Lisa Porter

As the new director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, Lisa Porter is the United States' answer to James Bond's Agent Q, but she's not crazy about the label. Porter is not the kind of person who likes being reduced to an easy metaphor, nor does she want her agency's intelligence work reduced to easy metaphors. That makes her the perfect head of the new agency, which has been tasked with developing technologies so far out that not even the Defense Department would fund them.

A former military scientist and senior NASA official is being tapped to be the first chief scientific researcher for all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. Lisa Porter was named as the first director of the new Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, in a statement from the Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell. "This is an important milestone for the Intelligence Community," he said in the statement last week. "We are incredibly fortunate to have someone of Dr. Porter's stature take on this vital role." Porter, of Scituate, Mass., is the associate administrator of NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, and co-chairman of the National Science & Technology Council's subcommittee on aeronautics.