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Monica Bertagnolli Confirmed as NIH Director
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Monica Bertagnolli Confirmed as NIH Director

The Senate on Tuesday voted 62-36 to confirm Monica Bertagnolli, head of the National Cancer Institute, as director of the National Institutes of Health.

In May, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Bertagnolli to serve as NIH director.

Xavier Becerra, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, welcomed the Senate confirmation of Bertagnolli, who will replace Acting NIH Director Lawrence Tabak.

Bertagnolli “has built a reputation for her willingness to take on the deadliest diseases facing patients and as a powerful advocate for cancer patients, working to end cancer as we know it. That same tireless energy and clear vision will serve her well as NIH director,” Becerra said in a statement.

Before becoming the 16th NCI director, Bertagnolli was a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

She is a former research fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who served as group chair of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology and led gastrointestinal science efforts within the Cooperative Groups Program, which is now called NCI’s National Clinical Trials Network.

Bertagnolli is a past president and board chairman of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The physician-scientist has also served on the boards of the American Cancer Society and the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

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Discover and dialogue on the latest healthcare technology trends at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2023 Healthcare Summit on Dec. 6. Register here to attend this important event.

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NASA Stennis Releases 5-Year Strategic Plan to Prepare for Future Space Missions
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NASA Stennis Releases 5-Year Strategic Plan to Prepare for Future Space Missions

NASA’s Stennis Space Center has unveiled a strategic plan outlining its goals and objectives in key mission areas for the next five years as it seeks to accelerate its space exploration and commercialization efforts.

The NASA Stennis Strategic Plan 2024-2028 lays out the center’s plans for propulsion testing, the federal city business model, autonomous systems design and development, range assets and infrastructure and workforce development, the agency said Monday.

NASA Stennis aims to operate as a multi-user propulsion test enterprise, develop a sustainable and long-term capital improvement plan for the federal city, design intelligent and autonomous systems and services, use its range location and infrastructure to support the testing and operation of uncrewed systems and prepare and optimize its workforce for the future.

“The new plan is our guide to help make sure we are aligning ourselves with the NASA mission and the needs of our commercial partners,” said Duane Armstrong, manager of the NASA Stennis Strategic Business Development Office.

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GSA & CIO Council Unveil Cloud Operations Guidance for Federal Agencies
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GSA & CIO Council Unveil Cloud Operations Guidance for Federal Agencies

The CIO Council’s Enterprise Operations Committee and the General Services Administration’s IT Modernization Division have released new guidance to help federal agencies manage and optimize their cloud operations.

The Cloud Operations Best Practices and Resource Guide outlines four key components of cloud operations, which are leadership, business management, security and platform engineering, and clarifies the differences between traditional IT and cloud operations.

“The overarching theme of this guide is that cloud operations fundamentally differ from traditional IT operations. This difference emerges in virtually every aspect of IT operations, including strategy, planning, budgeting, governance, monitoring, provisioning, and more,” the guidance reads.

Eighty-two subject matter experts across 31 federal agencies shared their best practices and insights for purchasing cloud services, migrating applications and managing IT investments.

The guidance also includes insights on improving cloud operations from the members of the Cloud and Infrastructure Community of Practice working group.

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AARO Shakes Up Executive Team With 2 New Leadership Changes; Kathleen Hicks Quoted
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AARO Shakes Up Executive Team With 2 New Leadership Changes; Kathleen Hicks Quoted

The U.S. Department of Defense’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office has made two major leadership changes.

These moves include the selection of Timothy Phillips as the office’s deputy director and the upcoming retirement of Sean Kirkpatrick, who serves as director of AARO, the DOD said on Wednesday.

Phillips has been a member of the Senior National Intelligence Service for nearly two decades and holds a strong track record of geospatial intelligence collection and mission management. His experience will support AARO efforts to identify, characterize and resolve unidentified anomalous phenomena.

