The CANA Connection

Cherish Joostberns | Principal Communications Analyst & Resource Manager Employees of a certain age might remember “Meetings, Bloody Meetings” - a 1976 corporate training film starring John Cleese about a man dreaming he’s on trial for holding disorganized and terrible meetings. As corporate training films go, it is - improbably - a Monty Python-esque “classic”. And for all of us that ever watched annual training films, we know that’s an accomplishment! We’ve included the lin

Shawn Charchan | Technical Director of Energy Solutions Adam Evans | Principal Operations Research Analyst Take a deep dive into energy innovation and transformation. CANAers Lauren Dimberg and Kassie McRostie plumb the depths with Adam Evans and Shawn Charchan and talk about the military’s operational energy roadmap and what excites them about the future. Kassie McRostie (KM): How did you become involved with the Department of the Navy Advanced Energy Research Toolkit (DON A

Here are some interesting facts, statistics, and other oddities about Friday the 13th: Paraskavedekatriaphobia: It is the fear of Friday...

In recent years there has been a huge AI boom. New technologies like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Github’s Copilot have excited the public and paved the way for rapid innovation. As a result, we are seeing many new AI technologies across fields: AI based anti-virus software, medical databases with integrated AI tools, and AI virtual assistants for programmers. AI technology will soon become a necessity for companies wishing to keep their data secure. In the near future, criminals wil

I have always enjoyed volunteering, it gives me the chance to help my community and get to know it better. It is also an opportunity to meet new people and learn from their experiences. Recently, I had the chance to volunteer at St. Luke's Community House for their Mobile Meals program, this program uses volunteers to deliver meals to people who are unable to leave their homes due to illness or disability. One of the things that made it possible for me to volunteer was the fl

Logistics, wargaming, MORS, and Hawaii made the perfect combination for CANA this past February. The MORS Wargaming with Pacific Partners was a unique event that was the first MORS conference ever held outside the continental United States. CANA was honored to lead the logistics wargaming focus area for the conference and to be joined by just under one hundred attendees representing many U.S. DoD agencies and services, other non-DoD agencies, and our international partners (A

We all have something we are “good” at. Maybe you pick up a baseball for the first time and throw a strike, or...

CANA at the George Mason University (GMU) Career Jam. The GMU Career Jam is an annual career fair hosted at Mason’s Fairfax campus.

These last two years of LIFE have been anything but smooth sailing; with a crazy pandemic lingering, a challenging school year with opportunities for my boys to learn how to stand strong for their constitutional rights, a cancer misdiagnosis (yes, misdiagnosis!), and much more, it was definitely time to BREATHE. CANA introduced a new Sabbatical benefit available to team members beginning after their third year with the company. The intent of the CANA Bridge is to provide a un

R’s Tidyverse is a collection of R packages that work together with a common functional interface to accomplish data transformations and analysis in the R programming language. To see it in action, let’s consider the following sequence of data transformations on some dataframe (called df) as an example. df <- read_csv(“some_file.csv”) df <- groupby(df, name, a, b, c) df <- summarize(df, qty = qty) df <- ungroup(df) df <- mutate(df, version = “20230130”) Each of the functions

By Anna Sterrett, Director of Business and People Operations On Wednesday, January 18, 2023, several CANA employees volunteered their time to participate in a virtual event with Georgia Tech students. Throughout the course of the day, mock interviews were scheduled with several students, and they had the opportunity to receive immediate feedback to improve their personal presentation and employability skills. Resume reviews also took place, where students were provided with h

By Shawn Charchan, CANA Technical Director of Energy Solutions As CANA's Technical Director of Energy Solutions, I also serve as the Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis (MS&A) Coordinator for several CANA clients. In that capacity, I have the privilege of working with the analytical leads of various pilot programs to ensure the composite group is capitalizing on work already completed and working with unity of effort. This ensures the collective body of work continues to expa

By Jesse Kemp, CANA Principal Program Manager Across all the military services, wargaming has become an increasingly popular tool to test new warfighting concepts, examine the use of new technologies, and exercise various scenarios against near-peer and peer adversaries. As an example, the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory executes 10-12 wargames per year, with multiple overlapping game lines of effort running simultaneously. Yet despite its broad adaptation, wargaming has

Across all the military services, wargaming has become an increasingly popular tool to test new warfighting concepts, examine the use of new technologies, and exercise various scenarios against near-peer and peer adversaries. As an example, the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory executes 10-12 wargames per year, with multiple overlapping game lines of effort running simultaneously. Yet despite its broad adaptation, wargaming has some acknowledged limitations. Those limitatio

The esports industry has seen tremendous growth and popularity over the past few years. However, despite the rapid interest and participation in esports, the industry is playing catch up with their solidified pathway to pro. Unlike traditional sports, such as football, basketball, and others, esports encompasses many different types of games, not just one. The pathways to pro in those aforementioned traditional sports are more linear than in esports. Take football, for exampl

The MORS analytics community is coming together next week for an important meeting on the role of analytics in national security and climate change preparedness. The goal of the meeting is to identify ways that analytics can be used to improve our understanding of climate change and its potential effects on national security. This information will help us develop a roadmap and analytical agenda that will support both areas. The importance of this meeting cannot be overstated.

Innovation has become a major buzzword of the 21st century and many companies feel they have established incubators for innovation in their market. Hard to believe? Search any major company plus the word “innovation” and you will find it appears at least once on their website; in fact, it probably appears repeatedly. They probably even have their own “Innovation Lab,” but do they understand how to design innovation for success? At CANA we strive to continually perfect how we

Every Marine knows the date, the 10th of November, which makes the following day, Veterans Day, a bit different. Veterans have Veterans Day to commemorate their military service on the 11th of November. And the Marines have the Marine Corps Birthday to commemorate their roots, one day earlier. All active duty and former Marines will wish each other a happy birthday on the Marine Corps Birthday. Marines will also tell you that the timing of these two back-to-back American holi

Today is the birthday of the greatest Navy in the world. No other country comes close. On this day I would like to reflect on how the Navy has shaped me and the importance of these experiences in my life. I was in the U.S. Navy from May 1992 until July 2016. I entered right after high school on a football scholarship to the United States Naval Academy. I started school a year early and was undersized coming out of high school so I elected to start my career at the Naval Acade

CANA Attends Key Events By Will Berry Pentagon Energy Expo The Pentagon Energy Expo took place over two busy days in September, one sunny...