|
All MITRE Projects (with summaries and presentations where available)
Listing of project titles in alphabetical order
Pages: 1234567891011121314151617
Enhanced Circuit Testing for Integrity
Primary Investigator:Monk, Leonard G
Enterprise Systems Acquisition Using Venture Capital Concepts
Primary Investigator:Stevens, Renee G.
Problems:
Federal acquisition confronts long-standing and well-publicized challenges. Information intensive systems, often characterized by changing user expectations, complex linkages that transcend organizational and functional boundaries and rapidly changing enabling technologies, face additional challenges. These challenges frequently translate into uncertainty about what to build (evolving requirements) and how best to do so (emerging technologies). The venture capital industry has developed a series of techniques to deal with rapidly-changing technologies and highly-uncertain markets. This research explores the applicability of venture capital derived strategies and practices to the federal acquisition of information technology (IT) systems under varying conditions of uncertainty. In particular, the research proposes alternative acquisition strategies tailored to garner flexibility in the face of uncertainty and identifies specific practices necessary to implement these strategies.
Objectives:
The goal of this research is to develop a strategic, forward-looking view of acquisition under conditions of uncertainty. Specifically, the research objectives are to explore venture capital (VC) approaches and determine whether and under what conditions they can be used to improve the acquisition of IT systems in the federal arena.
Activities:
Research activities are organized into three phases. Phase I entails the characterization and comparison of the venture capital and federal acquisition environments and methods and the development of a research framework to assess the nature and level of uncertainty within a program.
Phase II develops and details two alternative acquisition strategies and initiates field research, including both mini-case studies and pilots. Mini-case studies provide input for identifying acquisition strategies for dealing with uncertainty and for exploring the motivators, enablers, and barriers to innovation in acquisition practice.
Phase III focuses on synthesizing, validating, and communicating the research. Research findings are captured in an interactive diagnostic tool and a "How to Guide" for program managers and key members of the acquisition team.
Impact:
The research is developing within MITRE a rich understanding of acquisition as a complement to the evolving discipline of enterprise systems engineering. It is fostering a rich dialogue across the federal acquisition community, including policy makers, practitioners, and academicians, and forming the basis for an alternative set of processes for the acquisition of IT systems.
Public Release No:09-1126
[Presentation]
Exhibit Date(s):May 6, May 7
Enterprise Systems' State Awareness and Modification Framework (ESSAM-F)
Primary Investigator:Kirwan Jr., Malcolm C.
Envisioning the Ether: The Battle Commander Spectrum Planner
Primary Investigator:Jensen, Thomas M.
Problems:
The amount of spectrum needed for most military operations is significantly higher than what is available today or projected for the future. In light of this, the ability to plan for the most effective use of this spectrum is critical. This project will validate the need for and utility of such a network spectrum planning tool. It will provide an opportunity for MITRE to gain insight into operational requirements and for user representatives to see and understand the capabilities that are possible. Additionally, these capabilities, insights, and user feedback will be transitioned to on-going development programs that will be fielded through Programs of Record.
Objectives:
We will work with the MOIE sponsor, CERDEC Space and Terrestrial Communications Directorate, to provide the existing tool to assess its applicability to operational users and on-going programs.
Develop the planned MOIE enhancements for Course of Action development and the characterization of future networking waveforms.
Course of action enhancements, future networking waveform characterization, and user suggested enhancements will be complete.
Activities:
Engage Space and Terrestrial Communications Directorate (the System Engineers for CJSMPT) to lower transition risks. We will also be discussing and demonstrating the tool and providing feedback we receive from the user community.
Impact:
This project is in the process of developing a prototype planner fornetwork course of action assessment and configuration optimization that will, given scenario dependent input parameters, allow an operational user to answer questions such as:
1. How should I configure the network?
2. Where should I allocate spectrum within my network?
3. What level of performance can I expect from the network given a specific allocation to networks/subnetworks?
4. Does this meet my operational requirements?
5. If not, how can I alter my network to meet them?
6. How can I adjust my operational requirements given spectrum constraints?
Public Release No:09-0808
[Presentation]
Evidence Based Analysis of Financial Data
Primary Investigator:Worrell, Charles A.
Problems:
There are many instances in which traditional financial metrics do not provide sufficient visibility into matters of interest to our sponsors. Regulators, law enforcement personnel, and intelligence analysts often find that financial transactions of interest to them are difficult to distinguish from the noisy background of our dynamic economy using traditional accounting measures in tasks such as: detecting corporate fraud; interdicting terrorist finances; and detecting money laundering and illicit trade. The objective of this research is to conduct time series analyses of known transactions of interest to law enforcement personnel, regulators, and intelligence analysts in order to identify non-accounting evidence that can be correlated with those transactions.
Objectives:
Demonstrate the ability to identify financial activities of interest by analyzing non-accounting evidence.
Activities:
The technical approach proposed is to identify telltale data in known past cases of interest by performing time series analysis of selected cases. The analysis will look at corporate filings, public statements, and press coverage from 24 months prior to the transaction and 36 months after. Indicators will be sought that correlate to offenses using data visualization tools and other techniques. The project will apply existing MITRE fraud detection models using the new items of evidence selected during this research as well as MITRE's Chronoscope visualization tool in order to demonstrate the improved performance from using new evidence.
