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Pentagon Names 10 Members to Defense Business Board
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Pentagon Names 10 Members to Defense Business Board

Kathleen Hicks, deputy secretary of the Department of Defense and a 2022 Wash100 Award winner, has announced the 10 new members of a board that advises the DOD secretary and deputy secretary on business management, governance and best practices for operations, DOD News reported Tuesday.

The members of the Defense Business Board will be part of one of the three advisory subcommittees: business transformation; business operations; talent management, culture and diversity.

A Pentagon official said the new members will bring to the board their experience in academia and private sector to offer advice on enterprisewide approaches to business management to meet national defense objectives.

The board members are:

  • Alexander Alonso, chief knowledge officer at the Society for Human Resource Management
  • Anand Bahl, chief information officer at Micron Technology
  • Craig Albright, chief financial officer for Americas operations at Xerox
  • Greg Bowman, chief innovation officer and vice president of corporate development at Siemens Government Technologies
  • Marachel Knight, senior VP for technology at AT&T
  • Matthew Daniel, principal at Guild Education
  • Pat Zarodkiewicz, president of PatZconsulting
  • Bernie Skoch, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general and executive lead for strategic events at the Air Force Association
  • Stan Soloway, president and CEO of Celero Strategies
  • Suzanne Leopoldi-Nichols, president of global business services at UPS
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Edge Autonomy Enters Deal to Buy UAV Fuel Producer Adaptive Energy; CEO John Purvis Quoted
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Edge Autonomy Enters Deal to Buy UAV Fuel Producer Adaptive Energy; CEO John Purvis Quoted

Unmanned and autonomous technology company Edge Autonomy has entered an agreement to acquire alternative fuel producer Adaptive Energy for an undisclosed sum.

With the business move, Edge Autonomy has added a capability to manufacture solid oxide fuel cells — Adaptive Energy’s specialty — which enable their team to power unmanned aerial vehicles, among other usages, the San Luis Obispo-headquartered company said Monday.

John Purvis, CEO of Edge Autonomy, explained that the company has been utilizing AE’s SOFC technology for multiple years and said they are excited to amplify the latter organization’s research and development efforts in order to discover new pathways toward efficient and multipliable autonomous vehicle functionality.

“I look forward to working with the Adaptive Energy team as we continue to innovate together,” Purvis added.

Currently owned by AE Industrial Partners, Adaptive Energy has worked to harness its SOFC products for low-watt energy sources through honed fuel cell manufacturing processes. They have then marketed the fuel source to industries such as defense, critical infrastructure and transportation and sold it to U.S. government entities and private sector businesses alike.

Once the acquisition is complete, Edge Autonomy plans to employ AE’s portfolio of services for its various unmanned technologies and tools and EO/IR camera payloads. EA expects the business combination to strengthen their ability to serve their clients’ intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance needs.

“AEI is proud to support this partnership, which will allow both companies to gain significant competitive advantages by working together,” commented Jeffrey Hart, AEI principal.

Incepted after the merger of UAV Factory and Jennings Aeronautics in February, Edge Autonomy’s purchase of Adaptive Energy is the first major acquisition deal under their new moniker.

For the transaction, Akerman LLP was legal advisor for the Edge Autonomy team, while Koenig, Oelsner, Taylor, Schoenfeld & Gaddis PC counseled Adaptive Energy. RSM US LLP was the financial advisor for Edge Autonomy.

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Makpar, NuAxis Innovations JV Secures $115M BPA Contract From Department of Labor; Raza Latif Quoted
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Makpar, NuAxis Innovations JV Secures $115M BPA Contract From Department of Labor; Raza Latif Quoted

MakNuAx, a joint venture between Makpar and NuAxis Innovations, has been awarded a $115 million contract from the Department of Labor (DoL) to provide enterprise service desk support services and continue the JV’s mission to help modernize the federal IT infrastructure by applying the discipline of customer experience.

“This award is a clear testament to the dedication and hard work of every NuAxis team member working for DOL. We are all eager to continue our work through the prism of CX and HCD as we develop solutions that impact DOL’s wide-ranging mission,” said NuAxis CEO Raza Latif.

In addition, Senior IT Manager Justin Torlone expressed his enthusiasm to work with NuAxis on these challenges as Makpar will also bring fresh innovation to the Department of Labor and continually attempt to lower costs while increasing its capabilities.

