Leadership
DR. PETER VIECHNICKI
DIRECTOR
STIEFF SILVER ANNEX 400
Dr. Peter Viechnicki is a pioneer in the development of capabilities and the management of personnel in the areas of natural language processing, machine learning, and data science techniques. Dr. Viechnicki began his career in the Federal Government, where he helped government agencies solve some of their hardest human language technology problems. During his stint in the private sector, Dr. Viechnicki built NLP systems and managed the efforts of the research teams and system integration. Some of his notable projects include applying text classification to 1.5 billion emails to enable highly efficient response to information requests and developing a multilingual fuzzy biographic search tool for decision support. Dr. Viechnicki has received numerous citations during his career, including the Distinguished Civilian Service Award. Peter received his doctorate in Linguistics from the University of Chicago, specializing in Phonetics and Phonology under Howard Nusbaum, Karen Landahl, and Ken De Jong. His dissertation demonstrated a new experimental paradigm for measuring flexibility during vowel production.
Jeffrey David Harris
Senior Advisor to the Director
STIEFF SILVER ANNEX 400
Mr. J. David Harris joined the Human Language Technology Center of Excellence (HLTCOE) at Johns Hopkins University after retiring from the U.S Government. In the early years of his public service, he was a trailblazer in applying data mining and machine learning techniques to speech and language processing. In 2004, he reached the Senior Executive Service level, as a Defense Intelligence Senior Leader, and from there, he oversaw various projects and organizations spanning research, technology, operations, and human capital management. Notably, he served as the first Director of the Laboratory for Analytic Sciences, where he led a collaborative effort involving government, academic, and industry partners to develop and implement technology and methods to meet intelligence analysis needs. Mr. Harris’s distinguished 32-year career earned him numerous awards and commendations, with a notable highlight being the Meritorious Presidential Rank Award. This prestigious award recognized his sustained professional, technical, and scientific accomplishments on behalf of the U.S. Government.
