2023 Future 5 Awardees
Each year, AOC showcases five young professionals as the year's Future 5, recognizing those who actively innovate and strive for excellence as they build their careers in the EMS/EW/IO industry.
Please join us in celebrating this year’s Future 5.
Michael DiMeo
Systems Engineer, L3Harris
Career Goal
My ultimate goal is to be a leader in digital engineering that enables teams across the wider organization with tools that accelerate schedules, reduce costs and ultimately get the most capable system to the warfighter. My role has helped me understand how widely applicable Modeling & Simulation (M&S) is to support multiple facets of an organization such as business, software development, system design, development and I&T. I'm continually able to leverage the M&S toolkit that our team develops to perform trade analyses on new concepts to present to customers, generating dynamic RF simulations for hardware testing, and developing algorithms all in a fraction of the time that it would take without it. Now as the M&S Outreach Lead for EW, I'm working with different teams across L3Harris’s EW organization to train engineers of different disciplines in ways to utilize these capabilities to improve their processes and expand their toolset. The more challenging part of this role is understanding engineers’ needs or seeing opportunities to improve development when we don’t have an existing solution; finding points in our roadmap where we can efficiently develop incremental features that will fulfil multiple needs. While engineers are the immediate beneficiaries of what we do, I believe the warfighter receives its real value. By empowering our engineers, algorithms are easily optimizable through Monte Carlo simulations of relevant scenarios, software development is accelerated through SITL, and hardware testing becomes even more rigorous which, at the end of the day, helps us provide the most capable systems that protect lives. As I work towards establishing myself as a leader in this space, I continue to expand my network in and outside of L3Harris to discover additional opportunities to further enable our engineers, engage with industry experts to share unfamiliar use cases and build a path for what we have today to feed into a larger digital thread.
Career Achievement
My first project in the EW industry was one that several team members and I were recognized for at our President’s EW Town Hall last year. I also attribute a lot of my more recent achievements back to this effort. The project was a compact EW payload on a Group 2 UAS used in drone swarming applications where we exceeded stakeholder expectations at each flight demonstration. I joined this team at a fortunate time where the project was still in the design phase. My tasks during this phase involved plenty of cross-functional interfacing, modeling system performance, and leading the development of a CCA essential to the design. Later on, I supported the payload I&T, integration to the platform, and EMI testing which together led to opportunities to support the flight tests. Being fresh out of college, there was a steep learning curve throughout this, but I was insistent on being involved with every aspect of the project to some degree in order to learn as much as I could from our experts in systems, software, electrical and mechanical engineering. Partway through this effort, I also began working a customer-funded trade study focused on compact EW capabilities as it applies to Air Launched Effects (ALE). With guidance from senior engineers as to what analyses would be valuable, I began performing trade studies on SWAP-C, forming concepts for platform-specific packaging and developing new models to evaluate field-of-view, disrupt jamming effectivity and decoy injection capability to name a few. Over the span of nearly a year, a comprehensive study was formed. I consider that first project my biggest achievement because it opened doors to the subsequent opportunities I’ve had such as that ALE trade study. It’s also what I can directly trace back to as to what has led me to my most recent opportunity: the role of chief systems engineer for a rapid development effort which is advancing our compact EW technology and expanding the capabilities of a cutting-edge UAS.
Education
M.A. System Engineering, Steven's Institute of Technology
Scott Dinan
Systems Architect Sr., Lockheed Martin
Career Goal
My current career goal is to become a chief engineer who oversees a portfolio of programs. This will allow me to complete two ancillary professional goals. The first is to support a program(s) through the entire engineering life cycle process from a technical position. In achieving this goal, I would get to contribute significantly to systems that make a difference for our country and its soldiers. This is one of the primary reasons that I came to work for the DOD as a contractor. The second goal is that being a chief engineer would put me in a great position to mentor up-and-coming young talent. I have been fortunate to have had numerous role models throughout my career. These role models have shared their technical expertise, shown me the correct way to lead teams, and given me growth opportunities to continue on my development path. My experiences have inspired me to do the same for the next generation of engineers. In my current position, I have mentored several interns, co-ops, and new hires. I use these opportunities to share knowledge, experiences, and build relationships. These relationships are mutually beneficial, as I am often taught a few things as well. Achieving my goal to become a portfolio chief engineer would serve as a multiplier for my two ancillary goals. I would be able to contribute at the portfolio level, thereby supporting numerous programs as well as mentoring numerous engineers across the organization.
