Wayne Austad
Wayne Austad serves as Chief Technology Officer for the National and Homeland Security Directorate at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and as Chief R&D Officer for the Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CyManII). He has spent more than 34 years at INL building and leading impactful national security programs focused on cybersecurity, critical infrastructure resilience and emerging technologies.
As CTO for INL’s National and Homeland Security Directorate, Austad provides leadership and strategic direction for cooperative research and development, infrastructure initiatives and institutional partnerships that address national challenges. At CyManII, he leads research and development efforts to advance economically viable and pervasive cybersecurity solutions for manufacturing automation and supply chains. He also guides INL’s discretionary research efforts focused on advancing Cyber-Informed Engineering and Critical Function Assurance.
Austad has served on numerous U.S. Department of Energy, university and National Science Foundation review panels and has advised national consortiums working to establish domestic leadership in semiconductor technologies and energy supply chain security. His work includes supporting the creation of the Semiconductor Manufacturing and Advanced Research with Twins (SMART) Manufacturing USA Institute and advancing CyManII’s Secure Defensible Architecture and Cyber Physical Passport initiatives to improve assurance and provenance across critical manufacturing sectors.
Previously, Austad led the development of INL’s Cybercore Integration Center, an innovation hub dedicated to improving the security and resilience of critical control systems. He also served as Director of INL’s Special Programs Division, where he oversaw technology and analysis efforts supporting defense and intelligence agencies in areas including advanced materials, trace detection, nuclear nonproliferation, electronic warfare modeling, information operations and wireless communications systems.
Austad began his career at INL in artificial intelligence and simulation, working on hybrid neural network and expert systems, machine health monitoring and 3D simulation environments for real-time robotic control. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical and computer engineering.
