Dr Brian Young joined the Defence Technology Agency as Director in April 2012, after two and half years as Director for Research at the University of Otago. Previously, Dr Young served for four years at the New Zealand Embassy in Washington DC as the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology’s first Science & Technology Counsellor to the United States of America. In his earlier life as a neuroscience researcher, he was a senior scientist at HortResearch, a Foundation for Research, Science and Technology Research Fellow at the University of Otago, and undertook a period of post doctoral work that was divided across the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He received a BSc(Hons) in psychology from the University of Canterbury (NZ), and a PhD in psychology (behavioural neuroscience) from Dartmouth College (USA).