By Capt LeShawn A. Boyd, Northrop Grumman EWI Fellow
Northrop Grumman held their first-ever Tech Fest Oct. 22 - 24 at the Hilton Anaheim Convention Center, in Anaheim, California. TechFest is a new event combining several historically separate conferences: the Systems and Software Engineering Symposium (SSES), Technology Expo and the University Research Symposium. Together, these events showcase a broad spectrum of innovative technologies and create an environment for employees to grow their skills across a variety of critical engineering areas. This event also allowed stakeholders and customers to view the immerging and already defined technologies NG has across its portfolio.
SSES is executive sponsored by Chris Hernandez, vice president of Research, Technology and Engineering, and chaired by Lauren Smith, Program Manager, Resiliency and Rapid Prototyping. SSES included presentations on best practices and future trends by engineering thought leaders. The 2019 SSES program was anchored by more than 100 employee technical presentations across 10 technical tracks and includes workshops, panels, keynotes, NGx (TED-style) talks and various networking and resource fair opportunities.
NGC views the DoD as one of their key customers and as such several forums where focused primarily on government needs. The discussion of how the government acquires software intensive systems was a key forum for NGC employees. NG mentioned how the DoD is adopting new practices from commercial industries and streamlining how they buy which ultimately leads to policy changes and the affects it has on NG.
Capt Boyd stated “One of the key elements that I took away were the discussions on Agile Acquisitions, there unique elements and how NG incorporates the process within DoD programs.”
Within these panels elements such as Agile Integrated Master Schedules (IMS) and Systems Engineering (SE) were broken down. “Discussions on how to properly train your work force and transitioning from waterfall to Agile were also excellent topics that could benefit the DoD immensely.” said Capt Boyd.
Technology Expo was a showcase of more than 150 Research and Development projects, demos, workshops and mission thread scenarios. A key aspect in NGs technology programs is connecting and integrating capabilities across domains and to provide mission flexibility, adaptability and usability. Throughout this expo, many of the exhibits viewed demonstrated systems design methodologies and architectures that utilize software-defined, hardware enabled solutions. “This portion of TechFest I felt would be most beneficial to the DoD as I viewed over 100 programs from the realm of Space, Cyber Security, Machine learning/AI and C4ISR support.” shared EWI Fellow Capt Boyd.
Several big DoD issues were focused on in the mission showcase presentations, one being Multi-Domain Operations (MDO). This presentation described and show cased many of NGs systems used within MDO and how they properly integrate to create communication/networks in a highly congested battlespace.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) was another key take away in which NG has stood up an AI campaign. There mission is to accelerate the integration of AI into NGs products providing quick access AI tools and data across the enterprise. Collaborative Artificial Intelligence was a program within the campaign which will support human operators by recom¬mending tactics and strategy. This can be a huge asset for the DoD warfighters and space constellation.
University Research Symposium featured collaborative research presented by more than 20 national and international universities. This was a great opportunity to witness and discuss technology goals, and keep up to date with the most relevant tech around the world. NGs has a long history of partnering and creating long term relationships with national and international top academia Universities.
2019 University Partners
The projects that were displayed included The Research in Applications for Learning Machines (REALM) Consortium and the Northrop Grumman Cyber Security Research Consortium (NGCRC).
The last day of the event, Northrop Grumman held a technology reception and dinner which provided a great venue for employees, partners and customers to network and discuss big industry issues. Following the conclusion of TechFest, NG hosted the Invention and Patent Awards Ceremony which recognized key employees in the company for their innovative ideas and contribution to the overall mission.
“Tech Fest brought together research teams, technical communities, NGC customer organizations and university research partners from various places; all for the purpose of working together as a technical community to leverage old/immerging technology and create more effective programs. Providing a forum for this level of interaction is not easy but NGC did an excellent job. “shared EWI Fellow Capt Boyd.