NTT Data will also support the project to continue NuAxis’ continued success, especially over the last seven years with the Department of Labor. NTT DATA’s trusted IT strategies and technology solutions have paved the way to modernization and IT transformation, leading to better efficiencies, heightened security, and measurable cost savings for more than 20 years.

“NuAxis has had the privilege of setting up the DOL ESD, evolving it and running it since 2014,” Raza Latif added. “I still remember where I was when we won this significant contract. It is absolutely thrilling to get the opportunity to continue supporting the DOL ESD.

About MakNuAx 

MakNuAx is an SBA-approved joint venture between SBA mentor-protégé firms NuAxis and Makpar. We work together to offer Federal agencies full-spectrum services for IT modernization.

With over 30 years of combined experience in delivering the future of Federal IT, we combine a focus on customer experience with a passion for new and emerging technologies to deliver the exact solution to meet Federal agencies’ most pressing challenges today.

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NASA Opens New CubeSat Launch Initiative Opportunities for Academic, Nonprofit Organizations
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NASA Opens New CubeSat Launch Initiative Opportunities for Academic, Nonprofit Organizations

NASA has opened new opportunities for educational institutions and nonprofit organizations to develop small satellites and conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations in space.

The agency said Monday the next round of the agency’s CubeSat Launch Initiative will provide the developers with hands-on experience designing and operating small research satellites to support space exploration initiatives.

Interested parties can submit proposals through Nov. 18 and NASA expects to select new participants for the CSLI program on March 17.

Bradley Smith, director of launch services within the Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said CubeSats play a key role in supporting the agency in areas of science, exploration, technology and education.

“They are a cornerstone in the development of cutting-edge NASA technologies, such as laser communications, satellite-to-satellite communications, and autonomous movement,” Smith said.

CSLI was established to provide U.S. educational institutions and nonprofit organizations with opportunities to build small satellites flown as payloads on upcoming launches.

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Navy Tests New Detect, Avoidance System for Manned-Unmanned Teaming
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Navy Tests New Detect, Avoidance System for Manned-Unmanned Teaming

The U.S. Navy has conducted the first flight test of a new ground-based detect and avoidance system, dubbed Guardian, to assess its capabilities to enable crewed/uncrewed teaming safety.

The test was held at Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division headquarters in Patuxent River, where two RQ-21 Blackjacks flew toward each other, while Guardian operators monitored screens displaying the systems’ approach as part of the test plan, Naval Air Systems Command said Monday.

Once the unmanned air vehicles came within 400 feet of each other, Guardian alerted its operators of an imminent collision and made recommendations on avoidance maneuvers.

According to the NAVAIR, Guardian is the only ground-based detect and avoidance system developed in accordance with the Federal Aviation Administration’s performance standards for unmanned systems.

“Looking ahead, we’ll put Guardian through complex tests to confirm it will reliably handle congestion in the busiest airspaces as we work toward FAA certification which could significantly reduce Stingray’s developmental test time and costs,” said Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dulude, the Blackjack air vehicle operator supporting Guardian’s first flight.

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VHA Unveils Digital Health Playbook to Improve Patient Care
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VHA Unveils Digital Health Playbook to Improve Patient Care

The Department of Veterans Affairs has published a new guide outlining its priorities and goals for developing digital health care systems and devices designed to improve patient care, Nextgov reported Monday.

The Digital Healthcare Playbook, created by the Veterans Health Administration in collaboration with the Digital Medicine Society, aims to identify available digital health innovations that are capable of helping the U.S. health care system transform patient care delivery.

Specifically, VHA wants to evaluate the use of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality and connected sensor technologies, in providing digital health care services.

Arash Harzand, the chief medical advisor for digital health at the VHA Innovation Ecosystem, said the goal is to find the best strategy for the VA and the industry to collaborate on digital health.

He said the playbook serves as a guide for industry to learn about what the VA wants in new healthcare technology devices and as an internal department analysis for the current healthcare software marketplace.

The guide is open for public access to spur wider discussion around the future of digital health. 

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NSF, Amazon Name Several Recipients of Advancing AI Research Program Award
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NSF, Amazon Name Several Recipients of Advancing AI Research Program Award

The National Science Foundation has teamed up with Amazon and selected several university-led projects on artificial intelligence and machine learning systems that will be awarded up to $9.5 million in financial support.

NSF said Monday the 2022 recipients of the Program on Fairness in Artificial Intelligence in Collaboration with Amazon awards have potential AI/ML-focused initiatives that seek to address the technology’s unfairness and bias, establish human interaction principles, develop algorithm theoretical frameworks and enhance speech recognition tech, among others.

