Dr. Ruthana Gordon is a cognitive psychologist at the Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security, a University-Affiliated Research Center of the United States Department of Defense supporting the Intelligence Community. Prior to ARLIS, Dr. Gordon worked with Booz Allen Hamilton as a subject matter expert supporting the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). While there, she contributed to research programs on topics including game-based social science methodologies, bias mitigation training, crowdsourcing structured analysis, and prediction markets. Before her time at IARPA, Gordon worked as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy fellow at the US Environmental Protection Agency, where she developed initiatives for building an organizational culture of innovation.
Dr. Gordon supported both EPA and IARPA’s first challenge prizes, gathering new solutions for personal air quality and health sensors, and for machine learning to detect neurophysiological and behavioral signals of trustworthiness. Gordon helped found the Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science in 2012, joined the interagency group’s steering committee in 2013 and worked as a co-chair from 2015 through early 2020. Her projects have earned Challenge.gov Excellence Awards and a spot on the 2017 Harvard Ash Innovations in American Government finalist list. Dr. Gordon holds a PhD in Experimental Cognitive Psychology from Stony Brook University (2003) and a BA in Cognitive Science from Hampshire College (1997). She is a member of AAAS, and of the Citizen Science Association’s Law and Policy Working Group.