December 2025
Mark Peters, our CEO, recently shared a few thoughts to close out 2025: “MITRE’s critically important work reflects a shared belief that progress is an ongoing and collective endeavor—and that expertise applied in service to others is one of the highest forms of citizenship.”
Our work, encompassing a range of challenges, is guided by MITRE's North Star—making this nation safer and more resilient. Our steadfast dedication to mission motivates each of us to be better Americans.
As we look ahead to a new year, the stories below exemplify how we can extend MITRE's public interest mission to our communities. We wish you a happy, healthy 2026!
7-minute read time
IN THE COMMUNITY
Engineer Applies Technical Skills to Help Families in Need
By day, Emily Pertl, Ph.D., serves the nation as a principal data science engineer in MITRE’s Intelligence Center. In her off hours, she serves her community, helping to operate Pantry Plus More, a nonprofit in West Virginia, where one in five children experience food insecurity.
Problem solving for others: Pertl applies her engineering and organizational skills to streamline the Pantry’s operations and processes—everything from automating the registration system to tracking inventory. “I’m a mechanical engineer. I figure things out,” says Pertl. “If I can make things better or easier for someone else, I will. What gives me joy is helping people.”
Volunteering to Spread the Good Word about STEM
Introducing STEM to elementary school students is a lot easier with ice cream. Troy Rockwood and Tony Kubat, aerospace experts from our Colorado Springs site, make tasty scoops with liquid nitrogen to demonstrate the effects of extreme temperatures on materials at an atomic level. Their goal? Show young people the role STEM plays in the world around us.
Sweet results: In his decade-plus volunteering at schools, Rockwood happily reports at least one eager student who was inspired by his presentations. “Now he’s in graduate school for low-temperature physics—and apparently having a great time.”
CYBER OUTREACH
Teaching ATT&CK to Our Future Cyber Workforce
MITRE ATT&CK®’s value to cybersecurity practitioners is obvious, but the team behind it also believes in the benefit of sharing their knowledge with novice audiences. Over the years, Amy Robertson, Courtney Clark, Lauren Lusty, and others have presented ATT&CK 101 primers at more than a dozen high schools and colleges. “The more students understand the threats, the better they can defend themselves, at home or work,” Lusty explains.
An onramp to cybersecurity: “ATT&CK makes jumping into the cybersecurity conversation a little bit easier,” Clark says. “When people think cyber, they think coding or something that's hard to touch, but if you equate those things with actions that could happen to them, it’s easier to visualize and understand.”
Cyber Experts Volunteer to Fight Crimes Against Children Online
Teaching young people how to behave responsibly online has its merits (see story above), but all the guidance in the world can’t fully stop cybercrime. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, reports of child sex abuse material online have shot up 15,000% over the last 15 years.
Hackathons for good: A group of MITRE cyber experts launched a series of hackathons to support nonprofits and academia combatting trafficking and crimes against children. The volunteer work is an extension of our Disrupting Crimes Against Children program, which supports MITRE’s law enforcement partners.
In 2025, the group spearheaded three hackathons across the country with several more on the horizon next year. To get involved in future Hackathons for Good, email Adam Hammond at ahammond@mitre.org.
OUR CULTURE IN, ACTION
Mentoring Group Lifts Up Early Careerists
The power of the collective is on full display at NextUp, an internal employee group operated for early-career professionals by early-career professionals across our two main campuses and several sites across the U.S. Built from a desire to combine personal development and network-building, the group provides an opportunity for staff just entering the workforce to develop core leadership skills—and benefit from networking and mentoring.
An asset for leadership decisions: “We look to NextUp’s perspective as new and important voices,” says Douglas Robbins, vice president for engineering and prototyping, MITRE Labs. “They’re a group of self-starters, highly organized and motivated, and in tune to the unique needs of their peers.”
LAB SPOTLIGHT
Configurable Lab Meets Range of Government Missions
When we prototype things at MITRE, we do so with the needs of our government sponsors directly in mind. The Immersion Lab is one of those magical crossover places with advanced technology that promotes collaboration and opportunity across dozens of our capabilities.
In short: Simulated environments allow us to safely put people in high-stakes scenarios, such as a natural disaster, ensuring they’re prepared for the real thing. The interactive environments MITRE provides allow users to work in alternate realities and consider multi-dimensional solutions they may have never considered before.
Added value: Any of our innovation partners can use these configurable laboratory spaces. We provide the space, technology, and expertise, so our sponsors save time and cost.