CREATE software group, Defense Department's Baldwin are 2017 NDIA Ferguson awardees

David Chesebrough, vice president of program development; Kristen Baldwin, 2017 recipient of the Ferguson award; Bob Rassa, chair emeritus of NDIA’s Systems Engineering Division.

ARLINGTON, VA – CREATE software portfolio development group and Kristen Baldwin, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for systems engineering, are the 2017 recipients of the Lt. Gen. Thomas R. Ferguson Jr. Systems Engineering Excellence Award. They received the awards Tuesday, Oct. 24, at the 20^th annual Systems Engineering Conference in Springfield, Va., presented by the National Defense Industrial Association.

Cited as “a tireless and steadfast champion” for systems engineering, Baldwin was honored for many efforts in the field within the Defense Department. Her achievements include establishing a science and technology priority for engineering resilient systems, creating a guide to system of systems engineering, and founding practices used by acquisition programs. In her role as acting deputy assistant secretary, Baldwin is the principal systems engineering adviser to the secretary of Defense and is responsible for engineering policy and oversight across the agency.

David Chesebrough, vice president of program development; Bob Rassa, chair emeritus of NDIA’s Systems Engineering Division; CREATE team members Associate Director Douglass Post, Saikat Dey, Richard Vogelsong, Daniel Dault. The CREATE team won the 2017 Ferguson Award.

CREATE, or the Computational Research and Engineering Acquisition Tools and Environments, was recognized for its “determined pursuit of a vision” that will lead to fundamental changes in defense acquisition via high-performance computing and multidisciplinary, physics‐based software. This important suite of tools will result in savings of cost, time and risk in processes of weapons system development and deployment.

The Systems Engineering Division of NDIA chooses the Ferguson award winners. The award goes to a person and a group whose outstanding accomplishments in systems engineering have brought significant cost savings through enhanced procedures or concepts, increased mission capabilities or substantially greater performance. The award was established in 2003.

Topics: Systems Engineering