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Charles F. Draper is Director of the National Academies’ Naval Studies Board. He joined the National Academies in 1997 as Program Officer then Senior Program Officer with the Naval Studies Board and in 2003 became Associate Director and Acting Director. During his tenure at the National Academies, Dr. Draper has served as study director on a wide-range of topics aimed at helping the Department of the Navy with its scientific, technical, and strategic planning. Prior to joining the National Academies, Dr. Draper was the lead mechanical engineer at Sensytech, Incorporated (formerly S.T. Research Corporation), where he provided technical and program management support for satellite earth station and small satellite design. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Vanderbilt University in 1995; his doctoral research was conducted at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), where he used an atomic force microscope to measure the nano-mechanical properties of thin film materials. In parallel with his graduate student duties, Dr. Draper was a mechanical engineer with Geo-Centers, Incorporated, working onsite at NRL on the development of an underwater x-ray backscattering tomography system used for the nondestructive evaluation of U.S. Navy sonar domes on surface ships.