ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 9, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — The U.S. Army Night Vision Labs and Commonwealth of Virginia announced the upcoming launch of their iDISPLA platform collaboration at a conference held on January 30th by the Greer Institute.

iDISPLA – which stands for “Innovative Discovery Science Platform” – is a collaborative effort between the U.S. Army, Commonwealth of Virginia and the nation’s commercial and academia technology leaders. Its goal is to develop an innovation culture that starts in our communities and paves the way for solutions to real-life problems through distributed problem solving, crowdsourced constituent participation, advanced analytics and a virtual collaboration ecosystem to automate STEM/STEAM, R&D, workforce and technology transition initiatives.

The iDISPLA platform offers a strategic pathway and potential solutions for many workforce development issues impacting the Virginia community and the nation as a whole. Karen Corbett Sanders, Fairfax County School Board (Fairfax County, Virginia) Chair and Mt. Vernon District Representative, delivered the keynote speech at the event and expressed her support for the iDISPLA initiative: “The work that iDISPLA is doing is extremely important. We know that there is a demand for highly skilled workers here in Virginia and throughout the country. As a proud product of Fairfax County Public Schools, I want to make sure that our students are able to acquire the knowledge necessary to be able to fully participate in the digital economy.” 

Panel discussions held at the conference on January 30^th were led by Melvin Greer, Founder of the Greer Institute (and AI lead for Americas and China for Intel Corporation), Carlos Rivero, Chief Data Officer for the Commonwealth of Virginia and several experts. “There is a definite need for a robust workforce development and STEM strategy in Virginia. Of particular need is to find innovative ways to reach out to underrepresented communities for accelerating the maturation of new leaders and inspiring of future innovators,” said Greer, Managing Director of Greer Institute. Mr. Rivero added: “The iDISPLA platform can be a fertile test vehicle to source ideas and solutions for many AI and cyber security challenges we are facing.”

Professor Erdem Topsakal, Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Virginia Commonwealth University recognized that the platform could offer hands-on experiential learning opportunities for students. He commented: “The iDISPLA platform can provide a much-needed strategy for workforce, education in STEM/STEAM and an integrated technology landscape that includes the underrepresented communities.”

This unique collaboration and innovation ecosystem initiative enables the opportunity to unite citizens of all ages in a common purpose to help address real-world challenges. The first three open challenges being released on iDISPLA include new data driven approaches to the Opioid crisis, new solutions to address broadband access in rural areas and new approaches for thermal imaging technology. To participate in these challenges please visit the iDISPLA website (www.idispla.org).

About iDISPLA

The Innovative Discovery Science Platform (iDISPLA) (www.idispla.org) is the U.S. Army CERDEC Night Vision & Electronic Sensors Directorate’s (NVESD) initiative in Virginia with an aim to expand nationwide. It addresses technology challenges that are important to the future of the Army and has applications for commercial sectors. The iDISPLA project creates a collaborative atmosphere for education, research, partnership, workforce development, talent nodes and innovation.

Media Contact:
Melvin Greer
The Greer Institute for Innovation and Leadership/iDISPLA
[email protected]

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SOURCE iDISPLA