The National Institute of Standard and Technology has introduced a three-stage prize competition that seeks to explore unmanned aircraft system technologies for potential use by first responders when they conduct search and rescue operations.

NIST said Wednesday it plans to award more than $700,000 throughout the First Responder UAS Triple Challenge, which is composed of three focus areas and slated to occur through June of next year.

Participants will aim to demonstrate optical sensors for image detection and analysis, broadband data relay in degraded cellular areas and UAS cybersecurity technologies.

"These prize competitions are a way for us to find solvers from around the world to help us with this important research," said Dereck Orr, chief of NIST's public safety communications research division.

“Our goal at PSCR is to accelerate the development and adoption of advanced wireless communications for the public safety community." 

PSCR will host the overall challenge, while Kansas State University and Mississippi State University will jointly manage the program. Interested participants can submit their entries to the competition starting Aug. 2nd.

Jerry Ma, director of emerging technology at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), said he is looking to streamline the deployment and procurement processes for advanced technology within the agency, Nextgov reported Wednesday. 

Ma noted how USPTO employees are excelling in emerging technologies efforts of the institution but they are decentralized and act as an ad hoc to some extent.

“And so the next step on top of that is to bring in some central oversight, central expertise to be able to keep tabs of everything to make sure we're able to prioritize, that we're continually focusing on the maximum impact areas for emerging technology,” he told the publication in an interview.

He identified three main priorities in his leadership that include the assessment of active projects in the emerging tech portfolio, development of coherent deployment and procurement plans for modernized tools and reaching out to the larger intellectual property sector. 

Since USPTO is one of the federal agencies that leverage artificial intelligence in dealing with business matters, Ma said he is hoping to ensure that “these projects realize maximum value for our agency, our staff and stakeholders.”

The agency released on July 1 two sets of data files known as the Artificial Intelligence Patent Dataset in a push to help researchers and policymakers examine how AI shapes invention.

The first data file from the Office of the Chief Economist showed patents issued from 1976 to 2020, including pre-grant publications that have AI technology elements. 

USPTO said the second dataset consisted of patent files that were used to develop the machine learning prototypes, which generated the data from the first file.

The Partnership for Public Service recently announced on Thursday that the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has been named one of the best places to work in the federal government. GSA was awarded the sixth-best place to work in the 2020 mid-sized agency category, one spot better than the year before.

“The past year has been challenging for all of us, and I could not be more proud of the team at GSA for continuing to deliver for our partner agencies and for taxpayers,” commented Robin Carnahan, GSA administrator.

The rankings are developed by the Partnership for Public Service and provide an overview of employee perspectives on an organization’s innovation, leadership, pay, work/life balance and other topics.

GSA’s high ranking illustrates its work to assist with the federal government’s COVID-19 response, including high scores in leadership and availability of job resources during the pandemic. It also validates the Administration’s innovation and agency performance.

Altogether, GSA scored better across all categories than at any other point in the past eight years. The Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) accounted for many of the last year’s challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

The GSA is responsible for centralized procurement activities on behalf of the federal government, managing a nationwide real estate portfolio of nearly 370 million rentable square feet and overseeing approximately $75 billion in annual contracts. GSA’s mission is to deliver the best value in real estate, acquisition and technology services throughout government, supporting the Biden-Harris Administration’s priorities.

Naval Surface Warfare Center, Corona Division has produced a web-based tool that allows users to track, process and report cannibalizations, the act of reducing supply inventories to accommodate newer products.

The eCANNAB system serves as a centralized platform for the many cannibalizations across the Navy, NSWC said Tuesday. The tool harnesses NSWC Corona’s data sources to inform commanders and decision-makers in a business intelligence environment.

David Drake, operations research analyst and co-creator of eCANNAB, said the tool consolidates the service branch’s cannibalizations to grant all Navy personnel access to this information.

“The Navy can now track that (item duplicates) and develop solutions to try to avoid cannibalization for that part altogether in the future,” Drake said.

The Navy developed eCANNAB within six months and initially launched the platform in late 2017. NSWC has since been applying “spiral” updates, with the latest one released on May 7.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has unveiled a $27 million funding opportunity for research and development projects that will focus on converting ocean wave energy into carbon-free electricity. 

DOE said Tuesday that grant recipients under the Advancing Wave Energy Technologies through Open Water Testing initiative will create and test wave energy converters (WEC) at the PacWave South facility in Oregon.

The department expects the program to generate open-access data about wind, wave and other relevant measurements that could support WEC system design efforts for PacWave and the energy community as a whole.

"With wave energy, we have the opportunity to add more renewable power to the grid and deploy more sustainable energy to hard-to-reach communities," said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

She added that the department seeks to encourage clean energy technology adoption through investments in the domestic business and academic sectors.

DOE will host a webinar on July 22nd to discuss the funding opportunity. Interested parties can submit concept papers through Aug. 13th and complete full applications until Oct. 5th.