The awardees are:

  • A New Paradigm for the Evaluation and Training of Inclusive Automatic Speech Recognition, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
  • A Normative Economic Approach to Fairness in AI, Harvard University
  • A novel paradigm for fairness-aware deep learning models on data streams, University of Texas at Dallas
  • Advancing Deep Learning Towards Spatial Fairness, University of Pittsburgh
  • Advancing Optimization for Threshold-Agnostic Fair AI Systems, University of Iowa
  • AI Algorithms for Fair Auctions, Pricing, and Marketing, Columbia University
  • An Interpretable AI Framework for Care of Critically Ill Patients Involving Matching and Decision Trees, Duke University
  • Breaking the Tradeoff Barrier in Algorithmic Fairness, University of Pennsylvania
  • BRIMI – Bias Reduction in Medical Information, University of Connecticut
  • Fair Representation Learning: Fundamental Trade-Offs and Algorithms, Michigan State University
  • Human-Centered Approach to Developing Accessible and Reliable Machine Translation, University of Maryland, College Park
  • Toward Fair Decision Making and Resource Allocation with Application to AI-Assisted Graduate Admissions and Degree Completion, University of Maryland, College Park
  • Using Explainable AI to Increase Equity and Transparency in the Juvenile Justice System’s Use of Risk Scores, Bowling Green State University
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Lawmakers Eye Major Changes to Tech-Focused Small Business Programs; Heidi Shyu Quoted
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Lawmakers Eye Major Changes to Tech-Focused Small Business Programs; Heidi Shyu Quoted

The Small Business Innovation Research and Technology Transfer programs are set to expire by the end of September and lawmakers are considering major reforms to the programs to address concerns of alleged abuse of the so-called SBIR “mills,” Breaking Defense reported Monday.

The Senate Small Business Committee is pursuing two proposals and one of these two would limit eligibility to the SBIR and STTR programs based on the number of awards secured over a term of five years.

A House Small Business Committee proposal would restrict eligibility to the programs based on improved requirements related to current Phase I to Phase II transition rate and commercialization benchmarks under the third phase.

Heidi Shyu, undersecretary for research and engineering at the Department of Defense, said the proposed benchmarks introduce “significant concerns” for DOD and that an extension of the program would be the needed approach to evaluate potential challenges to the initiative.

“The Department, as well as the SBA and other agencies, respectfully disagree with the argument that multiple awards represent a significant problem and that having multiple awards ‘crowds out’ or limits competition,” said Shyu, a 2022 Wash100 Award winner.

“All SBIR/STTR awards are competitively awarded efforts with multiple awards addressing multiple topics. While a company can receive multiple awards, those awards are not for the same topic. In addition, the Department is concerned about the impact to the Department’s small business innovation base and its ability to meet warfighter needs if current SBIR/STTR projects are terminated due to benchmarks that go too far,” she added.

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DHS Kicks Off Search for Procurement Innovation Lab Director
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DHS Kicks Off Search for Procurement Innovation Lab Director

The Department of Homeland Security has begun its search for a new director of the procurement innovation lab within the office of the chief procurement officer.

The selected candidate will propose ideas for governmentwide procurement innovation through the Acquisition Innovation Advocates Council and other groups and forums and oversee a team that offers technical guidance and coaching to procurement teams across DHS, according to a USAJobs notice published Wednesday.

The incumbent will brief the OCPO leadership on the lab’s procurement projects, serve as a principal adviser on nontraditional procurement models, integrate best practices and new developments into the department’s acquisition procedures, policies and regulations and analyze sensitive and complex contracting problems.

DHS will accept applications through Aug. 18.

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Coast Guard Crowdsources Research Project Ideas
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Coast Guard Crowdsources Research Project Ideas

The U.S. Coast Guard has started its crowdsourcing effort to generate potential innovation ideas and challenges the maritime law enforcement service can incorporate into its fiscal year 2024 research portfolio.

USCG is accepting suggestions for how the branch can apply technologies to transform asset utilization for various missions such as crisis response.

Vice Adms. Scott Buschman and Paul Thomas, respectively holding the roles of deputy commandants for operations and mission support at USCG, have identified seven research priority areas for the FY 2024-2025 period.

These priorities involve data analytics, mobility, autonomous systems, human-machine teaming, C5I, services aimed at reducing climate change impacts and approaches to strengthen system and personnel security.

Interested parties can submit their innovative ideas to the service via the CG_Ideas@Work portal.

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