Click here to submit your Lifetime Achievement Nomination
We are now taking nominations for the second David M. Altwegg Lifetime Achievement Award. The nomination consists of a two-page write-up addressing the candidate's embodiment of the criteria below. Nominations submitted before 13 September 2019 will be considered for award at the February 2020 Symposium.
David M. Altwegg Lifetime Achievement Award
Congratulations to our 2019 David M. Altwegg Lifetime Achievement Award Winner, Mr. William Moore, Senior Strategic Advisor, Defense Engineering Corporation
The David M. Altwegg Lifetime Achievement Award recognized and honored an individual from Government, Industry, or Academia, who has made significant contributions to the Fire Control community, thus strengthening national defense and benefiting the warfighter over a period of time greater than 20 years. Nominees should exemplify the following traits:
The first David M. Altwegg Lifetime Achievement Award was presented posthumously to David M. Altwegg at a ceremony during the 2018 NFCS Plenary session.
Mr. Altwegg was a pioneer in Naval fire control - a driving force behind creating the Forward Pass CONOPS, acquiring interceptor missiles, creating the Aegis fleet, and setting-up ashore infrastructure that led to NIFC-CA. He defined the modern acquisition spiral development approach as the MDA Executive Director. Throughout his 64 year career serving the DoD, RADM Altwegg left his mark on technologies, tactics and people. The National Fire Control Symposium itself is a testament to RADM Altwegg's belief that people and knowledge are imperatives.
Early Career Award
First Place: Ms. Michelle O'Toole, Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory, “Extending the Kill Chain with Free Space Optical Communications”
Second Place: Dr. Joseph Munoz, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, “Information Denial for Missiles”
Third Place: Dr. Jason Zutty, Georgia Tech Research Institute, “EMADE for Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance Applications”
The Early Career Award recognizes an "early career" presenter/author for making meaningful contributions to the Fire Control Community. Those new to the field in the last 7 years delivering and authoring an oral presentation are eligible for consideration of this award.
The Early Career award criteria are:
First Place: Dr. Matthew Gombolay, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, “Enabling Battle Management via Machine Learning Models of the Human Pilot”
Second Place: Dr. Christopher Valenta, Georgia Tech Research Institute , “Real-Time Atmospheric Characterization for High Energy Laser Fire Control”
Third Place: Mr. Ryan Scheidt, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, “Expanding the Battlespace Through Multi-Beam Communications Scheduling and Routing”
Third Place: Ms. Olivia Brown, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, “Robustness of Combat ID Systems to Adversarial Perturbations”
First Place: ENS Sam Lacinski, U.S. Navy, “Assessment of Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Boost-Phase Intercept of Ballistic Missiles”
Second Place: Mr. Michael Molignano, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, “Softkill Weapon Coordination for Ship Defense”
Third Place: Dr. Monica Montanari, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, “Long-Range Doppler-Spread Clutter Mitigation in Over-the-Horizon Radars”
Poster Award
The 2020 National Fire Control Symposium will once again present a Peer Reviewed Poster Award. All attendees will be able to cast their vote for the three best overall NFCS posters.
First Place: Ms. Jennifer Eisenman, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, “Over-the-Horizon Radar Phenomenology Measurements”
Second Place: Dr. Chad Waddington, Air Force Research Laboratory, “Finding the Tiger Paw: An Application of a New RF Source Localization Method”
Third Place: Mr. Wayne Dietel, Pugh Associates, LLC, “Mark (MK) 41 Vertical Launching System (VLS) Overview”
First Place: Dr. Samantha Weiss, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, “A Dynamic Programming Approach to the Pursuer-Evader-Decoy Problem”
Second Place: 1st Lt Robert Gutierrez, Air Force Research Laboratory, “Weaponeering in Augmented Reality”
Third Place: Mr. George Kakas, Air Force Research Laboratory, “Survey and Evaluation ELINT and ESM Systems with Integrated Photonics”
First Place: Mr. Marc Santoro, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, “Agile Cybersecurity: A Modest Proposal”
Second Place: Mr. Samuel Lacinski, MIT Technology and Policy Program, “Assessment of Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Boost-Phase Intercept of Ballistic Missiles”
Third Place: Ms. Katherine Souza, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, “Lasercomms System for Mobile Terrestrial Applications”
First Place: Ms. Emily Anesta and Mr. Adam Schnabel, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, “Real-Time Characterization of the Atmosphere in Support of Electromagnetic Maneuver Warfare (EMW)”
Second Place: Mrs. Carol Lee, Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division, “Cyber Defense Vulnerability Insight Laboratory (Cyber Devil): Moving the Culture of Software Development toward Security”
Third Place: Mrs. Anu Myne, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, “The Broadband Challenge for Next Generation Electronic Warfare”