Aviation Week & Space Technology
08/20/2007, page 95
Printed headline: Innovation and Intellect
The Aerospace Corp., Mitre Corp. is a nonprofit research-and-development company chartered to work in the public interest. The organization focuses on systems engineering, information technology, operational and enterprise modernization.
It includes three federally funded research and development centers: Dept. of Defense Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence Dept.; the Center for Advanced Aviation System Development; and the Center for Enterprise Modernization, which supports the Internal Revenue Service. The 40-year-old company has 6,500 scientists, engineers and support specialists. More than two-thirds have master’s or Ph.D. degrees.
Looking to the future, Mitre President and CEO Alfred Grasso says the organization has to balance the experience and wisdom of older workers with the need to bring in high energy and new ideas from workers entering the market. “This new generation of workers has not yet developed biases for or against certain technologies and solutions,” says Grasso, “and is therefore generally more inclined to be open to a broader set of possibilities.”
And possibilities are what Grasso offers. “We operate as strategic partners with our government sponsors to address pressing issues and opportunities,” he says. “Two stand out as especially challenging. First, as the missions of government agencies become increasingly overlapping, system integration and interoperability across traditional organizational boundaries is a major concern. Second, the rapid pace of technological change demands the development of agile system solutions that can adapt over time, providing enduring capabilities of increasing performance.”
Grasso says these two major challenges will call upon expertise in development and application of advanced systems engineering concepts at the enterprise level and “a robust body of research into existing and potential technologies. Our work in support of the FAA on performance-based air traffic management and the unique blend of technology investments, such as GPS, ADS-B and RNAV required to achieve the next-generation air transportation system, reflects our commitment to maintain and apply expertise in both areas,” he says.
Grasso says Mitre’s unique feature is that it is prohibited from manufacturing or selling products. “This allows us to consider all possible solutions with no vested interest in seeing a particular system, product or technology achieve market success,” he says. “This affords Mitre staff more intellectual freedom than most and allows for an unprecedented level of innovation.”
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