Dr. Mary Ann Cummings has won the 2016 Naval Sea Systems Scientist of the Year award for innovating and patenting a software called Orchestrated Simulation through Modeling (OSM), according to the Naval Surface Warfare Center.
"It was my vision to create war games for fleet operators before a fleet exercise," Cummings said. "We can create simulations that show what could happen and take data from an exercise to show how that exercise might play out as a real event."
Cummins said she spent 11 days at sea for the Valiant Shields exercise last September where they used the OSM framework to help create more realistic training through warfare simulations.
"Her approach enables any organization to develop required software components independently and to plug-in those pieces into an overarching framework so that the various components can receive, share and output needed data and information," according to the official nomination sent by the NSWCDD commanding officer.
"Although this award was given to me, it really belongs to my team," Cummings said. "I may have been the team lead but it was their knowledge and software skills that made OSM a reality."
The software is free to the Defense Department of Defense.
