BLACK ENGINEER OF THE YEAR AWARD WINNERS
nology organization; Chief Technology Office; AT&T Labs; Network Planning, Engineering and Operations; Global Supply Chain; Corporate Fleet Operations; and Corporate Real Estate. ATNO delivers the nation’s largest 4G network, maintains nearly 1 million miles of network fiber and operates the network that transmits 33 petabytes of data on an average business day. During her tenure at AT&T, Knight led a team that installed a $10 million distributed antenna system in the New Orleans Mercedes-Benz Superdome. The new antenna system is the equiv- alent of 200 traditional cell towers, and is the largest system of its kind in the world. She is a respected alumna of Carnegie Mellon University, where she earned a master’s degree in information networking from the Information Networking Institute (INI). Knight is a member of the Alumni Leadership Council— select alumni from INI’s 20-year history. “While it was no easy task to hand-pick a dozen alumni from a highly accomplished community of over 1,200 leaders and professionals, Marachel was one person who caught our attention,” said Dr. Dena Haritos Tsamitis, director, INI, in her letter of nomination for Knight’s 2013 BEYA STEM Award for Professional Achievement.
PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENT-GOVERNMENT
Omarr Tobias Operations Officer 2nd Naval Construction Regiment, Civil Engineer Corps U.S. Navy
A
fghanistan is nearly as large as the state of
Texas. Regiment Operations Officer Lt. Commander Omarr Tobias was respon- sible for all engineering op- erations in the southern half of that 647,500 square mile country. Tobias served as operations officer responsible for a task force of 1,800 military engineers. He planned, coordinated, controlled, and executed the combat and construction operations for six subordinate U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force for the NATO International Security Force, Com- bine Joint Area Afghanistan. He also mentored/mentors Afghan military engineers.
Captain K.A. Donovan of the Civil Engineer Corps com- mended the “motivational leadership” of Tobias, the first Black regimental operations officer in the Naval Construction Force. Brigadier General Timothy P. McGuire, deputy commanding general, support for the 82nd Airborne Division and Regional Command South in Afghanistan recommends Tobias. “His tremendous efforts ensured that the Coalition maintained the re- quired engineer capabilities to serve as force multipliers to vital combat operations,” wrote McGuire, and added the handwritten personal note, “An exceptional officer—as good as they come.” Tobias, who was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., received his
bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from North Carolina A& T University. He is a graduate of Officer Training School, and also earned an M.B.A. from the University of Maryland at College Park. During his graduate years, 2005-2007, he founded Clean City LLC. The ongoing Washington, D.C., area company specializes in graffiti cleaning and prevention and has multiple public sector contracts.
www.blackengineer.com
Returning to active duty, Tobias completed $150 million of construction and engineering design work as the Director of the Facilities Engineering and Acquisition Division of the Public Works Department Washington Naval Facilities Engineering Command. He was promoted to lieutenant commander in 2009, and sent to Afghanistan where he initially led 530 men and women on two deployments. The first was a combat mission during which he led and managed the construction of more than 3 million square feet of contingency office space, as well as protective structure, and water wells in Afghanistan, for which earned a Bronze Star.
During his second deployment, he led construction and renovation of hospitals, schools and water wells in Romania and Ethiopia. His third deployment took the registered professional engineer back to Afghanistan to his present assignment.
PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENT-GOVERNMENT
Roy Foreman Electrical Engineer Manager Northrop Grumman Corporation
R
oy Foreman has a knack for making sys-
tems work together, coupled with a contagious work ethic. He started a small business at 16 installing car stereos in his parent’s garage. After three summers he had saved enough to pay for two years of college tuition at Alabama A&M University. This personal initiative and hands-on experience ingrained in him a common-sense approach to life and engineering. They also provide insights into his achievable approaches for designing systems, wiring specifications and testing. His work at Northrop Grumman has been at the center of multimillion projects for the U.S. Department of Defense. He’s developed partial or complete designs for 40 differ- ent projects, many of which have demanded new approaches. The projects include system and power architecture for ground combat vehicles and indirect visioning; cabling associated with the U.S. Army’s program of record for command and control platform production; power-saving relay systems for air missile defense fielding missions, and a secure shipboard network for naval and joint operations.
As lead electrical engineer on the Northrop Grumman- Army Command Post program, Foreman has been responsible for the design of critical sub components in a system that is a control center for a 3,000-strong brigade. His leadership has resulted in a product that makes a difference in the ability to conduct operations on the battlefield. Over the last two years he has served as lead for a team that developed electrical systems for the $449.9 million Ground Combat Vehicle program. The effort will replace the principal armored vehicle for the combat infantryman.
The award-winning indirect vision driving system was en- gineered by Foreman, providing architecture and power designs for the joint tactical vehicle, ground combat vehicle and consoli-
USBE&IT I WINTER 2013 29
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