Marjory Blumenthal (she/her) is an adjunct policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. She joined RAND as director of the experimental Science, Technology, and Policy program in spring 2016, with a broad remit including science and technology trends, societal impacts, and policy. Her work at RAND has addressed such topics as automated vehicles, measuring the impact of research, technology governance, regulatory policy, technological surprise and national/homeland security, citizen science, and trends and impacts of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, 5G, quantum, and more.
As founding executive director of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) at the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, she addressed the full range of information technologies and their impacts and is recognized for her work on the evolution of the Internet and cybersecurity. In 2003, she took a leadership position at Georgetown University, developing academic strategy, promoting innovation, and fostering research; her personal research addressed cybersecurity in the context of the cloud. In 2013–2016, Blumenthal was executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, addressing research targeting and support, cybersecurity, big data, and privacy, IT in health, technology and the future of cities, biosecurity, and many other issues.
Blumenthal is principal author and/or coauthor of numerous books and articles and serves on various boards and advisory bodies. She now applies her expertise in a variety of nonprofit, research- and policy-oriented affiliations.