Dr. Davy M. Belk

Air Force officials announced recently that Dr. Davy M. Belk will succeed Dr. Donald Hanson as director of the Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate in Rome, N.Y. Dr. Belk, a member of the Senior Executive Service, is currently director, Engineering Directorate, Ogden Air Logistics Center, located at Hill Air Force Base, Utah.

Dr. Belk began his professional career in 1976 at the General Dynamics Fort Worth Division, participating in full-scale design and development of the F-16 Fighting Falcon as a maintainability engineer. In 1978, he began work at the Air Force Armament Laboratory at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, serving there for nearly 16 years in a variety of research, technology development, system development and sustainment activities. He was later assigned to the Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate, where he developed computational fluid dynamics methods. Dr. Belk has also served at Headquarters Air Force Materiel Command as Technical Director for the Directorate of Engineering and Technical Management.

Dr. Belk received his B.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1976. He holds an M.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Florida, as well as a Ph.D. in engineering from Mississippi State University.

In his new position, Dr. Belk will oversee the center responsible for leading the discovery, development, and integration of affordable warfighting information technologies for our air, space and cyber force. The Information Directorate's areas of investigation include a broad spectrum of information technologies for information fusion, information exploitation, information management, communications, command and control, advanced computing architectures, and cyber operations. The directorate reports to the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

Dr. Hanson, also a member of the Senior Executive Service, plans to retire from federal service in June.