AI Gov: National Security

Clark Anderson, Security Solutions Architect for Presidio Federal, brings 25 years of unique perspective to Federal cybersecurity challenges. He founded a security manufacturing company, designed and supported security solutions for all branches of the Military, integrated International Coalition partners into US networks, and met the unique challenges of secure information sharing among agencies.

His current position with Presidio Federal is focused on researching the security industry and architecting advanced solutions for the special circumstances of Federal and Military customers.

His career in security began when he founded a small manufacturing company that built remote image transmission systems for federal and military clients. Later he traveled throughout South America supporting counter-narcotics programs and became the network manager for an interagency task force where he pioneered the joining of many state, local and federal agencies onto a single law enforcement network.

Clark was the Regional Security Manager for more than two years for US Forces North in Afghanistan and supervised a large Coalition Partner network expansion. He returned to Special Operations Command in Florida and oversaw security for the integration of the US BICES and NATO international networks into the SOCOM network.

Other assignments including Security Manager for the Air Force Cyber Weapons Program gives him a unique perspective into the challenges of architecting effective security to overcome the many internal and external threats in diverse federal and military networks.

Laura Carriere is the High-Performance Computing Lead at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation. Her responsibilities include ensuring that scientists have access to the compute resources they need by managing the details required to keep a supercomputer, a private cloud, centralized storage, public cloud access, and the backend services up and running. Before that she worked as a Technical Project Manager for the NCCS for almost a decade. She managed projects ranging from science data processing, web visualization, data analytics, HPC benchmarking, and a centralized storage project. Previously, Laura worked as a System Administrator for other NASA projects and various universities.

Krista Kinnard is the Chief of Emerging Technologies at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) in the Office of the Chief Information Officer. In this role, she leads the organization’s discovery and adoption of new technologies and solutions to meet the unique business challenges faced by DOL agencies. She helps foster the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotic process automation (RPA) and other emerging technologies across the organization in support of mission work.

Prior to joining the Department, Krista was a Director of the General Service Administration’s (GSA) Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence, where she partnered with federal agencies to foster the adoption of AI and automation capabilities. She played a critical role in DOL’s standing-up of a robotic process automation capability for procurement and IT based processes. Additionally, she helped lead the Artificial Intelligence Community of Practice (CoP) for GSA.

Krista has several years of experience as a data scientist and technical project lead in the private sector, leading the design and development of machine learning based systems for government clients.

She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology, a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and Portuguese from the University of Arizona, and a Master of Science degree in Data Analytics and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University.

Dr. Tsengdar Lee is the Program Manager for the R&A Weather Focus Area, the High-End Computing Program, and for NASA’s Data for Operation and Assessment. For the Weather Focus Area, he is responsible for the advanced planning for the weather research and development priorities. He is also the manager of the NASA Weather Data Analysis Program, focusing on the transition of research results into the operational forecast centers and the acceleration of operational use of research data. Two major activities include the multi-agency Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation and the Short-term Prediction Research and Transition Center. For the High-End Computing Program, he is responsible for maintaining the high-end computing capability to support the agency’s aeronautics research, human exploration, scientific discovery, and space operations missions. Dr. Lee serves as co-chair for the Interagency Weather Research Coordination Committee (IWRCC).

Lee joined NASA in 2001 as the High-End Computing Program Manager for the Earth Science Enterprise. He was responsible for the Earth science computational modeling needs, primarily focusing on weather and climate modeling. Between 2002 and 2006, Lee also managed the Earth Science Global Modeling Program. He funded research efforts to study the global climate change, weather forecasting, and hurricane prediction problems.

Prior to 2001, Lee held positions as Senior Technical Advisor with Northrop Grumman Information Technology and Senior Staff Engineer with Litton PRC. He worked on the Advanced Weather Information Processing System (AWIPS) project for the National Weather Service. He was responsible for the rapid development, integration, and commercialization of the AWIPS client-server system. Lee also was a principal engineer on the effort to develop the AWIPS network monitoring and control system.

Tsengdar Lee received a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University in 1992. He credits his training as a short-term weather modeler and later contributions to large information technology (IT) projects, including the National Weather Service’s Advanced Weather Information Processing System, as guiding his present-day decisions.

Greg McCullough is the Director of Cyber AI and Cyber Solutions at Booz Allen Hamilton. He has over ten years of experience developing cyber capabilities across the Defense market. Most recently, he has driven compliance automation and key cyber integrations across the Federal market. He holds a BS in Computer Science from Butler University, a BS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, and an MS in Computer Science from George Washington University.