Facebook has hired Regina Dugan, the head of Google's Advanced Technologies and Projects group, also known as ATAP. Dugan will lead a new group inside Facebook called Building 8, which will focus on building new hardware for the company, according to The Verge.
Dugan says that she is sad to be leaving ATAP, despite her excitement for her new role.
On the other hand, I am sad to leave the pirates of ATAP. Each of our efforts to create new, seemingly impossible products, has been faced with intense challenges along the way. Technical challenges. Organizational challenges. Challenges that might have broken lesser teams. This is the type of work we signed up for when we built ATAP. It is terrifying because it means we have to face our fear of failure, stare it down, more days than most. So be it.
Before heading up ATAP at Google, Dugan was the director at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It's not clear at this time exactly what Building 8 will be developing at Facebook.
