Eric Rasmussen, MD, MDM, FACP
Commander, Medical Corps, United States Navy
Director Strong Angel III
Dr. Eric Rasmussen spent seven years enlisted in nuclear submarines before leaving the Navy to receive his undergraduate and medical degrees from Stanford University. He worked in Haiti with the State Department and on the graduate research staff as a molecular biologist for Los Alamos National Laboratory before completing a Residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Texas in Dallas. He returned to the Navy as Chief Resident in Medicine at the Naval Medical Center in Oakland, California and continued there as assistant program director for the Internal Medicine teaching program. Since then he has held several positions, including Director of Surface Fleet Medical Programs at the Navy’s Medical Institute in Florida, and as Fleet Surgeon for the US Navy’s Third Fleet.
In addition to time in submarines Dr. Rasmussen has served as a physician-at-sea aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and on deployment with the missile cruiser USS Yorktown (CG-48). He served three brief rotations on the ground in Bosnia, and during that period was appointed a Principle Investigator for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In 1996 he was awarded both a Certificate of Meritorious Achievement from DARPA and an appointment as a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.
His work with DARPA and the Navy has included international exercises that deeply incorporate UN relief agencies into the exercise development process. He has also actively promoted the field evaluation of technologies specifically developed to improve integration at the civil-military boundary. In the course of developing US-UN civil-military support criteria he worked with Civil Affairs teams within Bosnia just after the siege of Sarajevo in 1996 and again twice in 1997, then in a Sudanese refugee camp in Kenya, in an Angolan refugee camp in Zambia, and as a guest within the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) hospital for Sudanese war-wounded in northern Kenya. His collaborative guidance document for civil-military cooperation was placed in the public domain in 2000 and personally briefed to the Chief of Naval Operations, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Dr. Rasmussen returned in mid-2001 to the medical faculty at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, with a simultaneous appointment as a Principle Investigator for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and a teaching position within the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) in Geneva. He then completed a Master’s in Disaster Medicine (MDM) through the European Center for Disaster Medicine and the World Health Organization. During the 2003 Iraq War he was first deployed to the planning staff of US Central Command Headquarters as the Medical Coordinator for J-5 (Civil-Military Operations). From there he was deployed forward by CENTCOM in February 2003 as a physician to the USAID Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) in Kuwait. Through the war he served as the disaster-response physician to the Iraq Humanitarian Operations Center in Kuwait City, and later worked within several cities in post-war Iraq, including Basra and Baghdad. He returned to San Diego from Baghdad in the late summer of 2003. For his work on the design and implementation of humanitarian information flow during the war he was selected for the DARPA 2003 “Sustained Excellence in a Principle Investigator” award.
His position as director of the Strong Angel humanitarian coordination exercises led to his 2005 deployment to Indonesia as head of a Civil-Military Coordination Team for the tsunami response. He was later deployed with Joint Task Force Katrina as the Joint Force (Maritime) Surgeon (Forward) in New Orleans. Currently CDR Rasmussen is the Chairman of the Department of Medicine and director of the Hospitalist and Critical Care Program within Naval Hospital Bremerton near Seattle, Washington. He also holds a simultaneous appointment as the Special Advisor in Humanitarian Informatics for the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Dr. Rasmussen is a Senior Fellow at the Rocky Mountain Institute, an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics within the Department of Public Health at the University of South Florida, an adjunct full Professor within the College of Sciences and the School of Public Health at San Diego State University, and a Principle Investigator for both DARPA and for the National Science Foundation. He is also a Reviewer for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the American Journal of Public Health. He sits on several advisory boards including the Crisis Management Resources Board for the National Academy of Sciences. He is published in wilderness ecology, biophysics, clinical medicine, humanitarian medicine, decision analysis, shipboard medical care, urban search and rescue, and trauma research. He has been awarded three Meritorious Service Medals and a number of other personal, unit, and theater military decorations.
