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NEWS | May 2, 2016

NSWC Carderock engineers showcase NISE/219 ideas to Pentagon leaders

By Dustin Q. Diaz, NSWC Carderock Division Public Affairs

Carderock Division employees joined engineers and scientists from across the Naval Research and Development Establishment (NR&DE) presented a pair of projects at the Naval Innovative Science and Engineering (NISE)/Section 219 Expo at the Pentagon April 21.

 

Goals of the event included highlighting the science and engineering work performed at Naval Sea System Command’s warfare centers via the NISE/219 authority and showcasing the scientists, engineers, facilities and equipment that can be leveraged to solve the Navy’s toughest challenges, according to Anne Adams, assistant to the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Chief Technology Officer.

 

Alex Askari, mechanical engineer with the Advanced Power and Energy Branch (Code 636), presented the Underwater Wireless Energy Transfer (UnWET) project, which won the 2015 Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) Innovation Award in the Robotics/Autonomous Systems Category for its potential to allow unmanned underwater vehicles to operate indefinitely away from underway platforms.

 

“It was a great opportunity for us engineers to show our work and meet with Navy leaders up close,” Askari said. “The big thing for me was to be able to do that and talk to them about where we can make an impact.”

 

John Grimes, a naval architect with the Center for Innovation in Ship Design (Code 8202), presented the Indicative Ship Design project, a mission-based decision making tool for surface-combatant design space exploration studies designed jointly by Carderock, NSWC Philadelphia and NSWC Dahlgren to analyze large complex data sets.

 

“The data set that we developed had over 8,000 different variants on a surface combatant and each one of them had 120 or so variables,” Grimes said. “So if you think of that like a massive spreadsheet, it would have 120 columns and 8,000 lines. We developed a tool to try to help visualize that data in a way that makes sense, a way we can think about it and understand it.”

 

SECNAV Ray Mabus, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition; Technology and Logistics Frank Kendall; Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Robert B. Neller; Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michelle Howard and Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition Sean Stackley all attended the event, with 48 projects in total on display.

 

“There was undeniable excellence demonstrated yesterday by the scientists and engineers that participated,” Dr. John Burrow, Deputy Assistant SECNAV for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation said in an email the day after the event. “The professionalism, technical knowledge and technical depth our scientists and engineers conveyed was exceptional and exactly what we wanted.”