Impact:
If successful, this research will produce an analytical technique that will improve the ability to predict and detect events of interest by analysts engaged in: detecting corporate fraud; interdicting terrorist finances; detecting money laundering and illicit trade; detecting tax fraud; detecting Medicare fraud; and financial market intelligence.
This technique will be useful to several MITRE sponsors including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Intelligence Community.
Public Release No:09-0880
[Presentation]
Exhibit Date(s):May 5
Exploration of Algorithms for the NextGen Collision Avoidance System
Primary Investigator:Chamlou, Roxaneh
Problems:
As the aviation community moves toward the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), current airborne collision avoidance technology may become inadequate. The Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) was developed some time ago, and its ability to accommodate the air-to-air applications and air traffic control procedures envisioned for NextGen is limited. Thus, there is a need to analyze the role of future NextGen technologies such as Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) in the overall collision avoidance concept and architecture.
Objectives:
Our objective is to answer three fundamental research questions: Which desired NextGen collision alerting and avoidance capabilities are not met by the current TCAS architecture?; what new enabling technologies and design principles could meet these NextGen needs?; and what are the key functional needs that ensure enhancements and modifications do not detract from safety, which is the primary function of the collision avoidance system?
Activities:
During the intial phase of this research, we identified the capabilities needed to accommodate the evolving Next Generation Air Transportation System. We determined areas where TCAS does and does not satisfy those capabilities, and identified enabling technologies and associated issues.
Currently we are establishing the performance baseline for TCAS in today's environment using new metrics for assessment of detection and avoidance algorithms. We will then develop new detection and avoidance algorithms, based on ADS-B information, for a NextGen collision avoidance system ("NextCAS"), and develop simulations to evaluate performance relative to TCAS.
Impact:
The aviation community's existing collision avoidance system, TCAS, can trace its origins to MITRE's Technology Program. MITRE has the opportunity to make a similar impact on the future of aviation by taking the initiative to explore an integrated airborne collision alerting and avoidance system that accommodates the new applications and procedures envisioned for NextGen.
Public Release No:09-1028
[Presentation]
Exhibit Date(s):May 6, May 7
Exploring Culture Through Language
Primary Investigator:Ferro, Lisa
Exhibit Date(s):May 5
Extending MITRE's Reach: Building External Relationships on a Social Platform
Primary Investigator:Cuomo, Donna L.
Problems:
Explore the application of social networking tools both within MITRE and to support cross-organizational collaboration teams with external (non-MITRE) users to help MITRE bring the larger community to bear on sponsor problems. Who does MITRE already know in industry, academia, in mission areas? How do we create community spaces that bring these people to bear on important sponsor problems? We will deploy a social networking capability and run user-facing pilots to assess which use areas yield the greatest value and to better understand requirements in this nascent space.
Objectives:
Explore and understand how a social networking engine can be used to improve MITRE’s ability to collaborate with others outside of MITRE. We need to track, manage, and share knowledge of our relationships with outside organizations such as partners, industries, and sponsors, which has been a long-standing problem within the enterprise. This will improve MITRE’s reach and our ability to bring the larger community to bear.
Explore and understand how social networking engines can be used to make explicit and maintain relationships and knowledge sharing between MITRE users and users external to MITRE such as staff at other FFRDC’s, MITRE alumni, industry, academia and sponsors.
Deploy a generic, extensible and open social networking capability called Handshake to support not only our proposed use cases above but to also support the broad spectrum of internal and externally-facing social networking research efforts being proposed across the company.
We will conduct end user evaluations to understand the impact of these applications and approaches on how MITRE does business.
Activities:
We will identify MITRE teams with a cross-organizational component, and work with them to identify where social networking functionality can provide an improved collaboration experience. We will then deploy a prototype social networking capability calledHandshake which isbased on the open source Elgg application. In addition to assessing Handshake's impact as deployed, Handshake will also provide a testbed to support additional research and applications that can be built on top of this openplatform. Potential topic areas include distributing social networking, automatic profile generation, recommender systems, and impact on systems engineering processes.
Impact:
Deploy aleading-edge social networking platform, Handshake,for MITRE and partners that lives outside of MITRE’s firewall, but that will be integrated with MITRE’s intranet to provide ease-of-access to MITRE’s employees.Members can make personal connections, search for other members’ expertise, organizations, and open groups. Each user’s “dashboard” will contain a stream of activity updates, notice of blog postings or tags,and other information the connections want to post. Handshake provides an immediate service to a number of significant MITRE partnerships. It also provides a test bed to support additional research and applications that can be built on top of the platform. Our partners will not only be able to learn from our experiences but actively participate in this experiment.
Public Release No:09-1345
[Presentation]
Exhibit Date(s):May 7
Extracting Multitemporal Attribute Grids from Image Collections
Primary Investigator:Barrett, Walter T.
Exhibit Date(s):May 5
File Format Identification
Primary Investigator:Vidrine II, Carroll K.
Exhibit Date(s):May 5
|
