By Michael Watkins

Rockwell Collins image
The big picture — Tara Riesbeck enjoys looking ahead, solving problems, and finding ways to be more efficient. This is one of many reasons the Rockwell Collins senior software engineer recently received our quarterly Open Innovator Award.

Like many female engineers, Tara Riesbeck embraces the fact that she is in the minority when it comes to her chosen profession.

According to statistics published on the National Academy of Engineering Web site, Engineer Girl, only about 9 percent of engineers within the United States are female.

Such a small number could have prompted Riesbeck, a senior software engineer at Rockwell Collins Simulation & Training Solutions (STS) in Binghamton, N.Y., to go through college and enter the professional ranks feeling like she had something to prove - but that wasn't the case.

Despite the fact that males currently dominate the engineering population, Riesbeck hasn't experienced any gender-bias since entering the workforce about 13 years ago. She has not felt the need to be faster, stronger, smarter or better because she's a woman. She simply does her job - and does it very well.

"I haven't had any problems due to the fact that I am a woman working in a technical field," said Riesbeck, who was recognized recently with our Open Innovator Award for the first quarter of FY'08. "I have been lucky enough to work with a great group of people that I call friends. Every program I have worked on has had a real team environment."

Cost-saving integration

The Open Innovator Award program recognizes those who practice open innovation by bringing external sources of technology and innovation into our company to accelerate business growth and create a competitive discriminator in the marketplace.

Open Innovator award winners

It's this collaborative atmosphere where new ideas are exchanged and encouraged that led Riesbeck to look beyond the walls of our own company for commercial software and animation tools to create high content, high fidelity displays for use in a variety of simulation and training applications.

With assistance from colleague Michelle Harper, a multimedia designer also in Binghamton, Riesbeck explored the idea of using Adobe Photoshop and Flash animation to develop various avionic displays and instruments instead of OpenGL, a more complicated graphics programming environment.

"Michelle found the graphics were much easier and faster to create with Flash," said Riesbeck, who joined our company in December 2003 via our acquisition of the former NLX. "In the meantime, I found a way for our simulation [back-end] software to communicate with Flash graphics. This enabled our software to control the graphics or change them based on the state of the simulation."

According to Bob Peffley, a senior software engineer in Binghamton, integrating Flash animation into our simulation and training applications provides our company with a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It also decreases application time and positively affects our bottom line.

"Traditional development of graphic intensive applications required highly-skilled software engineers and expensive toolsets," said Peffley, who nominated Riesbeck for the Open Innovator Award. "Because Adobe Photoshop and Flash animation are so widely used, we are realizing significant cost savings as well as simplified development."

Tara's work proved we could use Flash to develop high-fidelity animated graphics that are tied to our real-time simulation models," he continued.

To date, Flash graphics have been used on our MH-60 Weapon Load Training (WLT) program and our Canadian Maritime Helicopter Program (CMHP). The WLT program was the first to use Flash, and it proved easier and faster than the OpenGL programming because of the features already built into the program.

"The OpenGL programming used previously on the Stryker program would have taken much more time and been much harder," explained Riesbeck, who earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Binghamton University in 1994. "There would have been 100-plus graphic files required. Instead, we easily created the graphics by using Flash, and we didn't have to worry about any extra graphic files."

Team approach

Next on the agenda for Riesbeck - once she returns from maternity leave in September - is supporting changes for our Stryker program hardware maintenance trainers, which teach soldiers how to troubleshoot and maintain vehicles. Riesbeck works primarily on the Diagnostic Troubleshooting Trainers (DTTs) and Hands-On Trainers (HOTs).

Thinking innovatively, which includes recognizing the importance of tapping into the talents of external resources, is something Riesbeck and her teammates in Binghamton strive to accomplish each day.

"Tara's work ethic is stellar," said Gretchen Schlegel, a senior engineering manager in Binghamton and the person to whom Riesbeck reports. "Tara has a quality whereby she looks forward, beyond the current task, to see where improvements can be made.

"I believe her ability to keep the big picture in mind and the realization that we don't have to develop everything ourselves is what led to her winning this award," she continued.

And while Riesbeck is honored to have received such accolades, she also is humbled and a bit surprised.

"I've always enjoyed problem solving and trying to find ways to be more efficient," said Riesbeck, the mother of 2-year-old twins and a newborn baby boy. "I think it's very important that we be open to different technologies, even though they might not seem to fit at first glance."

- Michael Watkins is a freelance writer.