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PDF8-21-09: Sen Reed's MLA Visits SENEDIA Companies
Senator Reed's Military Legislative Assistant Visits SENEDIA Companies
Carolyn Chuhta, Senator Reed’s Military Legislative Assistant, visited SENEDIA member companies on in Middletown, RI on August 21st, 2009. Ms. Chuhta Toured facilities and labs and received briefings on corporate structures and technical projects. She was engaging and asked solid technical questions. She was very interested in recruiting and was impressed at the retention of people and new hires in this difficult economy.
At Progeny she learned about their internship successes, job fairs, and “rent-to-own” temp agencies. Following a tour of Progeny’s facilities and labs, Progeny provided Carolyn with a corporate overview briefing and a separate briefing focused on the local Rhode Island office in terms of how it relates to the overall company and the important contributions made by the RI office to DoD objectives. She expressed interest in how we Progeny does recruiting. They discussed internship successes, job fairs, and “rent-to-own” temp agencies. She also inquired about how Progeny with neighboring companies. We then discussed SENEDIA as a valuable venue for networking and how important it was in a small state and a smaller island to maintain healthy working relationships with our neighboring companies and that we often seek each other out as strategic partners in new solicitations.
PURVIS systems and Rite Solutions, along with John Riendeau of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation provided her a demonstration and simulation of the Undersea Perimeter Security Integrated Defense Environment (UPSIDE) System at the Rite Solutions facility in Middletown. The demonstration included an overview of the development and tests of the UPSIDE system in Phases 1 and 2 and the planned completion of the system development in Phase 3 of the program. UPSIDE provides an open architecture test bed environment and modeling and simulation tool for surface and underwater sensors and situational awareness displays as well as for first responder incident management and control systems used for port security against potential terrorist threats.
At SEA CORP she met with President Larry Willner, Senior Vice President Dave Lussier and VP for Corporate Development Rich Talipsky who provided a corporate overview and a tour of SEA CORP’s Middletown Facilities. She saw the technical production facilities and the various applications of SEA CORP’s automotive air bag inflator technology that is a Navy SBIR success story supported by Senator Reed’s office. The help that Senator Reed has provided has helped a small company like SEA CORP to leverage a small independent research and development investment into significant technology applications. The technology has blossomed from a Phase I SBIR project over 10 years ago to a multi-faceted program where air bag inflators are used in a variety of military and commercial applications.
Dave Lussier (L) Senior VP and Barry Holland (R), Launcher Sysems Buisness Manager explain SEA CORP's UAV launch technology to Ms. Chuhta.
At Promethius, Ms. Chuhta met with Dr. Jim Byrnes - Prometheus' President, Dr. Edmund Sullivan, Ms. Irena Stojanoska (an intern from Macedonia), Ms. Marcia Byrnes and Dr. Joseph J. Kranz at the Corporate Offices, 21 Arnold Avenue, Newport. Prometheus' genesis, history and background in self-funded Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education initiatives from the early 1980s was discussed; collaborations and internship programs with the Brown University Applied Mathematics Department, the University of Massachusetts - Boston and MIT were described. Prometheus' role in organizing and conducting NATO Technology (Advanced Studies Institutes (ASI)) Conferences, use of the Newport based Prometheus Conference and Computing Center to host international mathematics consortia and other technology conference leadership was also discussed. The company's capabilities and examples of work were discussed in Adaptive radar, the Affordable Acquisition Decision Aid, support of the NUWC Weapons Analysis Facility with innovative computationally efficient Broadband Torpedo Reverberation Modeling, research products in Feature Based Pattern Recognition for the Air Force and Naval Surface Weapon Center (NSWC) - Panama City, research products and Congressional Plus-up progress for the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) and the Air Force synthetic aperture radar surveillance programs in Materials Identification for Force Protection and finally, Waveform Diversity algorithm applications at the Missile Defense Agency. Prometheus Inc. is a small, woman-owned software research and engineering firm founded in 1983 that specializes in applied mathematics. Their goal is to develop algorithms and software that avoid, and in most cases completely eliminate, the need for hardware changes, reducing system costs while improving performance.
At each place visited, she also inquired about how each company worked with neighboring companies. The consensus was that SENEDIA is a valuable venue for networking and how important it is in a small state and a smaller island to maintain healthy working relationships with our neighboring companies where we often seek each other out as strategic partners in new solicitations.