MGMWERX, in conjunction with Air University’s Leadership, Education, and Development Experience (LEDx), selected three winners during their first-ever Pitch Night.
The pitch competition highlighted solutions, ideas, and products that make our nation’s warfighter better. The winners were selected by a judge’s panel of military and industry experts using this year’s LEDx theme, “Diversity at the Intersection of Leadership, Innovation & Strategy,” for their relevance and viability to answering an Air Force issue.
Air University’s Lt. Col. Jason Trew, earned top honors from the panel and senior leader champion sponsorship from Lt. Gen. Anthony Cotton, the university’s president, to further develop his concept of the Icarus Institute which formalizes and integrates design thinking across the continuum of professional military education to facilitate better air-minded strategic thinkers.
Ethan Rudd received $7,000 to continue his research and development for Multi-Modal AI-Augmented System for Low-Visibility Conditions. The solution aims to create an artificial intelligence-driven system which takes signals from image intensifiers, various forms of IR, and potentially other non-visible light spectrum sensors, and re-casts them with the appearance of natural and clear images of the same scene in the visible light spectrum.
Scott Kempshall received $3,000 in research funds for HyALTA, a hybrid lighter-than-air and flying wing air vehicle that allows a single vehicle to provide the simplicity, vertical heavy lift, and extended efficient station keeping capabilities of an LTA with the high glide ratio and velocity of low coefficient of drag flying wings.
MGMWERX was created under a Partnership Intermediary Agreement to align with the education initiatives of the U.S. Air Force’s Air University. MGMWERX augments ongoing Air University programs, through events like Pitch Night, to enhance production of high-quality, innovative research and ideas that span issues of importance to the Air Force. This includes, but is not limited to, doctrine, strategies, capability needs, operational concepts, training, education, and science and technology.