Milton Chen
Strong Angel III Executive Committee Board member for Visual Communications
Milton Chen is the Chief Technology Officer of VSee.com, a low bandwidth videoconferencing and application sharing Web service for humanitarian operations. Milton’s pioneering PhD research at Stanford University has shown why videoconferencing has failed to become ubiquitous despite billions in investments since 1927. His unique insight in how to make videoconferencing an everyday experience has led to more than 40 invited talks to countries ranging from Iceland to Nigeria to Saudi Arabia.
Milton received a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from UC Berkeley and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He also received the DEMO God award at DEMO 06.
John Crowley
Strong Angel III Information Architect and Executive Committee member
John Crowley is a technologist from Cambridge, MA and a web consultant at the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. As a classically-trained cellist, John strives to build web-based communities that foster the collaborative, creative process of a chamber ensemble.
Although he started programming and performing at age 7, John is also a writer and researcher who focuses on the intersection of technology and social systems. John has authored the best-practice research report, Knowledge Management Intranets for the Corporate Executive Board's Working Council for Chief Information Officers, and is co-author of a legal and economic analysis of the 'Napsterization' of virtual worlds, which will appear in the Northwestern University Law Review. He holds degrees in music and intellectual history from Boston University, and is planning a 2007 move to San Francisco with his Chilean fiancée.
Eric Frost
Regional Coordinator and Executive Committee member of Strong Angel III
Eric Frost is Co-Director of several centers at San Diego State University, including the Center for Homeland Security, the Visualization Center, and the Center for Information Technology and Infrastructure (http://citi.sdsu.edu), which he co-directs with Bob Welty. Eric also directs two other centers, one on Central Asia and the other on advanced water technologies, and is Co-Director of the Homeland Security Master’s Degree Program, an interdisciplinary program linking policy and technology to help educate officials and managers to lead regional, national, and international efforts to serve the public in all-hazards situations.
All of these roles involve humanitarian and homeland security efforts that use technology and geospatial imagery to help solve difficult problems in difficult circumstances, like the recent Indonesia earthquake and volcano and their impact on the people of the region. Eric and his colleagues use many new technologies and protocols that are enhanced and tested during real-play demonstrations such as Strong Angel III (http://www.strongangel3.net/) on avian flu and web pages such as http://www.geoplayer.com/gateways for Banda Aceh, Katrina, and Indonesia earthquake and volcano efforts.
With formal training as a structural geologist focusing on teaching geologists how to find oil and gas, Frost teaches classes in Sensor Networks, Collaborative Visualization, Remote Sensing, and Homeland Security, and helps link SDSU to the community to assist in many aspects of Public Safety and humanitarian assistance and disaster response. He has traveled widely in the world, helping draw together international teams to use technology in assisting with drawing countries and people together in mutually beneficial ways. Eric also works with advanced Internet and fiber-optic applications to build infrastructure, applications, and visualization products to demonstrate how science, education, entertainment, performing arts, and cultural exchange can draw people together and blossom existing social networks.
Pete Griffiths
Strong Angel III Executive Committee member for Civil/Military Integration
Commander Peter A. Griffiths is a native of Pelham, New York and a graduate of Marquette University with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration. While at Marquette he completed the four year Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps program and was designated a Naval Flight Officer in June 1985. Following his commissioning, Commander Griffiths reported to his first fleet squadron and flew the venerable A-3 “Skywarrior,” and the ES-3A “Shadow” aircraft on numerous deployments and has flown from nearly every aircraft carrier in the Navy’s inventory. Commander Griffiths served in the Mediterranean/ Arabian Gulf flying from and participated in a variety of worldwide operations including Operation ENDURING FREEDOM.
Selected for command in the spring of 1999, Commander Griffiths took command of Special Projects Patrol Squadron ONE (VPU-1) in June of 2001 flying the Navy’s multi-mission P-3 Orion aircraft. Following his command tour Commander Griffiths was selected to attend the prestigious National War College in Washington, DC, where he completed a one-year curriculum in National Security Strategy and received his Masters Degree in June of 2003. He was then appointed Director, Joint C4ISR Decision Support Center for the Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration (OASD-NII). Leading several government personnel and support contractors and managing a $5.5m annual budget.