Kirkpatrick shared his intent to step down from his current role in December in an interview with Politico published on Tuesday. The DOD officially confirmed his retirement in a statement by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks hours before Phillips’ appointment was announced.

Hicks, a three-time recipient of the Wash100 Award, noted Kirkpatrick’s “distinguished 27-year career of public services” within the DOD and Intelligence Community. During his time with AARO, she said, Kirkpatrick “served the American people with honesty and integrity, tackling an incredibly difficult mission to explain the unknown.”

One aspect of Kirkpatrick’s career that Hicks highlighted is his “commitment to transparency with the United States Congress and the American public on UAP.”

She cited his launch of the office’s public-facing website as an example and noted Kirkpatrick’s establishment of the office and its operations, assessment of hundreds of UAP cases and leadership in an exhaustive search for UAP-related government and contractor programs as other key contributions.

“Our department is stronger and better prepared for future scientific and national security challenges because of Sean’s distinguished service to our country,” she said.

DHS, CISA, FEMA Jointly Launch Critical Infrastructure Resilience Campaign
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DHS, CISA, FEMA Jointly Launch Critical Infrastructure Resilience Campaign

The Department of Homeland Security, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are collaborating for a campaign to strengthen the resilience of U.S. critical infrastructure.

The Shields Ready campaign is a follow-up to Shields Up, and aims to provide resources and tools to help hospitals, utilities and other critical infrastructure entities respond and recover from operational disruption, DHS announced Tuesday.

CISA previously launched Shields Up to urge the sector’s stakeholders to develop time-sensitive risk management measures in preparation for cybersecurity-specific threat intelligence.

Shields Ready is designed in likeness to FEMA’s Ready initiative for disaster response. It includes guidance on identifying an infrastructure organization’s dependencies and risks, making actionable plans and developing metrics for continuous improvement strategies. More information is found on the campaign’s page on CISA’s website.

“In coordination with FEMA’s own Ready campaign, this new approach will help us encourage critical infrastructure stakeholders to practice preparedness and build a more resilient nation by creating plans to protect people and communities alike against hazardous events,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell remarked.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and CISA Director Jen Easterly, who are both Wash100 inductees, expressed similar sentiments, saying the project prepares individuals and communities for present and future threats and challenges in national infrastructure.

DHS and CISA will be among the participants at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2023 Homeland Security Summit on Nov. 15. Click here to register for the event.

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DOD to Release New Strategy Addressing Defense Industry Challenges
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DOD to Release New Strategy Addressing Defense Industry Challenges

Laura Taylor-Kale, assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy, announced at the Defense Logistics Agency Demand Forecast event on Nov. 6 that the Department of Defense will release a new National Defense Industrial Strategy in early December.

Taylor-Kale said the new strategy would seek to address the various challenges confronting defense companies, including technological change and workforce and supply chain issues, the DLA reported Tuesday.

The new strategy, which reinforces the 2022 National Defense Strategy, also aims to establish an industrial ecosystem that would provide the U.S. an edge over adversaries.

An accompanying implementation plan will be issued in January 2024. The implementation plan will feature metrics and actionable steps.

The DLA Demand Forecast event was attended by representatives of various industry groups, including the Aerospace Industries Association, the National Defense Transportation Association and the Professional Services Council.

The event revealed to participants the areas in which the DLA intends to do business in 2024.

DARPA Announces Innovation Challenges for Civilian, Military Medical Triage
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DARPA Announces Innovation Challenges for Civilian, Military Medical Triage

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is launching a three-year competition to spur innovations in medical triage in civilian and military settings.

The agency announced Tuesday that it is funding teams from Arete Associates, Battelle Memorial Institute, Charles River Analytics, the University of Maryland, University of Pennsylvania and RTX‘s BBN business as initial participants in the DARPA Triage Challenge.

The five-track challenge will focus on new approaches to injury signature identification in mass civilian or military incidents. It will be divided into virtual, systems and data competitions.