Career Achievement
To date, I have made significant contributions to two similar but distinctly different systems. The first major contribution was an airborne electronic warfare system. I was the test lead on this program and was able to lead a cross-disciplined engineering team through a dozen flight test events of varying scope. These test events ranged from demonstrations for internal and external stakeholders to participation in major wargame events. These major wargame events included attendance from senior leaders up to and including the Secretary of the Army. The preparation for these events was intense. Our team would spend late nights in anechoic chambers as we ran through vignettes and resolved issues with the system. To optimize communication, I would lead daily meetings to prioritize and allocate resources to resolving the most critical problems.
My biggest career achievement has been leading the design of a new DOD investment. This involved contributing to and leading a cross-disciplined team to design a terrestrial EW and SIGINT system from initial requirements to a compliant baseline. This achievement required cross-team communication, technical breadth and depth, and a positive attitude. I led the team in creating a unified release plan, drafting system requirements, collaborating on designing a hardware architecture and associated software architecture, and flowing all data to the Model and Simulation (M&S) team to confirm design compliance against requirements and EMS threats. I served as the primary POC for all technical discussions with our internal and external stakeholders as well as led technical discussions during soldier touch points. This was to ensure all feedback would be incorporated into the system design. To date, this effort has put this system closer to coming to fruition and making a difference to our readiness against future threats. The superposition of those two efforts has given me tremendous experience on both sides of the systems engineering V.
Education
M.A. Electrical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University
Jarrett Holcomb
Research Engineer, SwRI (Southwest Research Institute)
Career Goal
Much to my parent’s dismay I questioned everything as a kid. Tired of having to ask them I quickly realized that if I could answer the why question, then all the what, when, and how were easier to answer. For me the typical answer to why in EW is simple: to save the warfighter. Unfortunately, not everyone shares this same answer. That is why my ultimate career goal is to create, inspire, and motivate EW leaders to answer their why question in a similar manner.
I wish that someone had taught me earlier about the importance of EW earlier in my career path. My younger self was always looking for opportunities to make a difference, but I often looked at various other career paths to accomplish this. Had I known about the importance of EW, I would have started applying my research to solve EW problems sooner. This is why my career goal includes speaking about my passion for the importance of EW at as many conferences, colleges, and schools as possible.
The underdog motif is a theme often used in stories to enact an inspirational response from an audience by having an unlikely character overcome great obstacles. I plan to similarly inspire others by leading teams of engineers to solve “impossible” warfighter scenarios that others have not dared to tackle. Utilizing the latest innovations in machine learning, latest generation hardware, and other creative novel architectures can inspire other EW leaders to apply these technologies to even more “impossible” scenarios. While leading these teams I plan to motivate other engineers by highlighting the catastrophic repercussions of failing in the EW industry.
The importance of EW cannot be overstated. Warfighter lives depend on their EW systems ability to adapt and overcome advanced threats in increasingly contested and congested environments. I believe that creating and inspiring EW leaders will not only protect the current generation of warfighters but future ones also.
Career Achievement
I believe that any impact to save the warfighter is a significant achievement, however, my largest contribution to the warfighter has been the leadership and development of the R&D 100 award winning SPARTA software. When I first started testing Electronic Warfare (EW) systems at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), the required tools for verification and analysis lacked the precision and measurement resolution for me to confidently test the system’s functionality. This caused my team and I to acquire internal research and development funds to develop an EW domain specific test software designed to adequately measure Electronic Attack (EA) system outputs.
After many great successful internal demonstrations, I led multiple outreach efforts to proliferate the tool to protect warfighters on more platforms. Several successful government contracts later, SPARTA received an R&D 100 award presented to the top 100 revolutionary technologies of 2020.
Continuing the program, I transitioned into a leadership role and lead groups of SPARTA engineers to test and analyze multiple EW systems at various government facilities. During these contracts, the SPARTA engineering team grew significantly. It has been extremely rewarding highlighting the importance of EW to new graduates and watching them grow into talented professionals working to save the warfighter.
After observing low probability of intercept (LPI) threats aiming to harm the warfighter during SPARTA test events, I turned my research to improving Electronic Support (ES) systems. I became the principal investigator on multiple internal research projects and was able to creatively apply signal processing techniques from other domains to create highly successful signal extraction algorithms. These algorithms were tested in extreme environments and were shown to be successful even without prior knowledge of the environment. I plan to continue my research while leading and inspiring others to save even more warfighters.
