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Brian Goodger: NITAAC Seeks Ways to Manage Expectations With Federal Partners on IT Task Orders Amid Supply Chain Issues
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Brian Goodger: NITAAC Seeks Ways to Manage Expectations With Federal Partners on IT Task Orders Amid Supply Chain Issues

Brian Goodger, acting director of the National Institutes of Health Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC), said NITAAC held a listening session to identify the supply chain challenges facing contract holders and come up with a roadmap that will enable the center to manage expectations, understand roadblocks and establish timelines with agency partners.

In an open letter published Dec. 20th, Goodger wrote that NITAAC aims to inform agency partners how long an IT task order will take to facilitate the inclusion of a fulfillment timeline in acquisition planning.

“Additionally, if supply chain disruptions persist, we are committed to meeting with our contract holders on a consistent basis to receive updates and other pertinent information that we will then use to inform our conversations,” he noted.

Goodger said that NITAAC is committed to advancing transparency and addressing supply chain issues to ensure that agencies get the IT products and services they need to meet their missions.

The open letter was issued as federal IT task orders across contracting vehicles face delays as a result of supply chain disruptions.

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IARPA to Host Proposers’ Day for HIATUS AI System Development Program
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IARPA to Host Proposers’ Day for HIATUS AI System Development Program

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) will hold a proposers’ day on Jan. 19th to provide stakeholders information on technical requirements and objectives of a program that intends to develop novel artificial intelligence systems to help protect author privacy and attribute authorship through identification and use of explainable linguistic fingerprints.

The Human Interpretable Attribution of Text using Underlying Structure (HIATUS) program seeks to advance the development of “novel techniques to generate representations that capture author-level linguistic variation and will use these representations to build human-interpretable algorithms to perform authorship attribution and ensure author privacy,” IARPA said Friday.

IARPA said technical approaches selected through the HIATUS program will be scalable across languages, genres and topic domains. Interested stakeholders have until Jan. 14th to register for the event.

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Ted Davies Named Senior Advisor, Board Member for Easy Dynamics; Poupak Afshar Quoted
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Ted Davies Named Senior Advisor, Board Member for Easy Dynamics; Poupak Afshar Quoted

Ted Davies, former Altamira CEO and a previous Wash100 Award winner, has been added to the advisory board at Easy Dynamics Corporation and will serve as senior advisor to the company’s CEO.

In his new role, Davies will help efficiently scale the McLean, Virginia-based technology services company and will report directly to Easy Dynamics CEO Poupak Afshar. 

Afshar welcomed the new board member and senior advisor, and she said Davies “has already become a voice that we can lean on as we enter the next phase for Easy Dynamics.”

“His alignment with our vision and core values, combined with his experience, both at the large and mid-sized markets, will be invaluable for our team over the next several years as we scale our human capital management, operations and service delivery,” Afshar added of Davies.

Previously, Davies served as CEO of Altamira Technologies Corporation for over six years and led the company through a growth period which culminated in Altamira’s sale to ClearSky in 2019.

Prior to his time at Altamira, Davies was the president of federal systems at Unisys, where he served civilian, defense and homeland security customers. His career also includes 17 years as a partner at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Davies currently serves as lead board member and senior advisor for CodeMettle and is the immediate past chair of the industry advisory council for the American Council for Technology, where he is now the chair for the executive collaboration forum. 

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AFRL Launches 5-Year BAA for High-Power Electromagnetics Research
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AFRL Launches 5-Year BAA for High-Power Electromagnetics Research

The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Directed Energy Directorate has issued a five-year closed broad agency announcement for project proposals on high-power electromagnetics modeling (HPEM) and effects. 

AFRL said Tuesday in a SAM.gov notice that its closed HPEM BAA seeks modeling and effects research in 14 areas including weapons effectiveness, fundamental HPEM effects, HPEM system simulation codes and empirical effects testing.

The high-powered electromagnetics division within AFRL’s Directed Energy Directorate runs research, development and procurement activities for HPEM technology.

The closed BAA approach allows AFRL to accept proposal submissions at a specific date, which will be unveiled in CALLs to be issued within the BAA’s five-year period. Each CALL will seek proposals for specific research efforts under the BAA.

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Robins’ 4 JSTARS Aircraft Set for Fiscal 2022 Retirement
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Robins’ 4 JSTARS Aircraft Set for Fiscal 2022 Retirement

The U.S. Air Force has approved the divestment of four E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System aircraft at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia throughout the fiscal year 2022.

Airmen attached to the E-8 JSTARS fleet will be repurposed for new missions aligned with the future Air Force force design at Robins and other military bases as part of the changes, the Air Combat Command said Tuesday.

In addition, affected members of the Georgia Air National Guard will be retrained for roles involving battle management command and control and advanced battle management system family of systems at the Georgia facility.

Their movement relies upon the completion of relevant environmental planning in early fiscal 2023. Robins does not plan to reduce its manpower billets following the retirement of JSTARS.

The Northrop Grumman-manufactured aircraft has been providing airborne battle management, command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to the Air Force since its introduction in the 1990s.

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GAO Appoints New Members to Health Information Technology Advisory Committee
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GAO Appoints New Members to Health Information Technology Advisory Committee

Gene Dodaro, comptroller general of the U.S. and head of the Government Accountability Office, has announced the seven new members of a national advisory committee tasked with promoting and implementing an interoperable health information infrastructure.

Each of the new members of the Health Information Technology Advisory Committee will initially serve a three-year term and may be reappointed for subsequent terms, GAO said.

