Gerardo Meléndez

Gerardo J. Meléndez is a San Juan, Puerto Rico-born scientist who served as Director of the Armaments Research Development Engineering Center (ARDEC) headquartered in New Jersey from 2010 until his Civil Service retirement in May 2014.

During his civilian career with the U.S. Army, which began in 1983 as an electronics engineer for the U.S. Army Communications and Electronics Command in New Jersey, Meléndez was a strong advocate of incorporating commercial technological advances in military applications, including equipment based on consumer products generated by companies such as Apple Inc. and Microsoft. He also served as chief of the Automatic Target Recognition Team for the Product Manager Tactical Endurance Synthetic Aperture Radar, as well as chief of the Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate’s Battle Space Identification Branch.

He is a graduate of Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in biomedical engineering in 1980, and Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he obtained a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1983, and he obtained his Ph.D in electrical engineering at Drexel University in 1993. He subsequently earned a master's degree in strategic studies from the Army War College.