John D. McLean is Superintendent of the Naval Research Laboratory's Information Technology Division (ITD).  He became Acting Superintendent in 2002, and he was confirmed as Superintendent and appointed to the Government's Senior Executive Service in 2003.  Prior to becoming Superintendent, Dr. McLean was a member of the Government's Senior Science and Technology Service and NRL's Senior Scientist for Information Assurance.

Dr. McLean came to NRL in 1980 as a Research Computer Scientist.  Serving as Principal Investigator for several research projects, he published widely in the areas of formal methods and formal modeling for computer security.  In 1988 he helped create ITD's Center for High Assurance Computer Systems, establishing and heading the Center's Formal Methods Section.  In 1994 he became Director of the Center, which during his tenure transitioned technological advances into several successful products, including IPSec, IPv6, devices that support a variety of MSL architectures, and the world's first Type 1 programmable cryptographic device.  While at NRL, he has also held positions as an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science for the University of Maryland, the National Cryptologic School, and Troisième Cycle Romand d'Informatique.

Dr. McLean is an Associate Editor of Distributed Computing, Journal of Computer Security, and ACM Transactions on Information and System Security. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the IEEE Computer Security Foundations Workshop and a US Navy Representative to the Technical Cooperation Program (TTCP) C3I Group, where he previously served as the Chair and US National Leader of the Group’s Technical Panel on High Assurance Systems and Defensive Information Warfare.

During his career at NRL, Dr. McLean has served as a Senior Research Fellow of the University of Cambridge's Centre for Communications Systems Research and as a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of Cambridge's Isaac Newton Institute Program in Computer Security, Cryptology, and Coding Theory. He has been Conference Chair for the IEEE Symposium on Research in Security and Privacy and Program Chair for that conference, the IEEE Computer Security Foundations Workshop, and COMPASS, where he was also a member of the conference’s Board of Directors. He is the recipient of an Outstanding Paper Award from the IEEE Computer Society and three Alan Berman Research Publication Awards from NRL.

Dr. McLean graduated from Oberlin College in 1974 with a B.A. in Mathematics. He received an M.S. in Computer Science in 1980 and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1976 and 1980, respectively, all from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where his research interests were computer science, mathematical logic, and the philosophy of science.