Team Kepler

Georgetown University

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Forging a Path for Safety and Accountability in Orbit

The Team

Peter McGee

• BS in History, United States Naval Academy
• MBA (2024), Georgetown University

Kieran Lee

• BA in History and Politics, University of Cambridge
• MA in Security Studies (2024), Georgetown University

Simone Montandon

• BS in Foreign Service (2024); Major: International Politics; Minor: Economics, Georgetown University
• MA in Security Studies (2025), Georgetown University

Problem Sponsor

Space Security and Defense Program (SSDP)

Original Problem Statement

Space Security and Defense Program (SSDP) requires an objective, analytic, user-friendly framework integrating views of US allies, adversaries, neutrals, and commercial entities, accompanied by a communications strategy, to assess U.S. compliance with obligations and to ensure U.S. leadership in space.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

100

The Innovation

As a space industry leader, the United States grapples with the rising challenges of responsible behavior as space actors and satellite launches increase, creating an evermore congested and contested space environment. Team Kepler was formed in Georgetown University’s Fall 2023 Hacking for Defense course to tackle this robust problem.

Team Kepler was composed of Peter McGee, Kieran Lee, and Simone Montandon - a diverse group of undergraduate and graduate students both academically and multiculturally. Peter has a background in the US Navy, Kieran was born and raised in Singapore, and Simone was born and raised in Italy. Their international backgrounds enabled them to make connections beyond the United States, which garnered them unique perspectives from foreign space organizations, such as Airbus. Hearing concerns and praise from European partners afforded them a better understanding of the fragmentation amongst international space organizations and the challenges of adopting global norms in space.

During the semester, Team Kepler initially hypothesized there was a need for a space operations center that could provide information sharing amongst the global space community. However, mid-way through their beneficiary discovery the team found the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) already existed, though in nascent stages. Throughout their discovery process, the team also refuted some of the assumptions the sponsor had about data sharing. Peter explained the team’s findings showed the incentive alignment to share data with the U.S. government was not as aligned as originally thought by the sponsor. With this information the team realized they had to re-frame their hypothesis from a technical focus toward a macro policy and alignment approach. Given a robust problem statement at the beginning of the semester, the team determined the actual problem came down to three key issues: 1) Space is congested and contested, 2) existing space operating regulations and norms are inconsistent and vague, and 3) no single organization can define and enforce rules in space.

After conducting 100 interviews, Team Kepler developed a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that took into consideration: 1) the diverse space environment encompassing commercial, government, and international interests, 2) strategic messaging and communication, and 3) understanding how to break down trust barriers for information sharing. The culmination of their work resulted in an integrated compliance framework across public and private sectors consisting of three pillars: coordination, evaluation and feedback. Kieran noted the importance of having the private sector engaged in writing the rules. From their interviews Kieran explained they learned the “government can be too heavy handed when it comes to regulating norms in space,” which nowadays hinders private sector space organizations with commercial interests who “set the viability of the space economy in the future.” By creating a set of global space norms that incorporates both private and public interests around responsible behavior, this framework promotes safety and provides accountability in space.

While the team does not have plans to continue beyond the semester, the skills they have gained through this experience will undoubtedly assist them in their future endeavors. For some, the experience was a pivotal moment in their decision to pursue a career in the space domain.

Presentation

Team Kepler’s Hacking for Defense Experience

With such diverse backgrounds, Simone, Kieran and Peter were all attracted to the Hacking for Defense course for different reasons. Simone’s interest in the course stemmed from his desire to explore the intersection between security, cyber, and policy. Kieran wanted to understand how startup methodology could be applied to government issues. Coming from business school and an internship with a venture capital, Peter wanted to broaden his knowledge of startups and had heard “glowing reviews about the class.” 

Reflecting on their experience in the course, the team found the H4 methodology posed some challenges for their group as they tried to validate the root cause of the problem, but found the process ultimately helped shape their solution. Simone attributed the team’s growth each week to the beneficiary discovery process, as it allowed them to “understand barriers and complexities” within the problem space. Peter thought it was “interesting to focus on the problem and see how it evolved.” He also realized that startups don’t need to begin with a brilliant idea, and can instead be formed through discovering the actual need before finding the solution.

For many students the Hacking for Defense experience affords them unique opportunities to expand their skillsets, positively impacting their future careers. All three team members felt their team dynamic contributed to their success and created a positive environment for them to leverage each person’s expertise. They noted their instructors, Jacqueline Tame and Justin Fanelli, at Georgetown University were instrumental in shaping their experience due to their extensive backgrounds in the government and startups.

What’s Next for the Team?

For Simone, this experience “was the start of something bigger.” The course inspired him to take two classes on space policy and space technology to hopefully begin a career in the space domain in the future.

Following the completion of his business degree, Peter plans to head back to the Navy and will be working at the Pentagon, where he plans to leverage his experience to help the Navy in resource management.

Kieran will be heading back to Singapore after finishing his degree and joining Singapore’s Ministry of Defence as a policy officer, likely working on international partnerships with partners and allies.

Team Valis

Columbia University

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Optimizing Army Manpower Distribution Through Process Improvement

The Team

Sean Kim

• MS in Computer Science, Columbia University

• Sean is a Masters student at Columbia University studying Computer Science. Sean has spent most of his career at startups and currently works in product and engineering at RIZZ, an AI dating assistant with over 3.5 million downloads. Sean hopes to continue working at startups and tackling hard problems. 

Jamie Bishop

• BA in History, Columbia University

• Jamie is a senior in the Dual BA program between Columbia University and Trinity College Dublin. She studies history and is currently completing her senior thesis on the nineteenth-century neighborhood of Five Points, New York. She also works as a business development analyst for an ed-tech startup. After graduation in May, Jamie intends to move to Austin, Texas to continue her career at Oracle-Netsuite. 

Muse Gimicael

• BA in Computer Science, Columbia University

• Muse Gimicael is a senior at Columbia University studying Computer Science. Gaining early experience in programming from developing games, Muse has been fascinated with software development from an early age. After completing an internship at Amazon's FinTech department and co-founding a music discussion startup at Columbia, he looks for the next problem to solve.

Akshat Gautam

• MS  in Computer Science, Columbia University

• Akshat Gautam is a Masters student at Columbia University studying Computer Science. After working at companies like State Farm and Capital One, along with machine learning research, he hopes to utilize his skills in software development with his interests in research and data science. 

Problem Sponsor

Army Human Resources Command, Fort Knox, KY

Original Problem Statement

Directorate leadership in HRC need a process to track and analyze the engagements and visits we have with the organizations we support across the Army to better predict and meet informational and practical needs.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

23

The Innovation

Team Valis was tasked to assist the U.S. Army Human Resources Command (HRC) improve their overall visitation process. The HRC oversees distribution of manpower to over 40 brigades with approximately 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers in each brigade. Leadership from the brigades frequently visit the HRC primarily to discuss manning shortfalls and talent management issues. At the start of course, the HRC was using a form to facilitate visit requests and another form for visitor feedback, which often went unread due to limited capacity to analyze feedback. The HRC hoped Team Valis could help them better predict organizational needs and needs of soldiers, ultimately saving time and money for everyone involved.

With new buzz around Artificial Intelligence capabilities, the team thought new software tools could be utilized to streamline the HRC’s visitation processes, but found that implementation would be difficult given the military’s constraints and tech adverse culture. They discovered the problem was “less about visitation processes and more about cutting through the red tape.” Based on feedback from their interviews, the team developed their first Minimum Viable Product (MVP), a five-step process to plan, schedule, track, manage and analyze visits to the HRC. Their plan envisioned optimizing pre-visit coordination, creating an online booking and visit intake form with a portal for HRC and the customer to track, view and change visits, and provide data to analyze from each step. 

However, for their final MVP, the team focused on one of the five steps - developing a more detailed intake form based on issues visitors wanted to address. Through their interviews they discovered the current HRC intake form had many open-ended questions that contributed to the overall problem. The team also recognized the need to build the intake form using applications compatible with the Army’s existing Microsoft infrastructure, so the HRC could easily implement their solution within budget. Their MVP not only streamlines processes for the HRC but also helps improve soldier career development and manpower allocation for force readiness.

By focusing on the biggest immediate pain point based on interview feedback, the team was able to build a solution that could be quickly implemented. Their sponsors at the HRC were thrilled with the results and are continuing to work with Team Valis beyond the semester to implement and test the solution. The team has plans to fly out to Fort Knox, Kentucky for further discovery, including talking with the HRC Chief of Staff. With encouragement from their teaching team at Columbia, the team is exploring taking their solution outside the Army to other organizations that face similar issues.

Presentation

Team Valis’ Hacking for Defense Experience

Each member of Team Valis came into the Hacking for Defense (H4D) course with different backgrounds and intentions for taking the class. For Jamie the class was an opportunity to diversify her schedule beyond a humanities focus and “have a direct impact on people and the world.” Her experience with H4D also helped build her confidence prior to starting her career post-graduation and provided her a chance to work with others with different academic backgrounds. Muse previously worked in a startup centered on creating a music discussion application. He shared the startup’s biggest issue was discovering “the problem they were trying to tackle wasn’t actually a problem.” During the course, Muse discovered that “if you can find the problem, the hardest part is just building around it and trying to satisfy your customers.” Sean’s attraction to the course stemmed from his interest in national security and defense tech. According to Sean, “The H4D class was a way to directly work within the Department of Defense (DOD) space without having the guardrails of a huge conglomerate and directly having an impact without taking 30 years of experience.”

When reflecting on the H4 methodology, the team emphasized resisting the urge to build a solution until they had thoroughly conducted beneficiary discovery and assessed feasibility. Both Sean and Jamie noted their favorite part of the course was the moment when everything “clicked” and they came to the revelation that an improved intake form was needed for the HRC. Working with people both inside and outside the class also contributed to the team’s positive experience.

By the end of the class, Muse and Sean shared their impressions of the military changed as they gained more insight through their interviews with military members. Prior to the course, Sean assumed the Army was “high-tech,” and was surprised to learn there were so many opportunities where a student could help provide innovation to a well-established organization. From their interviews, Muse described their “behind the scenes” look into Army culture as “a lot less formal” than originally perceived for such a hierarchical organization.

Personal Impact

A H4D course would not be successful without dedicated faculty. Professor Jason Cahill’s experience as a venture capitalist and entrepreneur inspired Muse to be a little riskier with his future employment opportunities and explore some “crazy ideas.” Jamie was intimidated going into this course as the only student without a computer science background, but came out more confident with the realization that she could still be a “valuable resource” in the world of entrepreneurship. For Sean, H4D solidified his decision to pursue a career in the startup industry, where he could make a large impact at a young age, versus the traditional path that may take years for the same amount of impact.

Learn to Win

Stanford University

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Microlearning software for results-driven trainers

The Team

Andrew Powell

• Cofounder, CCEO at Learn to Win
• MBA, Stanford

Sasha Seymore

• Cofounder, COO at Learn to Win
• JD/MBA, Stanford

Sam Lisbonne

• Advisor at Learn to Win
• Former Principal Materials Scientist at Itron
• MS in Engineering, Stanford
• BS in Mechanical Engineering, Stanford

Phil Stiefel

• JD/MBA, Stanford

Problem Sponsor

Lt Col Niewiarowski

Original Problem Statement

Combat Air Force (CAF) instructors need improved and expedited training procedures in order to reduce phase duration and information loss of trained student personnel.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

107

The Innovation

Hacking for Defense students leveraged their experiences with learning science and college sports to train U.S. Air Force pilots more efficiently, but their innovation has since expanded to a variety of organizations, from Chickfila to the Los Angeles Rams.

H4D alumni and H4X Labs participants from team Learn to Win developed a platform to improve training quality and efficiency for a variety of organizations, including Fortune 200 companies, NFL teams, the US military, and more. Three years after completing the course, Learn to Win has raised $14 million and is the first H4D team to receive SBIR Phase III funding.