In October of 2005 Commander Griffiths volunteered and deployed to the Waveland/Bay St. Louis area of Mississippi in the near-aftermath of Hurricane Katrina where he was able to directly support and assist with the installation of critical information technology systems assisting “first responder” and local government leadership global communications and collaboration. Commander Griffiths has accumulated nearly 3,000 flight hours in 10 different Navy aircraft and has survived over 300 carrier landings.
Doug Hanchard
Strong Angel III Technical Communications Advisor and Executive Committee member
Doug Hanchard is Director of Signature Engagements at Bell Canada, where he is responsible for designing solutions that provide Disaster & Rapid Emergency Communications services, enabling Satellite, Wireless Technologies such as Radio, Wi-Fi and Wi-Max to integrate onto a common I.P. platform, thus providing crisis management agencies alternate communications tools such as Data links and VOIP to PSTN in a disaster zone. Doug is also a solution architect for the Canadian Federal Government, responsible for Network and Application Engineering for all Federal Government Ministries, including DND and RCMP.
Doug’s past roles at Bell Canada include providing designs and architecture reviews of complex enterprise data networks spanning in size from 100 to 5,000 nodes, designing and engineering Global Carrier core networks, involving integration and redesigning of legacy TDM networks to I.P. transport layer, and advising and consulting on networks worldwide based in Europe, Asia and the United States. Doug also served as Director of the Center of Excellence for the Physical Security Bell Security Solutions Inc., a Bell Canada subsidiary.
Prior to Bell Canada, Doug was a product manager for Telus, and a manager for AT&T Canada, responsible for national and international integration of Internet and data networks. He also has 11 years of prior Telecommunications experience with other disciplines including Storage Area Networks, Un-interrupted Power Supply Systems, Website (Intranet and Internet), HTML, XML, Java Solutions.
Robert Kirkpatrick
Strong Angel III Executive Committee member for Application Integration
Robert Kirkpatrick is Lead Architect for Microsoft Humanitarian Systems (MHS), an expeditionary solutions team reporting to Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie. He is responsible for design and development of solution prototypes to address collaboration challenges within the areas of humanitarian relief, development, peace-building, human rights, and civil-military cooperation. Robert’s recent work includes design of software for coordination of humanitarian relief for earthquake victims in Muzaffarabad, Kashmir, and a telemedicine solution for remote diagnosis of tissue samples; the system linked rural health clinics in Afghanistan with hospitals in Kabul and pathologists in Europe. He has co-authored several papers on topics related to civil-military collaboration in austere communications environments.
In 2003, Robert developed the Virtual Iraqi Health Logistics center, a system which was used during the Iraq War by both humanitarian and military personnel for needs assessment, situation reporting, and the evacuation of injured civilians. Also that year, he served in Baghdad under US Ambassador Paul Bremer as a member of the Coalition Provisional Authority Executive Secretariat, facilitating collaboration and information sharing between civilian, military, and local Iraqi members of the new ministries. During this period, he also collaborated with OSD and NAVAIR on a project to enable secure information sharing between community leaders in Baghdad and a battalion of the US Army’s 82nd Airborne.
In 2004, Robert worked as Collaboration Architect for the OSD-NII and DARPA-sponsored Strong Angel II demonstration, where he contributed to the design, execution and analysis of more than 80 experiments related to civil-military coordination during complex emergencies in austere environments. In 2005, he built the Tsunami Virtual Emergency Operations Center, a collaborative toolset used by US Pacific Command and the UN Joint Logistics Centre to coordinate activities during Operation Unified Assistance in Banda Aceh. Robert also designed and deployed the collaborative, GIS-enabled DPKO SatComms tracking system now used by UN Peacekeeping Forces to manage global UN satellite communications. Following Hurricane Katrina, Robert designed tools for the American Red Cross that were used for registration, medical treatment, and family reunification for more than 15,000 storm victims displaced into emergency shelters. He also facilitated collaboration between JTF-Katrina JFMCC, US Navy medical personnel, humanitarian NGOs, Red Cross, Air and Army National Guard units, and local hospitals.
