DoD focused Machine Learning (ML) Collider

Note: New Location, DATE and Time. This event only.

The WBI Machine Learning Collider will be a collaboration between Gem City ML and WBI and will be on Wednesday, May 17th from 2-4pm at WBI.

The Wright Brothers Institute (WBI) mission is to support AFRL and help bring in innovation and small businesses.
They have monthly colliders that focus on different topics to support small businesses innovations for AFRL.

Gem City ML (www.Gemcityml.com) is a local meetup group that meets once a month at the Hub in downtown Dayton, OH. We meet to explore the exciting and growing field of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Our goal is to have a space where people can present and learn new ML/AI ideas, ask for help on problems they are working on, and meet new people.

ML/AI has taken off and there are many aspects that it touches. In this Collider, we give the community some perspective on how vast, hard and different it is in the DoD. Several speakers will give a presentation on an aspect of AI/ML inside the fence.

Speaker list

(talks subject to change)

• Dr. Vincent Velten, OSD Tri-service EO/IR AI Hub and Technical Advisor for AFRL Decision Science Branch, "Synthetic data for Sensemaking Technology"
• Dr. Aaron P. Nielsen: Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) ANT Center, ML challenge Problem for GPS denied environments using Magnetic Anomaly Maps
• Matt Jacobsen: Hanger 18 (AF Software Factory), Challenges of bringing ML algorithms inside the fence.
• Dr. Shauna Sweet: Galois, "Expertise for the Masses" Will explore the core design challenges which need to be addressed to successfully apply AI/ML to digital engineering problems.
• Andy Garrett: Mile 2, ACT3's ACE and resource management / provisioning tool for ML.

Time: 2-4pm
Date: Wed. May 17th
Location: Wright Brothers Institute: 2nd Street, 444 E 2nd St, Dayton, OH 45402,

The Wright Brothers Institute (WBI) is a cutting-edge center for innovation and technology commercialization. WBI provides breakthrough solutions to US Air Force's most complex initiatives by leveraging resident experts, unique facilities, disruptive innovation processes and extensive networks.

Evelyn Boettcher, Principal, DiDacTex, LLC and Senior Scientist BlueHalo, LLC - Gem City Machine Learning MeetUp Group – Presentation focus: Gem City ML Group Introductions and Moderator of the Collider. Gem City ML is part of Gem City TECH’s family of user communities.  Our goal is to have a space where people can present and learn new ML/AI ideas, ask for help on problems they are working on and meet new people.  We meet every THIRD Thursday at the Innovation Hub at Dayton’s Downtown Arcade. For more information see please go to  www.gemcityml.com

Vincent Velten, Technical Advisor for the AFRL Decision Sciences Branch, AFRL/RYAT – Presentation focus: Synthetic Data for Sensemaking Technology. Dr. Velten is currently the managing director of the tri-service OSD AI EO/IR Imagery Hub which is developing cross-service AI-based target detection and identification algorithms and is the Technical Advisor for AFRL’s Decision Science Branch.  Dr. Velten made numerous contributions to Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) technology span over 41-years. From pioneering ATR algorithm evaluation to doing early research into optical, thermal, and radar target signature estimation technology, subsequently evolved into the multi-service EO signature (MuSES) and Xpatch codes.  They are now the DoD-standard codes for thermal IR and radar target signature prediction.  Dr. Velten has led SAR advancement both theoretical and experimental.  He has derived the first application of invariant theory to radar sensors in 1D and 2D for SAR and was a virtual for MSTAR data set to be created and released.  From 2014 to the present Dr. Velten assembled and led the Sensors Directorate Machine Learning (ML) team which has produced internationally recognized AI research.

Dr. Aaron Nielsen: Research Scientist AFIT's ANT Center. The Advanced Navigation Technology (ANT) Center at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) has been focusing significant effort on solving the problem of how to navigate when GPS is not available, such as indoors or in the presence of GPS jamming. Harnessing the magnetic field of the earth for navigation has shown promise as a viable alternative to other navigation systems. Dr. Aaron Nielsen, from AFIT’s ANT center will discuss there Challenge problem for magnetic navigation.

Dr. Shauna Sweet, Principal Scientist, Galois – Presentation focus: Galois develops technology to guarantee the trustworthiness of systems where failure is unacceptable. They apply cutting edge computer science and mathematics to advance the state of the art in software and hardware trustworthiness.  They will talk about how they are helping to solve through ML a DoD problem.  Dr. Shauna Sweet will explore the core design challenges which need to be addressed to successfully apply AI/ML to digital engineering problems.

Andy Garrett, Technical Lead, ACE Hub, Mile Two – Presentation focus: The Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Autonomy Capability Team (ACT3) is an AI Special Operations organization whose mission is to Operationalize AI at Scale for the Air Force.  ACT3’s ACE is a one-stop, all-inclusive, license free, suite of closely integrated software and services that enable users to develop complex AI solutions at any scale on top of any Kubernetes cluster.  Andy will be going over AFRL’s ACE tool.

Matt Jacobsen, AFRL/RX, Director, Hanger 18 – Presentation focus: The Air Force’s Software Factories support the mission to make the Digital Air Force a reality by supporting our Airmen with Software Enterprise Capabilities.  Hanger 18 is a Dayton area Software Factory. Hangar 18 delivers software and data capabilities to the Digital Engineering and Acquisition community, as well as others seeking innovative and agile solutions. Founded by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Air Force Institute of Technology, we leverage a federation of digital teams and assets to engage in solutions engineering, DevSecOps, workforce development, education, training, and community engagement. Matt Jacobsen from Hanger 18 will talk about how they support this mission.