The Learn to Win team was formed in the Spring 2019 term of Stanford’s Hacking for Defense course. The original H4D team included MBA student Andrew Powell, JD/MBA student Sasha Seymore, JD/MBA student Phil Stiefel, and Engineering student Sam Lisbonne. Andrew’s background in learning science and education, coupled with Sasha’s experience as a college athlete and his time in the Navy Reserves, proved to be the perfect primer for catalyzing the development of Learn to Win.

Reflecting on his time as a college athlete, Sasha recalled the stacks of photocopies containing hand-drawn plays that he used to receive each season. After learning about this, Andrew remembers thinking “there are so many better ways to learn this than memorizing a three-ring binder.” These issues were not exclusive to collegiate athletes, however, as Sasha noted that his onboarding into the Navy Reserves also consisted of a three-ring binder full of instructions that he was told to memorize. After sharing their experiences, Sasha and Andrew realized that there was a systemic lack of consistent, quality training across a variety of industries. This realization gave Sasha and Andrew the momentum they needed to begin the process of developing Learn to Win.

In the summer of 2018, Andrew and Sasha prototyped what would later become the Learn to Win training program through their work with student athletes at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When Andrew and Sasha learned that one of the problems for the upcoming semester of H4D at Stanford sought to improve training procedures for pilots, they identified parallels between their work with student athletes, which challenged them to explore how their platform could be adapted and applied to matters of national security within the Department of Defense.

The team was originally tasked with improving and expediting training procedures for Combat Air Force instructors. After 107 interviews, however, the team discovered that the true problem was more deeply rooted in the wide-spread lack of modern learning tools, which prevented students and pilots in the United States Air Force from accessing consistent, on-demand content.

The ability to visit various Air Force bases was paramount to the team’s discovery during the course. In particular, the team’s visit to Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma gave them the opportunity to explore the limitations of Computer Based Training (CBT) on a first-hand basis. Following their visit, the team concluded that the obsolete method by which CBTs are graded likely resulted in functional loss for both pilots and instructors. In particular, the current method of grading CBTs at the time of the team’s discovery made it nearly impossible for instructors to identify significant knowledge gaps amongst their pilots. This led to their key thesis: “greater accessibility will lead to greater usage, which will lead to greater learning.”

By the end of the course, they had developed an Minimum Viable Product with three key elements:

1. An interactive mobile learning experience,

2. A user-friendly, templatized authoring platform for building the content, and

3. An analytics suite that more efficiently identifies performance and knowledge gaps.

After the course, Learn to Win participated in BMNT’s H4X Labs. H4X Labs helped them focus on partnering with dual-use, Deep Tech companies to match their solution to a database of active government requirements, and access non-dilutive funding to bring their solution into the commercial market.

In collaboration with university, industry and defense organizations supplemented with H4XLabs weekly coaching sessions, Learn to Win fast-tracked their understanding of funding programs, like SBIR, and helped them get their materials in prime shape for a strong application.

The result was a funding turnaround so fast any VC firm would be surprised; one month from proposal, they received $750,000. Making Learn to Win the very first H4D alumnus to transition to SBIR Phase III.

Presentation

Learn to Win’s
Hacking for Defense Experience

Andrew credits the H4D course with giving the team a head start in navigating the defense innovation space. He learned that selling a contract and getting an upsell is not as simple as solving a user problem and demonstrating value, but has so many factors, like having the user problem, identifying the person with money, having a contracting vehicle, having the right color of money, and the timelines. By leveraging the expertise of mentors from the H4D ecosystem who had done it before, the team was able to navigate the complex process.

The course’s focus on user problems and emphasis on “getting out the building” and talking to people was also transformative for their understanding of the DOD landscape. The course methodology was so influential to the team that they still conduct customer interviews now when looking into breaking into a new industry in order to quickly get a broad understanding of a market.

Andrew recommends H4D to anyone who is interested in working on consequential problems, especially those interested in entrepreneurship and/or national security and defense.

“In Hacking for Defense, there is an amazing set of opportunities where you can work on amazing and important problems. Applying your talent toward those things in the long run is a lot more fulfilling than just pursuing the highest-paying job or the easiest path. Intellectually stimulating experience that might expose you to some opportunities to make an impact that you might not otherwise come across,” said Andrew.

Team NeuroSmart

Stanford University

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Making Stress Measurable

The Team

Melis Yilmaz Balban

• Co-Founder, NeuroSmart
• PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior, Harvard University (2015)

Emily Brown

• Co-Founder, NeuroSmart
• MBA, Stanford (2022)

Problem Sponsor

Army Research Labs (Dr. Garcia, Dr. Hoffing, and Dr. Ries)

Mentors

LTC Ed Cuevas (Defense Mentor), Rafi Holtzman (Business Mentor), and Dr. Danielle Cummings (Business Mentor)

Original Problem Statement

Military officers need a way to regulate their stress while making high-stakes decisions in order to reduce critical mistakes and potential lasting trauma.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

101

The Innovation

Team NeuroSmart is helping law enforcement agencies train and prepare for stressful situations. The H4D alumni team is developing a wearable technology capable of stress monitoring in order to train self-awareness and self-regulation in law enforcement personnel. The interdisciplinary team formed the startup to continue their work, incorporating members’ experience in neuroscience and business.

The NeuroSmart team was formed in the Spring 2021 term of the Stanford University Hacking for Defense course. The original team included neuroscientist Melis Yilmaz Balban (PhD ‘15) and finance professional Emily Casey Brown (MBA ‘22), who came together as a multi-disciplinary team to explore a problem that Melis had been researching prior to the course – stress monitoring.

Team NeuroSmart at Stanford University was originally tasked with “providing military officers a way to regulate their stress while making high-stakes decisions to reduce critical mistakes and potential lasting trauma.” Traditional Tactical Training, consisting of in-class tactical memorization leading straight to Close Quarters Combat (CQC), traditionally resulted in unexplained performance loss, a high attrition rate, critical mistakes, and lost lives. Paired with the Army Research Laboratory’s Dr. Garcia, Dr. Hoffing, and Dr. Ries as their sponsor, the team identified “optimal” and “suboptimal” states for decision-making using physiological and behavioral measurements in order to streamline optimal cognitive performance. NeuroSmart applied their idea of a stress-monitoring technology to Conventional Field Grade Officers, who needed to regulate their stress levels while making high-stakes decisions. One colonel with the Marine Corps told the team, “Self-regulation could help this group make better decisions, process information quicker and be more resilient in high stress situations.”

However, the team soon learned through discovery that their technology would not be a priority for Conventional Field Grade Officers, who faced funding and scalability challenges. Team NeuroSmart then switched focus to US Special Operations Command (SOCOM), particularly the 75th Ranger Regiment, which demonstrated a high willingness to experiment with technology, had a separate training pipeline, was public facing, and had significant funding resources.

With their initial target beneficiary circled, the team set off to explore environments where they could provide value and help this beneficiary. They soon realized that Close Quarters Combat training could be optimized, as it was common for soldiers to break down and not make the right decisions. Through beneficiary discovery with Army officers, Team NeuroSmart concluded that simply gathering biometric data with their technology was not enough – the interpretation of the data was the actual pain point. One of the team’s beneficiary discovery interviewee even went so far as to say, “The Army has too much data and doesn’t know what to do with it.”

Consequently, the team then developed key metrics for improving CQC performance that not only recorded biometric data, but gave recommendations based on the analysis of this data. To this advancement, a trainer at Mountain View Police Department said, “Connecting the data to shot accuracy and threat response is invaluable.”

Following the conclusion of the course, Team NeuroSmart identified a new group with a more acute need for their product than military officers – law enforcement agencies. Currently, the NeuroSmart startup provides technology that monitors emotional and cognitive stress during scenario- based training sessions and maps a law enforcement officer’s stress prior, during, and after critical decisions in the scenario, allowing the officers and their trainers to improve in self awareness and de-escalation skills. NeuroSmart was awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to launch a pilot program with law enforcement agencies around the country, as well as an Impact Grant from the Common Mission Project to fund prototype research and development.

Presentation

Melis Yilmaz Balban’s Hacking for Defense Experience

Melis was drawn to the Hacking for Defense course by the quality of previous projects she had seen on Steve Blank’s webpage, and the strong military teaching staff and connections the course provided. Team NeuroSmart is unique in that they came in with a problem they were already working on, looking to utilize the course to enter the defense space and find a problem sponsor.

Learning the H4D methodology greatly influenced the team’s thinking and problem solving. Melis highlighted this, saying “The H4D methodology made me think about partners, stakeholders, and beneficiaries, and understand how the value proposition for each beneficiary could be involved. It’s not enough to just build something for officers – you need to propose logistical things like cost models.”

Melis’s favorite part of the H4D course was meeting her teammates. She says of Emily: “She had a completely different background, but we were able to come together and work towards a goal in a high paced environment.”

Currently, Melis is continuing to build out the NeuroSmart startup, while Emily serves as a Vice President at DNS Capital on the direct investing team.

Team SAIF

Stanford University

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A New Vision for the Future of Physical Security

The Team

Syed Faraz

• MBA, Stanford (2023)
• MPA, Harvard
• BS in Economics and Political Science, UT Arlington

Mac Klinkachorn

• MS in Computer Science, Stanford
• BS in Physics and Computer Science, Stanford

Problem Sponsor

Mark Breier, Partner, In-Q-Tel

Original Problem Statement

Ground security personnel need an automated way to detect unique individuals in large crowds.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

108

The Innovation

Department of State embassy security personnel face numerous challenges particularly when it comes to large crowds. A student team in the Spring 2002 Stanford University Hacking for Defense course investigated this problem and focused a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) on identifying suspicious individuals within large crowds. After successfully completing the course, the team began working on developing a dual-use product to increase safety on school and university campuses.

The SAIF team was formed in the Spring 2022 term of Stanford’s Hacking for Defense course. The original team was composed of Mac Klinkachorn, Eric Frankel, Syed Faraz, Savannah Ardrey, and Katherine Miller – a diverse group of undergraduate and graduate students from a multitude of backgrounds including computer science, business, and defense.

The team was originally tasked with addressing the issue of identifying unique individuals in large crowds where existing facial-recognition technology was not applicable. However, after conducting 108 beneficiary discovery interviews, the team realized that their original problem statement was too general and focused their efforts on improving security around high-risk locations.

During the semester, Team SAIF zeroed in on providing security personnel at embassies an automated way to identify recurring figures and threats earlier in order to facilitate faster response. The team noted that senior officials recognized challenges surrounding security at these locations, specifically that malicious actors often reconnoiter and surveil locations long before an attack. From there, they developed a mission-control AI product with a force multiplier tool for security officers to help them automatically flag potential security threats. They also developed a video search tool for security teams. Beneficiaries told the team that their proposed technology could “prevent Benghazi from ever happening again.” After the conclusion of the course, the team has shifted their focus from embassy security to school security.

Currently, Team SAIF has developed three further MVPs. One is a mobile version of the mission-control product, the second a redaction tool which uses AI to automatically redact Personal Identifiable Information (PII). The third MVP is an information extraction tool which can automatically pull relevant details from videos.

During their time in the Hacking for Defense course, the team was able to verify the need for these products. However, as the term came to a close, the technology and a fully functional prototype was not yet ready. Team SAIF was awarded a CMP Impact Grant supported by Lockheed Martin to aid them in moving forward with developing their product.

Presentation

Team SAIF’s Hacking for Defense Experience

Faraz is an accomplished Air Force Navigator who has worked in defense innovation for seven years. He was first exposed to the Hacking for Defense program when a squadron on his base worked with an H4D team (Team Learn 2 Win). He was able to learn about H4D on a much more personal level, and when applying for business schools, Stanford was his number one option because of its proximity to Steve Blank. Faraz describes Blank as “a legend in the defense innovation space. I wanted to attend Stanford and specifically take the Hacking for Defense course in order to learn from the man behind the Lean Launchpad methodology.” Faraz’s favorite part of his H4D experience was when Team SAIF traveled to San Diego to work with stakeholders and sponsors at InQtel. “We were the only student team invited by InQtel in the last decade, which was a really cool experience,” he says, demonstrating the success, viability, and potential of Team SAIF’s MVPs.

