PNNL

Doug MacDonald is a systems engineer in the Emerging Threats and Technologies Division at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). He currently serves as the advisor for physical security to PNNL’s Department of Homeland Security Sector.

Previously, MacDonald served as the strategy and development lead for the cyber-physical security effort being implemented by the then Operations Systems and Technology Division. MacDonald was also the technical team lead for Tactical Response and Technical Security Solutions teams within the Security Systems Optimization group, overseeing approximately 13 staff ranging from early career to seasoned veterans.

One of MacDonald’s key contributions to PNNL is serving as the principal investigator for cutting-edge research and development projects that blended the physical and cyber vulnerability assessment processes to include understanding the system-level interdependencies and interaction that occur within today’s interconnected cyber/physical systems. This research led to the development of a new software tool that captures and models a blended holistic assessment and provides the analyst with a wide variety of information such as system effectiveness, component attack vectors, and overall system resiliency. The Physical and Cyber Risk Analysis Tool (PACRAT) was granted a patent, was an R&D 100 finalist, and won a Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for the commercialization of the tool. 

MacDonald is a certified project manager and senior systems engineer on the Wide-Area Surveillance and the Surveillance and Detection projects for the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate and the program manager for the Screening at Speed program. The Surveillance and Detection project is adapting the latest giga-pixel class high-resolution camera technology to provide an immersive state-of-the-art visual surveillance system that can be used in the protection of the nation’s critical infrastructure assets.

MacDonald is also a subject matter expert in the areas of physical protection systems and security operations for large government facilities and various military installations. Prior to joining PNNL, MacDonald was the technical point of contact for all physical security and special system requirements for several high-security government and complex commercial projects.

• Systems Engineering
• Physical Security
• Cyber-Physical Systems

• ME in engineering and technology management, Washington State University
• BS in electrical engineering, University of Colorado Denver

• Computer-Implemented Security Evaluation Methods, Security Evaluation Systems, and Articles of Manufacture, Patent ID: 8509 | Patent Number 9,092,631