The Senior Advisor for Program Innovation, National Endowment for the Arts is a senior executive at the National Endowment responsible for exploring, examining and identifying innovative and/or emerging practices, programs and endeavors in the arts. In his current position, Mr. O’Brien helped organize two convenings of the nation’s leading artists and scientists in partnership with the National Science Foundation: Re/search: Art, Science and Information Technology and Symbiotic Art & Science: An Investigation at the Intersection of Life Sciences and the Arts. He helps lead an NEA/NSF/NEH working group to investigate research, practice and innovation at the intersection of art, science and the humanities, and serves as project director on a partnership between the NEA and the Department of Defense to investigate the use of Creative Arts Therapies as a formal medical protocol to help heal service members at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE) at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD and at Fort Belvoir, VA. - See more at: http://blog.artsusa.org/author/bill-obrien/#sthash.vRCaheGZ.dpuf