During a recent ceremony at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division’s Maritime Information Technology Center Auditorium (West Bethesda, Maryland, USA), Navy civilian and military scientists and engineers were presented with the Dr. Dolores M. Etter Top Scientists and Engineers award. This annual award honoring Etter — a former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense for Science and Technology and Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition — is presented to scientists and engineers in recognition of their contributions to the Navy and Department of Defense (DOD).
Although not physically present at the ceremony, Etter submitted a video of herself where she congratulated the awardees and gave them words of wisdom moving forward.
Brittany Preston-Baker, acting manager of the Painting Center of Excellence Program in the Corrosion and Coatings Engineering Branch, and Carderock’s Jacob Mason, the Shock Research and Development program manager in the Underwater Explosions Research and Development Branch, earned awards in the emergent engineers category.
Preston-Baker earned her award for her work with the significant total ownership cost reduction to the fleet in the area of corrosion mitigation and control. As the Corrosion Control Assistance Team (CCAT) Deputy Project Engineer, and program manager for the Painting Center of Excellence, she provided cost avoidance of more than $2,300,000, resulting in the preservation of more than 9,000 man-hours, by taking corrosion control training exercises directly to the fleet.
“I found that we had a disconnect between the people who were doing the technology work and the sailors themselves, so we decided to train sailors directly on how to use each of these technologies,” Breston-Baker says. “We began meeting sailors where they were and realized if we wanted this technology to transition successfully, we had to take our technology and demonstrate it on onboard ships.”
As a result, CCAT is now located at nine major ports around the world and services 250 ships per year.
Mason received the award for his innovation in enhanced testing supported by modeling and simulation (ET-M&S). He delivered tangible results for ET-M&S, developing new and practical approaches to full ship shock trials (FSST). Two Carderock teams — and one Carderock team member working in a collaborative effort — also received group awards. They were the CVN 78 Full Ship Shock Trial Team, the Deamping System Design Team, and the Nickel Aluminum Bronze Alloying for Large Propulsors Casting team, which featured Dr. Meredith Wells from Carderock’s Advanced Propulsor Management Office.
Source: Naval Sea Systems Command, www.navsea.navy.mil.