Dr. Brad R. Ringeisen

Dr. Brad Ringeisen joined DARPA as the Deputy Director of BTO in December 2016.

Before coming to DARPA, Dr. Ringeisen was the Head of the Bioenergy and Biofabrication Section at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) where he oversaw diverse research programs including the development and application of laser-assisted printing approaches to biology, development of organs-on-a-chip, microbial energy harvesting and extracellular electron transfer as well as microbial discovery and microbiome characterization. His personal research focused on using a variety of novel laser-based processing tools to deposit patterns and 3D structures of biological materials including living cells, fixed tissue, solid-phase environmental samples, and biopolymers. He was also the Chief Technology Officer for the DoD’s Advanced Technology Biofabrication Manufacturing Innovation Institute.

From 2012 to 2014, Dr. Ringeisen was detailed at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Joint Science and Technology Office as a science and technology manager, where he oversaw the development of field-forward diagnostic technology with wireless connectivity to the cloud.

Dr. Ringeisen is a pioneer in the field of live cell printing, having demonstrated the first living bacteria and mammalian cell printing experiment using modified laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) technology in the early 2000s. He is a named inventor on thirteen patents, eight involving modifications to LIFT for biological applications. He has published over 65 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has edited a book on cell and organ printing. Throughout his career he has worked across the Department of Defense (DoD) research enterprise having performed research for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), DARPA and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) in addition to his internal programs at NRL.

Dr. Ringeisen received a Doctor of Philosophy in physical chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from Wake Forest University. Dr. Ringeisen was named the DoD Lab Scientist of the Quarter in December 2015 for his achievements in applying bioprinting to the fields of tissue engineering and microbial ecology.