Darren Shaffer is a Contracting Officer (CO) within the Innovative Research Division at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center (Volpe Center). He has twenty years of contracting experience, half of which has been dedicated to U.S DOT’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. He served as CO for SBIR from 2008 to 2011. He resumed his role as CO supporting SBIR in 2016. During the intervening years, he served the Volpe Center’s Acquisition Division as warranted CO holding a FAC-C Level III certification, government purchase card (GPC) coordinator, and small business specialist (SBS). He maintains FAC-C Professional and FAC-COR Level III certifications and has earned Federal Acquisition Institute (FAI) credentials related to various aspects of R&D contracting. Mr. Shaffer is an alumni of the General Services Administration’s (GSA) CXO Fellows Program and has received Master of Public Administration and an interdisciplinary bachelor’s degrees from The Evergreen State College (Olympia, WA).