SoarTech Team Attends DARPA Forward Event

SoarTech was well-represented at last week’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Forward Event in Columbus, Ohio. SoarTech president and CEO, Michael van Lent, Ph.D.; executive vice president and chief technology officer, Dylan Schmorrow, Ph.D.; Charlie Kola, chief financial officer; and other SoarTech team members attended the conference. van Lent was part of a panel titled Saving Lives on the Battlefield of the Future and AI engineer III, Nick Paul, was honored as a DARPA Riser.

“Our respect within the DARPA ecosystem is the result of years of innovative ideas and amazing work by everyone at SoarTech including scientists, engineers and every ‘back office’ teammate whose responsiveness and diligence make our company easy to work with and trust. I’d like to thank each and every team member for their many contributions to our company’s reputation,” van Lent said.

Paul was honored as a DARPA Riser for his work on Urban Reconnaissance through Supervised Autonomy (URSA). A DARPA program, URSA enables improved techniques for rapidly discriminating hostile intent while filtering out threats in complex urban environments. The Risers program provides up-and-coming standouts in their fields a unique opportunity to be recognized for their notable work related to national security and to present their ideas directly to DARPA in the early stages of their research career.

Schmorrow said, “It was great to celebrate Nick’s selection to the DARPA Risers program with him, alongside our SoarTech colleagues, and the DARPA community. This is an amazing opportunity for Nick, and he seized the moment by directly engaging DARPA program managers and defense industry leaders while immersing himself in the conference. It will be exciting to see how he leverages this opportunity for professional growth in the coming years.”

Kola added, “I was encouraged to see that we pursued most of the programs highlighted and that we’re the prime on both URSA and In The Moment (ITM). It was an awesome event, and we were all proud of the buzz about SoarTech.”