Company Profile
Draper Laboratory
Company Overview
Draper Laboratory is a state-of-the-art research
and development laboratory, employing more than
750 engineers, scientists, and technicians on a
broad array of programs for government and
commercial sponsors.
The Laboratory’s unparalleled expertise in the
areas of guidance navigation and control systems
remains its greatest resource. Draper is among
the leaders in fault-tolerant computing, reliable
software development, and modeling and
simulation, and the Lab can apply its control
skills to any engineering problem that has
control implications.
While Draper is committed to continued excellence
in its traditional areas of expertise, it is
leveraging the state-of-the-art techniques that
underlie its core competencies to a wider
spectrum of applications. These include a broad
range of information systems, precision-guided
munitions, air traffic flow management, military
logistics, and, in the biomedical arena,
innovative neural prostheses.
To this end, Draper has nurtured a highly skilled
and motivated work force supported by a network
of exceptional design, fabrication, and test
facilities. This combination of highly trained
technical talent and state-of-the-art facilities
enables the Laboratory to deliver not only the
design and development of first-of-a-kind systems
incorporating innovative technology, but also
high-value-added engineering services to a broad
spectrum of government and commercial sponsors.
Company History
Draper’s roots date to the 1930s when Dr. Charles
Stark Draper created a teaching laboratory at MIT
to develop the instrumentation needed to make
precise measurements of angular and linear
motion. The Laboratory was renamed for its
founder in 1970 and remained a part of MIT until
1973 when it became an independent, not-for-
profit research and development corporation.