Stevens participates in the 2002 National Defense Industrial Association/DoD Conference & Tech Expo
Stevens Institute of Technology was well represented among the exhibitors at the National Defense Industrial Association’s 2002 Science and Engineering Technology Conference & DoD Tech Expo, Feb. 5-7, in Charleston, S.C. With a display booth staffed by a broad spectrum of professional personnel, Stevens was the only university among the 40 exhibitors to present a general institutional overview.
Stevens’ technology developments in the areas of electrical and computer engineering, cybersecurity, telecommunications, environmental remediation and materials science, as well as the broad range of Stevens’ academic programs, were all prominently on display at the expo.
Among those attending the NDIA conference and representing Stevens was Jerry MacArthur Hultin, dean of Stevens’ Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management, formerly Under Secretary of the U.S. Navy.
Representing Stevens’ faculty and research expertise were Dr. Audrey Curtis, Director of the Telecommunications Management program at the Howe School; and Dr. Sumit Ghosh, Hattrick Chair Professor of Information Systems Engineering at Stevens’ Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering. Organizing Stevens’ presence at the conference and expo was Emily Groce, P.E., Stevens’ Director for Corporate, Foundation and Faculty Initiatives in the Office of Development and External Affairs. Personnel from Stevens’ office of media relations also attended.
The major theme at the gathering of military and defense-industry technologists was “transformation of forces for the new military era,” with a heavy emphasis on conversion from a cold-war footing to a technologically integrated quick-and-total-response mechanism, which would be capable as well of executing rapid preemptive strikes in many terrains and conditions.
Keynoting the Wednesday session was Rear Admiral Stanley R. Szembroski, Deputy Director for Resources and Requirements for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. His talk concentrated on “advancing joint warfighting.” Much of Szembroski’s presentation outlined new defense systems that are, as he put it, “born joint,” through the authority of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council. The council is a body that sets the technology agenda for the entire U.S. Armed Forces and oversees implementation. Szembroski stated that the goal of the council is to “foster a climate of innovation and change through the development of joint defense architectures,” enriching and accelerating military research though partnerships with industry, academia and the corporate world.
Szembroski also spoke of a coming reorganization of the military in response to the war on terror.
“There will soon be a four-star command for Homeland Security,” he said, “relying heavily on joint technology development among the branches of the defense agencies.”
A highlight of the full day session was a talk by Dr. Ronald M. Sega, Director of Defense Research and Engineering for the Department of Defense. Drawing partly on his experience as a Space Shuttle mission specialist for several joint U.S.-Russian flights, including dockings with the MIR Space Station, Sega outlined his agency’s response to what he called “the desperate need to integrate forces through assured information systems.”
Focusing in particular on “ensuring U.S. access to space and ensuring our assets in space,” Sega illustrated dramatically through video the rapid development of a thermobaric “intelligent missile” system, used to target and destroy Taliban cave outposts in Afghanistan. A collaborative effort among agencies of the U.S. Navy, Army, Air Force and the Department of Energy, the missile system was approved Sept. 2001, flight-tested in December and put into field use Jan. 2002.
Sega held up this weapon system’s development as a model of quick and creative inter-agency collaboration, including a minimum of red tape, expedited to meet an immediate defense need. Future systems for “advanced reconnaissance and knowledge architecture,” he elaborated, will be handled with equal focus and efficiency. Areas such as cyberwarfare, sensor technologies and unmanned space vehicles, combined with secure high bandwidth communications, are near-term priorities for such inter-agency co-development.
Also presenting at the conference were officials from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), as well as Research and Science/Technology directors from all the armed services.
Stevens’ experts interacted with both fellow exhibitors and conference presenters. Dr. Ghosh explained to numerous interested participants the details of his research projects in network systems design, simulation and testing, through his Secure Network Design Lab (SENDLAB) at Stevens. Dr. Curtis drew on her long experience in telecommunications development at AT&T and Lucent to describe new horizons in telecommunications networks and their place within the defense structure.
Dean Hultin brought to the attention of many of his former colleagues in the Defense Department new technology initiatives at Stevens, as well as the many extant research collaborations with the military involving Stevens’ experts from every discipline.
Stevens will be an exhibitor and a conference presenter at the NDIA’s TechTrends 2002 event April 3-4 in Baltimore titled “Leveraging Science and Technology Opportunities.” Speaking at the conference’s Defense Session from Stevens will be Dean Hultin, who will participate in a panel led by Ohio Sen. Michael DeWine. The topic will be defense trends and technology. Also impaneled at the conference will be representatives from Stevens Technologies, Inc., the technology commercialization unit of the Institute.
Exhibiting separately will be PlasmaSol Corporation, a Stevens Technogenesis® company whose non-thermal plasma technology applications include scalable devices for eliminating biochemical threats to the public. (Please visit www.plasmasol.com for further information.)
About Stevens Institute of Technology
Founded in 1870, Stevens Institute of Technology is one of the leading technological universities in the world dedicated to learning and research. Through its broad-based curricula, nurturing of creative inventiveness, and cross disciplinary research, the Institute is at the forefront of global challenges in engineering, science, and technology management. Partnerships and collaboration between, and among, business, industry, government and other universities contribute to the enriched environment of the Institute. A new model for technology commercialization in academe, known as Technogenesis®, involves external partners in launching business enterprises to create broad opportunities and shared value.
Stevens offers baccalaureates, master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, computer science and management, in addition to a baccalaureate degree in the humanities and liberal arts, and in business and technology. The university has a total enrollment of 2,150 undergraduate and 3,500 graduate students, with about 250 full-time faculty. Stevens’ graduate programs have attracted international participation from China, India, Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America. Additional information may be obtained from its web page at www.stevens.edu.
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