Project Agrippa

Stanford University

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Augmenting Integrated Deterrence

The Team

Kyle Duchynski

• Cofounder, Agrippa
• MS MS&E, Stanford ‘23
• BA Economics and Honors in International Security Studies, Stanford ‘21

William Healzer

• Cofounder, Agrippa
• BAH Political Science and History, Stanford ‘22

Jack Carney

• BA Economics, Stanford ‘21

Jonathan Deemer

• Cofounder, Agrippa
• JD, Stanford Law School ‘23, Knight-Hennessey Scholar
• MA International Policy, Stanford ‘23
• BA International Relations, Union College, NE
• BS Business Administration, Union College, NE

David Hoyt

• Cofounder, Agrippa
• JD, Stanford Law School ‘20
• MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business ‘20
• BA International Relations and Honors in International Security Studies, Stanford ‘13
• AA Liberal Arts, Mercer County Community College ‘10

Problem Sponsor

Rear Admiral Lorin Selby, Chief of Naval Research, and Dr. Jason Stack, Office of Naval Research

Military and Business Mentors

CDR Jeff Vanak, Rachel Costello, Marco Romani

Original Problem Statement

The United States Navy needs new operational concepts to incorporate emerging technologies in order to successfully compete and deter aggression in the Indo-Pacific.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

242 during the course; 700+ post-course

The Innovation

Hacking for Defense (“H4D”) students are helping the U.S. Department of Defense augment integrated deterrence. H4D alumni team Project Agrippa created a concept for an unmanned logistics vessel to better decentralize maritime logistics in the Indo-Pacific theater. Thanks to the promising end user discovery during H4D, the team decided to form a startup to continue their work post-course and are now working to field and scale their solution. 

The Project Agrippa team was formed in the Spring 2021 term of Stanford’s Hacking for Defense course. The original H4D team included Kyle Duchynski (B.A. ‘21, M.S.’23), William Healzer (B.A.H. ‘22), Jack Carney (B.A.’21), Jonathan Deemer (JD/MIP ‘23), and David Hoyt (JD/MBA ‘20, BA ‘13),.

The team was paired with ONR’s Dr. Jason Stack as their problem sponsor and were given their initial problem statement: “The United States Navy needs new operational concepts to incorporate emerging technologies in order to successfully compete and deter aggression in the Indo-Pacific.” Selecting the name Agrippa for Octavian’s right-hand strategist who transformed the Roman Navy, the team threw themselves at the problem. However, the team was initially worried  that they would not be able to impact such a large problem, one that their professors referred to as a classic “boil the ocean” topic. 

However, the team credits the customer discovery interview process as enabling them to get smart on their problem area quickly and begin to narrow its scope. The core driver of H4D’s Lean Methodology is “getting outside the building” by talking to the customer who must confront the problem every day. While the customer might be clearly defined for traditional startups, in the defense world the concept of a customer is much broader—whoever might benefit from the potential solution. For the Agrippa team, this meant leaving their comfort zone at Stanford and interviewing warfighters, strategists, logisticians, and others across the Joint Force, industry, and academia. The H4D class mandates a minimum of ten beneficiary discovery interviews each week of the ten-week course. However, during their ten weeks in the course, Agrippa found such value from the interview process that they ended up conducting a stunning 242 interviews, a national H4D record, in addition to reading over 50 books to better understand security challenges facing the U.S. and its allies in the Indo-Pacific.

Beyond just building a broad base of knowledge, these interviews were an essential way for the team to iteratively test their weekly minimum viable product, or MVP. Another integral part of the H4D Lean Methodology, an MVP is not a demo or even necessarily a product, but whatever allows a hypothesis about the problem, or a potential solution, to be tested. For the Agrippa team, in the early part of the class, their MVPs were generally a slide summarizing a new operational analysis to test a new aspect of their concept solution. 

Beyond the value for their team alone, the Agrippa team members were surprised at how much value these beneficiary discovery interviews brought to the beneficiaries themselves, including the Office of Naval Research, by helping to bridge “pockets of excellence” by connecting people from across different organizations all examining a similar problem set. As Agrippa team member William Healzer explained, “You have lots of people who are trying really hard to do amazing things for the country and while they know what they do and what the next person on the acquisition process chain does, sometimes they are on a 15 step bridge. There is not always that same connectivity between someone who is on one side of the bridge and someone on the other side. Students taking H4D have flexibility to map out what these processes look like and talk to everyone on that chain. In doing so, you are able to bring these people together who might not have interfaced with each other in the past, so it has not only been fruitful for the team, but has helped build connections internal to the DoD.” 

As they were conducting these interviews, the team gradually refined their problem statement to focus specifically on the need for logistics to support emerging distributed operational concepts. Their final problem statement read: “In order to retain credible conventional deterrence against the PRC in the Indo-Pacific, U.S. joint forces must develop, acquire, and employ a distributed, survivable force to impose increased costs on the PRC. This strategy depends on distributed, discrete, low-cost logistics systems that can survive within the Weapons Engagement Zone (WEZ).”

By the end of the course, their final Minimum Viable Product was a complete concept for employing autonomous maritime vessels in the Indo-Pacific, with several supporting analyses. Over the course of a week toward the end of the course, the team led a series of briefings with over 50 officials across 6 bases in 4 different cities with key stakeholders from U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), U.S. Pacific Fleet (PACFLT), U.S. Marine Forces Pacific (MARFORPAC), Navy Special Warfare Command (WARCOM), U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC), and the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). In these briefings, they received overwhelming support for their concept and encouragement to continue with the work post-class to continue to refine the concept. PACFLT even requested that Project Agrippa redact parts of their final presentation. 

The positive response from their sponsoring organization and these briefings inspired Project Agrippa to continue their work beyond the class. After embarking on another 12 months of customer discovery and surveying the defense industrial base, encouragement and support from key DoD stakeholders and the Stanford H4D team led Agrippa to incorporate and pursue fielding their solution at scale for the DoD as a startup. Already, the work done by Agrippa during H4D has helped informed research both inside government at institutions like the Naval Postgraduate Schoolas well as other outside experts, like at the Special Competitive Studies Project, where the team won an essay contest building off the idea of distributed deterrence they developed in H4D. Recently, Agrippa was awarded a grant from the Common Mission Project Impact Fund, which the team plans to use for further beneficiary discovery, MVP development, and a series of in-person MVP demonstrations and briefs.

Project Agrippa’s
Hacking for Defense Experience

The Agrippa team was fortunate in that many of their members knew each other at Stanford before taking H4D, with a shared interest in national security and defense. For two of the team members, William and Kyle, they were drawn to H4D because of the opportunity to apply high-level concepts they had been taught in the classroom in a real-world setting. Four of the team members had taken Technology, Innovation and Modern War (now Technology, Innovation, and Great Power Competition) during Fall Quarter of 2020, taught by Professors Joe Felter, Steve Blank, and Raj Shah. This class was a major impetus for applying to H4D. 

“The hands-on nature of the course [H4D] allows you to get a layer deeper than what is covered in a traditional academic class. It is also immensely helpful for untangling the national security bureaucracy, as well as developing professional skills, such as finding people to reach out to, cold-calling, conducting an interview, and building a professional network,” said team member Kyle Duchynski. 

The experiential nature of the class was similarly attractive for David Hoyt, as well as the fact that it pulled together all of his academic interests - international relations and national security, emerging technology and the DOD, and innovation and entrepreneurship. 

During the course, the team gained the knowledge and confidence necessary to be a successful startup. First and foremost, they discovered the power of the Lean methodology, particularly the beneficiary discovery process. Learning the methodology from its creator, Steve Blank, the team was able to learn from a variety of experts from across the DoD, from warfighters to policymakers to technologists.

Team member Hoyt characterizes the beneficiary discovery process as a “superpower.”

“When you combine a targeted reading selection with targeted customer discovery, your ability to hack the growth curve of your knowledge is formative. The ability to go from barely knowing what a boat was at the beginning of the course, to engaging in long conversations with admirals on this topic in a briefing center in the Pacific Fleet headquarters in less than ten weeks is  transformative. I now use this methodology in many parts of my professional life now,” said Hoyt.

Through the course, the team also learned to accept uncertainty and become comfortable with ambiguity. 

“H4D teaches you that it is okay if you don’t know the answer now. You just need to start with an educated hypothesis and go out and test it, and as a result, you will get a better answer so much faster. In life, it is much more important to get to the right answer faster than to get the right answer right off the bat. You don’t need to wait to add value. You can help out on huge national security issues as a 20-year-old,” said Hoyt.

Although team member Kyle Duchynski was always interested in a career in national security and defense, he was unsure of how to break into the field. H4D helped lay the foundation for him to have that opportunity. 

“H4D and the connections and networks I was able to create during it inspired me to pursue a post-class fellowship at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. The  experiences we had in Hacking for Defense gave me the knowledge and expertise to hit the ground running and make an impact on an incredibly meaningful set of challenges working at INDOPACOM, ” said Duchynski. 

For Jonathan Deemer, the course was equally transformative and challenging. As he explained, “without a doubt, [H4D is] the most challenging and best course I have taken at Stanford or anywhere else.”

For Hoyt, taking H4D directly shaped his professional decisions. In addition to being a founding member of the company that was formed out of the course, Hoyt was brought on to be the Assistant Director of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford, which David partially attributes to the success of his team in H4D. The work he does in his capacity as Assistant Director is tied to his H4D experience; he works on questions of national security innovation, dual use technology, and how to use the Lean methodology to solve national security problems. In his role at Gordian Knot Center, he is passionate about creating similar opportunities to H4D to feed a pipeline of students who might be interested in participating in these programs at Stanford.

“This is one of the greatest educational gifts I’ve ever received. I’ve taken about 100 courses at Stanford across three degrees and I would say this course would be tied for first because of this methodology,” said Hoyt.

For William Healzer, H4D was an avenue to synthesize his passion for defense policy with the emerging technology space in Silicon Valley.  His H4D experience was so impactful that he postponed pursuing a Ph.D. out of college and now works full-time on the company formed out of the course. “H4D is the most transformative thing I have done at Stanford,” said Healzer.

CausalTwin

Stanford University

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Improving Ballast Tank Inspections for the U.S. Navy

The Team

Kyle Orciuch

• Co-Founder & CEO, CausalTwin, Inc.
• MS in Computer Science (2024), UT Austin
• BS in Computer Science, Stanford

Ghassan Oueidat

• Co-Founder & CTO, CausalTwin, Inc.
• BE in Mechanical Engineering

Karim Tabaja

• MBA Candidate, Stanford

Philip Lambert

• MS in Statistics Candidate, Stanford 
• BS in Mathematics and Computational Science, Stanford
• BS in Symbolic Systems, Stanford

Shubh Gupta

• PHD in Electrical Engineering Candidate, Stanford

Problem Sponsor

Kirk Jenne and Vinoj Zachariah of NAVSEA 21, Washington, D.C.

Original Problem Statement

The NAVSEA21 maintenance team needs an automated way to inspect ballast tanks in order to accurately predict the level of repair required and maintenance timelines.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

95

The Innovation

Background

Kyle studied computer science with a concentration in artificial intelligence at Stanford. The summer going into his senior year, Kyle interned as a data scientist at veteran-owned start-up Second Front Systems. There, he learned about the painstakingly difficult US government acquisition and software accreditation processes. During his half-year internship, he built a data-mining tool to supplement Second Front's acquisition decision support system, Atlas Fulcrum, in order to identify and evaluate brand-new US-based start-ups before adversarial investors could get their hands on them.  

Ghassan received his Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from the American University of Beirut and specialized in Control systems, robotics, and mechanical design. In addition to experience as a researcher and engineer, Ghassan founded Asymptotic Robotics Inc. to produce modular structural maintenance robots aimed at facade cleaning for high-rises and skyscrapers while eliminating the use of water and detergents.

Kyle and Ghassan, along with Karim Tabaja, Philip Lambert, and Shubh Gupta, formed "Team Ankabot” for the Spring 2022 H4D course at Stanford.

The Solution

The team took on an Office of Naval Research-sponsored problem headfirst to investigate methods of improving ballast tank inspections. The 10-weeks of Lean Launchpad problem validation, customer discovery, and rapid prototyping processes unexpectedly revealed that the US Navy was experiencing a crisis of vessel maintenance availability delays. 

