Research

On the research front in the department, Dr. Steve Shellman and his VIPCAT Research Laboratory will be working with Lockheed Martin on a DARPA-funded grant to develop a program for determining a country's stability and propensity to experience an events crisis. Dr. Shellmans' lab has already begun work on this project. Below is the press release made by Lockheed Martin.

LOCKHEED MARTIN TO DEVELOP EARLY WARNING SYSTEM THAT PREDICTS CRISIS EVENTS AND STABILITY OF COUNTRIES

CHERRY HILL, N.J., October 19, 2007 —The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Lockheed Martin [NYSE:LMT] a $1.3-million, 15-month, Phase-I program to develop the Predicting Stability through Analyzing Germane Events (PRESAGE) system—an element of DARPA's Integrated Crises Early Warning System (ICEWS) program.

ICEWS will let military commanders anticipate and respond to worldwide political crises and predict events of interest (EoIs) and stability of countries of interest with greater than 80 percent accuracy. Using national resources across Diplomatic, Information, Military, and Economic sources, ICEWS will provide combinations of strategies, tactics, and resources to mitigate predicted instabilities with the greatest positive impact.

"For ICEWS, Lockheed Martin's PRESAGE will combine a portfolio of state-of-the-art and operationally deployed social science models and technologies to predict EoIs and general stability indicators," said Mark Hoffman, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories (ATL). "Being able to predict events with reasonable accuracy is the first step in constructing a decision-support system to aid in region stabilization."

Hoffman also said that PRESAGE will predict various types of events across the Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure, and Information spectrum for specific geographic areas and within specific time frames. Typical events may include rebellions, insurgencies, ethnic/religious violence, civil war, and major economic crises.

ICEWS is a multi-phase program. Phase I will build, integrate, test, and evaluate social science models to forecast EoIs and predict country instability. Later phases will develop analytical and technical foundations to provide decision support to unified commanders. If successful, then the system will deploy in-theater where commanders will test its ability to fulfill stability objectives in a dynamic, resource-constrained environment.

Lockheed Martin ATL leads a team that includes the University of Pennsylvania, University of Kansas, University of Washington, University of Georgia, Innovative Decisions, Inc., Evidence Based Research, Interactive Data Visualization, and Argonne National Laboratory.

Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin employs about 140,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services.

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Contact: Stephen P. O'Neill, (856) 792-9815, soneill@atl.lmco.com

For additional information on Lockheed Martin Corporation, visit our website: www.lockheedmartin.com

End of the semester

With another semester almost in the books and finals just around the corner, good luck to everyone on your exams. Best wishes to all students who are graduating at the end of fall semester. To those who'll be back for spring, have a safe and happy holiday break. Click here for a holiday "present" from the department. It may take a moment to load, but it's worth it.