Who is Nand Mulchandani, CIA's first-ever Chief Technology Officer?

Mulchandani's key responsibility will be to ensure that the American espionage agency leverages cutting-edge innovations and keeps an eye on tomorrow's innovations to further the CIA's mission.

Indian Origin Nand Mulchandani has been appointed as the US Central Intelligence Agency's first Chief Technology Officer. Mulchandani's appointment was announced by agency Director William J Burns.

Following Mulchandani's appointment, Burns said that since his confirmation, he gave priority to technology and that the new CTO position is a very important part of that effort. He further said that Mulchandani will bring his extensive experience to the crucial new role.

Mulchandani's key responsibility will be to ensure that the American espionage agency leverages cutting-edge innovations and keeps an eye on tomorrow's innovations to further the CIA's mission.

Mulchandani said he was honoured to join the CIA in this role and looked forward to working out a comprehensive technology strategy that would deliver exciting capabilities through working closely with industry and partners

Here's what you should know about Mulchandani:

* He has over 25 years of experience working in the Silicon Valley as well as the United States Department of Defense.

* Mulchandani served as the CTO and Acting Director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center at the Department of Defense. 

* He was also the co-founder and CEO of startups like OpenDNS (acquired by Cisco), Oblix (acquired by Oracle), Determina (acquired by VMWare) and ScaleXtreme (acquired by Citrix).  

* He started his career at Sun Microsystems as a compiler architect. Mulchandani holds a patent on dynamic code generation.

* Mulchandani has a Master in Public Administration degree from Harvard, a Master of Science degree in Management from Stanford and a degree in Computer Science and Math from Cornell. He is a non-resident Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard.

* Mulchandani studied at Delhi-based Bluebells School.