After over 100 interviews with over 25 organizations, the team determined that an unmanned underwater vehicle deployment could realistically enable the Navy to perform ballast tank inspections—both impromptu and planned—during a pierside availability when the tanks are filled, thus removing the requirement for dry-docking period. Implementing this fleet-wide still to this day has the potential for significantly increasing operational readiness, reducing sustainment and maintenance costs, and empowering personnel at regional maintenance centers across the country.

Presentation

CausalTwin’s
H4X Labs Experience

Filling In the Missing Piece

While the team thought that they had achieved product-market fit with their concept by the end of the class, they quickly realized that the hardware already existed and could be bought from established providers such as Deep Trekker and Video Ray. However, Kyle realized that what lacked was a hardware-agnostic software component to securely and easily store the captured data and accompanying inspector annotations.

Fast-forwarding to summer of 2022, the team entered BMNT's H4X Labs summer accelerator to continue studying the problem and finding a path towards commercialization of a software solution. Using a grant from the Common Mission Product, the student team incorporated as CausalTwin, Inc. in July with Kyle as CEO and Ghassan as CTO and made it as finalists in the NSIN Starts Naval Tank Inspection Challenge in September 2022.

The demo days for this challenge involved inspecting an unfilled void inside the USS Midway aircraft carrier in San Diego, CA. To simulate a submersible solution, the team flew first person view drones to perform corrosion and structural assessments with data being handed off to an off-site inspector for analysis.

The team discovered from its improvised workflow on the carrier that indoor localization and navigation, obstacle avoidance, video file management, and report generation were the main pain points in the process. This is why Kyle and Ghassan are now pushing for building a cloud-based software platform to better streamline the aggregation of different sensory streams from unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles to better automate computer vision analysis pipelines and the subsequent generation of maintenance reports.

Moving Forward

H4D alumni Kyle Orciuch and Ghassan Oueidat are now continuing their H4D work to help the US Navy improve ballast tank inspections with their new startup, CausalTwin, Inc.

To learn more about CausalTwin, Inc., you can visit their website.

Natrion

University of Illinois

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Paving the Way With Solid-State Ion Batteries

The Team

Alex Kosyakov

• CEO of Natrion
• Materials Science and Engineering major at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Tom Rouffiac

• COO at Natrion
• Finance major at Indiana University Kelley School of Business

Duke Shih

• CTO at Natrion
• Former Principal Materials Scientist at Itron
• Ph.D. in Materials Engineering from Imperial College London

Problem Sponsor

Harlan Kefalas of the 69th Forward Support Company, Fort Sill, Oklahoma

Original Problem Statement

Support platoons need reduced reliance on fuel for generators in order to free up valuable resources and reduce the risk of enemy action during resupply missions.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

33

The Innovation

Young entrepreneurs are increasingly becoming catalysts for grand new ways of thinking. In the case of recent startup Natrion, an alum of the national Hacking for Defense program, the team’s innovation is revolutionizing batteries and power supply as we know it. 

The opportunities before them are far beyond anything they could have imagined when they started. It took getting an in-depth and personal understanding of modern power supply shortfalls to awaken them to the true potential for change on both the commercial and Defense levels.

In 2017, a high school student named Alex Kosyakov won an internship at a materials engineering lab. There, he was given the freedom to tinker in his off hours, and he used his time wisely. Alex developed early-stage prototypes of what would become the first solid-state lithium and sodium ion batteries, discoveries that would make batteries safer and improve performance. The trouble was, though clearly advanced beyond his years as an engineer, he didn’t immediately realize his inventions carried such far-reaching potential. 

Kosyakov patented his early concepts when he started his undergraduate studies at University of Illinois. Under the guidance of his lecturer and advisor, Alex Gorsuch, he decided to try the school’s iVenture accelerator and eventually pursued Hacking for Defense. Here, he and his small team of material engineers and business students gained insight into the vast applications their inventions could have in the Defense industry. In 2018, still undergraduates, the team founded Natrion. In that capacity, they have continued to develop solid-state batteries with a state-of-the-art ceramic-polymer composite solid-state electrolyte called Lithium Solid Ionic Composite, or LISIC.

Traditional Power Pitfalls

When he began his research, Kosyakov had little concept of the existing depth of need for a better battery and power sources. He knew the common shortcomings of traditional power sources, including fire risks, weight, noise, maintenance and limits regarding recharging. But in his time with H4D, Kosyakov began hearing first-hand the stories that gave true meaning to his creation.

He spoke to personnel being evaluated in drills on stealth yet forced to rely on portable diesel generators that roared to life the moment they were turned on. They'd already failed in the stealth criteria before they’d begun. This, he knew, corresponded to in-theater scenarios in which maintaining a low-profile means the difference between life and death. 

He spoke to armed servicemen serving in Iraq and Afghanistan who drove resupply trucks into austere forward operating bases, lugging heavy, broken generators over bomb-strewn roads knowing that the generators could not be fixed because the necessary parts weren’t available. 

He spoke to a scouting unit in Afghanistan that carried a heavy generator to support their radios for maintaining communications, yet found themselves far ahead of their squad, in hostile territory, with dead radios and a generator that wouldn't start. 

Diesel generators exist to provide on-site power, albeit loudly, but they only work if supplied with enough fuel. According to the U.S. Army 52 percent of all US military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan occurred during attacks on land-based resupply missions – resupply convoys bringing the very fuel upon which those generators depend.

“We didn't realize that generators have been dictating how Warfighters have operated since the World War II era,” said Kosyakov. “We learned that if we could deliver a way to carry power through energy storage versus relying on generation, the expeditionary capabilities of Warfighters and the DoD in general would be greatly enhanced, not to mention the opportunities for the public. We were awe struck by how huge the problem is right now, but also at how huge the potential is if we can make energy storage work for the DoD,” he said.

Presentation

Natrion’s
H4X Labs Experience

From DoD-Minded to Dual-Use

Natrion started with a plan to build stationary energy storage systems like microgrids to replace generators for both commercial and Defense customers. After further research, the team unveiled an opportunity to do even more to solve safety and performance issues in portable electronics, radios, and communications equipment in consumer electronics. This led to the electric vehicle market which is currently the biggest market for batteries in the commercial space. 

Electric vehicles, in turn, led to concepts for improved drones for the DoD. 

“Our experimenting has created an interesting cycle between Defense and commercial opportunities. They’ve been happening in tandem, with one idea leading to another, but everything began with the DoD, in terms of tech validation. We reach new milestones with the DoD, then translate those capabilities to the commercial side. That has worked really well for us,” said Kosyokov. 

Another major shift in the design concept for Natrion was in the size and usability of the batteries once created. Initially, they embarked on developing a large battery that could replace and mimic traditional diesel generators. After speaking with end users and customers, team members realized the impracticality of these large, heavy and burdensome machines. The team pivoted to a revolutionary idea for a modular battery suite that could be large and powerful, or broken down into smaller, lightweight components, including cargo pocket batteries for radios. 

”Walking into H4D, we thought, ‘What could the DoD possibly want with more batteries?’ But once we completed the customer discovery, we found that it was one of its highest priorities. We also understood the applications to the commercial side as well. We really started working in a dual-use way,” Kosyakov said.

A Future for Safer, Better Power

Looking ahead at uses for Natrion’s solid-state batteries, the company hopes the world will soon be ready to embrace its solid-state sodium ion battery as well. Sodium ion batteries are compelling for ecological and humanitarian reasons, as they don’t rely on the harmful mining of dwindling resources, like lithium, or cobalt, two critical components often linked to human rights abuses and environmental pollution. These resources also can’t be sourced in the U.S, demanding a reliance on potential adversaries. 

Kosyakov and his team are already working with local, American manufacturers and factories, and waiting until the market matures to accept sodium. Their goal is set for 2025 and beyond. The change would give Natrion something it strives to become: a truly American battery company. While countries such as China vie for power over cobalt mines and lithium salt beds around the world, Natrion envisions an America that sources, produces and builds its own battery materials domestically. It’s a future they can believe in, as they lay the groundwork for it, one battery at a time.

To learn more about Natrion, you can visit their website.

Team Disaster Games

SUCCESS STORIES > HACKING FOR HOMELAND SECURITY

Team Disaster Games

Colorado School of Mines

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Making Disaster Preparedness Accessible

The Team

Torin Johnson

• University Innovation Fellow
• Graduate TA for Innov8X (Hacking for Homeland Security)
• Former Project Engineering Intern at JR Clark Enterprises 
• Former Venture Capital Intern at Rockies Venture Club 
• BS in Computer Science and Robotics & Intelligent Systems

Maxwell Sissman

• Senior Scientific Analyst at OBXtek
• Senior Consultant at Artlin Consulting
• MS in Space Resources from Colorado School of Mines
• MS in Systems Engineering from the George Washington University
• BS in Aerospace Studies from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Tabish Iqbal

• Founder / Energy Analyst at Ceres Energy Solutions
• Former Finance / Accounts Officer at Mari Petroleum Company Limited
• Former Finance Executive at Pakistan Oilfields Limited 
• MS in Mineral & Energy Economics from Colorado School of Mines
• BBA, Finance & Investment from National University of Sciences and Technology

Problem Sponsor

FEMA Region VIII

Original Problem Statement

The National Preparedness Division needs a safe and interactive way to run large-scale emergency simulations in order to improve crisis management skills and validate the response capabilities of the various communities.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

25

The Innovation

Across the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) responds to and works to prevent disasters. A critical piece of FEMA’s mission is ensuring a well-prepared general population, which greatly increases the efficiency and likelihood of success in these emergency situations. Typically, FEMA hosts large scale, in-person role playing simulations to help prepare individuals for disaster response. However, when the pandemic broke out, FEMA was no longer able to conduct their in-person training sessions and was looking for a suitable alternative.

With this new challenge at hand, FEMA Region VIII, which covers the mountain region of the United States, tasked Team Disaster Games at Colorado School of Mines with educating the general public on disaster preparation and response.

As the team began their investigation into this problem, they spoke with experts at organizations such as FEMA, the Red Cross, NARA and the Disaster Institute in order to better understand disaster preparedness challenges. Through this beneficiary discovery process, the team found that a primary challenge with educating the public is that the training sessions are resource intensive, which limited the number of individuals they would be able to reach.

In addition to the resource heavy nature of these training sessions, the team also found that there was little incentive for the general public to participate in these disaster preparedness training sessions. The team compared the attitude toward visiting a doctor. Something you should do but may not always be a top priority to do in your free time. While ensuring a well-prepared general population would greatly increase the efficiency and likelihood of success for emergency responders, they also found that there was little incentive for the general public to engage.

With this in mind, the team decided that their solution must be both engaging and educational. While there was plenty of disaster engagement material available, it was the engagement that proved to be the primary challenge.

With this information the team began to explore low fidelity simulations, such as the one created by NARA and iThrive. Initially, the team considered creating their own game (board or video) to engage their desired population segment. However, the team soon realized that creating and marketing an entirely new game would be very challenging, and beneficiary discovery interviews proved that an unfamiliar game with a government seal of approval quickly lost its appeal.

From there, the team went on to consider “reskinning” games, specifically those popular with our target demographic. This would involve taking known and popular games among their demographic and modifying them to include disaster preparedness scenarios. The team tested this concept by reskinning popular games “Jenga” and “Exploding Kittens”, and watched for behavioral changes in action and conversation of those who participated as a way to validate our hypotheses. 

Ultimately, the team took their findings and published a White Paper on the use of games to educate their segment of the general population (college students) on disaster preparedness. Though the team tested their hypotheses on college students, they believe this can be an example case for educating the larger population. The team focused on creating engaging games, suitable for a small group with limited resources. 

Though the team does not have plans to continue with the project themselves, they hope to hand their work on to a future Hacking for Homeland Security team to continue with this research and turn their pretoype into a prototype that FEMA may actually be able to implement.

