If brain drain is still considered an issue in some parts of Pennsylvania, Anna Griffith is proof that even in rural Central PA, there are major inroads being made to keep bright minds close to home.
Saxonburg-bred Griffith, the CEO of Williamsport business intelligence firm
Discovery Machine, met her husband, a Williamsport native, in school at Georgia Tech University and returned to Central PA. She takes pride in her company’s impact on technology education and her employees’ abilities.
“The talent pool in PA is not an issue,” says Griffith. “I think there’s a lot of people who leave PA and want to return. It’s about helping that talent get connected to the region in the right way.
“Everybody we’ve hired has stayed long-term and has deep connections to the area.”
Discovery Machine is a leading indicator because of its patented approach to capturing and deploying the knowledge of experts within a company, working successfully in defense, aerospace and biomedical research, including work with the Navy, DARPA, ONR, NASA, and Lockheed Martin, among others.
The company recently released Knowledge Service Modeler 6.0, which addresses the needs of the training and simulation industry by incorporating user friendly knowledge acquisition features and enhanced capabilities to facilitate quick, cost-effective automation of complex cognitive knowledge.
“Our approach to capturing expertise makes it operational so you can turn it into software,” says Griffith, who founded the company through a Small Business Innovation Research grant in 2000. “You want people to look at that software and understand the process, and you can have continuity of knowledge handed down, especially considering the aging workforce and how to transfer expertise to junior level employees.”
Discovery Machine has doubled its workforce in the last year and now has 17 employees. With the company receiving a new patent approval to create new consoles for Navy instructors to build missions within synthetic training environments, that trend figures to continue.
Source: Anna Griffith, Discovery MachineWriter: Joe Petrucci