News from NMTC

The NMTC Visionary Awards formally established the Academy of Visionary Awards, at a social, Thursday evening, November 6, 2014, at Silks Restaurant, Bulle Rock Golf Club.

Attending this inaugural event were a majority of the previous 30 Visionary Awards honorees and representatives of the NMTC Board of Directors. Host for evening was Michael Seldes, VP at ACET, and an NMTC board member and chair of its Visionary Awards committee.

Opening remarks by John Casner, Executive Director NMTC, thanked all the honorees for their extraordinary service to the STEM community and described the expectations establishing the Academy of Visionary Awards  – To guide the Visionary Awards process going forward, nominate peers for future awards and serve as community ambassadors promoting the benefits of building a STEM qualified workforce; necessary to defend our nation and grow our national economy.

Committee chair Michael Seldes, along with NMTC Board Member Melissa Kuzma, President Kuzma Technical Enterprises, conducted interviews with all the honorees as to how they saw their role in STEM. A montage of these interviews will be aired at the Visionary Awards Gala, February 26, 2015

The Visionary Awards Gala celebrates our neighbors and colleagues making a difference in STEM Education and to Technology Advancement in our community, in five distinct categories – the Visionary (remarkable achievement), Leaders, Innovators, Mentors and Rising Stars. The evening gala honors the individuals in each of these five categories. Introduced in 2012,

Below are many of the honorees and NMTC board members attending, and a demonstration of the interview process.

Presentation CLICK DHS-presentation-to-NMTC-140911.pdf

Our speaker:
Dr. Famini is the Director of the Chemical Security Analysis Center (CSAC), established under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2006, co-located with Department of Defense assets at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. provides a scientific basis for the awareness of chemical threats and the assessment of risk to the American public due to chemical hazards.

The CSAC under Dr. Famini has established itself as a key interagency resource for chemical terrorism information, and has ongoing interagency collaboration with several key Departments, including the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Defense, the FBI, the EPA, and other key assets within DHS.

Take aways by the NMTC executive team were:
Highlights of his presentation shared how their main focus on chemical risks have more to do with the domestic transportation of industrial chemicals as chlorine and ammonia; chlorine being the more concerning. Tracking, preventing spills and rapid response are the major focus. Literally, tons of these dangerous chemicals come through our cities, on truck or rail, every day.
Another DHS major business issue, now being resolved, is a more efficient way to buy equipment. Also, over 85% of their staff, at Edgewood, is contractor based  and continually expanding.

NMTC Board Member Dr. Dennis Golladay, President of Harford Community College, is featured in I95 BUSINESS as their August 2014 Influencer, click here for full article on page 22.

In addition, NMTC Executive Director John Casner is profiled in the summer 2014 edition of the CSSC Asset. click here for full article on page 13

See how NMTC drives technology growth through collaboration of its members and the larger community, by continually building ambassadors within the tech community, creating new and relevant programming for NMTC partners, taking on broad-based community missions as STEM Education and mentoring future leaders within the membership and technology sector as a whole.

NMTC on pages 13,14
Click here to view NMTC in CSSC Asset

Mr Jyuji Hewitt, Deputy Director, to the 14,000 employee US Army’s Research, Development and Engineering Command, shared his insights (presentation at bottom of page) into the Army’s direction and how critical it will be, for the yet to be developed technology, to support fewer yet more powerful, resourceful future warfighters.

Some take aways, by the NMTC team, were:

• Future force requirement is now the direction, as the urgency to quickly respond to a war’s needs has diminished (Future has always been the direction for an R&D effort, anyway).
• Zero maintenance and repair, as our forces become focused more as the ‘tip of spear’, with less support, and the logistics supply chain becomes longer.
• More integration of forces across the DoD, meaning technology will be looked to for answers to accomplish this.
• Planning is always about the “Probable, Possible and Unthinkable, and technology, is again, looked to for the defense of our nation.
• For the Navy & Airforce, the platforms are ships and planes; for the Army it will always be the soldier. This will drive investment making the soldier smarter, and a better decision maker with the ability to master more complex technology and direct a wideing array of distant resources
• Army Total obligation authority (TOA) declines 22.4%, whereas Army Research, Development & Acquisitions (RDA) declined 38.7%  – FY 12 to FY 15. Again, more emphasis on technology to do more.
• Future R&D is looking at material sciences – materials to actually become better sensors, or, if they are explosives, creating more energy per unit volume.
• Intelligent, autonomous transport auto systems (read, fewer soldiers and fewer in harm’s way delivering supplies, patrolling, etc).  Here, the Army is ahead of Google’s driverless car research. The Army has tested, successfully, a convoy of 7 driverless trucks.
• Cybernetics – improved decision-making at the soldier level, to allow a squad to handle what a company used to handle. One possibility; a 10 to 1 reduction in force with the same lethality, again, putting fewer soldiers in harm’s way with less demand on the supplu chain.
• Quantum physics used for information encryption; for example, using the spin of electrons, or what Einstein as ‘spooky action at a distance’, as a form of cyber security

In a way, NMTC members, in particular, are well-positioned . They can discuss how best to use new technologies to meet national security needs and how best to create ways to integrate new technologies into existing infrastructure.
Other ways are to help the Army better use defense industry critical thinking and where possible, suggest/modify off-the-shelf products and other techniques that offer increased buying power of the defense dollar.

Mr Hewitt also identified the strong community relationship with APG for supporting STEM programs, many of which are NMTC initiated and funded.

Mr Hewitt’s presentation is  available for downloading: NMTC-Mr.-Hewitt-RDECOM-Final.pdf

NMTC is pleased to have JC Park interning this summer with the program team. He is a Bel Air High School alumni and will be a sophomore Biomedical Sciences major this Fall at Texas A&M University. JC is also a member of the Corps of Cadets and the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band. As an inventor, JC already holds a patent pending through his senior capstone project with the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center and looks forward to continuing advancement in technology.

He has been working on establishing the NMTCConnect social media platform, expanding awareness of the Science Cafe in the community, stimulating member activity and establishing programs to increase technology growth.