MITRE Executive Director Richard J. Byrne Awarded 2006 AFCEA Meritorious Award for Engineering

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

McLean, Virginia, July 14, 2006 — At ceremonies culminating its annual TechNet International Conference at the Washington Convention Center, the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) awarded its prestigious 2006 AFCEA Meritorious Award for Engineering to Richard J. Byrne.

Byrne is Executive Director of Innovation and ESC (Electronic Systems Center) Engineering for the Command and Control Center of The MITRE Corporation in Bedford, Mass. He currently serves as Technical Director to ESC's Directorate of Engineering at Hanscom AFB, Mass.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, and a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The award cited Byrne's pioneering work in championing an enterprise-scalable, machine-to-machine network centric approach called Cursor on Target (CoT), by applying an eXtensible Markup Language schema representing the critical data elements intrinsic to almost every major battlefield mission: what, where and when.

CoT has allowed our Air Force Special Operations forces to reduce their time-sensitive target chain from 30 to less than eight minutes. Nearly 100 military communications systems worldwide are now developing CoT, and it has even been deployed in multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, so they can "talk" with other command and control systems. And, it is now being looked at to help combat terrorism, for counter IED (Improvised Explosive Device) applications.

In endorsing the award, Dr. James Cunningham, Director of Engineering for the Electronic Systems Center, commended Byrne's work as having "significantly advanced the discipline of network centric warfare ... The results are now being upscaled DOD-Wide in system enterprise applications, with the ultimate benefactor being the warfighter."

MITRE (www.mitre.org) is a not-for-profit company that provides systems engineering, research and development, and information technology support to the government. It operates federally funded research and development centers for the Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Internal Revenue Service, with principal locations in Bedford, Mass., and McLean, Va.

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