Rising Star John Collier
Collier designed and developed an advanced multi-intelligence analyst system. He came up with a design that could fit on a couple of laptops or be scaled to a system that involves hundreds of systems.
Age: 40
Organization: Ball Aerospace and Technologies, supporting the Air Force
Title: Principal engineer
Nominated for: Designing and developing an advanced multi-intelligence analyst system. Came up with a design that could fit on a couple of laptops or be scaled to a system involving hundreds of systems.
First IT mentor: Rhonda Diaz, a systems engineer from Silicon Graphics who helped me learn the political aspects of large government computer systems.
Latest accomplishment: In our latest project, we got to inject a lot of new technology into our facility. Some of the technologies include Linux, virtualization, deduplication, 10-gig network to the desktop and clustered file systems.
Career highlight: Getting the IOTS program (a five-year effort to transform sensor data into intelligence information) operational on time and under budget.
Favorite bookmark: Slashdot.org
Dream non-IT-related job: Magician. I have performed for my kids' classes and several charity events.
The annual Rising Star awards are presented by the 1105 Government Information Group, publisher of Federal Computer Week, GCN and Washington Technology, to public and private sector employees in the federal IT community who have gone above and beyond their job descriptions to make a lasting impact in their organization. See all the 2009 Rising Star award winners.