A selection panel of current and former intelligence community leaders—including representatives from the private sector and academia—recently named recipients of the Award for Excellence in Defense Scientific & Technical Intelligence (S&TI), AFCEA announced March 18. Sponsored by AFCEA International’s Intelligence Committee, the award was created last year specifically to address the need for—and recognize the value of—innovation in intelligence. The awardees will be recognized on the second day of the AFCEA Spring Intelligence Symposium, on April 2, 2025. The Defense Intelligence Agency director, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, USAF, will deliver keynote remarks and attend the award presentation.
The individual award is open to active duty and Reserve members and federal government employees, and this year’s individual winner is Dr. Lisa Costa, for S&TI contributions in space intelligence analysis, foundational military intelligence and intelligence innovation. Costa has spent much of her career “operationalizing innovation on a global scale” in the intelligence community and shaping and executing large-scale initiatives in emerging technologies and cybersecurity.
Dr. Costa’s professional accomplishments exemplified S&TI analysis and innovation at its best, always in pursuit of more robust space and cyber intelligence capabilities to advance the Nation’s security,” remarked Capt. Ray Cross, USN (Ret.), vice president, Intelligence, at AFCEA International.
The team award winner is Project LOWGROUND Development Team. Project LOWGROUND is a collaborative Defense Department and intelligence community team that developed next-generation signals intelligence (SIGINT) sensor technology for the U.S. Army.
“This unique award recognizes Project LOWGROUND’s significant enhancements to the US Army’s ability to detect, characterize, and track targets of interest,” said Lewis Shepherd, the AFCEA Intelligence committee chair. He added: “The team’s extraordinary effort has resulted in a disruptive technology that is on a glidepath for integration into multiple Army modernization programs of record – as well as further proliferation of the technology across the DoD and IC.”
Source: AFCEA
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