Arati Prabhakar: Keynote Address, 2025 Commencement

The commencement ceremony honors the UC Berkeley School of Information class of 2025.

Keynote Speaker
Arati Prabhakar

Arati Prabhakar, Ph.D., was the 12th director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and assistant to President Biden for science and technology. In this capacity, Prabhakar was the president’s chief advisor for science and technology, a member of the president’s cabinet, and co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

An engineer and applied physicist with broad management and leadership experience, Prabhakar has led two different federal R&D agencies and worked with startups, large companies, universities, government labs, and nonprofits across a wide variety of sectors to create new solutions for critical challenges. She served as director of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, from 2012 to 2017; under her leadership, they kick-started the development of a rapid-response mRNA vaccine platform that later made possible the fastest safe and effective vaccine development in world history in response to COVID-19.

In 1993, she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), becoming the first woman to lead the agency. Between these federal leadership roles, Prabhakar spent 15 years in Silicon Valley as a company executive and as a venture capitalist.

In addition to her contributions to public interest technology, Prabhakar is a renowned engineer. After graduating from the California Institute of Technology as the first woman to earn a doctorate in applied physics, she held leadership positions at companies Raychem and Interval Research and worked on projects involving broadband technologies and specialty materials manufacturing. She also became a partner at U.S. Venture Partners, investing in semiconductor and cleantech startups. In 2018, she co-founded Actuate, a nonprofit organization that designed innovative research and development programs.

Her contributions to the private and public sectors have earned her recognition from many notable organizations. In 2024, Prabhakar was named one of the most influential people in AI by TIME Magazine. She is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

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