Presentation

Team Disaster Game’s
Hacking for Homeland Security Experience

Growing Their Disaster Preparedness Network

One of the highlights of the course for Team Disaster Games was the “flipped classroom” style of learning, where students share their findings with the instructors, rather than listening to a lecture. This methodology challenged Team Disaster Games to connect with experts in the field to validate, or disprove, their hypotheses. 

Torin shared that he really enjoyed that he was able to meet and network with people working in the disaster preparedness space.  For Tabish, the interview process was his favorite part of the course and was “ultimately what led the team to find a successful solution to the problem we were tasked with addressing.”

The team also highlighted that the interview process gave them the opportunity to have an iterative problem solving process. It allowed them to focus on the problem first and made the challenge they were facing more digestible. By speaking with a wide range of beneficiaries, the team was able to focus on the pretotype they were developing and figure out what the real problem was, rather than going down the wrong path without understanding what beneficiaries really needed.

Getting Outside of the Classroom

For Tabish and his teammates, the course had a steep learning curve. The team was confronted with an unfamiliar problem and were tasked with using unfamiliar entrepreneurship strategies. However, he shared that the course helped him improve the ways in which he thinks through problem solving. For Maxwell, he similarly stated that using the Mission Model Canvas made considering both the business layer in addition to the public benefit element became more default as the course went on.

No Sim, No Train

Arizona State University

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Overcoming Training Shortages with Virtual Reality (VR) Simulations

The Team

Ksenia Kerentseva

• MS in Innovation and Venture Development from Arizona State University
• BS in Aeronautical Management Technology from Arizona State University

Vipin Verma

• Former Tech Lead at Bluesapling
• Former Software Engineer at Wize Commerce 
• PhD Candidate in Human Systems Engineering at the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University
• MS in Computer and Information Systems Security & Information Assurance from Stratford University
• B.Tech in Production & Industrial Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee

James Cook

• Technology Facilitator at the Centers for Adaptive Warfighting
• 2021 X-Force Fellow
• Former Mechanical Engineering Intern at MD Helicopters, Inc. 
• BS in Mechanical Engineering Systems with a concentration in Homeland Security from Arizona State University

Problem Sponsor

355th Maintenance Group - Air Combat Command

Original Problem Statement

Aircraft maintainers from the 355th Maintenance Group need an accessible training program in order to improve their capability to complete essential core tasks and certify their experience.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

21

The Innovation

The 355th Maintenance Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, AZ works to ensure deployment readiness of over 1,900 personnel by training mission-ready pilots and maintenance personnel. With a shortage of sufficiently trained maintenance crew, H4D Team “No Sim, No Train” from Arizona State University was tasked with increasing training efficiency to ensure safe and efficient missions for soldiers. 

Through 21 interviews and two visits to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, the team realized the key challenge facing the 355th Maintenance Group was the maintenance team shared training equipment, including the flight simulators and the physical aircrafts, with pilots. The priority for training equipment typically went to pilots and maintenance personnel frequently had their training rescheduled or delayed. With these disruptions, some maintenance personnel were unable to complete the training at all.

The team set out to not only improve the availability of training equipment for the 355th Maintenance Group, but also worked to improve overall preparedness. This improvement would reduce the unit’s cost to repair planes and safety for maintenance personnel. With the goals of increasing access and reducing errors, the team decided the best solution would be to develop a virtual reality (VR) solution that would allow maintenance personnel to train on their own equipment with their own software, to decrease conflicts with pilots.

At first, the team considered building an entirely new VR software. However, upon further investigation, the team realized this solution would prove too costly and time consuming for the 355th Maintenance Group, who were looking to quickly implement the solution. Thus, the team decided to work with existing software and modify it to fit the needs of maintenance personnel. 

Despite public health conditions, the team had the opportunity to visit Davis-Monthan Air Force Base to experience the existing pilot training simulators. The team stated that having the opportunity to test the equipment themselves debunked several of their assumptions and allowed them to better understand the experience of those using the equipment.

After experiencing the existing system themselves, the team set off to work with partner organizations to develop software that specifically met the needs of maintenance personnel. The team utilized the existing training procedures to construct various scenarios for trainees. You can view the team’s MVP in action here. Upon presenting the innovation to their problem sponsor, they received very positive feedback. One 355th Maintenance Group trainer expressed how thrilled she was to have VR training software instead of needing to use live ammunition for both safety and cost reasons.

Team No Sim, No Train plans to continue to pursue this venture beyond the semester and plans to incorporate as “VTRAIN”. The team was accepted into the NSIN Vector Program to continue to build out their solution. The team hopes to continue to develop the appropriate training software for the 355th Maintenance Group and hopes to build and scale similar VR solutions across the Department of Defense.

View fullsize

No Sim, No Train tests current pilot training VR systems at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

Presentation

No Sim, No Train’s
Hacking for Defense Experience

Visiting Davis-Monthan Air Force Base

With masks at the ready, the team had the opportunity to visit Davis-Monthan AFB, which gave them invaluable insight into their problem. James said this was both a “cool experience” and one that “made a big difference” in developing their final solution. While initially the VR solution was an abstract idea, once the team was able to experience the simulator themselves, they gained huge insight into the experience of the trainee and the needs of the trainer. Furthermore, the team got to sit in the actual aircrafts, which allowed the team to better visualize the environment they were working to simulate. “We were lucky that we were able to visit the base” shared Ksenia.

Learning to Innovate in H4D

As a Master of Innovation Tech student, Ksenia was initially drawn to the course that would allow her to develop innovative solutions. Before H4D, she had not worked with the military and really enjoyed the opportunity to work in a fast paced class. She appreciated the small class size that gave her and her teammates the opportunity to work one-on-one with their professors to develop their solution. Similarly, Vipin expressed that this course was “different from anything I’ve ever worked on.” He enjoyed the opportunity to gain hands on experience and understand how things operate in the Air Force. 

For teammate James, the best part of his Hacking for Defense experience was the impact he was able to have. Through the course, he and his teammates were able to develop a solution that will improve flight safety and save lives. He had never worked with the Department of Defense before and was excited to have the opportunity to work with military end users on a weekly basis. James shared “I’ve always wanted to pursue federal service Hacking for Defense has given me a more clear path to do so.”

View fullsize

Ksenia of No Sim, No Train sits in an aircraft to better understand the systems they will recreate using VR.

Team Remote Warfare & Resilience

University of Virginia

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Addressing Mental Health Challenges Among RPA Pilots

The Team

Caroline Still

• Data Analyst at NSIN
• Former Research Assistant at the National Security Policy Center
• Former Select Prosecution Intern at the Office of the State Attorney, 4th Judicial Circuit of Florida
• BA in Global Security & Justice, and French from the University of Virginia

Kaylee Moore

• Research Intern at the Miller Center of Public Affairs
• Former Virginia Delegate Campaign Intern
• Former Administrative Intern at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Towne Realty
• BA in Foreign Affairs & History from the University of Virginia

Strother Cech

• Legal Assistant intern at the Legal Aid Justice Center
• BA in Foreign Affairs and History from the University of Virginia

Thien-Kim Dinh

• MS in Leadership & Public Policy from the University of Virginia

Sahana Bhagat

• NSIN X-Force Fellow
• Former Peace Appeal Foundation Intern
• Former Hager Sharp Intern
• BA in Media Studies & Global Security and Justice

Campbell Turner

• Former NSIN X-Force Fellow
• Former Congressional Intern
• BA in Foreign Affairs and Public Policy

Problem Sponsor

RPA Pilot with the 732nd Support Squadron

Original Problem Statement

Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) personnel need effective policy implementation strategies, and specific changes to Air Force Instructions (AFIs) in order to prioritize human capital and improve mission readiness and retention rates.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

76

The Innovation

In the Air Force, the demand for Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) pilots has grown over 76% since 2013. Despite this demand, the retention rate for RPA pilots is below 10%. RPA pilots often struggle with burnout, anxiety, and work-life balance, which explains the extremely high departure rate. Furthermore, RPA pilots suffer from significantly higher rates of suicide ideation than the general Air Force population.  During the summer of 2020,  NSIN X-Force fellows Sahana Bhagat and Campbell Turner began investigating the specific challenges faced by RPA pilots.

In the Fall 2020 semester, UVA Hacking for Defense students Caroline Sill, Kaylee Moore, Strother Cech, and Thien-Kim Dinh were tasked with continuing the work of the summer X-Force fellows and developing specific policy recommendations for the RPA community. The team decided to pivot and focus on the challenges of implementing the initiatives launched by the Air Force in early 2020 and recommend specific policies that would improve the quality of life for RPA pilots. 

In order to better understand the problem, the team interviewed a variety of subject matter experts including pilots, psychologists, psychiatrists, chaplains, and the authors of several prominent RAND studies on the challenges facing the RPA community. Through these interviews, the team identified recruitment challenges and promotion pathways as a contributor to low morale. The team also uncovered the challenge of moral injury, which often causes symptoms similar to those of PTSD, and that many pilots feel ethically conflicted about their role. 

The team found that an overarching challenge is this issue is often viewed as a large, nebulous issue rather than as discrete policy problems. Thus, Team Remote Warfare and Resilience decided to focus on small, concrete changes that could quickly improve the quality of life for RPA pilots. 

Through beneficiary discovery interviews, the team identified three current obstacles (the “Triple C”) cost, culture, and complacency to current RPA policy and proposed several specific solutions. The team’s policy recommendations include: establishing a clear and distinct promotion pathway for RPA pilots, giving pilots true days off (rather than on-call days), and increasing social support through chaplains, psychologists, and more child care options. Through weekly discussions with their problem sponsor and other Air Force leadership, they were able to workshop the practicality of their policy proposals and tailor them to meet the needs of real RPA pilots. The policy proposals address both the quality of life for pilots and mission readiness for the Air Force as a whole.

Beyond the semester, the team is pursuing a variety of advocacy avenues to continue making quality of life advancements for RPA pilots. X-Force fellows Sahana and Campbell have been collaborating with RPA professionals to advocate for the mental health challenges within the community and hope to compile and publish their findings. The team is working closely with the National Security Policy Center at UVA's Batten School of Public Policy to host a symposium for the RPA community to present their findings (once public health conditions allow).

Presentation

Team Remote Warfare & Resilience’s
Hacking for Defense Experience

Tackling Real World Challenges

Strother expressed his surprise at the depth of knowledge he gained through the course: “I did not expect to leave the class as a drone expert.” He wanted to use Hacking for Defense and his final year of college to make a meaningful impact and believes that they were able to take steps to advance this issue and improve lives. He appreciated the opportunity to work on a real world issue and shares the distinction between this course and other college courses: “This wasn’t a case interview… This is a real world issue. Working on something that was not hypothetical was very rewarding and very unique.”

Similarly, Kaylee describes Hacking for Defense as an incredible learning opportunity: “It was really cool being able to jump right into a problem I knew nothing about beforehand.” Initially, she was unsure of how subject matter experts became experts. Through this course, she has realized that through research, interviews, and an open mind you’re able to think through the problem and identify a solution.

The interview process is a critical part of the Hacking for Defense course, and Campbell admits to initially being a bit intimidated by reaching out to experts. Would they really want to spend their time talking to college students? However, throughout the course he saw the willingness of all of his contacts to not only meet with them, but also introduce them to others in the field and support them with their research. These interviews with enthusiastic beneficiaries were ultimately what drove their policy recommendations.

Personal Impact

For Caroline, being able to support the quality of life of service members was personal. Her brother is commissioning into the Army and she was excited to have the opportunity to support the research that will improve the quality of life for those he will one day be leading. She wanted to ensure that soldiers, like her brother, have access to all the resources they needed to make quality of life improvements and positive policy changes. 

Sahana, reflecting on her own H4D experience from the pre-COVID fall 2019 semester, described the enjoyment of being able to work closely with her team. The group was randomly selected, and she admittedly was apprehensive about the group dynamic. However, they quickly bonded and spent countless hours together in the library. The night before their presentation at the Pentagon, the entire team stayed at her home in Northern Virginia, and together they ran to catch the Metro in the morning. She shares that this memory “will always hold a special place in her heart.”

