Dr. James Valdes, the senior technologist (ST) for biotechnology at Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC), played a key role in the 27th Annual Army Science Conference, held recently in Florida. Valdes chaired the Technical Program Committee.
A significant part of his role involved reviewing the hundreds of abstracts submitted last spring by renowned scientists and engineers from the United States and foreign governments, academia and industry seeking to present a paper or poster. Valdes led the Technical Program Committee that determined which papers and posters were accepted, as well as selecting papers that won awards, including the prestigious Paul A. Siple Memorial Award.
“We tried to maximize the poster sessions to be as inclusive as possible while maintaining high quality,” Valdes said. “At times, we had to make some very hard choices.”
The four-day conference included 18 parallel technical sessions covering topics as wide-ranging as Power and Energy, Biotechnology, Network Science, and Neuroscience. The sessions supported the conference’s theme: Transformational Science and Technology – Enabling Full Spectrum Operations.
“Dr. Valdes was instrumental in ensuring the Army had a high quality scientific conference that was focused on warfighter needs both present and future,” said ECBC Technical Director Joseph D. Wienand.
At the closing banquet, theoretical physicist S. James Gates, Jr., Ph.D., presented a talk called “The Third STEM Crisis: Defending the American Dream in the New Millennium.”
Valdes has chaired the Technical Program Committee in previous years and plans to stay involved in future conferences. He encourages ECBC to participate more fully to showcase our accomplishments to the Army.
“As a critical national asset in the CB defense community, ECBC has the opportunity to have direct interaction with our stakeholders and the warfighter when attending the Army Science Conference and others like it,” Wienand said. “Each year, new technologies are created, processes developed and answers to some of the most pressing scientific questions have their origin in an ECBC facility. It’s important for us to share that research, science and engineering with those it impacts most.”
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