ACT3 ACE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Director of Academic Engagements
Dr. Doug Riecken is a trained concert pianist with a B.A. from the Manhattan School of Music and studies at the Julliard School of Music. He spent many years performing classical, jazz, and rock styles on international concert tours with world-renowned artists before he switched to a career in cognitive and computing science. He received his PhD from Rutgers University under thesis advisor Dr. Marvin Minsky from MIT; a founding father of artificial intelligence. Riecken and Minsky have spent 30+ years in friendship researching learning and the mind. Dr. Riecken's career is grounded from 15+ years of research at ATT Bell Laboratories Research (during the classic days in AREA 11 Research) and later 11 years at IBM Watson Research During that time his focus was in multimedia systems, intelligent multi-agent systems, and computational commonsense reasoning and learning. In 2011 he combined his passion for teaching and conducting research at Columbia University and later went on to conduct research as a principal knowledge architect at both Dow Jones and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Dr. Riecken is a thought leader in the areas of big data analytics and machine learning, human-computer interaction and design, knowledge discovery and data mining, global cloud enterprise architectures, and privacy management. He joined the Air Force Office of Scientific Research as a program officer in 2014 and is a senior member of the AFRL ACT3 team.
In his role as the program officer for the Science of Information, Computation, Learning, and Fusion program, Dr. Riecken seeks research related to advancing the science of machine intelligence and learning (biological and "silicon in many forms") along with human/machine learning. He encourages partnerships and collaborations through efforts with many of the world's preeminent scientists in diverse areas of learning/analytics/reasoning.
Dr. Juan Vasquez is a subject matter expert in target tracking, with a focus on algorithm development for sensor exploitation. His experience includes basic and applied research and development in both government and industry. He currently leads the planning and execution of the applications team within the Autonomy Capability Team (ACT3) as part of the Air Force Research Laboratory. Dr. Vasquez has prior experience in acquisition of satellite systems and as an aircraft maintenance officer.
Job Titles:
- Chief Technology Officer
- Senior Member of the IEEE
Dr. Michael J. Mendenhall is a Senior Member of the IEEE and the Chief Technology Officer of Air Force Research Laboratory Autonomy Capability Team (ACT3). He received the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Rice University, Houston, TX in 2006. He has authored over forty publications, co-authored the Air Force's strategy for use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Autonomous Systems, and was the editor of one book. He is currently an Adjunct Faculty at the Air Force Institute of Technology. Dr. Mendenhall received the student selected Dr. Leslie M. Norton Teaching Award and was a runner up for the Air Force John L. McLucas basic research award for research novelty and excellence, both in 2010. He received best technical presentation and innovation awards during his time with the 711 Human Performance Wing in 2016 and 2018, respectively. His interests include the delivery of AI at scale to support a diverse set of problem domains and research in conversational AI systems.
Dr. Steven "Cap" Rogers has served since 2015 as the Air Force (AF) Senior Scientist for Autonomy, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Air Force Material Command (AFMC), Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. He also serves as the AF Senior Scientist for Automatic Target Recognition (ATR)/Sensor Fusion, a position he has held since 2006. As the AF Subject Matter Expert (SME) on artificial intelligence (AI) and application data-to-knowledge challenges, he leads the AFRL Autonomy Capability Team (ACT3) in the rapid advancement of autonomy R&D and application. Dr. Rogers also identifies opportunities for data processing research collaboration throughout DoD, facilitating embeds with ACT3, and initiates new industry/academia relationships with the goal of creating a robust and flexible AI platform that scales to address all AI challenges. Dr. Rogers' personal research has focused on Qualia Exploitation of Sensing Technology (QuEST), to build autonomous systems by replicating the engineering characteristics of consciousness. After retiring from active duty in the Air Force, Dr. Rogers founded iCAD, a company focused on developing practical applications of advanced information processing techniques for medical products. The company invented the world's most accurate computer aided detection system for breast cancer. Dr. Rogers has 281 technical publications and 25 patents.