Team Splint-X

Texas A&M University

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“A Splint in a Can” - Helping Ejected Aircrew Quickly Address Injuries and Evade Hostile Environments

The Team

Kyle King

• MS in Mechanical Engineering and Graduate Research Assistant at Texas A&M University 
• BE in Mechanical Engineering at Bradley University
• Graduate Research Assistant at Texas A&M University

Allison Scott

• BS in Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University

Ahsan Waseem

• BS in Interdisciplinary Studies - Electronic Systems and Industrial Distributions Engineering at Texas A&M University
• Former Sound Engineering Intern at Lucky Run Studios

Problem Sponsor

Air Force Research Laboratory

Original Problem Statement

Ejected Aircrew members need a compact way to stabilize a broken limb while enabling mobility to allow the injured aircrew to escape and evade until rescued.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

52

The Innovation

Each year, roughly 10 fighter pilots must eject from their aircraft, and breaking a limb upon ejection or landing is not an uncommon occurrence. Currently, there are no splint type devices within the survival aid kit of a fighter jet. Fighter pilots who need a quick and easy way to become mobile to evade hostile environments turn to sticks or other resources they are able to find upon landing. 

Team Splint-X was tasked with addressing this challenge and spoke with over fifty Air Force members, nurses, EMTs, and researchers to identify a viable solution. Initially the team struggled to identify a solution but with a combination of speaking to people and research, they began to recognize what the customer needed. They realized they needed to identify a splint solution that required little to no training to use, was small enough to fit into ejection kits, and something that would allow for quick mobility.  

As the team continued their interviews, they realized that this was a big need within the Air Force and their unique position to help these soldiers. Team Splint-X created a splint device that utilizes quick hardening foam to be sprayed on the injured area creating a durable, temporary cast in order to become mobile and prevent any further injury. After looking at competitors, they realized there was nothing as compact and fast acting currently on the market. In addition to ejected Aircrew, the team has identified a variety of other potential beneficiaries: emergency medical personnel, hikers, athletes, and animal care professionals.  

The team has received very positive feedback from both their sponsor and other beneficiaries on this much needed product. While health conditions limited site visits, lab time, and the ability to physically “get out of the building”, Team Splint-X adapted. Ahsan says “There are a lot of obstacles in entrepreneurship, and the pandemic is just one of them.” Their tenacity has allowed them to successfully develop a proof concept and establish plans to continue their work beyond the semester. 

With the high-potential of this product, the team received a grant from the vector program at A&M University to continue with their work. With this grant, the team plans to create a product prototype. Once they accomplish a successful prototype, they hope to start a company, pursue a patent and seek further funding to develop their project. Their ultimate goal is to conduct a clinical trial and go through the FDA approval process so they can begin implementation of their multi-use solution across a wide range of industries.

Presentation

Team Splint-X’s
Hacking for Defense Experience

Career Impact

For Kyle King, getting into the vector program was a “dream come true”. Having his own businesses has been a dream of his and he hopes to pursue this work full time after graduation. He says the progression of his H4D project is “a step in the right direction for what I've always wanted to do.” Similarly, Ahsan shared that his experience in Hacking for Defense strengthened his goal of starting his own company. He really enjoyed the idea and process of “starting something from nothing.”

For Allison, she realized how much she enjoyed working with people and the problem solving process. Brainstorming ideas with beneficiaries and watching their ideas, shift, fall or become something totally different was a very rewarding process. This experience has piqued her interest in the technical consulting world, where she is able to bring her knowledge to clients to help solve their problems.

Building a Network to Reach Their Solution

For Ahsan, speaking with 50 beneficiaries was simultaneously the most challenging and most rewarding aspect of the course. He described the frustration of finding someone they are really interested in talking to, but then not hearing back from them. The course has made him “More comfortable reaching out to people and cold emailing.” Overall, the team was pleasantly surprised by how willing people were to speak with them. Kyle shared “They were strangers to us, but they were incredibly helpful and wanted to stay in contact with us.”

The team also points to their H4D teaching team as a key driver of their success. The teaching team always encouraged the team to (virtually) get outside of the classroom and the building to gain a better perspective on their problem. Their instructors helped the team understand the interview process and how to ask the right questions with beneficiaries.  On behalf of the team, Allison expressed her gratitude for the teaching team. “They did a wonderful job leading us.”

Team Swamped

Arizona State University

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Innovating Organizational Structures to support the excavation of MIA soldiers from past conflicts

The Team

Shane Jinson

• 2nd-year PhD student in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University
• Fellow Assistant at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA
• BA in Biology from Northern Vermont University

Shivaani Methuku

• Former Software Engineering Intern at GoDaddy and Ticketmaster
• VP in ASU Women in Computer Science
• BS in Computer Science candidate at Arizona State University

Travis Andren

• CEO & Co-Founder of Lemna LLC
• Chairman & CEO of D3 Designs Inc.
• Current MS in Innovation & Venture Development at Arizona State University
• MS Environmental Policy Management, Energy Management and Sustainability from University of Denver
• BS in Industrial Design from Arizona State University

Problem Sponsor

US ARMY DPAA - Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency

Original Problem Statement

Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency archeological teams need an effective wetland mitigation method in order to conduct safe recovery operations in areas of shallow water or saturated soils.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

51

The Innovation

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) supports the location and excavation of the remains of MIA individuals from past military conflicts. The DPAA tasked Team Swamped of ASU with solving a complicated wetland excavation of site 2711 in Grado, Italy and consider larger organizational challenges that would make these types of excavations more efficient in the future. 

On January 30, 1944, a flight crew of ten on a mission to Yugoslavia was hit and crashed off the coast of Italy. With one survivor and two bodies recovered, the remaining seven soldiers remained unaccounted for until 2014 when a local farmer at site 2711was digging and found a military boot. This indicated that the remaining bodies are likely below the property's duck pond.

Team Swamped was brought in to support excavation at this particularly challenging site. The forensic archeologists they had spoken with with 10, 15 and even 30 years of experience stated that this was the most complicated site they had worked with. This pond, now on private land and home to endangered species presented a variety of challenges to Team Swamped, including navigating relationships with Italian partners and determining heavy equipment needs for such a sensitive, semi-aquatic site. An uninformed excavation attempt could permanently compromise the site. 

Through their 51 beneficiary discovery interviews, the team realized that the primary challenge facing the DPAA was not the technology itself, but rather the "lack of awareness and access to available technologies to solve the wetland problem". Excavation capabilities were siloed within the agency and across partners. However, through beneficiary discovery, the team realized that they may be able to better work if the organization served to organize various partners in order to figure out what equipment they have and how they can best use it. 

With this in mind, the team created a software MVP that allowed the DPAA to organize all partners by their available technology inventories. This software would allow the archaeological team search and rank partners to help plan and execute missions with greater accuracy and efficiency. After the team identified that the organization of technology was the primary issue for this site, they wanted to think outside the box and address the larger communication problem facing the organization to better inform the planning of this and future excavation missions.

After speaking with other leaders within the organization, they realized their MVP could be integrating with the capabilities of their emerging Salesforce platform. The team mapped out detailed spreadsheets outlining in the site architecture and facilitated a meeting with Salesforce & DPAA to better understand how their MVP could be translated onto the Salesforce platform. The utilization of the platform in this way would result in more effective and estimated savings of $10,000 per mission; with just 100 missions for the organization this would result in an over $100,000,000 in savings. Not only would the use of this platform be more cost effective for the organization, it would allow them to more effectively excavate the bodies of those killed in action and offer closure for family members. While the team does not have plans to continue beyond the semester, they have successfully handed off their work to Salesforce engineers who are able to effectively implement their plan.

Presentation

Team Swamped’s
Hacking for Defense Experience

Getting Comfortable Speaking with Strangers

When reflecting on his experience in the course, Shane Jinson describes how much more comfortable he got speaking to strangers. He shared an experience where he was conducting a beneficiary discovery interview with a DPAA employee and ended up having an impromptu conversation with the Acting Director. He highlights how his experience in Hacking for Defense taught him to have the confidence to go into these interviews while remaining flexible in your assumptions. Shane states that going into interviews he “thought I knew the answer then it was something totally different.”

Shivaani describes the challenges the team faced at the onset of the problem while figuring out what the expectations were and what exactly the problem was all about. The beneficiary discovery interviews helped the team understand what the underlying problem was. Things “got clear as we started doing the interviews.” Similarly, Travis shared how critical it was to share the MVP with those they spoke with. Talking through the MVPs “accelerate the overall process and made the interviews engaging and fun.”

Learning to Navigate Government

Shane emphasized the insight into government agency structure and communication dynamics that he gained through the course. “Anyone interested in working with or within government agencies should take this class”. He greatly increased his confidence through constant engagement with numerous individuals from several different levels of  agency personnel within the DPAA and other agencies. Additionally, he was pleasantly surprised by his ability to go beyond “ideal” organizational theory in this class, and learned a good deal about how decisions are actually made within a “real” organizational, bureaucratic structure during this brief but rewarding experience. 

Travis admits that before his work on the project, he had not heard of the work being done by the DPAA. His work in Hacking for Defense showed him this humanitarian side of the DoD and “shone a whole new light on the military” for him. His work in this course made him realize just how many personnel are out there to recover.

Team Anthro Energy

Stanford University

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Changing the Future of Battery Technology

The Team

David Mackanic

• Founder of Anthro Energy
• Former Partner at Dorm Room Fund
• PhD. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University
• B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Chemistry from Virginia Tech

Michael Kao

• Head of Product at Anthro Energy
• Battery Engineering Intern at Natron Energy
• B.S. in Material Science and Engineering Candidate at Stanford University

Problem Sponsor

Joint Staff Office

Original Problem Statement

Isolated personnel (IP) such as downed fighter pilots need an integrated power source on their person to ensure access to power for necessary electronics and to increase rescue probability.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

143

The Innovation

Gone are the days of bulky batteries weighing down Soldiers on missions. H4D alum and H4X Labs participants in team Anthro Energy have created “human-compatible” batteries that are flexible and foldable.

The Anthro Energy team was formed in the Spring 2020 term of Stanford’s Hacking for Defense course. The original H4D team included PhD student and Battery Engineer David Mackanic & Michael Kao (B.S Battery Engineer), along with dual MS-MBA students Jonathan Hess and Adreína Mesalles who came together to support challenges faced by the Joint Staff Office.

The team was originally tasked with addressing power shortages for ejected fighter pilots. However, after conducting over 143 beneficiary discovery interviews, the team realized that battery life was not a priority for this group; most beneficiaries stated that their priority in this situation was surviving, not battery life.

Through further beneficiary discovery interviews, the team identified a new group they could serve: the “Guardian Angels”, who carry out life-saving rescue missions for Soldiers. These operations typically involve jumping out of a plane while carrying sufficient batteries to power the variety of devices required for a successful mission. The team realized that a battery integrated into their backpack or body armor would dramatically improve the efficiency of rescue operations. Many beneficiaries told the team: “You are doing something that is going to save lives.”

During their time in Hacking for Defense, the team was able to verify the need for this product and prove the technology in the lab. However, as the term came to a close, the technology and a fully functional prototype wasn’t ready. They realized that in order to reach a deployment ready state, they would need to pursue a dual-use venture and utilize commercial funding in addition to government resources to create a functioning prototype.

In H4X Labs, the team focused on bridging the work they had conducted in the lab and the technology to make their product a reality. H4X Labs allowed the team to specifically focus on building commercial buy-in. David Mackanic graduated from Stanford University in May 2020, and is committed to working full time on pursuing Anthro Energy. Michael Kao is currently on a leave of absence, also working on Anthro Energy full time. For David and Michael, working on Anthro Energy full time was always the goal.

Presentation

Team Anthro Energy’s
H4X Labs Experience

Making Goals a Reality

David says they “knew the start-up playbook in the  abstract, but through H4X Labs we had the opportunity to build relationships to get the buy-in we needed to make it a reality.” The team cites the most rewarding and valuable part of H4X Labs were the mentors that supported them in building a dual-use customer base and taking the tactical steps toward building a successful start-up.

