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Angela Sheffield is a graduate student and Space Industry fellow at the National Defense University’s Eisenhower School. She is on detail from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), where she serves as the Senior Program Manager for AI for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development. The National Nuclear Security Administration (https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/national-nuclear-security-administration), a United States federal agency, part of the U.S. Dept of Energy and it’s Office of Defense Nuclear Non-Proliferation, responsible for safeguarding national security through the military application of nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile; works to reduce the global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the United States Navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion; and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the United States and abroad. In this position, Ms. Sheffield directs efforts leveraging artificial intelligence, advanced mathematics and statistics, and research computing technologies to develop capabilities to detect nuclear weapons development and characterize foreign nuclear programs around the world. Before joining NNSA, Ms. Sheffield led project teams at DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to develop modeling and simulation methodologies to model risk of WMD threats to inform national policy and decision making. Additionally, Ms. Sheffield led multidisciplinary efforts in the development of technical capabilities to detect the development of nuclear weapons with a special focus on AI and ML technologies. Ms. Sheffield joined PNNL after a distinguished career as an operations research analyst in the U.S. Air Force, where she specialized in the research and development and technical intelligence of U.S. and adversary weapon systems. Ms. Sheffield has a BS in Economics from the United States Air Force Academy and Duke University, an MS in Operations Research from Kansas State University, and will graduate from the Eisenhower School in June 2022 with an MS in National Security and Resource Strategy. The views expressed here are those of the guest and do not reflect the position of the U.S. government, DOE, NNSA, or DoD.

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