Aviation Group

Odyssey team member Brett Newlin was part of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center team that participated in the Boeing St. Louis T-7A Red Hawk roll out ceremony. The new T-7A “Red Tail” Red Hawk will train the next generation of Air Force Cadets for decades to come, providing a digitally designed, technologically advanced platform. Congratulations to the entire T-7A team!

C5ISR Group

Jim Logan, Logistics Manager in Colorado Springs for our HBQ contract, was recognized by the Perimeter Acquisition Radar Attack Characterization System (PARCS) Division Chief, Bittany Williams, and his team in July for his exceptional work. “Every interaction with him is positive and professional. He volunteers without hesitation. His contributions to conversations are valuable and his questions within discussions are thoughtful. He has taken on the Product Owner role with care and enthusiasm. Additionally, it is clear that his Loggie knowledge and skills are top-notch!”

Rick Blackwelder has been identified as an “Unsung Hero” by Major General Michael Schmidt for his work supporting the HNJW mission. “Rick takes personal interest in the capabilities he is providing the warfighter. There have been endless challenges and issues, but Rick has always found resolution with professionalism and perseverance. In the past six months Rick, along with Doug Mazze, has solved one of the most expensive challenges we have seen in three years. Because of his efforts, the PMO was able to identify $500M+ to retest over 13 Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) and eliminate the need to perform more than 20 different contract actions. Our program continues to remain on the critical path because of their efforts! Rick’s ability to get the right people in the room and provide the hard-hitting facts have ensured the success of their projects. HNJW is successful due to the incredible professionalism and personal investment of Rick and Doug. Words cannot express our appreciation for your hard work, attention to detail, and personal dedication to making HNJW successful!”

Nate Merrit graduated from Tufts University with a MS in Engineering Management. Similar to an MBA, an MS is a business degree with financial accounting, and additional course work in ethics, building and leading teams, new product development, supply chain management, business strategy, and various math courses (DOE, process capability, big data), culminating in a Capstone that Nate completed in late April: “Closeout and Sale of a Family-Owned Small Business.” “Hopefully, these additional skills will prove useful in my growth and understanding of the DoD acquisition process and in expanding my project management tasks in the future. Many thanks to you and the Odyssey team for your understanding and support, especially with my start date, as it allowed me to complete my Capstone project in a timely manner so I could graduate this semester.”

The Air & Space Forces Association released this year’s “Salute to SSC” award winners. The nominees and winners of these annual awards are considered among SSC’s top performers; they recognize members’ direct and significant impacts on our national security space capability. The Upgraded Early Warning Radar (UEWR) Team was selected as the General Schriever Chapter’s SSC Unit of the Year Award thanks to the hard work of Odyssey’s great employees!

Jill Greenleaf awarded “Unsung Hero” for HNJ by the Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence, & Networks (C3I&N) Program Executive Office (PEO). Jill is the office manager for AFLCMC/HNJT Advanced Technology Branch. She oversees day to day business operations, coordinates high visibility, dynamic visits from AF and DoD executives, seamlessly manages appointments and calendars, while delivering world class customer service to both internal and external stakeholders. Under Jill’s tutelage, HNJT’s front office has been transformed to an efficient, organized, and highly effective operation. Her keen attention to detail and forward thinking consistently results in program successes for our SEITaaS and legacy systems and teams. Both her polish and professionalism have garnered Jill respect across all levels HN. After a long week supporting the Advanced Technology Branch, Ms. Greenleaf enjoys unplugging at the beach in Hull, MA or dominating the Pickleball court. Jill is a true C3I&N unsung hero!

Alan Galster (HNJT) finished a course completion certificate in Supply Chain Strategy and Management at MIT Sloan School of Management and passed a certification test to become an AWS Cloud Practitioner

Medical Group

Cynthia (Cindy) Lawrence-Banks, supporting the Clinical Investigations Program (CIP) at the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP) will be recognized with an On the Spot Award at the yearly Contractor Researcher Personnel (CSPR) Appreciation Brunch on 07SEP at the NMCP Pavilion. This is a government event that recognizes contractors who specifically made significant impacts to the command.

