MITRE On Team That Receives Collier Trophy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

McLean, Virginia, July 15, 2008 — The Collier Trophy was established in 1910 by Robert J. Collier, a magazine publisher and one-time president of the Aero Club of America, which issued the first pilot licenses in the U.S. It is presented annually for "the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America with respect to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or space vehicles."

MITRE, as part of an ADS-B team of 26 public and private sector groups, was selected for the 2007 award for its efforts in conceptualizing, developing, and implementing a fundamental, so-called "cornerstone capability" for the future of the national airspace system. Other recipients of the award include the FAA, NASA, UPS, Garmin Ltd., Lockheed Martin, and the Airline Pilots Association. The team's name was recently engraved on the 7-foot, 525-pound permanent trophy that resides in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

For the roughly 100 MITRE employees who have worked on ADS-B, their inclusion alongside such past Collier Trophy recipients as Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins for the Apollo 11 flight and moon landing, among many other aviation pioneers, marked a significant achievement.

"This is a really big deal," said MITRE President and CEO Al Grasso, speaking at the July 9 award ceremony at MITRE's McLean, Va., campus. "You're among some giants here, which makes you a giant. Many years from now, people will recognize ADS-B as a pioneering effort in its time."

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, Massachusetts, and McLean, Virginia.

Members of MITRE's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) attended the awards ceremony, where MITRE's groundbreaking work on this program, begun in the early 1990s and undertaken with 25 government and industry partners, was recently recognized when ADS-B received the most prestigious honor in aviation: the Robert J. Collier Trophy.

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