Russell Shilling, Ph.D., is an accomplished social impact innovator whose career has been dedicated to using technology to improve education, training, and psychological health. He is a former Navy Captain, aerospace experimental psychologist, and program officer at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he led innovative programs on the use of AI and affective computing for psychological health and created new approaches to using games and analytics strategies for STEM education.
Prior to his time at DARPA, Shilling was a pioneer in serious games and Virtual Reality for education and psychological health. He developed award-winning programs with Sesame Workshop to help military children cope with deployments, injury, and grief. Later, he served as the Executive Director of STEM Initiatives at the U.S. Department of Education during the Obama Administration, where he worked on education policy issues and helped coordinate STEM activities with federal agencies and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Shilling is a strong advocate for a DARPA for Education (ARPA-ED) and has consulted with startups and major philanthropies on applying innovative processes to research and development. He continues to work on policy issues in education, focusing on the use of AI in education and health technologies, including an advisor to the EdSafe AI Alliance.