Job Titles:
- Electronics Engineer
- Principal
- Principal Electronics Engineer With the Air Force Research Laboratory
Dr. Terry Wilson is the Principal Electronics Engineer with the Air Force Research Laboratory. He has more than 32 years of combined military and civilian service in advanced research, development, transition, maintenance, and sustainment of warfighter technologies and systems.
Dr. Wilson entered the U.S. Air Force in 1982, were he spent 5 years as an enlisted service member performing aircraft and missile system maintenance and analysis. He completed the Airman Education and Commissioning Program at the University of Florida in 1990, receiving a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and an Air Force commission. As a company grade officer, he worked as the ICBM Code Processing System Project Officer for the Ballistic Missile Organization. Dr. Wilson earned an M.S. in 1994 and a PhD in 1998 at the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson AFB OH, with concentrations in electrical engineering and AI/Machine Learning. In 1998 Dr. Wilson served in the AFRL Sensors Directorate as an Automatic Target Recognition Program Manager, focusing on target recognition, multi-sensor fusion, and high performance computing. Beginning in 2000, he served as an assistant professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy teaching computer science, networks, and cyber security. Dr. Wilson retired from military service in 2003 and entered civilian service at AFRL, where he currently serves as Senior Integration Engineer for the Autonomy Capability Team (ACT3). As Senior Integration Engineer, he leads development, integration, and accelerated transition of AI/Machine learning technologies within ACT3 and across several AFRL programs. He also serves as national and international level authority on multi-sensor processing, exploitation and dissemination (PED) and unmanned aircraft systems technologies in support of autonomous sensing research and applications.
Job Titles:
- Director of AI at Microsoft
Eric Horvitz, Director of AI at Microsoft - "…with the compelling advances in Deep Learning, Reinforcement Learning and many other techniques… the work by the ACT3 team serves the AI/Machine Learning community with significant breakthroughs to integrate various computational AI techniques, thereby obtaining new levels of performance in machine learning… and most critically, engineering the AI scaling challenges due to the dynamic architecture of the ACT3 platform"
Job Titles:
- Professor of Computer Science at the Air Force Institute of Technology
Gilbert L. Peterson is a Professor of Computer Science at the Air Force Institute of Technology and Chair of the IFIP Working Group 11.9 Digital Forensics. Dr. Peterson received a BS degree in Architecture, and an MS and PhD in Computer Science at the University of Texas at Arlington. He teaches and conducts research in digital forensics, statistical machine learning, and autonomous robots. His research has been sponsored by the NSF, DARPA, AFOSR, AFRL, and JIEDDO. He has over 90 peer reviewed publications and 6 edited books. In 2008, Mr. Peterson received the Air Force Junior Scientist of the Year Category I award. Professor Peterson currently serves as the Chief Scientist for the Air Force's special operations unit for Artificial Intelligence, Autonomy Capabilities Team (ACT3).
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director of Autonomy Capability ( ACT3 ) Team
Mr. Matthew Muha is the Director of Autonomy Capability (ACT3) Team, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. Mr. Muha leads and directs AFRL's Artificial Intelligence (AI) Special Operations organization that operationalizes AI at Scale for the Department of the Air Force. He advises senior leadership on AI application and research, and responsible for the daily operations of the 60+ member team that's responsible for fielding solutions to Air Force problems using AI and autonomous technologies for existing and future weapons and business systems.
Mr. Muha entered civilian federal service in 2005 with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) as the Chief of the Engineering Support Branch. Following his selection and attendance as an in-residence Intermediate Developmental Education (IDE) student at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), Mr. Muha served as the Deputy Director of AFRL's Research Collaboration & Computing Directorate where he also served as the assistant Air Force S&T Principal for the DoD's High Performance Computing & Modernization Program.
Mr. Muha also serves as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserves where he currently is the IMA to the Director of Global Power Programs, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Pentagon. He's a Master Navigator with over 120 combat flight hours and seven hurricane penetrations. He has served as the Deputy Director to the Program Executive Officer (PEO) of Air Force Tankers, Commander of the 53d Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, known as the Hurricane Hunters, Director of Operations for the 38th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, a Foreign Systems Space Engineer at the National Air & Space Intelligence Center, and a Technology Safeguard Monitor for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.