The United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation today announced the winners of the 2007 USGIF Awards Program.
This year’s recipients are Ms. Gabriella Farris; Dr. Swen Johnson; the Space and Naval Systems Warfare Command C4I Support Team; the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Missile and Space Intelligence Center; and Mr. Matt O’Connell of GeoEye.
“On behalf of USGIF, our Membership and Board, I would like to congratulate the Award Program winners on their accomplishments, earning them these notable honors,” said K. Stuart Shea, USGIF President and Chairman of the Board. “Their successes have greatly contributed to our field and we are pleased to recognize them for this.”
The 2007 USGIF Awards Program recipients received recognition for:
* Academic Achievement Award – Ms. Gabriella Farris of the Geospatial-Intelligence Training Program (GITP) distinguished herself not only academically with a 98.16 GPA, but also by her ability to be a leader in the classroom and willingness to be a team player. Farris was named the GITP Student of the Year—an award given to students in the top 20 percent of his or her class who demonstrate outstanding academic performance, teamwork, professionalism, and uphold the highest standards of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence College. Farris showed a zest to become the best analyst possible, returning for additional training after graduation. Her present assignment is with the Office of Central and Southwest Asia.
* Academic Research Award – Dr. Swen Johnson was recognized for developing innovative methods of blending the social sciences with recent advances made in geospatial predictive technology to help address some of the U.S. intelligence community’s most challenging intelligence problems in tactical and operational environments. Backed by the Naval Research Laboratory, fellow academic social scientists, geospatial and military colleagues, Johnson founded Socio-Cultural Intelligence Analysis Inc. and dedicated himself to creating Human Terrain Analysis Teams across the Defense Department. His teams’ empirical, quantitative and group-based sociological focus have transformed traditional geospatial models of human behavior into more accurate geo-social models, bringing GEOINT to the cutting edge of intelligence analysis.
* Intelligence Achievement Award (Government Division) – The Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) Missile and Space Intelligence Center (MSIC) team has contributed greatly to the understanding of adversary military capabilities by developing and deploying a GEOINT-enabled Foreign Missile Test Range Analysis architecture. The ability to store, manage, query and view vast amounts of geospatial intelligence data in seconds is a significant achievement. MSIC’s daily savings of 2-3 hours per analyst of data search time has been reinvested into analysis. The new architecture greatly enhances the availability and usability of GEOINT data and results in more all-source analysts leveraging the full potential of GEOINT data as a contributor to their analysis.
* Intelligence Achievement Award (Military Division) – In support of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command’s Command Control Systems Directorate, Mr. David McKinley, Mr. Chris Mayfield, Mr. Dave Gokey and Mr. Gary Koch of the Space and Naval Systems Warfare Command C4I Support Team, began an ambitious program to create a user defined operational picture called Situational Awareness Geospatial Enterprise (SAGE). Its goal is to make GIS a commodity within the command by instituting an enterprise GIS capability that everyone can use and configure to their own precise needs. SAGE was fielded for the 2007 hurricane season and is a fine example of how this team is making great contributions to the accomplishment of the Homeland Defense and the Defense Support of Civil Authorities mission sets.
* Intelligence Achievement Award (Industry Division) – Since the merger of Space Imaging and Orbimage created GeoEye, the newly formed company has overcome many of its predecessors obstacles and has since grown into one of the largest remote sensing companies in the world, having more than 370 employees at four key locations in the United States, along with one of the foremost providers of geospatial imagery. Mr. Matt O’Connell joined Orbimage in 2001, the year the company had a failed satellite launch and went into bankruptcy. Through his expertise he brought Orbimage back to life and led the new company to win a coveted $500 million NGA NextView contract to build the next-generation GeoEye-1 satellite.
* Lifetime Achievement Award – The Lifetime Achievement Award is presented, upon selection by the USGIF board, to an influential member of the geospatial intelligence community for his or her lifelong commitment to the tradecraft. The recipient is annually announced and presented with his or her award during the USGIF Hall of Fame Dinner and Awards Banquet during the GEOINT Symposium. This year, the event will be held on October 24 from 7 to 10 p.m. at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio.
“The purpose of the USGIF Awards Program is to give our community the chance to come together to nominate and recognize those who continue to build upon the tradecraft’s foundation,” Shea said. “Additionally, this program further validates and reminds us of the value the geospatial intelligence field has to our national security.”