“Ms. Lawrence-Banks leads a comprehensive research compliance program that is both effective and educational. She has been able to foster a collaborative environment where researchers often request compliance audits of their protocols in order to receive her guidance on their research design and proper conduct of their studies. This is really a testament to her collegial nature and knowledge of clinical research best practices. Furthermore, she has set the standard for compliance programs throughout the Defense Health Agency.

Ms. Lawrence-Banks consistently takes the initiative to educate research staff on regulatory guidelines and expectations, and to improve overall compliance. She often volunteers to lead additional educational outreach activities. With the departure of the Research Resources Team Leader, she has taken the lead on training new research support staff on regulatory requirements and best practices. In addition, she recently organized and led the biannual Research Ethics Roundtable event. She was charged with securing a speaker, creating a flyer, advertising the event via multiple platforms, and running the virtual event.

Ms. Lawrence-Banks’ broad knowledge, approachability, and previous work experience have been invaluable to her role as the Research Compliance Advisor. Her dedication to educating our researchers and support staff is observable on a daily basis.”

Sudeep Musyaju (Principal Investigator Brain Trauma Scientist) and Alexander (Alex) Bobrov (Sr. Scientist III, Traumatology, Wound Infections) presented the following research posters at the Military Health System Research Symposium (MHSRS) in September 2022:

1. Sudeep/NNS: Poster 1, Title: Time-course of Mitochondrial Oxidative Stress Markers Following Severe Penetrating TBI
   Sudeep Musyaju, Hiren R. Modi, Ying Cao, Anke H. Scultetus, Janice S. Gilsdorf, Deborah A. Shear and Jignesh D. Pandya
2. Sudeep/NNS: Poster 2, Title: Impairment of Mitochondria Targeted Post-injury Mechanisms in a Rat Model of Penetrating TBI
   Jignesh D. Pandya, Sudeep Musyaju, Hiren R. Modi, Ying Cao, Anke H. Scultetus, Janice S. Gilsdorf and Deborah A. Shear
3. Sudeep/NNS: Poster 3, Title: Time-course of Mitochondrial Calcium Dynamics, Membrane Integrity and Apoptosis Markers Following Severe Penetrating TBI
   Hiren R. Modi, Sudeep Musyaju, Ying Cao, Anke H. Scultetus, Janice S. Gilsdorf, Deborah A. Shear and Jignesh D. Pandya
4. Alex Bobrov/MHSRS: Radmila Pavlovic, Daniel J. Selig, Yonas Alamneh , Brittany Garry, Joseph B. Long3, Stuart D. Tyner, Venkatasivasai S. Sajja, Jesse P. DeLuca,  Derese Getnet, Vlado Antonic and Alexander G. Bobrov. Blast effects on Pharmacokinetics of Antibiotics in Rat Model. Military Health System Research Symposium (MHSRS) September 9-12, 2022 Kissimmee, FL.
5. Alex Bobrov/MHSRS: Alexander G. Bobrov, Vlado Antonic, Radmila Pavlovic, Yonas Alamneh, Brittany Garry, Brett Swierczewski, Stuart D. Tyner, and Derese Getnet. The role of interspecies interaction between wound pathogens and coagulase-negative Staphylococcus for antibiotic resistance and biofilm formation in vitro and the development of polymicrobial infection in polytrauma animal model. Military Health System Research Symposium (MHSRS) September 9-12, 2022 Kissimmee, FL.

Ping Wang (Principal Investigator Brain Trauma Scientist) presented work at the 39th Annual Symposium of the National Neurotrauma Society in June 2022. Her research poster was titled “Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) profile of intravenous anti-CD47 antibodies in a rat model of penetrating traumatic brain injury. Ping Wang, Brain Trauma Neuroprotection, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.”

Rebecca (Becca) Spooner (Clinical Research Coordinator, NMCP) is being awarded for transition support of an extremely difficult protocol with over 40 changes required. Kudo was from our COR on the contract. Additionally, Becca was awarded for completion of study NMCP.2021.0046: Prosthetic Joint Replacement in Lower Extremity Amputees in the Military Population.

Gabrielle Singer (Administrative Assistant I, NAMRU-D) received a Bravo Zulu for her contributions to the NAMRU-D MEDIG inspection in March. Below is the note from CAPT Althoff: “Thank you to Ms. Gabrielle Singer for her patience in scheduling multiple conference rooms, canceling schedules, and then re-scheduling them again. She was very quick to provide everything we needed to ensure the MED-IG team had the space they required during the time frames they desired.” 

