David Van Wie

Dr. David Van Wie is the ninth director of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). As director, Dr. Van Wie leads the nation’s largest university affiliated research center, which performs research and development on behalf of the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, NASA, and other federal agencies. The Laboratory has more than 9,000 staff members who are making critical contributions to a wide variety of nationally and globally significant technical and scientific challenges.

Prior to becoming director on July 14, 2025, Dr. Van Wie led APL’s Air and Missile Defense Sector, where he was responsible for strategic planning, execution, and performance of over 1,500 staff advancing the ability of the nation to defend our homeland, deployed forces, allies, and partners against adversarial threats. In this role, he championed new types of kinetic interceptors, novel approaches to sensing and data fusion, deployable artificial intelligence capabilities, and innovative non-kinetic effectors.

Dr. Van Wie also previously served as mission area executive for Precision Strike, focusing on advanced weapon development, electromagnetic spectrum dominance, and novel long-range detection and targeting systems through revolutionary application of technologies in the areas of hypersonics, adaptive coordination of discrete kinetic and non-kinetic systems, and upstream data fusion.

He has long been an active leader in the defense research and development community as well as the broader U.S. science and technology community. Van Wie has published extensively on hypersonic flight, high-temperature fluid dynamics, airbreathing propulsion, and plasma aerodynamics and has played key roles in major studies investigating topics of national strategic importance, including hypersonic systems, autonomous systems, ballistic and cruise missile defenses, reusable boosters for space launch, virtual training technologies, and hybrid warfare.

Dr. Van Wie has served previously on the Defense Science Board, the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board within the National Academies. Dr. Van Wie holds a joint appointment as a research professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Van Wie was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2017. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and is a recipient of the Air Force Award for Meritorious Civilian Service. He was awarded the honor of presenting the AIAA 2021 Theodore von Kármán Lecture in Astronautics.

Dr. Van Wie earned his B.S. (summa cum laude), M.S., and Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland and an M.S. in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins.