Carnegie Mellon Names Jason Brown CEO of Software Engineering Institute

A leader from the military and industry

The SEI is a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) operated by Carnegie Mellon and sponsored by the Department of War (DoW). According to the university, Brown brings experience across military operations, the DoW and other national security agencies, academia and the defense technology industry.

Brown currently serves as general manager, government, at Applied Intuition, where he leads work to develop and deploy software and autonomous technologies for government and defense customers. Before that, he led Google's professional services business for defense.

His earlier career includes senior U.S. Air Force leadership positions focused on intelligence, emerging technology and national security. As director of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force Strategic Studies Group, he developed and implemented the service's emerging-technology strategy and founded the U.S. Air Force Artificial Intelligence Accelerator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was also a founding member of the Department of Defense's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. Brown is an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University, where he teaches artificial intelligence and national security.

He first worked with Carnegie Mellon and the SEI while serving in the Air Force.

What the role involves

As director and CEO, Brown will set the SEI's strategic direction, oversee its research, engineering and technology-transition activities and serve as its principal representative to federal sponsors and partners. He will also work with researchers across Carnegie Mellon to connect the university's strengths with emerging national security needs.

The university says the SEI has brought together national security expertise, technical depth and Carnegie Mellon's research strengths for more than four decades. As emerging technologies change defense operations, it sees an opportunity for the institute to help the department evaluate new capabilities, understand their potential and vulnerabilities and employ them responsibly at scale.

Theresa Mayer, CMU's vice president for research, said Brown "understands national-security missions from the perspective of a military leader." Brown said that "the most powerful results occur when researchers, military professionals and industry partners work closely enough to recognize possibilities that no one organization would identify on its own."

Succeeding Paul Nielsen

Brown succeeds Paul Nielsen, who joined the SEI in 2004 and became its director and CEO later that year. According to the announcement, Nielsen guided the institute through more than two decades of technological change, institutional growth and expanded mission responsibility. He will remain engaged through the leadership transition, and Carnegie Mellon plans a reception in early 2027 to celebrate his service, with details to come.

John Gilligan, chair of the SEI Board of Visitors, thanked Nielsen for guiding the SEI for the past 22 years and said the board looks forward to working with Brown as he builds on that foundation.

What it means for the SEI

The announcement describes the SEI's work as having influenced how the DoW develops and acquires software, protects the defense industrial base, responds to cybersecurity threats and moves AI from experimental models into dependable systems. It adds that the institute enters its next chapter with a renewed federal mandate, a record of national impact and new leadership.

For the SEI's government, industry and academic partners, the appointment signals continuity in the institute's focus on software, AI, cybersecurity and autonomous systems. Brown's background in both defense and commercial technology reflects the mix of sectors the institute says is central to its mission.