News

On July 11, 2022, Heat 2 of the Defense Data Grand Prix concluded with an award ceremony organized by the Acquisition Innovation Research Center (AIRC). The Grand Prix provides research opportunities that expose students to Defense Acquisition System challenges, decisions, and processes. Faculty-led academic teams directly engage with government problem owners to solve practical DoD acquisition problems.  

The Office of Acquisition Enablers (AE) within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment is a strategic sponsor of the Grand Prix in partnership with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). Student teams worked diligently with DLA problem owners to provide advanced analytics solutions and recommendations for improving access to data. 

 During the award ceremony, keynote speaker, Dr. Lindsey Saul, DLA Chief Data and Analytics Officer, offered her many thanks and appreciation to the competitors for their dedication and insights. Dr. Saul commented that “Heat 2 of the Defense Data Grand Prix has been beneficial to further cooperation with academic teams and institutions, deepen academic engagement with the DLA data challenges, decisions, and processes that began in Heat 1, and demonstrated scalable access and sharing of data by developing innovative solutions to those problems.” 

The top four winners of Heat 2 are: 

• First place ($40K): Defense: Top Priority Team including Dr. Christian Lucero, Sam Rizzuto, Ryan Kaplan, Danielle Sebring, and Adeline Guthrie (Virginia Tech) with a project titled Manufacturing Stores and Materiel Shortages with the DLA Aviation directorate 
• Second place ($30K):  MACC Team including Dr. Ying Wang and Savannah Bergen (Stevens Institute of Technology) with a project titled Supply Chain System Scalable and Secure Access and Risk Identification for Decision Making Support with the DLA Acquisition directorate 
• Third place ($20K): SIT Complexity Team including Dr. Roshanak Nilchiani and Maximilian Vierlboeck (Stevens Institute of Technology) with a project titled Data Catalog, Data Dictionary, Federated Data Catalogue with the DLA Office of the Chief Data and Analytics Officer (CDAO) 
• Fourth place ($10K): AI Squared Team including Dr. Benjamin Harvey, Ayen Kuol, Kato Mivule, Dinali Jayawardana, and Lloyd Pierre (Bowie State University) with a project titled AI Technologies, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and Operations Security with the DLA Information Governance & Compliance division 

Rankings were based on the impact, acceptability, suitability, and feasibility of the competitors’ proposed solutions. The first-place team led by Dr. Christian Lucero developed a model that could accurately predict materiel shortages and offered prescriptive actions that could be incorporated into the DLA standard operating procedures. The top four winning teams developed solutions that directly support the needs of the DLA. 

Heat 3 of the Defense Data Grand Prix will focus on the application of advanced data analytics and visualizations for defense acquisition data. Registration for Heat 3 is ongoing.