The FBI has established a new unit that will provide virtual currency-related intelligence, operational and technology support to other divisions across the bureau. The bureau said Tuesday the virtual assets unit will help the FBI track illicit funds, counter illegal activity and attribute criminal actors.

The FBI’s cyber and criminal investigative divisions worked together in the past several months to establish VAU in support of the bureau’s plan to address the need for virtual asset-related expertise in intelligence and law enforcement communities.

“The FBI has a long history of using virtual currency to track criminals profiting from ransomware, soliciting murders-for-hire, and raising funds for terrorist organizations. The VAU will integrate experts across the organization to leverage the outstanding work being done every day,” said Brian Turner, executive assistant director of the bureau’s criminal, cyber, response and services branch.

The FBI criminal investigative division’s financial crimes section oversees VAU, which kicked off operations on Feb. 7th.

Qarbon Aerospace and Georgia Tech have partnered to develop airframe structures for civilian vertical lift aircraft under a NASA-led university engagement program.

Qarbon Aerospace said Monday it will demonstrate the production of urban air mobility airframe structures through a $5.37 million award granted by NASA’s University Leadership Initiative to Georgia Tech.

The company will also test the applicability of thermoplastic components and maintain advanced structures as a partner of ULI. The effort aims to address the technical challenges in the development of civilian vertical lift vehicles.

Red Oak, Texas-based Qarbon Aerospace provides aircraft assemblies and structural components including wings, engine nacelles and fuselages.

The Department of Energy is investing $32 million in more than 30 projects that aim to retrofit buildings and deliver affordable housing technologies.

Seven organizations will demonstrate ways to update the energy and environmental systems of buildings while reducing disruption to tenants, DOE said Monday. These techniques include wall prefabrication, decarbonization tools and drop-in replacements for temperature control systems.

“Faster and more efficient construction and renovation methods that improve our nation’s supply of affordable housing are the kinds of transformative innovations we need to lower costs for working families and build a better America,” said Jennifer Granholm, the secretary of energy.

The projects will apply technologies developed under a previous DOE investment titled the “2019 Advanced Building Construction with Energy-Efficient Technologies & Practices Funding Opportunity.”

The awardees and their respective contract amounts are:

• Fraunhofer USA Center for Manufacturing Innovation: $4.9 million
• Home Innovation Research Labs: $4.5 million
• National Renewable Energy Laboratory: $4.4 million
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory: $5 million
• Rocky Mountain Institute: $4.4 million
• Syracuse University: $5 million
• The University of Central Florida Board of Trustees: $3.6 million

Maj. Gen. Matt Easley, most recently chief information security officer and director of cybersecurity of the U.S. Army, discussed the service branch’s efforts to advance digital modernization initiatives, including the Army’s work to develop and support hybrid cloud environments, Nextgov reported Monday.

Easley, who now serves as deputy principal information operations adviser to the undersecretary of defense for policy, told Nextgov over email that the military branch has been using in the past two years a model that guides how it procures, builds and secures cloud services.

“A lot of what we learned with how we buy multi-cloud and how we have been securing public multi-cloud offerings [is] within cARMY, the Army’s enterprise cloud environment that is helping inform how the Defense Information Systems Agency wants to structure Joint Warfare Cloud Capability and shape DOD policy around impact levels and distributed architectures,” he noted.

He discussed the service’s Digital Transformation Strategy and its progress with its data management platform, dubbed Army Vantage.

“Army Vantage is now being used by over 35,000 people worldwide to assist decision-making across Army echelons and is providing curated, authoritative data, dashboards, common operating pictures and custom tools for analysis,” Easley said.

He added that the service plans to develop accredited standard toolsets for machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotic process automation and enterprise data lake in the cloud in support of all mission areas.

Easley also highlighted the need for the Army to migrate information systems to its cloud ecosystem – cArmy – and come up with plans to implement a zero trust architecture in compliance with the cybersecurity executive order.