Obama appoints Google's Megan Smith as new US chief technology officer

The President of the United States, Barack Obama has named Google executive Megan Smith as the new US Chief Technology Officer.

Megan Smith, a Google vice president and champion of women in technology, is an MIT-educated engineer who worked most recently at Google X, the company's lab for hyper-ambitious projects like the self-driving car and the future of robots. Before that, she led the business development team for nine years, The Verge reported.

Along with her, Alex Macgillivray who was Twitter's former top lawyer has been named the deputy CTO. It is an interesting choice because Macgillivray, at Twitter, had set a tone for that company's independence from the US government and resistance to law enforcement data requests.

However, Smith is only the third ever CTO for the States.

The US CTO position is relatively new. The first US CTO, Aneesh Chopra, served from 2009 to 2012. He was succeeded by Todd Park, who left in late August. Smith will be the third US CTO ever, the report said.