Prior to the launch of MHS, Robert was Public Sector Solutions Architect for Groove Networks, where he designed collaboration systems to support a range of humanitarian operations and exercises, including Iraq, Banda Aceh, the US Gulf Coast post Katrina, and Strong Angel II. Robert holds a BA degree in Greek and Latin from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has been a student in the Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences non-degree program.
Gay Mathews
Strong Angel III Executive Committee member responsible for Volunteer Integration & Community Involvement
Gay Mathews, CCUE, has been the President/CEO for the last 19 years of the North Hawaii Community Federal Credit Union, a CDFI certified, island wide, low income community development credit union. She has over 30 years in the consumer, mortgage and small business financial services sectors, and is known throughout the state as being an innovative lender, creating a number of programs and products that serve the disadvantaged.
Mathews is currently working on a culturally appropriate financial life skills program for the incarcerated and the illiterate. She serves on a number of state and county-wide boards including the State Board of Credit Unions, Hawaii County Resource Center, Hawaii County Economic Development, Hawaii County Citizens Corp, Hawaii County Workforce Investment and the Hawaii County Reintegration Program for the Ex-Offender.
Mathews holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, a Masters in Community Development and currently working on a Masters in Organizational Change. Mathews has been an active participant in all three Strong Angel efforts, serving in a variety of capacities including volunteer coordination and integration, regional director, site and logistics coordinator, and executive assistance to Dr. Eric Rasmussen. In addition she has worked with Dr. Rasmussen on a number of other projects and charrettes focusing on humanitarian relief.
Suzanne Mikawa
Strong Angel III Informatics Coordinator and Executive Committee Member
Suzanne Mikawa is the Informatics Coordinator for Strong Angel III, responsible for operational organization, documentation, and information flow for the multinational integrated disaster response demonstration focused on experimentation in the use of cutting-edge techniques and technologies to facilitate improved communication and cooperation across the civil-military boundary in post-disaster and post-conflict field environments.
Prior to joining the Strong Angel team, she worked as the Cisco Networking Academy Program Coordinator, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) Project, for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Afghanistan, a joint project funded by Cisco Systems, Inc., the United Nations Development Program, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to bridge the digital divide in Afghanistan. In this role, she managed the Gender Focused Expansion of CNAP Afghanistan across 6 provinces, launched the Afghan Women in Information Technology (AWIT) Initiative, and fostered public-private partnerships among government institutions, private firms, local NGOs, and academic communities to promote Afghan women’s education and participation in ICT skills training.
Before her mission with UNDP-Afghanistan, she worked at Cisco Systems, Inc. as International Partnerships & Strategies Program Manager for Cisco’s Least Developed Countries Initiative. At Cisco Systems HQ, she managed partnerships with USAID, UNDP, and government institutions and top universities in the world’s 49 Least Developed Countries to implement an industry-standard computer networking training program, with a particular focus on Africa and Central and South East Asia. She also launched the Women in Technology (WIT) Initiative in 2004 through a partnership with USAID and the Institute of International Education awarding IT scholarships to women across 7 countries: Bangladesh, Mongolia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Suzanne graduated from Stanford University in 2003 with a B.A. in International Relations and a B.A. in French.
Nigel Snoad
Strong Angel III Executive Committee member, responsible for Demonstration Design
Nigel Snoad is the Lead Capabilities Researcher for Microsoft Humanitarian Systems where he heads Microsoft’s investigations into the capabilities, approaches and future directions of solutions to address collaboration challenges in humanitarian environments. Microsoft Humanitarian Systems (MHS) is an expeditionary team under Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, tasked with investigating and building working models of advanced solutions to address collaborative aspects of some of the most vexing, emotionally-charged, and least-served human interaction problems, including relief, development, conflict resolution, human trafficking, and human rights.
