Maynard Holliday

Last updated
Maynard Ansley Holliday
Maynard Holliday, Sandia National Laboratories.jpg
Holliday in 2012
Born
Providence, Rhode Island
Alma mater
Scientific career
Fields Robotics
Institutions
Website maynardholliday.com

Maynard Ansley Holliday is the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Critical Technologies in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. He previously worked under Barack Obama, during which time he launched the Defense Innovation Unit. Holliday was a Project Manager for Pioneer, a robot that helped to map the inside of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

Contents

Early life and education

Holliday was born in Providence, Rhode Island. He watched Star Trek as a child and wanted to become an astronaut. [1] He grew up in Scarsdale, New York. [2] Holliday studied mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, where he was one of only fifteen African American engineers in his class. [2] During his studies, Holliday became interested in robotics, as the Three Mile Island accident resulted in the launch of a Carnegie Mellon spin-off company called RedZone Robotics, with Red Whittaker as the Chief Scientist. [1] Holliday worked with Whittaker, designing robotic systems to explore the contaminated reactor. [1] [2] Holliday attended the International Space University in 1991, reaching the finals of the NASA Astronaut Corps selection process in 1994 and 1996. [1] [3] However, Holliday withdrew his application after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. [1]

Research and career

Holliday joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a robotics engineer. [1] Holliday received a scholarship to work on robotics and international security at Stanford University and began a graduate program in mechanical engineering design. [4] Holliday worked on the target positioning systems of the National Ignition Facility. [4] In 1995, Holliday received an American Association for the Advancement of Science Science Engineering and Diplomacy Fellowship to work on science and technology policy at United States Agency for International Development. [5] During his fellowship, Holliday advocated for international robotic development funding in response to the Chernobyl disaster. [2] After his fellowship, Holliday worked for the United States Department of Energy Russia Nuclear Materials Taskforce on nuclear material security upgrade implementation in Russian nuclear cities. Holliday also worked with the Institute of Special Mechanical Programs in Ukraine on the Pioneer robot design, which designed guidance and control systems for USSR ballistic missiles. [4] Holliday's efforts in securing tons of weapons-grade nuclear material were recognized with the Meritorious Service Medal, the DOE's highest civilian award.

Holliday served as a project manager for the Pioneer robot, which helped map the inside of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. [6] Holliday collaborated with Whittaker's RedZone Robotics to deliver a finished robot in 1999. [2] The robot, which cost $3 million, was designed to withstand considerably more radiation than humans could tolerate and stay inside the nuclear reactor for up to two years. [6] [7] The robot used the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Vision System to identify and document properties of materials inside the plant. [8] This system became a prototype for the Mars Pathfinder.

After leaving the Energy Department, Holliday helped develop pattern recognition for Evolution Robotics. Holliday contributed to designing and developing high-definition (HD) camera systems for Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci telerobotic surgery robot. [4] Holliday joined Sandia National Laboratories in 2011, where he worked in the Systems Analysis Group. [1]

During Barack Obama's second term in office, Holliday was appointed as Senior Technical Advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. [9] Holliday helped to establish the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), a Department of Defense organization to accelerate government adoption of commercial technology. [5] [10] Holliday also served as an advisor for the Defense Science Board in 2015. [11] Holliday was awarded the Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service. [11] Holliday left the Defense Department in 2017 to join RAND Corporation, where he researched autonomous vehicles. [4]

Holliday returned to the Defense Department in 2021 as Defense Research and Engineering for Modernization Director, overseeing investment in the National Defense Strategy and identifying modernization priorities such as 5G, hypersonics, and quantum science. [12]

Outreach and engagement

Holliday works on various projects that teach young people about science and engineering. Holliday's motto is, "You learn it, earn it, and return it". [1] Holliday was involved with Barack Obama's My Brother's Keeper Challenge, a partnership that promoted intervention by civic leaders in the lives of young men of color. Holliday co-founded Robot Garden, a community makerspace in Livermore, California, and remains on its advisory board. [13] In 2012, Citizen Schools named Holliday its Volunteer of the Year for his efforts at Elmhurst Community Prep school. [1] Holliday has also taught advanced robotics classes at San Ramon Valley High School. [14] Holliday is particularly committed to public engagement to improve diversity within science and engineering. While discussing his career in an interview with Carnegie Mellon University, he stated, "...these organizations... are doing things that affect the entire population, and it's important that there are diverse voices at the table to be able to promote those viewpoints". [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carnegie Mellon University</span> Private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology and began granting four-year degrees. In 1967, it became Carnegie Mellon University through its merger with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, founded in 1913 by Andrew Mellon and Richard B. Mellon and formerly a part of the University of Pittsburgh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Argonne National Laboratory</span> American science and engineering research laboratory in Illinois