The new members are:

  • Hans Buitendijk, director of interoperability strategy at Cerner
  • Steven Eichner, health information technology lead at the Texas Department of State Health Services
  • Rajesh Godavarthi, associate vice president of technology and interoperability at MCG Health
  • Hung Luu, director of clinical pathology at Children’s Health in Texas
  • Aaron Neinstein, vice president of digital health at University of California San Francisco Health
  • Eliel Oliveira, director of research and innovation at the Dell Medical School of the University of Texas at Austin
  • Fillipe Southerland, director of health care solutions at Yardi Systems

 

“Today’s appointees bring impressive qualifications and a range of experiences and perspectives to the HITAC’s work on such issues as the use of technology to promote care coordination, addressing the needs of children and other vulnerable populations, and supporting public health,” Dodaro said. 

HITAC was established by the 21st Century Cures Act to make recommendations to the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology on policies and standards related to the implementation of interoperable health information systems built to improve the efficiency of health care and public health services.

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USS Gerald R. Ford Ship Receives Final Advanced Weapons Elevator Unit
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USS Gerald R. Ford Ship Receives Final Advanced Weapons Elevator Unit

USS Gerald R. Ford now has a full set of advanced weapons elevators following the 11th unit’s delivery on Dec. 22.

The carrier’s AWEs use electromagnetic motors and other various technologies to move ordnance to the flight deck with less manpower requirement, Naval Sea Systems Command said Thursday.

“The Navy-Industry teaming provided the opportunities for hundreds of craftsmen, technicians and engineers, working around the clock—through multiple underway and holiday periods—to get these advanced systems on line and operational,” said Rear Adm. James Downey, program executive officer for aircraft carriers at the Navy.

The team achieved this milestone within the aircraft carrier’s half-year planned incremental availability period at Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News Shipbuilding’s Virginia-based facility.

Downey said the ship is on track to complete the PIA then move forward to sea trials and follow-on tasking.

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NASA Sought 4 University Teams’ Help for Advanced Air Mobility Research
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NASA Sought 4 University Teams’ Help for Advanced Air Mobility Research

NASA has tapped four university teams to receive up to $31.5 million for research on various aeronautical challenges in support of its Advanced Air Mobility campaign.

Under the University Leadership Initiative, participating students and faculty members will explore methods of reducing aircraft emissions with different engines and autonomy tools for air travel in complex airspace, the space agency said Thursday.

The five-year effort will help advance NASA’s aeronautical research goals while providing participants with experience working on real-world technical topics and leading diverse and multi-disciplinary groups.

“Aviation of the future has to be climate friendly to keep the world flying, and a great way to do that is to allow tomorrow’s top minds to begin making contributions to these goals while still in school,” explained Koushi Datta, project manager for ULI.

The winning teams hail from:

  • University of Central Florida
  • Florida State University
  • Georgia Institute of Technology
  • University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
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Ball Aerospace’s Mirror System, Optics Tech Launched Aboard NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope; Mackenzie Lystrup Quoted
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Ball Aerospace’s Mirror System, Optics Tech Launched Aboard NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope; Mackenzie Lystrup Quoted

A mirror system and optical technology built by Ball Aerospace has launched aboard NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is meant to detect light from the first stars and galaxies to exist.

The Webb telescope, which uses a Ball Aerospace-built 269 square-foot lightweight mirror system, will be the first segmented telescope deployed in space and will provide infrared imaging of distant stars, Ball Aerospace said Saturday.

Makenzie Lystrup, vice president and general manager of civil space for Ball Aerospace, said the company was honored to play an integral role in the “next great space observatory.”

“Today’s launch is the culmination of a lot of hard work by a closely integrated team that spanned across multiple mission partners and NASA,” said Lystrup.

Ball Aerospace worked with Northrop Grumman and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center on the innovation of the Webb Telescope, which launched on Saturday.

Additionally, Ball Aerospace developed 132 cryogenic actuators which were mounted on each mirror segment to control positioning and curvature radius. 

The company also designed and built electronic flight control boxes that can withstand extremely cold temperatures in space and will control the actuators to maintain proper telescope segment alignment.

This launch continues Ball Aerospace’s partnership with NASA. Earlier this month, NASA launched the Ball Aerospace-built Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer, which will study X-Rays from supernova remnants, supermassive black holes and other high-energy objects in space.

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Installation of Exascale Supercomputer ‘Frontier’ at Oak Ridge National Lab Now Underway
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Installation of Exascale Supercomputer ‘Frontier’ at Oak Ridge National Lab Now Underway

An exascale supercomputer called Frontier is now being installed and integrated at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Leadership Computing Facility in Tennessee and some researchers are expected to gain access to the machine in the summer of 2022, Nextgov reported Thursday.

“Some early users will get access to Frontier this summer to help harden the system for full user operations on Jan. 1, 2023,” Justin Whitt, program director for the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, told the publication Wednesday.

In May 2019, the Department of Energy awarded Cray a potential $600 million contract to build the Frontier supercomputer, which will incorporate technologies from Advanced Micro Devices. 

In September of the same year, Hewlett Packard Enterprise closed its acquisition of Cray four months after it first announced the deal.

Whitt said Frontier will not only provide simulation and modeling capabilities, but will also offer “unprecedented opportunities to utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques for issues of global importance, like discovering new patterns in patient data for precision medicine uncovering the origins of disease, shedding light on new properties of materials, and advancing research in high-energy physics.”

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