MCLEAN, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Altamira Technologies conducted its annual company-wide Innovation Grand Challenge, providing employees a forum to develop solutions for our customer’s real-world problems. Participants formed teams to explore and address challenges largely faced by the national security community. Teams received coaching workshops to help develop their ideas from all aspects with consideration to the technical, market positioning, as well as financial and ROI elements. Finalists pitched their ideas in a Shark Tank led by Altamira’s CXOs for a chance to win the Grand Challenge trophy, bragging rights, and the funding to advance their project.
Of the six teams selected as finalists, five presented projects that incorporate machine learning (ML) into their solution. Finalists’ ideas centered around automation and decision-making efficiencies for customers in the intelligence and defense communities. Proposed projects included the development of a ML knowledge bank, an enterprise level database provisioning application, ML based query tools for interrogation of big data, a machine augmented recruiting solution, and an algorithmic based technology to support the identification of adversarial communications hardware.
“At Altamira, innovation is part of our corporate DNA, and our first Innovation Grand Challenge delivered a range of opportunities to advance our offerings, particularly in the area of machine learning,” said Jonathan Moneymaker, EVP & Chief Strategy Officer at Altamira. “The establishment of this exercise builds on our continued dedication to R&D as we challenge ourselves to develop solutions that outpace the evolving threats to the national security community.”
The winning team, aptly named Seismic Wave, presented a solution that applies ML for automatic detection and characterization of seismic activity related to nuclear events. The group proposed the development of a big data system that automatically detects seismic events in near real-time, determines if the event has previously occurred, characterizes the type of event, and provides any necessary alerts. Using seismic and infrasound data, the system reduces the difficulty associated with detecting military movements and subsurface nuclear tests.
“With the Seismic Wave project, we are using modern big data architectures to apply machine learning algorithms to geophysical data. This capability is able to produce fully automated terrestrial intelligence reporting and tipping systems, while developing a common operating picture,” said Wyatt Frelot, Seismic Wave team lead.
Congratulations to Wyatt Frelot and Andrew Jessup from Team Seismic Wave!
About Altamira
Altamira Technologies is a best-in-class innovation partner to the to the defense, intelligence, and homeland security communities. They provide customers the information advantage through full-spectrum advanced engineering, data analytics, and cyber operations. Altamira harnesses the brightest minds to drive the advancement of mission-focused solutions addressing their customers’ most challenging problems from research through development and into operations.
