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Brian Faull |
Innovative On the Job and Off
Brian Faull
April 2005
If an eclectic interest or two sparks out-of-the-box thinking,
then MITRE's Brian Faull is hot-wired for the flight of innovation.
Zipping along the highway to work each morning, Brian Faull squeezes
a whopping 72-miles-per-gallon from his snappy red Honda hybrid.
Such per-gallon efficiency, however, pales when compared to the
productivity he squeezes from his own energy, time, and talent each
day. Faull's skills range from coaxing reluctant electrons through
microprocessors, to programming code in Perl, to getting uncooperative
digital machines to effectively communicate with each other.
In an age when many engineers elect to specialize in their work,
this Rochester, New York, native admits to strong affinities for
both hardware and software. With a degree in electrical engineering
from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an advanced degree in computer
science from Northeastern University, he's got the requisite skills
to complement his boundless energy and inquisitive nature.
Faull played a role on two MITRE teams that made major breakthroughs
in 2004 in very different areas. One research team designed and
built a unique Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) that
processes the emerging "modernized" military GPS signal. On the
second team, Faull switched hats to that of software developer.
He worked on a project for the military to give warfighters a more
efficient way to aim for and pursue mobile targets, such as missile
launchers, by enabling computers to communicate directly with each
other. Using machine-to-machine communications bypasses a time-consuming,
error-prone process involving laborious hand-written communication.
The team presented a solution to the Air Force in record-breaking
time, which brought much praise from MITRE and the Air Force.
Faull's now applying machine-to-machine integration to the intricate
problems of global synchronization of in-flight refueling between
Air Force tankers and aircraft during long-distance missions.
While Faull is obviously loaded with important work, he also finds
time to apply innovation to smaller, more local problems at MITRE.
For example, after observing people waiting in long lines at the
small cafeteria on his side of the MITRE campus, he developed an
online order form that improved lunch service, considerably speeding
up sandwich-to-stomach integration.
He's also interested in much more than technology. For example,
his desk drawer is full of pruning tools he uses on his office plants—including
a Ficus, Jade plants, dwarf dracaena, and Bonsai trees. In the summer,
he plants fruits and vegetables in the MITRE gardens.
His interests also include music. Faull is a baritone in the Masterworks
Chorale, a vocal percussionist with a group called Stir Fried,
and an accomplished trombone, tuba, and euphonium player.
Clearly, Faull's eclectic hobbies provide balance to the day-to-day
rigors of engineering his way through intricate electronic puzzles.
They may even offer insight. At the very least, they seem to foster
the out-of-the-box thinking and the innovative solutions that MITRE
is famous for.
—by Tom Green
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