In 1993, at the age of 34, she was appointed as the head of the 3,000-person National Institute of Standards and Technology. From there, she left for Silicon Valley, where she became a top officer at a specialty materials company. She joined the venture capital firm U.S. Venture Partners in 2001, spending a decade investing in green tech and IT start-ups.

"Dr. Prabhakar's Department of Defense leadership, when coupled with her experience with technical communities in Silicon Valley and beyond, make her the ideal candidate to continue Darpa's impressive track record of success," Undersecretary of Defense Frank Kendall wrote in a memo to Darpa employees that Danger Room obtained.

But that experience may also draw fire from the White House's political opponents. One of U.S. Venture Partner's most famous betswas in Solyndra, the solar firm that was championed by President Obama, backed by half a billion dollars in government loans – and soon thereafter went bankrupt. According to the Wall Street Journal, it's "unclear whether Prabhakar was directly involved with the firm’s Solyndra stake."

A senior defense official tells Danger Room that "Dr. Prabakhar, who underwent extensive vetting, had no involvement in the federal loan guarantee for Solyndra and wasn't involved in the restructuring of the loan."

But no matter what her connection to Solyndra – direct or less so – Prabhakar's appointment once again raises an issue the president's reelection campaign would rather forget.

First, the Department of Energy structured Solyndra's loans in a way that paid back private investors before taxpayers. And some of those investors were six-figure