Education
B.A. Electrical Engineering, Mercer University
Rachel Norris Brody
RF Electrical Engineer, Motorola Solutions - Applied Technology
Career Goal
My ultimate career goal is to help Applied Technology - my department at Motorola Solutions - secure an even larger position in the EMS/EW/IO industry to support our warfighters and make the world a safer place. I strongly believe my company and the work that I do can help greatly with this challenge as this industry is one of our greatest opportunities to use our expertise and technologies to impact national defense and save lives. I’ve become a valued member of our rapid development field experiment team that travels frequently to experiments and exercises. These events give us tremendous opportunities to talk first hand with operators and customers and receive feedback on our prototypes and products. By paying attention to the needs of our EMS/EW operators and customers and getting experience in the field, I am able to grow by helping guide our product strategy to best serve our warfighters. I’ve seen the impact I can have by guiding others and as a result, I can see myself growing into senior leadership one day to build relationships with new customers and help drive business goals. By achieving these leadership and career goals, I can support the EMS/EW/IO industry by enabling warfighters with our tactical, small-SWaP, cutting-edge technologies engineered to achieve new EW capabilities and dominance on the battlefield.
Career Achievement
My biggest career achievement was creating our most successful and highest performing build to date of our 30 GHz software-defined radio (SDR). Years of research and creative evaluation techniques helped me build up my mmWave design capabilities. After establishing myself as a technical leader through proven designs, communicating existing flaws of this mmWave product design featuring our own custom RFICs, exposing areas where we could make significant improvement in the product design, and suggesting new processes to reduce risk, I was able to take ownership and leadership of that mmWave design. This was achieved directly as a result of getting to employ my creative thinking and problem solving skills, clearly and effectively communicating known flaws to the right people, challenging what has been done in the past, and successfully leading a team to achieve this success. As a result, I feel valued and appreciated at my company as an inventive contributor, collaborator, and leader.
Aside from my technical achievements, I am incredibly proud of the new programs I have introduced in Applied Technology - my department at Motorola Solutions. I completely revamped our summer intern program after interning myself. The program I created offers opportunities to build our interns' technical network as well as provide several professional development sessions and team building events. I played a critical role in creating Women in Applied Technology (WIAT) - an inclusive group dedicated to promoting women of all backgrounds by connecting them with one another to thrive in the workplace through support, empowerment, and development. As a leader of the group, I help create and share opportunities that focus on education, connections, outreach, partnership, and mentorship. Most recently, my passion for making the workplace a better place for everyone led me to create a new formal mentoring program focused on career development for early career individuals in my department.
Education
B.S. Electrical Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Noah Wichlacz
Embedded Software Engineer, Northrop Grumman, Mission Systems
Career Goal
Looking forward into my career, the ultimate goal that I have within our industry is the capability to continuously protect and preserve our dominance within the Electromagnetic Spectrum through innovation. I would personally like to become an industry architect in order to shape the future of Electronic Warfare.
Within EW Simulation and Testing, it is certainly common nature to become reactive to the threats we see and then approach them through simulation, after our first detection.
Yet, what happens when we send countermeasures, either physical or back through the Electromagnetic Spectrum? How do those threats respond to our countermeasures? A complete Threat Engagement Sequence.
With that, I believe that creating a closed loop simulation platform would be game changing for the teams and laboratories that test and program our most advanced Electronic Warfare Platforms. Especially as enemy radars and emitters gain in complexity each and every day.
While we certainly will maintain our growth and dominance in EW Simulation and Test by responding to the exact needs and requests of our industry… Why not look further and challenge ourselves to engineer and develop a closed loop simulation solution that offers unparalleled performance? We have the building blocks and creative thinking to solve these needs. Our industry is filled with extremely intelligent engineers, mission analysts, and architects. This is the industry shaping solution that I see myself leading towards a more advanced and data driven Electronic Warfare Environment.
When our troops are targeted and fight back, they can know what to expect next. We live in a world of information and data where the key to success is mission readiness. Knowing what is coming at us, and how we can appropriately react a number of times over will bring our warfighters back home.
Career Achievement
Striving to make the most of my first years in the Electronic Warfare Industry, my most impactful career achievement to date has been advancing the understanding of the importance of Electronic Warfare Environment Simulation. Highlighted throughout my recent AOC Presentation, I am truly proud to be able to show and demonstrate an incredible simulation product to labs who can use them to deliver highly proven EW System Solutions.
With this, I have been able to guide, work on and support the successful integration and delivery of our Combat Electromagnetic Environment Simulators to numerous Electronic Warfare Testing Facilities across the country.
The key to this achievement is our strong communication capability to bring awareness of mission critical simulation assets and the impact that they have, every single day, for the men and women who serve and protect our country. Our Simulators allow our pilots and the EW equipment that they have on their aircraft to be tested in order to see the unseen before being sent out to the front lines.
Simulated Electromagnetic Environment testing can truly turn the tide in your next mission.
Education
B.S. Electrical Engineering, University at Buffalo