Peter L. Levin


For the film director, see Peter Levin. For the jazz musician, see Pete Levin.
Peter L. Levin is an American entrepreneur, professor, and public official. He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Amida Technology Solutions, an open source software company that focuses on data and data security. From 2009 to 2013 he served as Chief Technology Officer for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.
Levin is also a non-resident fellow at the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and serves on the Board of Directors of Conversa Health.

Education and early career

Levin received his B.S., M.S., and doctoral degrees in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He was a DAAD visiting scientist and post-doctoral student at the Institute for High Voltage Engineering at the Technical University of Munich. He started his academic career as an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
He was named a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator during the first Bush Administration for his work in electromagnetic and acoustic field theory and high performance computing. In 1994 he spent a sabbatical year as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in the Department of Mathematical Physics at the Technical University of Darmstadt, and in 1995 he was selected to be a White House Fellow in the Office of Management and Budget. Levin was appointed associate dean for research and graduate programs at Boston University's College of Engineering in 1997.
In 1999, Levin joined the international venture capital firm Techno Venture Management. In 2003, Levin co-founded DAFCA, Inc., a semi-conductor design software company. DAFCA won a NIST Advanced Technology Program Award in 2004.
He was a director of the open source network company Astaro and a co-founder of the GPS-based cybersecurity company Zanio.

Recent career

Department of Veterans Affairs

In 2009 Levin joined the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as Senior Advisor to the Secretary and Chief Technology Officer. He spearheaded the development of the automated Agent Orange claims processing, the creation of the Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent, and led the design, implementation and deployment of Blue Button. He stepped down as CTO on March 1, 2013.

Amida Technology Solutions

In 2013, Levin founded Amida Technology Solutions, an open source software company that focuses on data management, data exchange, and data security. Amida has created a tool chest of open source components that are used in the healthcare, financial services, cybersecurity, and NGO sectors.

Author and Inventor

Levin holds several patents in chip design and GPS-based authentication, and has published over 50 scientific papers and policy articles. His work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, HuffPost, Politico.com, and the Obama White House website. "How to Counter Fake News," an article Levin co-authored with former Governor of Maryland Martin O'Malley, was included in Foreign Affairs's "The Best of 2017" anthology. He has co-authored pieces on cybersecurity with retired General Wesley Clark, and with cybersecurity expert Dan E. Geer Jr.. He also wrote an article with former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy that encourages the Federal Government to embrace practices that protect data and personal identity from the inside out. He recently collaborated with General H. Hugh Shelton and Stephen Ondra on a report that urges the Department of Defense to choose an open source electronic health record when reforming the Military Health System.

Other non-profit affiliations

From 2007-2017, Levin was a consulting professor in the Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at Stanford University. He has been an acting member of the UsAgainstAlzheimers and Prevent Cancer Foundation boards since 2013 and 2015, respectively. In 2017, he joined the Markle Foundation's Rework America Task Force.