Marin Halper

A 20-year career innovator, integrator, and systems thinker at MITRE, Halper was instrumental in creating a family of interrelated government programs and impactful partnerships. In addition, he has played an integral role in advancing MITRE capabilities in data, artificial intelligence, sensing, command and control, and other initiatives supporting the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community.

As director of MITRE’s Cross-Cutting Urgent Innovation Cell, Halper combined analysis, prototyping, and experimentation to accelerate the identification and delivery of game-changing solutions addressing urgent national missions. In a whole-of-government approach, he led MITRE’s efforts to adapt and integrate non-traditional data with automation.

As a technical leader, he also developed and fielded novel automated processing capabilities designed to detect and identify materials of interest in near-real time using hyperspectral imagery. These processing capabilities—in particular, MITRE’s Probabilistic Identification of Solid Materials (PRISM) algorithm—have been broadly transitioned across the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, and industry partners, enabling significant impact in the accuracy, timeliness, and analyst burden associated with prosecuting hard targets.

Halper began his MITRE career as a nanosystems research intern while completing his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics at Yale University. He also holds a master’s degree in applied and computational mathematics from Johns Hopkins University. Halper has received awards of merit from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Director of National Intelligence, and the International Security Assistance Force.