Dr. Nathaniel S. Heiner

Dr. Nathaniel Heiner assumed duty as the U.S. Coast Guard’s Chief Knowledge Officer and Deputy CIO in January 2001. Heiner has been an active participant in the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, working to establish better interoperability and information sharing among the Department’s agencies.

Prior to this assignment, Heiner was Director of Web/Internet Services at Northrup Grumman and Federal Data Corporation. His business unit was dedicated to working exclusively with Federal organizations such as the State Department, U.S. Navy, Veterans Affairs, National Institutes of Health, Department of Justice, and U.S. Air Force. From 1986 to 1992, Heiner was president of Amazon Systems Inc. and The Logic Works. In the early 1980s, Heiner was Vice President at Virginia Information Systems Corporation, also Unix systems integration firm. Heiner’s first work in the computer industry, in the mid-1970s, was with the American Institute of CPAs, where he built a mainframe meta language that streamlined the AICPA’s publications process.

Heiner holds Ph.D., M.Phil., M.A., and B.A. degrees, all from Columbia University, where he also taught, and was President’s Fellow and Belgian-American Fellow. His academic specialization is in mathematical logic and linguistics, with a subspecialization in an area of semantics called theory of reference.