Normally, we introduce you to one scientist who’s doing great things in this “Meet the Scientists” feature, but today, we’re showcasing four. The Department of Defense is honoring four scientists and engineers from theNavy’s Space and Navy Warfare Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific) with the Dr. Delores M. Etter Top Scientists and Engineers of the Year Award given by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy (ASN) Research, Development, and Acquisition (RD&A).
The Etter Award is named for the former assistant secretary of the Navy. It recognizes scientists and engineers who have made significant contributions to the research, development, acquisition, test and evaluation community. Achievements are considered significant when they establish a scientific basis for technical improvements for the military or when they make a material contribution to the nation’s defense.
This year’s awardees are Dr. Jose Romero-Mariona, Dr. Benjamin Taylor, John Stastny, and Walter Velasquez. Romero-Mariona and Taylor will receive Emergent Investigator awards. Stastny and Velasquez will receive Individual awards.
The Emergent Investigator category recognizes scientists and engineers with less than 10 years of non-academic work prior to nomination, while the Individual category recognizes scientists and engineers with 10 years or more of non-academic work.
Let’s meet the scientists!
Romero-Mariona is being recognized for his work in cyber security. He developed techniques and concepts to support the warfighter’s unmanned capabilities, cyber decision superiority, and critical infrastructure protection. Romero-Mariona’s most recent work on the cyber security component of critical infrastructures like water, gas and electricity is providing new information for monitoring and protecting our nation’s critical infrastructure against threats. His projects have produced an impressive portfolio of patents and have supported junior scientists and engineers, including Wounded Warrior interns, in expanding their scientific and professional experiences.
Taylor has taken the lead in developing new superconducting quantum interference devices for the detection of radio frequency transmissions. He’s being honored because his efforts have greatly improved the U.S. military’s gathering of signals intelligence in its fight against adversaries around the world. His ground-breaking research is expected to result in significant enhancements to overall warfighter force protection by improving warfighter survivability and stealth.
Stastny has developed and integrated state of the art automated anomaly detection and correlation maritime data analysis algorithms into U.S. Navy and Coast Guard unclassified Maritime Domain Awareness systems. His algorithms provide real-time indications of possible hijackings and piracy events by applying signal processing and machine learning to large quantities of maritime data. They’re used by more than 20 partner nations to significantly enhance situational awareness and maritime crime detection.
Velasquez has been instrumental in leading the engineering effort to develop a reliable, low cost, autonomous Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) system that will meet a critical Navy information gap. New technologies were created for this system, including an automated deployment method, a unique communication system, advanced processing and underwater inductive charging. He’s being honored for his work on this system which, by the way, has extremely low operating costs: a real win for the Navy.
Awardees are nominated by their commands. The selection process is carried out by an executive panel of representatives from the nominated organizations.
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