The Executive Suite: Facebook’s Building 8 Chief to Leave the Firm in 2018

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Facebook’s Building 8 Chief to Leave the Firm in 2018

Facebook will soon be losing the woman behind its top secret Building 8 research group.

Regina Dugan, who was hired 18 months ago by the social network to head up its then-brand new research and development lab, is leaving Facebook to build and lead “a new endeavor.”

Regina Dugan

As chief of Building 8, Dugan, the former director of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA, was tasked with creating new hardware products to advance Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s dream of “connecting the world.” It is a dream Zuck was quite willing to sink hundreds of millions of dollars into.

Dugan’s exit is not immediate, however. She has said she will work with Facebook’s leadership “over the next several months to ensure Building 8 makes a smooth transition into 2018.”

“This was a difficult decision for me. Together, we have already done so much good work. And there are many people that I will miss, personally, and professionally,” Dugan wrote in a Facebook post.

Dugan, at Facebook’s F8 conference back in April, said her team was working on a silent speech system capable of typing 100 words per minute using only the brain — that is five times faster than most people can text using a Smartphone. The goal, she said at the time, is to create non-invasive, wearable sensors that enable brain-to-screen functionality and can be manufactured at scale.

Building 8’s second silent speech software project, Dugan said, is directed at allowing people to hear with their skin. The hardware and software needed to deliver language through the skin is currently in the works.

There is no word on how far along the Building 8 team is on these projects, but they are likely a big part of the reason for Dugan’s slow exit from Facebook.

It will be interesting to see who Facebook will choose to step into Dugan’s role at Building 8.