Anthro Energy founder David Mackanic was honored as a Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient. Forbes describes the innovation as: “Anthro has developed a flexible, non-flammable lithium ion battery that can be stretched and flexed like rubber thanks to an innovation in ‘polymeric solid-state ion conductor’ technology. There's endless applications for flexible batteries.” You can view Forbes’s feature here. 

David offers advice to future H4X Labs teams: “Put in the time to be very clear about what you want help with each week.” He encourages teams to utilize the H4X Labs and BMNT network, as it plays a critical role building buy-in and a potential customer base.

After H4X Labs, the team continues to work toward identifying product-market fit and move toward production in the new year. To learn more about Anthro Energy, you can visit their website and engage with them on LinkedIn.

Team Post-Quantum Cryptography

University of Alabama in Huntsville

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Decoding the Future of Post-Quantum Cryptography

The Team

Matthew Daigle

• MS in Computer Science Candidate at University of Alabama in Huntsville
• BS in Computer Science from University of Alabama in Huntsville

Erik Failing

• BS in Computer Science Candidate at University of Alabama in Huntsville

Angela Allison

• Software Engineer Associate at SAIC
• Former Software Engineer Intern at Raytheon
• BS in Computer Science from University of Alabama in Huntsville

Sean Pagani

• BS in Computer Science Candidate at University of Alabama in Huntsville
• Research Assistant at Information Technology and Systems Center (ITSC)

Original Problem Statement

Department of Defense Engineers need the ability to assess post-quantum cryptography algorithms in order to ensure system encrypted data security.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

15

The Innovation

Quantum computing is an operating system that works much faster than traditional computers and allows users to show information beyond just 0s and 1s (bits). Quantum computers have the ability to store information in “qubits” or in four different states (00, 01, 10, 11.) While this system has not fully been developed, the advent of quantum computation threatens to undermine information security systems. Given this threat, the Department of Defense tasked Team Post-Quantum Cryptography with assessing post-quantum cryptography algorithms in order to determine which should be employed to ensure data security. 

This was an entirely new topic for the team, so the group’s process began with learning more about quantum computing and encryption through interviews with experts. The team quickly realized that there are very few experts within this field. As shown in the graphic, while there are many individuals who study quantum computing and cryptography respectively, it was challenging for the group to identify a large pool of experts to contact. 

Nonetheless, the experts they were able to contact were a beacon of knowledge and offered tremendous support for the direction of their work. With the help of these experts and the extensive research the team conducted on their own, the team selected promising algorithms for further analysis. 

Once these algorithms were selected, the team worked diligently to prove that they had the potential to efficiently and reliably secure information security systems against attacks performed by a quantum computer. To do so, the team started by benchmarking the performance of each algorithm. From there, the team validated the security of these algorithms’ operations within tightly constrained environments. 

The team presented the information to their problem sponsor through a white paper report which presents the team’s findings about the state of quantum encryption and the three algorithms the team tested. Of the team, both Matthew and Erik plan to continue their work on this problem beyond the end of the Hacking for Defense semester.

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Presentation

Team Post-Quantum Cryptography’s
Hacking for Defense Experience

Quality over Quantity 

Most Hacking for Defense teams aim to contact a certain number of experts each week. While this works well for broad topics, weekly interview requirements proved to be a challenge for Team Post-Quantum Cryptography. There are very few experts that work at the intersection of quantum computing and cryptography. That pool is even further narrowed by security clearances that prevented several experts from speaking with the team about their work. With these restrictions, the team decided to focus their energy on high-quality, in-depth interviews with subject matter experts. 

The team conducted 15 beneficiary discovery interviews and had extensive conversations with eight others via email. For Team Post-Quantum Cryptography, these interviews were not brief, 10 minute phone calls. These interviews averaged an hour each with the longest interview reaching three and a half hours. With just 15, high-quality interviews, the team was able to engage in hours of conversation that ultimately led to the success of their final white paper report. 

Hacking for Defense Sparks Student Curiosity 

The members of Team Post-Quantum Cryptography had little engagement with the field of quantum cryptography before the semester. A curiosity in the topic sparked student’s interest in the course. Matthew stated he took Hacking for Defense because he “...likes to learn new things”. He continued to share that this course allowed him to “learn about things I never thought I would learn”.

Erik shared his interest in working on a project throughout the semester that produces a final product. He was excited about the opportunity to work on a long term project and have the ability to reflect proudly and say “I did this!”. With the flipped classroom model, students are able to take control of their learning and determine the course of their semester. 

The team cited the Lean LaunchPad tools as a key reason for their success. Working with the Mission Model Canvas guided their initial steps to better understanding the challenge at hand. Matthew said “Without it, we wouldn’t have known where to start.” The use of the MMC allowed the team to effectively modify the canvas and pivot throughout the semester. The team’s curiosity paired with the Lean methodology allowed the team to successfully evaluate post-quantum cryptography algorithms to support their sponsoring organization.

Team Magneto

Georgetown University

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Side Stepping Physics to Identify Electromagnetic Spectrum Jamming Threats

The Team

Cindy Martinez

• Former Policy Analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, advising senior government officials on military cyber operations and space security issues
• BA in Cybersecurity and Marketing from California State University, San Bernardino
• MA Candidate for Security Studies from Georgetown University

Mack von Mehren

• Associate at Pallas Advisors, advising cutting-edge tech companies on navigating the national security ecosystem
• Former Marine Corps Infantry Officer
• BA in History and Leadership Studies from Williams College
• MA Candidate for Security Studies from Georgetown University

Nick Edwards

• Active Duty Army Officer with 10 years experience
• Deployed to Iraq in 2011 and Afghanistan in 2012
• BA in Political Science from Penn State University
• MS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University

Problem Sponsor

Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations Cross Functional Team, OSD

Original Problem Statement

Infantry units and radio operators need a way to practice identifying and responding to electromagnetic spectrum jamming in order to remain effective in communication-compromised environments.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

61

The Innovation

Initially, Team Magneto viewed this issue as a policy problem and sought to create a more efficient approval process for jamming training. The team believed that by reducing this lengthy process, there would be more opportunities for more jamming training to occur within the Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations Cross Functional Team.

However, the team soon realized that the bureaucracy was too dense to focus their efforts on solving that issue. One beneficiary stated: “It would take an act of God to do what you’re asking.” Informed by the course’s basis in the Lean LaunchPad methodology, the group decided to pivot. 

After going back to the drawing board to find a solution, the team had a breakthrough: they realized that training could continue if they are able to simulate jamming, rather than actually jamming equipment. With this pivot, they are able to entirely sidestep the lengthy approval process for jamming and could provide Soldiers and Marines with exposure to jamming through training. 

With this new direction, the team produced the “In-Line Jamming Simulator” which completely removed the EMS physics within typical jamming training. The problem sponsors and beneficiaries are eager about this innovation, with one beneficiary stating: “I want it, when can I get it?”

With the strong interest in their solution, the team will continue to work on this project beyond the end of the semester and are currently working to create 10 - 20 prototypes of the In-Line Jamming Simulator to get the product in the hands of end-users for further feedback. Team Magneto is a Common Mission Project Impact Fund recipient, which will support their work in developing a prototype. Additionally, they are pursuing several other funding opportunities to continue to develop their product.

Presentation

Team Magneto’s
Hacking for Defense Experience

Team Magneto’s Mack Von Mehren heard about Hacking for Defense long before logging into his course registration portal at Georgetown University. During his 2017-2018 deployment to Korea with his Marine Battalion he was asked to identify problems he was facing in the field that could be addressed by undergraduate and graduate Hacking for Defense students.

After identifying the problems within his own unit to be solved by university students, when he became a graduate student himself, he was enthusiastic about taking the course himself and to work toward solving problems faced by soldiers in the field. 

Mack Von Mehren emphasized the course’s value for both problem sponsors and for students taking the course, which allows them to “Be a ‘do-er’ before (they) have actually graduated.”

Nick Edwards, MSFS graduate stated this course “was the most rewarding class I took at Georgetown.” The entire team stated the course was an incredibly challenging and rewarding experience. They look forward to pursuing their solution beyond the course.

Team GroundWatch

University of Colorado at Boulder

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From Hacking for Defense Students to Company Co-Founders

The Team

Lt. Matthew Giltenan

• Co-Founder & Chief Operations Officer of GroundWatch
• U.S. Army Infantry Officer
• BA in Communication and Media Studies from Fordham University
• MBA from University of Colorado Boulder

Ron Thompson

• Co-Founder and CEO of GroundWatch
• Former Quantitative Developer at Point 72
• Former Rapid Prototype Application Developer at Booz Allen Hamilton
• MS in Computer Science Candidate at Tufts University
• Post-Baccalaureate Studies in Computer Science at University of Colorado Boulder
• BA in Government from Georgetown University

Carl Mueller

• Co-Founder / CTO of Lighting in a Bot, Inc.
• Former Research Scientist at QualTek Molecular Laboratories
• PhD in Computer Science Candidate at University of Colorado Boulder
• BS in Biopsychology University of California - Santa Barbara

Cameron Casby

• Mechanical Engineer at CACI International Inc.
• Co-Founder / CTO of GroundWatch
• MS in Mechanical Engineering from University of Colorado Boulder
• BS in Mechanical Engineering from University of Colorado Boulder

Michael Flanigan

• Former Development Engineer Ocean Aero Inc.
• Former Systems Engineer at DMC, Inc.
• MS in Computer Science Candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder
• BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame

Nicolas Mayhan

• Co-Founder of GroundWatch
• BS in Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering Candidate

Problem Sponsor

U.S. Army Special Operations Command

Original Problem Statement

USASOC Operational Detachments seeks to improve the automation of sensory information processing within their Counter-Unmanned Aircraft System in order to identify potential threats.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

65

The Innovation

The U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) is developing a Counter-Unmanned Aircraft System (“Count sUAS”) platform that will be mounted onto military vehicles. Hacking for Defense team GroundWatch was tasked by the USASOC to focus on integrating the visual and the machine learning algorithms. 

As the group began their process, they interviewed over fifty beneficiaries including USASOC commanders, Army engineers, sensors manufacturers and the end-user. As the group further explored this topic another key issue emerged: sensor integration. They found that many Count sUAS options from competitors require sensors to only work with internal products from the same company. They also found that many of their competitors' sensors struggle to track out-of-frame objects. Their solution needed to use the data from sensors to provide a full picture of the battlespace.

With the challenges faced by end-users in mind, the team decided to look further down the pipeline to address how these sensors worked together. With this, the team developed “Sixth Sense”, a sensor middleware that gives clients more choice with sensors and software (preventing vendor lock-in) and improves out-of-frame tracking capabilities. The solution provides more robust sensor integration that allows systems to be more modular than a traditional more customized integration. 

Additionally, the team addressed the problem of out-of-frame objects by combining the streams from various sensors to provide 360 degree situational awareness. Through Sixth Sense integration, the team has enabled the sensors to communicate with one another more effectively and pass relevant information to allow the sensors to automatically track threats. Finally, Sixth Sense allows the sensors to track threats out-of-frame, which means the camera doesn't need to be pointing at the threat continuously to estimate where it is. 

From this Hacking for Defense group,  three of the members of GroundWatch, Ron Thompson, Matthew Giltenan, Cameron Casby have formed a company, with Michael Flanigan continuing to work with the group as a software developer while pursuing another startup opportunity. The team is working on developing a more advanced prototype and looking at commercial opportunities.

To get in touch with GroundWatch, please contact info@ground-watch.com or ron.thompson@ground-watch.com.

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Presentation

Team GroundWatch’s
Hacking for Defense Experience

Working directly to serve the end user

A highlight for Team GroundWatch was that they were able to work on a solution that directly impacted end-users. Ron Thompson stated that most of his previous interactions with the military had been with officers. However, throughout their work, the team had the opportunity to interview and work with a lot of enlisted personnel on the ground. This allowed the team to create a solution that would not just be helpful in the abstract but allowed them to create something that would actually be helpful for the end-users on the ground. 