Lourdes (Luly) Clarkson (Sr. Acquisition Specialist, NHRC) has been tasked with creating an SOP for a tracking tool, Excaliber. This tool is a way to help the NHRC group keep track and understand the numbers and overall picture of the contracts’ funding and invoicing information. The SOP she has created will help everyone understand the tool more and will become a great reference guide for new employees, as well as a reference for anyone using it. Luly has also been assisting our Task lead in training a new NHRC hire. She works off hours at times to ensure her tasks are completed and answers emails as needed, as well as serves as the Task Lead backup. We would like to thank Luly for going above and beyond in her ongoing support of the NHRC contract.

Jane Lovett (Administrative Assistant I, NAMRU-D) has been recognized by Dr. Rick Arnold for her wonderful work at NAMRU-D. Dr. Arnold wrote: “AS NAMRL Admin Assistant Jane has been knocking it out of the park.  She is extremely proactive, mission oriented, and persistent in the pursuit of completing her assigned tasks. No matter what I hand her to do I can be assured it will be done thoroughly and quickly. She now assists me with equipment inventory, records management, space utilization and assignments, onboarding for NAMRL and orientation / sponsorship, getting NAMRL historical archives under control, managing NAMRL calendars of events, and much, much more. She is an invaluable asset for NAMRL leadership and PIs. I could not be happier with her attitude or effort.”

Christine (Christy) Sintz (HR Generalist II, NAMRU-D) received a Bravo Zulu from NAMRU-D’s Commanding Officer, CAPT Dalitsch: “A Bravo Zulu to Ms. Christine Sintz who has been managing and championing the command training program. Her efforts have been nothing less than extraordinary and have positioned the command to currently be at an 81% completion rate. Also, the command’s SharePoint site that we all visit to see what training is due is again thanks to her. She developed this very user-friendly training portal that serves as the central information point for all required courses. Many thanks to you Ms. Sintz for all that you do and we invite all of our staff to visit the command training SharePoint page to learn even more!”

Space & Missile Defense Group

Government praise for the Missile Warning/Missile Defense (MW/MD) Team: Fred Heineman and Rich Kalber continue to deliver results way beyond expectations of their customer–anticipating what the customer will want next, developing solutions, and providing their best military advice. This is highlighted by excerpts from an unsolicited email from the Chief of the Environmental Monitoring (EM) Current Operations Branch:

“Mr. Heineman and Mr. Kalber do an outstanding job of neutralizing issues before they surface, so that we can stay focused on the mission of delivering Environmental Monitoring capability to the warfighter… successfully transition this important capability from acquisition to operations. Fred and Rich do an outstanding job managing and prioritizing tasks, ensuring accurate, on-time task completion despite a 40%+ increase in taskers to date in 2022 compared to 2021, which itself was a record year since we started keeping track four years ago.”

“Mr. Heineman and Mr. Kalber were instrumental in prepping the SpOC/CC for engagements with senior Department of Commerce (DOC) officials, vital interactions that promoted partnership opportunities between DOC/NOAA/NESDIS and SpOC. General Officer feedback on the support was very positive with comments that included ‘Nice job, the boss was happy with this’ from DCG-O and ‘This is very helpful’ and ‘Thanks to you and your team for the fast turn’ from SpOC/CC.”

“While I was recently out of the office, Fred initiated a response to the 4-Star Combatant Commander, GEN Dickinson, thoroughly addressing his questions on the history of DMSP End-of-Life events without any additional prompting. Dedicated and anticipatory, Mr Heineman and Mr Kalber routinely deliver spot-on, dependable results.”

Aaron Dolbow, MECS contract, has completed his M.S. Information System Security degree from the University of Cumberland in August 2022.

Corporate HQ

In October, Brandi Colvin-Schweitzer will be awarded a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration with an emphasis in Program Management from Southern New Hampshire University. She’s been accepted and will be starting a Masters Program in early November. Congratulations Brandi, and good luck!

Congratulations to everyone who has celebrated an important work milestone between March 16, 2021 and September 15, 2022. Thank you for your dedication!