The Department of Defense should consider accomplishing some steps in the acquisition process in parallel rather than in sequence in order to speed up supply procurement, U.S. Navy Adm. Christopher Grady, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was quoted as saying in DOD News.

Grady, a Wash100 inductee, made his remarks during an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

He recommended the agency’s Adaptive Acquisition Framework and Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve as two pathways to expedite the acquisition of capabilities needed by warfighters. AAF includes five decision routes that can be combined or tailored by decision authorities and program managers according to the capability to be purchased. RDER, meanwhile, is an initiative to encourage, expand and accelerate prototyping and experimentation among different DOD components.

Grady cited the testing phase as an ideal stage for parallel processing. “We can do and embed the testing apparatus in the acquisition process as we work our way along, such that when we’re ready at the very end, all we have to do is that final test, as opposed to then starting the whole testing process,” he suggested.

The National Nanotechnology Coordination Office is soliciting public comment on possible revisions to the Environmental, Health, and Safety Research Strategy, created in 2011 by the National Nanotechnology Initiative.

In a request for information published in the Federal Register, NNCO said it is interested in better approaches to improve ethical, legal and social aspects of nanotechnology in the EHS research strategy.

The Nanotechnology Environmental and Health Implications Working Group has commenced its review of the 2011 EHS research strategy under the instruction of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. OSTP is seeking an updated plan that uses science-based risk analysis and management.

NEHI is looking for industry feedback regarding research accomplishments from human health and exposure assessment, environment, risk assessment and management methods, informatics and modeling, and nanomaterial measurement infrastructure. The working group also wants respondents to identify gaps in addressing the key research areas in the strategy.

The RFI will close on June 2.

The U.S. Air Force has begun seeking industry input on its plans to award a contract for the development of a next-generation reentry vehicle for the service branch’s Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile weapon system.

A notice posted Wednesday on SAM.gov states that the Air Force is conducting market research to determine industry capabilities to support the NGRV effort and define the contract’s acquisition strategy.

The government plans to schedule one-on-one meetings in the second week of May at Hill Air Force Base in Utah to discuss the procurement effort with interested companies.

Sentinel, formerly the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent system, will serve as the ground-based leg of the U.S. nuclear triad, replacing the Minuteman III ICBM system.

The Air Force plans to award the NGRV contract in fiscal year 2026 and responses to the request for information are due April 19.

The National Energy Technology Laboratory will receive $150 million in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to support infrastructure and laboratory modernization upgrades at its three research facilities in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Oregon.

Among the research sites is the Advanced Alloy Development Center in Albany, which will use the funding to prototype metal alloys designed to accelerate the commercialization of clean energy technologies for hydrogen transport and use and other purposes, NETL said Wednesday.

The Geological, Environmental and Materials Computational and Visualization Laboratory will harness the IRA investment to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to monitor how carbon dioxide moves underground.

The legislation will also supplement existing Computational Science and Engineering Center funding to establish a new facility in Morgantown.

IRA investments in carbon conversion and critical materials research and development programs will support the modernization of laboratory facilities in Morgantown and Pittsburgh.

“This funding authorized by the IRA will enable NETL scientists and engineers to accelerate their work toward delivering solutions for our nation’s sustainable energy future,” said Brian Anderson, director of NETL.

Microway has been named NVIDIA Public Sector Partner of the Year in the Americas.

NVIDIA recognizes Microway’s expertise in designing superior hardware and software deployments for customers running workloads in artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, the partner company said Tuesday. 

Microway has provided customers with GPU clusters with NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs and NVIDIA DGX AI supercomputing deployments, including NVIDIA AI Enterprise software stack.

“Microway’s expertise in providing custom-built AI systems using NVIDIA technology is helping government agencies and enterprises solve their hardest problems, improve energy efficiency and discovery, and make communities safer and more connected,” said Anthony Robbins, vice president of North American public sector business at NVIDIA and six-time Wash100 awardee. 

NVIDIA’s Partner Network Awards annually recognizes partners that have demonstrated excellence as top providers of NVIDIA accelerated computing technology and service delivery.