Before the Battlefield: Competition Spurs Warfighter Innovations

Courtesy Photo | Official DTRA graphics  

FORT BELVOIR, VIRGINIA, UNITED STATES

07.17.2018

Courtesy Story

Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Chemical and Biological Technologies Department

Warfighter success begins long before the battlefield. Merging training, talent and creativity, the tools researchers develop today will be instrumental to mission success tomorrow. As a nation, our greatest tools are our people and technology. This is why the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Chemical and Biological Technologies Department is focused on developing both through an intern-based program with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

Managed by Lauren Charles, Ph.D., of PNNL, a 10-week competition tasked graduate students working in three teams to develop a novel software application which targeted gaps in data collection, integration, analysis and visualization of chemical and biological threats. The winning team’s application was chosen for further development and integrated into DTRA’s Biosurveillance Ecosystem (BSVE), an open-source, web-based platform that enables precision decision making for chemical and biological scenarios.

Recruited from across the United States in public health and epidemiology, user experience, computer science and software engineering disciplines, interns were selected on technical merit, interdisciplinary interests and creativity.

The residents were immersed in a two-week training program to foster innovation in a high-intensity environment and were then assigned one of the following topics: wearable sensors, foreign notifiable diseases and agricultural populations. Based on these parameters, the teams developed three new applications in support of health surveillance: EpiEvident visualized foreign notifiable diseases. ZooRisk developed a zoonosis risk model based on disease transmission parameters, county fairs and weather. Sensalert visualized wearable sensor data from the Grand Canyon Rim2Rim hike using real -time hiker data.

Each team presented their application to a panel of government, industry, university and national laboratory subject matter experts for evaluation on scientific and technical merit, ease of use, design and feasibility of integration into the BSVE. After careful consideration, DTRA CB selected Sensalert to be matured to a higher technical readiness level by PNNL staff, which was integrated into BSVE within six months and demonstrated during the 2017 Chemical and Biological Defense Science & Technology Conference.

This program provided an opportunity to train and cultivate future technical leaders while simultaneously encouraging them to work with the Department of Defense to generate future innovative warfighter solutions at the speed of relevancy.

DTRA CB POC: Mr. Edward Argenta; [e-mail] PNNL POC: Lauren Charles, D.V.M, Ph.D.; [e-mail]

• Date Taken: 07.17.2018
• Date Posted: 07.17.2018 14:31
• Story ID: 284624
• Location: FORT BELVOIR, VIRGINIA, US