Argonne National Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center in Lemont, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1946, the laboratory is owned by the United States Department of Energy and administered by UChicago Argonne LLC of the University of Chicago. The facility is the largest national laboratory in the Midwest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science</span> School for computer science in the United States

The School of Computer Science (SCS) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US is a school for computer science established in 1988. It has been consistently ranked among the best computer science programs over the decades. As of 2024 U.S. News & World Report ranks the graduate program as tied for No. 1 with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robotics Institute</span> Division of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University

The Robotics Institute (RI) is a division of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. A June 2014 article in Robotics Business Review magazine calls it "the world's best robotics research facility" and a "pacesetter in robotics research and education."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Idaho National Laboratory</span> Laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho, United States

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is one of the national laboratories of the United States Department of Energy and is managed by the Battelle Energy Alliance. Historically, the lab has been involved with nuclear research, although the laboratory does other research as well. Much of current knowledge about how nuclear reactors behave and misbehave was discovered at what is now Idaho National Laboratory. John Grossenbacher, former INL director, said, "The history of nuclear energy for peaceful application has principally been written in Idaho".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chernobyl disaster</span> 1986 nuclear accident in the Soviet Union

The Chernobyl disaster began on 26 April 1986 with the explosion of the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine, near the Belarus border in the Soviet Union. It is one of only two nuclear energy accidents rated at the maximum severity on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. The response involved more than 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated 18 billion roubles. It remains the worst nuclear disaster in history, and the costliest disaster in human history, with an estimated cost of $700 billion USD.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chernobyl New Safe Confinement</span> Protective building over Ukrainian nuclear reactor

The New Safe Confinement is a structure put in place in 2016 to confine the remains of the number 4 reactor unit at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, in Ukraine, which was destroyed during the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The structure also encloses the temporary Shelter Structure (sarcophagus) that was built around the reactor immediately after the disaster. The New Safe Confinement is designed to prevent the release of radioactive contaminants, protect the reactor from external influence, facilitate the disassembly and decommissioning of the reactor, and prevent water intrusion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Red Whittaker</span> American robotisict

William L. "Red" Whittaker is an American roboticist and research professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He led Tartan Racing to its first-place victory in the DARPA Grand Challenge (2007) Urban Challenge and brought Carnegie Mellon University the two million dollar prize. Previously, Whittaker also competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge, placing second and third place simultaneously in the Grand Challenge Races.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Garwin</span> American physicist

Richard Lawrence Garwin is an American physicist, best known as the author of the first hydrogen bomb design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology</span> White House advisory board

The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is a council, chartered in each administration with a broad mandate to advise the president of the United States on science and technology. The current PCAST was established by Executive Order 13226 on September 30, 2001, by George W. Bush, was re-chartered by Barack Obama's April 21, 2010, Executive Order 13539, by Donald Trump's October 22, 2019, Executive Order 13895, and by Joe Biden's February 1, 2021, Executive Order 14007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anatoly Dyatlov</span> Soviet nuclear engineer in charge during the Chernobyl disaster

Anatoly Stepanovich Dyatlov was a Soviet engineer who was the deputy chief engineer for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. He supervised the safety test which resulted in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, for which he served time in prison as he was blamed for not following the safety protocols. He was released due to health concerns in 1990. Later investigations found that reactor design flaws were a more significant factor than human error, although some safety procedures were not followed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manuela M. Veloso</span> Portuguese-American computer scientist

Manuela Maria Veloso is the Head of J.P. Morgan AI Research & Herbert A. Simon University Professor Emeritus in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where she was previously Head of the Machine Learning Department. She served as president of Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) until 2014, and the co-founder and a Past President of the RoboCup Federation. She is a fellow of AAAI, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). She is an international expert in artificial intelligence and robotics.

