| SOUTHERN MARYLAND CHAPTER: SoMDLY Gives $16K to Chapter's STEM Scholarship Fund Southern Maryland Loves You (SoMDLY) donated $16,000 to the chapter's STEM Scholarship Fund in November. The chapter is committed to investing in education and innovation throughout the region and works closely with the Naval Air Station Patuxent River, local schools and higher education institutions to foster the next generation of innovators and leaders in technology and defense. The donation ceremony took place at TechPort, at the St. Mary's County Regional Airport, in St. Mary's County, Maryland. Southern Maryland Loves You has a long-standing legacy of partnering with local innovators to help the community. This was demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the organization collaborated with Triton Defense, Burchoil and then-SoMDLY President Barbara Ives and board member Matt Hayes, to come up with solutions for the critical shortage of personal protective equipment in the region. Matt Hayes invented The Hot Box, an FDA-authorized medical device capable of sanitizing up to 24,000 N95 masks per day. This donation reinforces SoMDLY's dedication to fostering future innovation, supporting STEM education and impacting the community. "This moment is deeply personal for me," said Tommy Luginbill, chapter president and executive director of the Pinkney Innovation Complex for Science and Technology at Montgomery College. "I want this to be an example for my daughter, Brooke-and for anyone, young or old-that even when the world feels scary, when good people come together for a common cause, magic can truly happen. These funds will continue to do something real and lasting in our community-supporting students and the future of STEM." |
| SOUTHERN MARYLAND CHAPTER: September's luncheon featured guest speaker Roger Thorstenson, an information technology systems analyst in the Architecture and Interoperability Directorate of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration. His responsibilities include strategic planning, development of information support plan (ISP) guidance and policies and coordinating the reviews of maritime- and missile defense-related ISPs. Thorstenson specifically addressed the enhanced ISP process. He said this is a new and improved way of developing and reviewing ISPs using XML, which will become a mandatory way of creating ISPs in a data-centric process through which discovering, sharing and reusing ISP data becomes easier. |