MITRE 360 August
August 2024
With back-to-school here, it’s time to gear up for learning. That’s our sweet spot. We experiment, solve, learn, and repeat. Why? To tackle large-scale challenges that are part of your everyday—from cyber to healthcare to AI.
In our research and across our Innovation Centers and labs, we look under the hood of complex, critical systems to discover real-world answers that benefit everyone.
Bottom line: We uncover opportunities and identify risks across the technologies and systems running in the background of daily life.
And while we announced this last month, news this big is worth a second mention: #TeamMITRE welcomes Mark Peters, our new president and CEO, next week.
8-minute read time
OUR CULTURE IN ACTION
Sparking STEM Interest
Future state: Our STEM Council devotes time and brainpower to help grow the next generation of problem-solvers. From Embedded Capture the Flag cyber competitions to Python coding sessions to touring our BlueTech Lab, middle and high school students experience STEM in action.
Picture yourself: The Council’s work “gets students thinking, `What could my future in STEM be?’” says Elizabeth Borseti, STEM Council communications lead and MITRE Labs project management specialist. That’s the goal: Prepare tomorrow’s tech leaders—no matter where they land.
WHO'S NEXT
A QuantuMITRE Summer
MITRE intern Kenny Calhoun spent his summer helping program a superconducting quantum interference device to sense magnetic fields at the quantum level.
Translation: Writing code to help sensors find needles in subatomic-level haystacks.
Next-gen talent: The rising sophomore at the College of William & Mary is a computer science and physics major. He’s also legally blind. Calhoun joined us through a program sponsored by the Virginia Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired. “This experience has helped me reaffirm what I want to do, and I'm not going to let anything stop me,” he says. We believe him.
THE BIG PICTURE
Testing, Testing, DrONE, 2, 3
Conducting search and rescue. Accessing high-risk locations. Drones and robotics systems can do that and more—like lowering risks to humans. But operators need to know the rules of the sky before they fly. MITRE Engenuity™ has that covered through its Safely Operating Aircraft Remotely program.
Zooming in: Community Day at our national test range in Orange, Va., connected multiple stakeholders. First responders, law enforcement, commercial operators, and student robotics teams came together to learn drone operation safety rules and regs. And test new knowledge.
LESSONS FROM “CYBER CITY”
Small-scale, Big Impact
Zooming out: When critical systems go down, water, electric, health, and other sectors brace for impact. The domino effect can span miles.
A closer look: Enter our Smart Connected Analytic Learning Exchange Lab. Coined “Cyber City,” the tabletop, small-scale municipal environment includes a hospital and military, residential, nuclear, and transportation areas.
Failure is an option: The lab is open to government and utility/system operators to test worst case cyberattack scenarios using our open-source Caldera™ for Operational Technology platform. The goal: Help users visualize the cascading effects of attacks and system interdependencies—and plan accordingly.
"That's really where the power of this modeling comes in," says Mark Bristow of our Cyber Infrastructure Protection Innovation Center.
RESEARCH TO REAL-WORLD
Solving for X, Why, and Z
Early warning: We’re all about learning from the data to get ahead of critical challenges. That includes the mental health of our military members. Our researchers collaborated with the University of California Los Angeles to create the Technology Assisted Stress Control (TASC™) app.
The machine-learning driven app runs on smartwatches to monitor physiological stress in real time—and get people the help they need before a crisis erupts.
What’s next: UCLA continues to refine the prototype. Once fully developed, government users could access the technology at no cost for myriad mental wellness applications.
WE’RE HIRING
Join our talent community of innovators, learners, knowledge-sharers, and risk-takers. Check out opportunities to amplify your impact for public good.