Spring 2021 Class

In the spring of 2021, JMU X-Labs hosted its fifth H4D class where transdisciplinary student teams pursued solutions to the following challenges:

1. Exceptional Help for Exceptional Families – Military families with dependents with special needs need a better way to navigate healthcare and educational options within the Exceptional Family Member Program in order to plan for assignment changes and identify support programs.

2. Fort Bragg Leadership Development Program – Leadership training teams and military psychologists need to identify counter-productive leadership styles and intervene to stop them in order to improve all leaders’ engagement with their subordinates and peers. U.S. Army

3. Heavy Metal Contamination in the United States Army Reserve Command Facilities – Army Reserve Safety Officers need a way to quantify and catalog lead-contaminated facilities in order to provide appropriate safety guidance and mitigation measures to protect soldiers who are most at risk of exposure. U.S. Army Reserve

4. Office 365 Business Reporting Tool – Defense Logistics Agency Program Managers need an overarching business unit reporting tool in order to increase visibility and efficiency of collaboration across business units.

5. Solving the Beast – The Joint Personnel Recovery Agency Personnel Recovery Education and Training Center needs to increase the efficiency of scheduling resources in order to meet Joint, Interagency, Intra-governmental, and Multinational requirements.

In the spring of 2020, JMU X-Labs hosts its fourth H4D class where transdisciplinary student teams pursue solutions to challenges based on the needs of client partners from the 11th Wing of the U.S. Air Force, the Defense Logistics Agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Department of State, and the Womack Army Medical Center.

1. Training long-term strength – Air Education and Training Command Staff in the 11th Wing of the U.S. Air Force need a comprehensive way to assess and achieve the long term health of service members in order to ensure the readiness of the force.

2. Patching cybersecurity vulnerabilities more efficiently – Cybersecurity analysts at the Defense Logistics Agency need an efficient and fast way to remediate open vulnerabilities in order to keep systems more secure and reduce the time spent on vulnerability management.

3. Transforming training data to improve relevance in machine learning – Soldiers in the battlefield need a way to quickly and accurately identify equipment in the lab so that they can better identify Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) threats. (Defense Threat Reduction Agency)

4. Acquiring ‘approval to operate’ for IT systems – Managers need a more efficient accreditation process for Commercial Off the Shelf software and application products that balance security concerns and resources in order to reduce the time and effort required for acquiring ‘Approval to Operate’ certification. (U.S. Air Force)

5. Department of State global alignment – Develop a means by which the U.S. Department of State can strengthen its ability to align global strategy and priorities to resourcing.

6. Anticipating disaster scenarios for state facilities – Synthesize data from satellites, local weather stations, climate models, and more to create an interactive visualization of U.S. Department of State facilities along projected disaster scenarios for 5, 10, 15, and 20 years out.

7. Show me your credentials – Healthcare provider supervisors and clinical rotation schedulers at Womack Army Medical Center need improved awareness of their clinical personnel’s skill sets in order to effectively use their expertise.

Spring 2019 Class

In the spring of 2019, JMU X-Labs will host its third H4D class where transdisciplinary student teams will have the opportunity to pursue solutions to challenges based on the needs of client partners from the U.S. Army, the U.S. Marine Corps, Defense Acquisition University, Sandia National Laboratories, the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, and the MITRE Corporation.

1. Improve training to maximize learning and performance – Army and civilian trainers require a means to rapidly take findings from the U.S. Army Research Lab and other labs in order to implement and integrate them into training programs, which may include augmentations that utilize immersive virtual reality.

2. Incentivize infantry service – Army and Marine representatives in the Close Combat Lethality Task Force need a way to illustrate the value of service as an infantryman in order to incentivize the best candidates for military service to seek assignment to infantry jobs.

3. Create a leaner, meaner defense acquisition team – Defense Acquisition University program managers need a way to incentivize team member participation in order to optimize productivity and minimize the time spent in the acquisition process.

4. Enable transparency in humanitarian aid delivery – The systems analysis group of Sandia National Laboratories needs a transparent and secure process to track humanitarian aid deliveries for local communities in Somalia.

5. Develop standards for universities to secure unclassified Innovative research – The MITRE Corporation is partnering with JMU X-Labs to define and publish standards for universities to secure innovation research performed in their colleges and labs. The purpose for establishing standards is to prevent exploitation and theft of proprietary information and innovations.