The team made all the difference

For most of Team GroundWatch, the team and teaching staff at CU Boulder made the course such a meaningful experience. Ron stated that his favorite part of the Hacking for Defense experience was “hands down the team.” He appreciated being with a group of such dedicated and motivated teammates that allowed them to make real progress on such a big issue in such a short amount of time. Mike spoke on behalf of the team to praise the CU Boulder teaching team. After hearing Hacking for Defense instructor Lloyd Thrall speak, Mike realized “I want to be in the same room as that guy.” The team appreciated the support and guidance from their teaching team that supported their team to where it is today.

Team Crow’s Nest

University of Colorado Boulder

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Innovating the Search and Rescue Process through Data Fusion

The Team

Jeff Venicx

• CU Robotics Club Founder and Team Lead for Robosub Team
• PhD Candidate in Computer Science at University of Colorado Boulder
• MS in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from University of Colorado Boulder
• BS in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from University of Colorado Boulder

Jake Luoma

• Former Engineer at Genentech
• MS in Computer Science Candidate at University of Colorado Boulder
• BS in Chemical and Biological Engineering from University of Colorado Boulder

Stacy Hayes

• Former Software Development Intern at Lockheed Martin
• BS in Computer Science from University of Colorado Boulder

Alex Mclaren

• Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corp
• Former Intern at the U.S. House of Representatives
• BS in Electrical Engineering from University of Colorado Boulder

Chad Lewis

• Development Engineer at Figure Engineering
• Former DevOps Intern at Webroot
• BS in Computer Science from University of Colorado Boulder

Jake McGrath

• Owner of McGrath Technologies
• Former Software Engineer at Overall Electric LLC
• BS in Aerospace Engineering and Applied Math Candidate at University of Colorado Boulder

Nolan Ferguson

• Former Systems Engineer for Air Force Office of Hypersonic Research funded research team
• BS in Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from University of Colorado Boulder

Problem Sponsor

National Security Agency (NSA)

Original Problem Statement

National Security Agency (NSA) personnel need alternative techniques to use UAVs to improve time and success rate of Search and Rescue missions.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

42

The Innovation

The National Security Agency (NSA) tasked Team Crow’s Nest with coordinating multiple Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles (UAVs) to support Search and Rescue (SAR) efforts. As the team began researching their problem and conducting beneficiary discovery interviews, they identified other SAR procedures that require innovation. Some of these key innovations include better understanding how SAR crews utilize resources such as drones including cost, response time, sensor packages, etc. 

As the team continued to conduct beneficiary discovery interviews, they realized the real issue wasn't in how to deploy UAVs, but rather how to effectively allocate resources to improve the mission’s success. They found that the true problem lies in identifying how to effectively utilize existing technology to improve the success of a SAR mission. Many of the resources available to SAR teams are not coordinated to work together to support a mission. The team pivoted and began brainstorming how to most effectively allocate resources and create a system that could be as versatile as the product’s end-users. 

Ultimately, the team discovered data fusion was the most effective way to combine the various sets of information that are essential for a successful SAR mission. The team utilized topographical maps, GPS tracking, radios and drone deployment options to form one unified source of information that SAR teams are able to utilize to better carry out their mission. Algorithms within the system use all available information and additional subject behavior modeling to project likely hiker travel patterns. This information is used to highlight where SAR efforts are best focused. 

This innovation dramatically reduces the preparation time needed for SAR teams. The platform pools all relevant information and creates a projected travel path for the subject so the team can focus solely on carrying out their mission. 

Many of their beneficiaries and future end-users agreed with the product’s success. A US Navy officer stated: “This predictive analysis could take SAR planning from hours to minutes.” Reducing the SAR planning time is essential to ensuring the mission is successful. A Chief Warrant Officer at the Army National Guard of Colorado told Team Crow’s Nest that: “The success rate increases exponentially with additional prep time. Someone has to try and figure out resource allocation based on probability.” This resource would serve as an invaluable resource to SAR efforts within the state of Colorado and beyond. 

With this innovation, the team is able to generate insights that would typically take years of experience in the field of SAR to generate. The team will be continuing their work beyond the semester and are in the process of applying for funding opportunities.

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Presentation

Team Crow’s Nest’s
Hacking for Defense Experience

Try, Fail, Adjust

When asked to describe the hardest and the most rewarding aspects of the course, Team Crow’s Nest gave a surprising answer. “The answer to both would be the team.” They shared that at times it was a challenge to balance all the different attitudes on the team. Each team member had a different idea on the direction of their work which led to friendly arguments and debates among the group.

The team also attributed these “arguments” as the ultimate reason for their success. Everyone on the team cared so deeply about what they were working on and wanted to succeed. The team environment was one that encouraged open discussion about all aspects of the project. Even when they believed they were on the right track, a teammate would jump in with a “Well… what about this?” This allowed the team to push their final product to one that was completely thought through after challenge from other team members and led the team to success. 

H4D is Shaping the Academic Experience

For many students, Hacking for Defense is a highlight of a student’s academic experience and impacts a student’s future career plans. For Jeff Venicx, Computer Science PhD candidate, this course opened his eyes to the variety of funding opportunities available that will allow him to continue his research. As a true Colorado native, he describes this unexplored area of research funding as fresh powder in the snow that he is excited to trek through. 

For teammate Chad Lewis, the course has led him to work for his problem sponsors after graduation. He urged the Common Mission Project team to “Do whatever you can to keep this course around. This is one of three courses that I will remember for the rest of my life. We went through it all: all the hardships, all the arguments. I truly think that this is a program that needs to be advocated for.” As shown through Crow’s Nest and their Hacking for Defense experience, this course is one that truly shapes student’s academic experiences.

Douglas County Search and Rescue Dog

Team 007

The Ohio State University

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Linking Incompatible Systems to Streamline Communication Across the Intelligence Community

The Team

Jackie Carlin

• Former Account Manager at DeanHouston, Inc.
• MPA Candidate from the Ohio State University
• MBA from the Ohio State University
• BA in Strategic Communication from Miami University

Michael Dumitrescu

• BS in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the Ohio State University

Maya Perlmutter

• Undergraduate Research Assistant, OSU Battelle Center for Science, Engineering and Public Policy
• BS in Psychology

Cassie Boutelle

• Master of Public Health Candidate, Emory University
• BS in Industrial and Systems Engineering

Problem Sponsor

Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security

Original Problem Statement

The Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence needs visibility into the intelligence fulfillment process in order to confidently respond to requests for information.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

92

The Innovation

At the beginning of the semester, Team 007 was tasked with “increasing visibility in the intelligence fulfillment process” within the intelligence community. Initially, the team felt overwhelmed by the broadness of this topic. However, through nearly 100 beneficiary discovery interviews, Jackie, Michael, Maya and Cassie from Team 007 collected and analyzed the experiences of subject matter experts, stakeholders, and beneficiaries to figure out the root of this issue. 

The team quickly discovered that the lack of visibility into the intelligence fulfillment process comes from incompatible management and collaboration systems. This mismatch in systems prevents intelligence analysts from communicating with one another about relevant information. One intelligence analyst stated:

“Collaboration would be so much easier if I even had the name of another analyst working on this topic.” 

Once Team 007 team identified the root cause of the problem, incompatible collaboration systems, the team used Lean Innovation tools and the human-centered design process to brainstorm a variety of potential solutions. Each week, the team had multiple hypotheses that continuously evolved through their beneficiary discovery. Ultimately, the team was able to confirm their hypothesis and decided the most effective solution to this problem would be their proposed production management system, “Nile”.

Nile is an application that will bridge the gaps between the existing systems in the intelligence community. The goal of this application is to increase knowledge management capabilities through communication interfaces and a data archiving system. The team compared the problems faced within the intelligence community to the issues faced within a retail distribution center, and “Nile” would allow communication between those making the “deliveries” or fulfilling requests for information. As the team continued to develop their MVP, the team had the opportunity to travel to present their wire-frame to stakeholders at NASIC, the DIA, and the Pentagon, and used the feedback to further refine their ideas. These trips to Dayton, OH and Washington, DC proved invaluable to their final product. 

Despite strong sponsor feedback, the team does not currently have plans to continue their work on this project beyond the semester. However, the team has indicated a strong interest in continuing to support their sponsoring organization or further pursuing the project at some point in the future.

With each new hypothesis, the team literally went “back to the drawing board”.

Presentation

Team 007’s
Hacking for Defense Experience

“Failing Fast” Through Beneficiary Discovery

Master of Public Administration student Jackie praised Hacking for Defense as “One of the best classes I have taken in my academic career. I am really happy I was able to experience it.” She further explained how the course taught her and her teammates “how to let yourself be wrong.” Through many iterations of the team’s hypothesis, Jackie realized being wrong is an essential part of the process. Her attitude throughout the discovery portion of the project was: “If you’re wrong, okay you’re wrong.” This attitude allowed the team to take risks and quickly find a way to pivot to find another solution. The course taught her to “put yourself out there and let people talk you through things… accept that you don’t know everything (so you are able to learn.)”

Teammate Maya Perlmutter was motivated by the overall mission of the course to continue working hard on her project. Aligned with the Common Mission Project belief that mission driven entrepreneurship is a new form of national service, Maya stated: “Knowing that it (our solution) would help someone in the future definitely motivated me throughout this course.”

Both Cassie and Michael are interested in working in the public sector in the future. This course gave the team significant exposure to public sector work and confirmed their interest in pursuing a career in government. 

The entire team cited the course and their experience traveling to conduct beneficiary discovery interviews in Dayton, OH and Washington, DC as a highlight of their academic experience.

Auen Analytics

Colorado School of Mines

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Embracing Entrepreneurship as a New Form of National Service

The Team

John Pugh

• Former Lab Manager at Microsoft
• U.S. Army Veteran
• MS in Geological/Geophysical Engineering Candidate at Colorado School of Mines
• BSc in Geological/Geophysical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines

Morgan Cox

• Computer Science on Tour Program Coordinator
• BSc in Computer Science Candidate at Colorado School of Mines

Problem Sponsor

Air Force Inspection Agency

Original Problem Statement

The Analysis Division of the Air Force Inspection Agency needs a way to leverage relevant data collection and analysis for Air Force missions in order to recommend specific topics or trends for inspection.

Beneficiary Discovery Interviews

95

The Innovation

The Air Force Inspection Agency (AFIA) takes in a large amount of data each year that is used to inform inspection areas. While the organization is able to quickly find key topics, processing this information in order to identify larger trends is a very time consuming process. This process can lead to a lag between reporting and investigation which means lost time, money and resources for the organization. Auen Analytics was tasked with improving the organization’s ability to identify trends during the Spring 2020 semester of Hacking for Defense. 

Auen Analytics worked with AFIA to identify specific challenges with data analytics. Through 95 beneficiary discovery interviews, the team began to better understand the issues with inspection topic identification. The team soon realized the best way to improve the organization’s ability to identify key trends was through natural language processing and specifically topic modeling. This technology will provide AFIA with the ability to quickly identify the key topics, so they can direct inspections in the right places, preventing major issues from arising. This technology uses up-to-date, open source data to ensure the information they are working with is timely and actionable.

Their problem sponsor at AFIA was very positive about their work and even began including other members from his organization to support Auen Analytics. He was highly engaged throughout the entire process and helped the team understand the problem thoroughly. 

Given this positive feedback from beneficiaries and potential end-users, Auen Analytics is excited to continue their work beyond the semester. The team has formed an LLC and is currently working on pursuing funding opportunities and has applied for several military funding sources.

Presentation

Auen Analytics’
Hacking for Defense Experience

Mission Driven Entrepreneurship

At the Common Mission Project, we believe that entrepreneurship is a new form of national service. Auen Analytics embraced this ideal through their work with AFIA. John Pugh, a U.S. Army Veteran, became very focused on supporting the organization. He said: “I saw this problem and had an idea of how to help. I really want to help ease their pain, so that other people are helped down the line.” Understanding the value that this work would bring to members of the organization, the group worked diligently to find a solution.

The group was committed to serving their organization and was excited to do so using Lean LaunchPad tools. John stated “This was my first time doing anything like this (using Lean LaunchPad methodology). The visualization tools were very helpful and allowed us to quickly identify where the problem was.” By combining both a dedication for national service and entrepreneurship, Hacking for Defense students are able to effectively create innovative solutions for their sponsoring organization and ultimately support the end users.