Tabitha Dodson

Dr. Tabitha Dodson joined DARPA in 2018 and the Defense Sciences Office (DSO) as a program manager in April 2024. Her interest areas include advanced space payloads, electric propulsion, astrodynamics, nuclear thermal and nuclear electric propulsion, radioisotopes, advanced nuclear reactors (fission and fusion), plasma physics and plasma engineering, nuclear/quantum/particle physics, and hypersonics.

Dodson came to DARPA in 2018 to provide her expertise in the creation of the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program in the agency's Tactical Technology Office. Prior to joining DSO, Dodson was the DRACO program manager and before that she served as chief engineer and deputy program manager of the DRACO program. Dodson has previously worked as an adjunct professor of aerospace engineering at the United States Naval Academy and as an adjunct professor in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department of the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT). Dodson has worked in various other positions within and for the U.S. Air Force (now U.S. Space Force), including as an aerospace engineer and senior scientist in the fields of spacecraft engineering, space missions and operations, space power, and space propulsion. She was also a NASA fellow conducting research in nuclear materials for nuclear thermal rockets. Dodson has performed research utilizing the Department of Defense High Performance Computing supercomputer on radiation effects on potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) crystals used in the National Ignition Facility for fusion research.

Dodson holds a doctorate in applied physics from AFIT, as well as a doctorate in mechanical and aerospace engineering from George Washington University, where she also earned a master’s in space policy and bachelor’s degrees in physics, sociology, and anthropology.