BioCreative Competition

Fraunhofer, Germany, December 2007

Lynette Hirschman, PhD, artificial intelligence engineer and director of Biomedical Informatics at MITRE and co-founder of the BioCreative competition, presented the results of the most recent BioCreative workshop at the Fraunhofer Text Mining Symposium in Germany. Participants in the BioCreative competition apply text mining tools to real biological challenges. The event fosters collaboration and allows for comparison of approaches across the scientific text mining community. "One of the very interesting results in the gene mention and gene normalization tasks was if you pool the results from multiple systems, you got better results than from any one system," said Hirschman.

MITRE Engineer Receives International Test and Evaluation Association Award

Washington, DC, November 2007

John Stine, principal communications engineer, received the International Test and Evaluation Association's (ITEA) Professional Publications Award for 2007. Stine's article, "A Cautionary Tale on Testing and Evaluating Tactical Wireless Mobile Ad Hoc Networks," was published in the March/April 2007 issue of The ITEA Journal for Test and Evaluation. The Publications Award recognizes individuals whose published books and technical papers have improved and increased the general body of knowledge relevant to better understanding and development of test and evaluation technology. Stine accepted the award at the ITEA Annual International Symposium in Kauai, Hawaii.

Book Series to Further Understanding and Adoption of Enterprise Systems Engineering

Boca Raton, FL, November 2007

Taylor & Francis has reached an agreement with senior scientists and engineers at The MITRE Corporation to develop a series of books to further understanding and adoption of complex and enterprise systems engineering. Spearheaded by MITRE's Paul Garvey, chief scientist, Center for Acquisition and Systems Analysis, and Brian E. White, director of MITRE's Systems Engineering Process Office, the series will extend traditional systems engineering discipline and process in new and different ways. The initial books, written by thought leaders from MITRE, BAE Systems, and MIT, are scheduled for publication in early 2008.

Webinar Explores the Past, Present and Future of Network Centric Warfare

Sunnyvale, CA, November 2007

Fred Stein, MITRE senior principal engineer for network-centric warfare, will appear in an Objectivity sponsored webinar to discuss how technology has influenced military operations and what lies in store for the next-generation war fighter. Stein's book, co-authored by David Alberts and John Garstka, Network Centric Warfare: Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority, published almost a decade ago, cast a new light on the future of battlefield command, was one of the first to address the emergence of and forecast its future prevalence on the battlefield. Stein has since become one of the foremost experts on the digitization of military forces and the challenges that arise when integrating new technology, especially when that technology has to span across generations of users.

MITRE Engineer Elected President of IEEE's Computer Society

Washington, DC, October 2007

Kathy Land, a MITRE software systems engineer in Huntsville, Ala., has been elected president of the 85,000-member IEEE Computer Society. Land, a Computer Society vice president, won with 54 percent of the vote over Jim Isaak, a former computer company executive who teaches at Southern New Hampshire University. The IEEE has about 370,000 members. The Computer Society, founded in 1946 and based in Washington, D.C., is the largest IEEE society. Land has served on the Computer Society Board of Governors and is the 2007 recipient of the IEEE Standards Association Standards Medallion. She will continue to work at MITRE during her term as president.

Capitol Hill Hearing Testimony

Washington, DC, October 2007

Agam N. Sinha, senior vice president and general manager of MITRE's Center for Advanced Aviation Systems, gave a briefing to the Committee on House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation. He discussed the workings of ADS-B, explaining why ADS-B is a cornerstone of the Next-Generation Air Transportation System. He also gave a high-level description of the benefits ADS-B could deliver in the Next Generation timeframe, including some of the early benefits that will accrue to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Airspace System (NAS) users under the FAA's current ADS-B program.

N.Y.'s Delay Donnybrook

Washington, DC, August 2007

Satellite navigation holds the promise of allowing for more precise paths to and from runways in all types of weather. Area navigation is enabling Delta Air Lines to save $30 million in fuel per year on departures from Atlanta through more direct routes that shave a few miles off each procedure. Arrival paths can also be streamlined. "The whole operation becomes more efficient, and there's much less deviation," notes Agam N. Sinha, senior vice president and general manager of MITRE's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD). CAASD is assisting the FAA in a variety of efforts to improve air traffic management in the New York region.

Autonomous Flying Ambulances Could Save Troops

Bedford, MA, June 2007

"Ducted fans have been around for years," says Bob Behler, a retired Air Force general who once flew medevac aircraft who is now a senior vice president in MITRE's DoD C3I FFRDC. "They're very efficient, but reliability is questionable with vectored thrust." Nevertheless, Behler says that ducted-fan aircraft are great for urban operations. "You've got to have something that travels slowly and can maneuver around obstructions," he explains. He remains concerned, however, about not having a medical attendant with the patient.

Groups Team to Test Secure-coding Skill

Bedford, MA, March 2007

MITRE's Steve Christey, editor of the Common Vulnerability and Exposures (CVE) Project, is part of groups led by the SANS Institute that will create a set of four tests covering major programming languages. The tests would give companies a tool to measure software developers' ability to create secure code. They would also act as a guide to software buyers about the ability of the developers who created the programs, as well as give coders a way to identify gaps in their knowledge of secure programming techniques.

The RSA Conference

San Francisco, CA, February 2007

Kathy Wang, MITRE information security engineer, gave the presentation "Honeyclient Tech and Client-Side Exploit Research" at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. Honeyclients are systems that drive a piece of vulnerable client software to potentially malicious sites, and monitor system behavior for indicators of compromise. Wang's session discussed the latest characteristics of an open-sourced honeyclient package, and how the honeyclient package can be deployed in networks to effectively find new client-side attacks.

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