 |
Matt Ware |
A Young Engineer Finds His Mission with the
Marine Corps
Matt Ware
June 2007
The military history buff in Matt Ware grows enthusiastic when
he talks about the changing nature of warfare and the growing options—including
sensors, visualization tools, and command and control and intelligence
software—that can be refined and sent out to the field.
"Giving better capabilities to the warfighters has always intrigued
me, and there's a lot of stuff coming down the line that can be
brought to the forefront," he says. "It's a good time to be in it,
and there's a lot of interesting work out there."
And, in his fifth year at MITRE, Ware finds himself in the middle
of much of it, just as he wanted to be.
Since March 2003, Ware, a systems engineer at the company's Quantico,
Va., site, has worked on developing the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle
(EFV). The EFV is a top acquisition priority for a Marine Corps
seeking ways to get warfighters from water to land faster and give
them greater awareness of ground conditions and enhanced ability
to respond quickly. Through hundreds of hours spent reading books
and researching websites, working with contractors in the Quantico
lab on software testing, and consulting with his MITRE colleagues
and with Marines at their Quantico base, Ware has learned the EFV
inside and out.
"Being thrown into the laboratories to get familiar with anything
and everything in that vehicle prepared me to take on any task that
was thrown at me in the EFV, whether it was hardware or software-related,"
Ware says.
When the Marines asked MITRE to prototype features from the still-in-development
EFV to upgrade the vehicle it will eventually replace, the Amphibious
Assault Vehicle (AAV), Ware's hard-earned expertise reaped big dividends.
The AAV team faced a number of challenges, and one of the biggest
was deciding how the cables powering the command and control systems
could be hooked up without interfering with existing equipment that
couldn't be moved. Ware used his contacts with the EFV contractor
to obtain documentation showing how to connect the cables, thus
saving time that might have spent linking up equipment only to see
it not work properly.
"The AAV prototyping effort has probably been the highlight of
my MITRE career, as far as taking something from the ground up and
actually getting it to the point where you can show that it operates
as it was designed," he says. "It was a big learning process in
that it was a complete design effort, and that's really what I wanted
to be part of."
Exceeding Expectations
Midway through his college career at the West Virginia Institute
of Technology, Ware knew he wanted to be in the defense world, "but
as what, I didn't know." That began to change in 2000, when he attended
a job fair at the college. He stopped by the MITRE booth for what
became a long conversation with Terrance Zimmerman, who was part
of the Marine Corps program at the time (and is currently working
at MITRE's Huntsville, Ala., site).
MITRE's Quantico, Va., site
It's actually been located in Woodbridge, Va.—about
10 miles up I-95 from the Marine Corps Quantico Base—since
1999, but MITRE's Quantico, Va., site is closely associated
with the company's Marine Corps program. The site hosts
40 full-time employees who help MITRE carry out its
goal of providing the Marines with general systems engineering,
analysis support, and systems research and planning
across different directorates and commands. |
|
| |
According to Zimmerman, Ware was "the type of person who stood
out among a lot of the other guys who came by our table …
he really seemed eager to understand what MITRE was all about."
Two stints in MITRE's undergraduate technical co-op program helped
Ware understand that even better, while the level of information
exchange and collaboration he saw convinced him he wanted to join
MITRE full-time, which he did in December 2002.
"MITRE's exceeded my expectations as far as a work environment
and learning environment," he says. "When I met those guys and came
on board as a co-op, it opened my eyes as to what I really wanted
to be involved in. People are very helpful around here to a college
graduate not knowing what to expect."
The people who have helped Ware at MITRE praise his fast learning
curve and steadfast work ethic. Richard Stalcup, former head of
the EFV project, says Ware "took on every challenge without question
and demonstrated the zeal and enthusiasm of a person with a passion
for his job." Zimmerman adds, "Once you get Matt started on something,
you don't have to keep on him. Give him a job to do, and he goes
out and does it. On top of that, he interacts with people well.
That's important, especially when you're working in a government
program office where you have to deal with lots of different people."
For the future, Ware would like to expand his expertise in fusing
computer systems with military functions and help efforts to protect
classified information that may appear on such systems. And his
enthusiasm for his work—the kind of commitment he showed at
the job fair seven years ago—remains undimmed.
"You want to go to work and enjoy doing what you do and actually
see results that benefit somebody," he says. "Once you see that,
it's pretty clear MITRE is a good place to work."
—by Russell Woolard
Related Information
Articles and News
Technical Papers and Presentations
Websites
|
