The U.S. Army Materiel Command has announced that Physical Scientist Dr. Richard Massaro of the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s Geospatial Research Laboratory is the winner in the Fiscal Year 2016 Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene Award for Innovation in the Individual-Civilian category. Massaro’s program “Tactical Full Motion Video to 3D,” benefits the Army and DOD in providing Soldiers and deployed forces with highly-detailed geospatial data delivered by manned and unmanned systems.
Massaro continues the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ success in the Army’s Greatest Innovation Award Program. This marks the second year in a row a member of USACE has won the award. The award is named for Greene who was killed Aug. 5, 2014 during the War in Afghanistan.
The award consists of three categories: military individual, civilian individual and group. The program is managed by AMC under the lead of its chief technology officer and awards a first-place winner in each category each spring.
When notified of Massaro’s selection, former ERDC director Dr. Jeffery Holland said, “Soldiers are no longer waiting for terrain or intelligence analysts to produce battlespace products. Dr. Massaro’s technology puts these decision aides right at their fingertips with minimal training.”
Massaro serves as the prime investigator for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Intelligence Investment Fund (I2F) initiative on ‘Operational Advancement of FMV-to-3D Mapping’ (See article in the ERDC Information Bulletin, Volume 5 Issue 2, March 31, 2016) and co-investigator for the Advanced LADAR for Terrain Acquisition and Ranging applied research program.
He earned a bachelor’s in physics from James Madison University, a master’s in astronomy from Boston University, and a doctorate in computational science and informatics from George Mason University.
Massaro has served as a reviewer for the Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing Journal since 2015. PE&RS is the official journal for imaging and geospatial information science and technology. He has also authored or co-authored 12 peer-reviewed articles.
He received the 2017 ERDC Award for Excellence in Operational Support as part of a three-person team that supported the 2nd Brigade Combat Teams of the 82nd and 101st Airborne by developing a Soldier-deployable geospatial capability and providing training, workflow design to conduct mapping operations in and around Erbil, Dahuk and Mosul, Iraq in 2016. He is also the recipient of the 2016 ERDC Research and Development Award; 2015 ERDC Achievement Medal for Civilian Service; 2013 ERDC Research and Development Award, and Topographic Engineering Center Director’s Award for Excellence in Scientific and Technological Achievement; George Mason University’s 2011 Best Computational Sciences and Informatics Dissertation; 2006 TEC Director’s Award for Operational Support and the ERDC Research and Development Achievement Award.