Senior Vice President, Chief Development Officer
BWX Technologies, Inc.
Dr. Jonathan W. Cirtain is senior vice president and chief development officer of BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT). He is responsible for identifying and developing new technologies and commercial opportunities for the company by integrating technical expertise and resources across the enterprise. He joined BWXT as director of commercial technologies in 2017 and was second to Oak Ridge National Lab in 2018, where he served as the associate lab director responsible for a nuclear reactor development program. He has also served as BWXT Advanced Technologies president and chief technology officer.
Dr. Cirtain spent nine years with NASA. He received the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and held positions of increasing responsibility from astrophysicist to the Science Research Office manager. He also co-founded Astraea, Inc., a machine learning and data science analytics company.
With a passion for design and innovation, Dr. Cirtain has contributed to and led teams in revolutionary science and technology applications. He has developed numerous scientific space science payloads, plasma confinement systems for lab research, a solid rocket motor system for suborbital vehicles and graphics processing unit technology for video systems.
Dr. Cirtain earned his Ph.D. in physics from Montana State and a doctoral fellowship from Harvard University. He also holds two bachelor’s degrees in physics and mathematics from the University of Memphis. Dr. Cirtain has served on advisory committees for NASA, the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Academy for Science and Engineering, Royal Academy of Science, European Space Agency and numerous universities.