Prior to joining Microsoft Nigel was Contingency Planning Advisor to Dr David Nabarro, the United Nations System lead for Avian and Human Influenza. Nigel and his colleagues produced policy, plans, guidance, simulations and training establishing the UN system’s response and operational continuity in the event of an influenza pandemic. Prior to this Nigel was a UNICEF staff member deployed to Iraq in 2003 as the chief information officer and deputy for operations of the United Nations Joint Logistics Center (http://www.unjlc.org) which provided emergency humanitarian logistics and civil-military coordination on behalf of UN agencies and NGOs. He was then one of the founding members of the Rome based UNJLC Core Unit, and responsible for information products and processes, including reporting, field assessments, GIS and mapping, the website, and the development and deployment of field applications such as cargo booking systems, assessment tools and relief supply chain management solutions.
Nigel’s more recent field deployments include Sudan and Indonesia. In Indonesia Nigel established the UNJLC less than 48 hours after the Tsunami and led the logistics coordination for the immediate international response. This involved liaison with Governments, UN, NGOs and various military assistance missions. The UNJLC team produced maps, damage assessments and reconstruction plans, flight and cargo procedures and day-to-day prioritization, and pooled transport assets, including military and civilian helicopters, fixed wing aircraft and boats. In Sudan Nigel was a part of the UNJLC team that managed the supply of non-food items for more than 1.5 million displaced persons in Darfur. Nigel was a part of the UN rapid disaster response system, and helped draft the Civil-Military Coordination Handbook for UNOCHA.
Before joining the UN Nigel worked as lead for R&D, product management and business process analysis for tech startups that developed business process automation, data mining, search and optimization products using a range of web-services, software agents and natural language technologies. Nigel has worked as a research microbiologist and soil scientist, parliamentary lobbyist, designer, and has several years experience leading search and rescue teams in the USA.
Nigel has a PhD in Complex Adaptive Systems from the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the Australian National University. Nigel was a visiting fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, the Stanford Center for Computational Genetics and Biological Modeling and Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden. Nigel has a BSc with Honours in Laser Physics from the ANU.
Brian D. Steckler
Strong Angel III Communications Director and Executive Committee Board member
Mr. Brian Steckler is Associate Chair for Special Programs at the US Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, CA. Brian specializes in telecommunications, information technology, information operations, information warfare, computer network attack/defense, e-commerce, Internet technologies, computer networking and related fields. In his current role, Brian provides business development expertise to NPS’s Research Department, and is an occasional lecturer. His areas of teaching and research include: basic networking (LAN/WAN), Information Operations to include Computer Network Defense, Attack, & Exploitation, Psychological Operations, Military Deception, Electronic Warfare, Operations Security, and Information Warfare.
Brian also conducts research for the U.S. Department of Defense in mobile wireless network security, hastily formed networks, information technology applications for Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief, mobile network operation centers, voice verification and recognition technologies, and various broadband internet access device technologies including fixed broadband wireless, ultra wideband, free space optics broadband, and broadband over power lines. He has led major NPS research efforts including deployments of Hastily Formed Networks (HFN’s) in Thailand after the December 2004 SE Asian tsunami as well as in the U.S. Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.
Brian’s last assignment in the corporate world was as the founder and CEO of a California business-class Internet Service Provider (ISP) and software engineering firm. He operated that business for 7 years until selling it in the Summer of 2001. Prior to that Brian had a successful 20-year career in the U.S. Navy, ten years as an enlisted Cryptologic Technician and ten years as a Commissioned Officer. During his Navy career he qualified as a Surface Warfare Officer, Supply Officer, Communications Officer, Operations Officer, Weapons Officer, CMS Custodian, Mine Countermeasures Officer and Officer of the Deck (underway).
He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Washington in 1987 in Business Administration. He received a Masters of Science in Information Technology Management from the Naval Postgraduate School in 1994.