Bin He is a Chinese American biomedical engineering scientist. He is the Trustee Professor of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, professor by courtesy in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Professor of Neuroscience Institute, and was the head of the department of Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior, he was Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medtronic-Bakken Endowed Chair for Engineering in Medicine at the University of Minnesota. He previously served as the director of the Institute for Engineering in Medicine and the Center for Neuroengineering at the University of Minnesota. He was the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering and serves as the editor in chief of IEEE Reviews in Biomedical Engineering. He was the president of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBS) from 2009 to 2010 and chair of International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering from 2018 to 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen E. Cross</span>

Stephen Edward Cross is the executive vice president for research (EVPR) at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), a position to which he was appointed in 2010. As EVPR, Cross coordinates research efforts among Georgia Tech's colleges, research units and faculty; and provides central administration for all research, economic development and related support units at Georgia Tech. This includes direct oversight of Georgia Tech's interdisciplinary research institutes, the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), the Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2) and the Georgia Tech Research Corporation (GTRC).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Subra Suresh</span> Indian-born American academic (born 1956)

Subra Suresh is an Indian-born American engineer, materials scientist, and academic leader. He is currently Professor at Large at Brown University and Vannevar Bush Professor of Engineering Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was Dean of the School of Engineering at MIT from 2007 to 2010 before being appointed as Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) by Barack Obama, where he served from 2010 to 2013. He was the president of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) from 2013 to 2017. Between 2018 and 2022, he was the fourth President of Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU), where he was also the inaugural Distinguished University Professor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shree K. Nayar</span>

Shree K. Nayar is an engineer and computer scientist known for his contributions to the fields of computer vision, computational imaging, and computer graphics. He is the T. C. Chang Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering at Columbia University. Nayar co-directs the Columbia Vision and Graphics Center and is the head of the Computer Vision Laboratory (CAVE), which develops advanced imaging and computer vision systems. Nayar also served as a director of research at Snap Inc. He was elected member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 2008 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011 for his pioneering work on computational cameras and physics based computer vision.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Robotics Engineering Center</span> Operating unit within the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University

The National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) is an operating unit within the Robotics Institute (RI) of Carnegie Mellon University. NREC works closely with government and industry clients to apply robotic technologies to real-world processes and products, including unmanned vehicle and platform design, autonomy, sensing and image processing, machine learning, manipulation, and human–robot interaction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Warren F. Miller Jr.</span> American engineering scientist

Warren Fletcher "Pete" Miller Jr. is an American nuclear engineer known for his work in the areas of computational physics, radioactive waste management, transport theory, nuclear reactor design and analysis, and the management of nuclear research and development programs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Urmson</span> CEO of self-driving technology company Aurora

Chris Urmson is a Canadian engineer, academic, and entrepreneur known for his work on self-driving car technology. He cofounded Aurora Innovation, a company developing self-driving technology, in 2017 and serves as its CEO. Urmson was instrumental in pioneering and advancing the development of self-driving vehicles since the early 2000s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vandi Verma</span> Roboticist at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory and driver of the Mars rovers

Vandana "Vandi" Verma is a space roboticist and chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, known for driving the Mars rovers, notably Curiosity and Perseverance, using software including PLEXIL programming technology that she co-wrote and developed.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Sandia's Maynard Holliday named Volunteer of the Year by Citizen Schools". Eureka Alert. Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Carroll, Dan. "Shooting for the stars". engineering.cmu.edu. Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  3. ↑ "Speaker bios | PhD Careers". sites.uci.edu. Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Stuart, S. C. (2018-08-18). "How the Pentagon Went West". PCMag UK. Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  5. 1 2 "Federal Policy: Made Better with STEM". American Association for the Advancement of Science. Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  6. 1 2 "The Laboratory in the News". str.llnl.gov. Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  7. ↑ "U.S. robot is cleaning up crippled Chernobyl reactor Machines can go where radiation is too deadly for life". DeseretNews.com. 1999-05-05. Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  8. ↑ Jet. Johnson Publishing Company. 1998-08-10.
  9. ↑ "USD Summary | Maynard A Holliday" . Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  10. ↑ Schwartzel, Erich. "Scientists Help Movie Writers Make Films 'Plausible-ish'". WSJ. Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  11. 1 2 "Maynard A. Holliday". www.rand.org. Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  12. ↑ "Maynard Holliday". www.defense.gov. Retrieved 2022-02-25.
  13. ↑ "About Us | Robot Garden" . Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  14. ↑ "Sandia National Laboratories: News Releases : Sandia's Maynard Holliday named Volunteer of the Year by Citizen Schools" . Retrieved 2019-08-07.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.