Technologies may range from autonomous systems with standoff sensors, to artificial intelligence and robotic military platforms that can be used in primary and secondary triage.

DARPA is expecting to fund more teams in the coming weeks. Self-funded teams may also submit their application until Nov. 27.

The Potomac Officers Club is gathering private and public sector healthcare experts to discuss critical issues such as changes in the industry since the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2023 Healthcare Summit is happening on Dec. 6, and registration is now open.

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Bipartisan Bill to Reauthorize Section 702 Intelligence Collection Authority, Introduce Surveillance Reform Measures
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Bipartisan Bill to Reauthorize Section 702 Intelligence Collection Authority, Introduce Surveillance Reform Measures

Four Senate and House lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan bill that would reauthorize for four years the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s Section 702 provision and establish accountability measures and protections to prevent warrantless searches and other forms of surveillance abuse.

Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Mike Lee, R-Utah introduced the Government Surveillance Reform Act with Reps. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, and Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.

“Our bill continues to give government agencies broad authority to collect information on threats at home and abroad, including the ability to act quickly in emergencies and settle up with the court later. But it creates much stronger protections for the privacy of law-abiding Americans, and restores the warrant protections that are at the heart of the Fourth Amendment,” Wyden said in a statement published Tuesday.

The proposed Government Surveillance Reform Act would protect U.S. citizens from warrantless backdoor searches, limit the acquisition of information on Americans as part of large datasets and require warrants for government purchases of private data of Americans from private brokers and for surveillance of citizens’ web browsing, location data and search records.

The legislation would also prohibit the targeting of foreigners as a pretext for surveilling Americans and would include exceptions to ensure that the U.S. government can continue to use the Section 702 authority for defensive cybersecurity purposes.

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DOD CIO Names Kevin Mulvihill Permanent Deputy Chief Information Officer for C3
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DOD CIO Names Kevin Mulvihill Permanent Deputy Chief Information Officer for C3

Kevin Mulvihill, acting deputy chief information officer for command, control and communications within the Office of the Department of Defense CIO, has assumed the role of deputy CIO for C3 on a permanent basis.

The Office of the DOD CIO announced Mulvihill’s appointment in a LinkedIn post published Tuesday.

In this capacity, he provides strategic direction, policy guidance and oversight of DOD’s efforts to modernize C3 capabilities, including communications systems and networks; position, navigation and timing; waveform management; tactical network management; enterprise mobility; and spectrum.

Mulvihill’s “expertise and leadership of key initiatives will ensure that DoD continues to modernize and improve support to the Warfighter – ranging from the Satellite Communications and PNT to the implementation of cutting edge 5G/Next G technologies in support of operations,” the Office of the DOD CIO said in the post.

Mulvihill previously helped the DOD CIO meet warfighter requirements by leading modernization initiatives in the fields of satellite and tactical communications and data links.

The U.S. Air Force veteran also served as a net-centric capability portfolio manager within the Office of CIO Headquarters Air Force at the Pentagon.

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NASA Invites Lunar Community Feedback on Moon Infrastructure Tech Demonstration Program
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NASA Invites Lunar Community Feedback on Moon Infrastructure Tech Demonstration Program

NASA is soliciting information from organizations that can participate in the development of its Lunar Infrastructure Foundational Technologies demonstration.

The agency on Monday issued a request for information to advance its plan for an In-situ Resource Utilization demonstration, which will be part of the Artemis Moon missions.

LIFT-1 aims to showcase technologies with capabilities such as extracting oxygen from lunar soil, generating power and landing and exploring the surface of the Moon’s South Pole region.

“Using in-situ resources is essential to making a sustained presence farther from Earth possible,” said Prasun Desai, acting associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, which leads the program. “Just as we need consumables and infrastructure to live and work on our home planet, we’ll need similar support systems on the Moon for crew and robots to operate safely and productively.”

NASA will open an industry forum for LIFT-1 on Nov. 13, and accept RFI responses until Dec. 18.

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