2009 Women of Color Award Winners
With limited supervision and no access to the commercial soft-
ware’s source code, Rogers researched the network protocols
it used and determined its structure. This involved a sophisti-
cated bit-breakdown trick: deconstructing the network packet
into computer hexadecimal to understand how the network
bytes were arranged.
She then coded network hooks within the military software
to sort the received bytes into aircraft location and altitude
information. The data was mapped to an internal aircraft
simulation running inside the government software to enable
the game to control the military model.
Rogers also co-designed the reverse process of sending the
enemy aircraft information from the military software to the
commercial game. This second connection permitted two-way
communication between the software modules and allowed a
user in the game to fi ght against enemy aircraft generated by
the government-designed simulation software.
In just a few months, between May and August 2008, Rogers
contributed software code to three applications supporting
AFRL research. For a fi nal presentation, Rogers demonstrated
the gaming technology she developed to a standing-room-
STUDENT LEADERSHIP
only audience of airmen, government personnel and defense
contractors.
Brandy Alexandrea Rogers
The AFRL also showcased the system during the 2008 Inter-
BA –communications, 2011
Tennessee State University
service/Industry Training, Simulation and Education confer-
Proficient with C/C++ programming, AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor
ence. The low-cost gaming proof-of-concept demonstration
ran alongside multi-million-dollar programs from across the
Department of Defense.
Brandy Rogers showed she was up and coming, while com-
More Over 18,000 attendees from government, industry and
pleting a summer internship in engineering and technology
academia visited the conference to witness the latest in simu-
development with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)
lation training and techniques. Rogers presented her research
in Mesa, Arizona. Rogers helped initiate a new avenue of re-
to visitors, including to a number of senior military offi cers, at
search targeting integration of leading game-based technolo-
the Air Force Research Laboratory booth.
gies into advanced warfi ghter training systems.
After the internship ended, Rogers continued to support the
Her contributions kick-started an expanding Air Force pro-
laboratory with contributions to a technical paper describ-
gram utilizing gaming technology for military simulations and
ing the work accomplished and its potential applications.
laid the foundation for a quarter-million-dollar funding under
Her work was compiled with others into the published paper,
which a team of 10 software engineers and behavioral scien-
“Leveraging Gaming Technology for Military Training,” and
tists are exploring half of a dozen gaming research topics.
presented at the Society for Applied Learning Technology
Rogers’ task was to integrate a commercially available fl ight
Conference and also at a leading electronic-warfare technol-
simulator game with high fi delity aircraft and electronic
ogy symposium.
warfare simulations. By themselves, commercial, off-the-shelf
The ability to leverage the multi-billion-dollar commercial
games represent the realism of military electronic warfare and
gaming industry by linking these games with validated, high
weapons systems for fully valid training. Rogers’ goal was to
fi delity, government-controlled simulations has the potential
build a capability to fl y an aircraft inside a commercial game
to decrease the military’s procurement costs and also to cut
and fi ght against highly-realistic enemy aircraft generated by
the development time of training systems.
the simulation software.
www.womenofcolor.net WOMENOFCOLOR | FALL 2009 43
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