Ralph At Work

 

In my day job, I’m a senior Federal official* for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Information Directorate, where I’ve done a wide variety of of cutting edge Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) during my  career.  Various topics include advanced Radar algorithm design, advanced microprocessor  design, and mobile collaborative situation awareness (smart phones!).  Some of those projects have been high visibility,  had  large budgets or high impact.  However, some of that work is not widely publicized.

My primary goal as a Federal employee is  to bridge the gap  between the laboratory to the field to bring technological advances directly to practical use in the field.

As a federal employee, I’ve received several accolades and honors.  Here’s a sampling of recent honors:

  • Fellow, IEEE (top 0.1% of society members  are selected).
  •       Packard Award, “For significant contributions demonstrate exemplary innovation and best acquisition practices, to the TAK Joint Product Center for its innovative approach to acquisition by having a distributed governance model, based on the Open Source model.” (All Charter Members included).
  •       Air Force Engineer of the Year. One per year Air Force Wide.
  • Fellow, Air Force Research Laboratory (top 0.1% of engineers are selected)
  • R & D 100 Award — for having one of the 100  most innovative commercial products in the world
  • Aeronautical Systems Center Senior Civilian  of the Year (of 25,000 people)
  • Air Force Materiel Command Technology Transfer Award (of 75,000 people)
  • Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for Technology Transfer (Three Times)
  • Mohawk Valley Engineer of the Year
  • Air Force Exemplary Civilian Service Medal.  (Second highest award and medal commonly  given to federal employees)

I’ve also  deployed to Afghanistan (three times), Iraq and Djibouti, among other locations to bring technological advances directly from research to operational use.

I have degrees from:

  • Columbia University (BS, Electrical Engineering)
  • Syracuse University (MS, Computer Engineering)
  • St. John Fisher (BA, Physics, History Minor;  BS, Computer Science,)
  • Camden High School (where I wasn’t in the top ten percent of my class)

I also have approximately graduate 40 credits in Public Policy from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.

TAK — Research, Deployment, Licensing

My most recent project at work is a program to integrate mobile geospatial collaboration to a wide variety of users and career fields throughout the DoD, throughout the federal government and to promote the technology widely, consistent with the Bayh-Dole Act through licensing.  Its called ATAK — the Android Team Awareness Kit (or Android Tactical Assault Kit for military use).

atak

Screenshot of ATAK being tested, from a YouTube video.

The overall program is  called the Android Team Awareness Kit.  In addition to wide use throughout the DoD and Federal Government, ATAK has been  licensed by approximately 150 companies as well as state and local governments.  Android and iPhone versions are available in their respective app stores and additional resources are available at Tak.Gov.  There are about 500,000 users.

Here’s some more information  on ATAK: