Unlocking the potential of 5G for Federal government

Dan Elmore is the director of the Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience division at the Idaho National Laboratory. He also serves as the executive director of the INL Wireless Security Institute. Mr. Elmore provides strategic leadership in support of the research, development, and deployment of engineered solutions to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure. Significant focus areas for his organization are resilient control systems, electric power grid security, spectrum sharing, and wireless communications challenges targeted at large infrastructure, as well as military systems and platforms.

Mr. Elmore is a retired Air Force colonel with more than 27 years of active-duty military experience leading organizations comprised of military, civilian, and contractor teams performing cyber operations support, communications systems, and networks engineering, national and nuclear command and control systems operations, and continuity of government and contingency operations planning. His last active-duty assignment was at the Pentagon where he directed the largest single cyberspace office in Air Force headquarters.

Prior to the Pentagon, Mr. Elmore served in a variety of positions and locations, including the White House, U.S. Strategic Command, Alaska, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan. He has extensive operational experience, coupled with a fundamental knowledge of critical infrastructure and its relationship to mission assurance, to the inner workings of federal and intelligence agencies, as well as broad exposure to specialized and classified capabilities.

Mr. Elmore holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Michigan Technological University, a master’s degree in Systems Technology from the Naval Postgraduate School, and a master’s degree in Computer and Information Resources Management from Webster University. He is a life member of the Air Force Association, life member of the Armed Forces Communications Electronics Association, and a senior member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Mr. Jody Little is the Executive Program Manager, JBSA 5G Program Management Office, JBSA Ft. Sam Houston, Texas, the largest 5G research, development, and prototyping site in the Department of Defense. The JBSA 5G Program Management Office manages and performs experiments in 5G applications in Telemedicine and develops 5G Cyber Security. Research and development at JBSA 5G, including the application and security of 5G cores, secure communications in 5G zero-trust networks, telementoring, telehealth, telesurgery, augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and machine learning for 5G applications.

Prior to leading the 5G Program Management Office, Mr. Little was the Manager of Information Exploitation at Southwest Research Institute. He led research development, test, and evaluation programs for intelligence fusion, exploitation, analysis, and dissemination. In this role, Mr. Little served as the Principal Investigator of artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate intelligence analysis applications. Mr. Little also led programs for dynamic spectrum access (DSA), wireless communications, and 4G and 5G networks and systems. He was responsible for overall business strategy, marketing plans, operating plans, budgets, and technical direction of both the intelligence exploitation and wireless communications segments.

Before joining Southwest Research Institute, Mr. Little was the Director of Programs, Cyber Warfare, at Harris Corporation in San Antonio, Texas. At Harris, Mr. Little led and managed strategic vision, business strategy, business plans, budgets, and financial accountability for Air Force cyberwarfare market segment for cyber defense and offense systems. His business strategies successfully led to multiple, multi-million-dollar contracts for cyber systems development and integration. Mr. Little also served as the Principal Investigator for researching, developing, and fielding novel and special cyber capabilities supporting USAF programs.

Prior to working at Harris, Mr. Little was the Vice President of Strategic Business Development and Executive Vice President of Intelligence Programs at Sierra Nevada Corporation. At Sierra Nevada Corporation, Mr. Little managed and directed strategic business development activities for the ISR Business Area, which represented more than $985 million in DoD and commercial advanced technology programs, and had a staff of more than 780 engineers, scientists, technicians, and managers. In this role, Mr. Little was responsible for overall profit and loss of the enterprise, creating and managing business area strategic plans, marketing, and advertising, forecasting, and budgeting for multiple profit centers, and managed marketing and business development budgets totaling more than $35 million annually and Internal Research & Development of more than $30 million annually. While at Sierra Nevada Corporation, Mr. Little’s business areas averaged more than 48% per year, with profits of 22% annually during his tenure in the executive position, well above the industry standard.

For about 30 years, Dr. Tao Zhang, an IEEE Fellow, has been leading research, product development, and corporate strategies to create disruptive innovations and transform them into practical solutions, standards, and products. He is currently managing the Emerging Networking Technologies Group in the Information Technology Lab at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He was the CTO for the Smart Connected Vehicles Business at Cisco Systems, and the Chief Scientist and the Director of multiple R&D groups working on wireless and vehicular networking at Telcordia Technologies (formerly Bellcore, originally part of the Bell Labs). He cofounded the Open Fog Consortium and the Connected Vehicle Trade Association (CVTA) and served as a founding Board Director for them. Tao holds 50+ US patents and coauthored two books “Vehicle Safety Communications: Protocols, Security, and Privacy” and “IP-Based Next Generation Wireless Networks”, and 80+ peer-reviewed papers. He served as the CIO and a Board Governor of the IEEE Communications Society and as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society. He cofounded and served on leadership roles for multiple international conferences and forums.

Bob Zapotocky is a Senior Principal Architect with AT&T Public Sector. Bob owns the “art of what is possible” in supporting innovation and technology strategy, currently with a focus on 5G and edge computing for public sector customers. Bob is seen as a SME in his field and has been called upon to share his knowledge on industry trends, critical analysis and strategic insights for organizations such as the International Telecommunications Professional Exchange (IPTX), National Association of Counties (NACo), National Governors Association (NGA), National Association of State Technology Directors (NASTD), and multiple Digital Government Summit conferences. He has also contributed to podcasts, whitepapers and articles published by various industry trade and media outlets.

Bob has 22 years of experience with AT&T in a variety of positions supporting enterprise and public sector clients in their efforts to innovate and deliver what is possible within their organizations. He holds an MBA from Suffolk University and is an Alumnus of The Emerging Leaders Program with the Center for Collaborative Leadership at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Jared Serbu has been covering the Defense Department since 2010 and has filed hundreds of stories on DoD’s contracting, legislative, workforce and materiel issues. Jared has produced multiple news series, which included investigating DoD’s shrinking footprint and the Goldwater-Nichols Act: 25 years later. Jared also hosts On DoD, a weekly interview program with DoD officials.