NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Douglas A. Comstock is the director of NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program (IPP). The IPP provides leveraged technology for NASA's mission directorates, programs and projects through investments and technology partnerships with industry, academia, government agencies and national laboratories.

Image left: Douglas A. Comstock, Director of the Innovative Partnerships Program. Photo credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls.

Comstock also is responsible for directing the IPP portfolio of technology investments and partnering mechanisms including Small Business Innovative Research, Small Business Technology Transfer Research, the Centennial Challenges and the Innovative Partnerships Seed Fund. Additionally, he is responsible for intellectual property management and technology transfer that will provide broad societal benefits from the nation's investment in NASA's space and aeronautics missions, and for encouraging and facilitating partnerships with the emerging commercial space sector including the agency's purchase of emerging commercial services.

Comstock previously served as the NASA comptroller, responsible for the preparation, tracking, presentation and defense of NASA's budget to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congress. As the founding director of NASA's Strategic Investments Division, he was responsible for integrating NASA's strategic planning and program analysis supporting budget decisions into a single organization. Under his leadership, NASA was the first agency to achieve GREEN status as part of the President's Management Agenda for Budget and Performance Integration and NASA received its first honorable mention for the President's Quality Award.

Before coming to NASA, Comstock spent four years as a program examiner in OMB, with responsibility for NASA's human space flight activities, biological and physical research and personnel. Prior to his government service, he was Director of Engineering with the Futron Corporation, a Bethesda, Md.-based technology consulting firm, and began his career with General Dynamics Space Systems Division, conducting preliminary design and systems analysis for numerous aerospace systems, from strategic defense to advanced space transportation.

Comstock has undergraduate degrees from the University of Washington in both mechanical engineering and architecture. He did his graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received masters degrees in both aeronautics and astronautics, and technology and policy.

He resides in Ashburn, Va. and is married to the former Susan Louk. They have two children.

May 2007