Semantic Technology for Intelligence, Defense, and Security Conference (STIDS) 2026

Amy Morris

Amy Morris is a professionally licensed geotechnical engineer with more than 20 years of experience in consulting and federal service. Her work has focused extensively on levee infrastructure, risk assessment, and specialized analyses, and she is now engaged in research aimed at improving infrastructure documentation and detection.

Jaime L. Stieler

From Data to Decision Advantage: A Warfighter’s Requirements for Semantic Technology in 21st Century Intelligence

This keynote challenges the semantic technology community to move beyond elegant data architectures and confront the operational realities of modern warfare. From the warfighter’s perspective, the true measure of advances in data management, structured relational representation, and AI is whether they can transform overwhelming volumes of disconnected data into trusted decision advantage before the adversary acts.

Jaime L. Stieler is the Director of Advanced Programs for the 480th ISR Wing, where she supports intelligence mission modernization and operational integration across joint and coalition environments. Her work focuses on advancing ISR capabilities, improving data usability and interoperability, and aligning emerging semantic technologies with real-world operational requirements.

Lieutenant General Robert J. "Bob" Elder Jr

Operational Benefits of Standardization and Open Architectures

The Operational Benefits of Standardization and Open Architectures presentation illustrates how the use of ontology engineering’s conceptual structure underpins DoD Architectural Framework (DODAF) views and makes them coherent and machine-interpretable. DODAF’s organized views of capabilities, operations, systems, standards, projects, services, and data supports detailed analysis from multiple perspectives while providing decision-makers a “big picture” view.

Lieutenant General Robert J. "Bob" Elder Jr. is the former Commander, 8th Air Force; Commander, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana; and Commander, Joint Functional Component Command for Space and Global Strike, U.S. Strategic Command, Offutt AFB, Nebraska. He is now a member of the research faculty at George Mason University.

James G. “Snake” Clark

Innovation in Three Decades

Mr. Clark’s career offers a powerful case study in mission-driven innovation under bureaucratic constraint. This keynote examines Clark’s example as a model of practical resilience, ethical risk-taking, and leadership under pressure. It explores what it means to challenge slow systems responsibly while remaining focused on delivering critical capabilities to those operating in harm’s way.

Retired Colonel James G. “Snake” Clark is widely known as the “Godfather of the Predator” for his role in accelerating the deployment of unmanned aerial capabilities that reshaped modern military operations. Across three decades of service, he championed rapid operational innovation, near-real-time intelligence delivery, and deployable satellite downlink capabilities in support of the warfighter.

Joe Blankenship

Ontology Engineering in the Era of Generative AI: Current Trends and Future Trajectories

Ontology engineering is rapidly evolving within generative AI, shaping knowledge representation and reasoning. This session explores emerging tools, techniques, and methodologies for effective ontology development, including integration with agentic AI, explainable AI, and governance concerns such as bias mitigation, information security, and privacy preservation.

Joe Blankenship is the founder of A Valid Company and a veteran with more than 20 years of experience spanning data science, geospatial analysis, and AI engineering. His work across government, nonprofit, academic, and commercial sectors focuses on building validated data and AI solutions tailored to operational and organizational needs.

Armita Davarpanah

Flood Risk Governance through Hybrid LLM–GraphRAG: A Query Framework for the National Levee Database

This presentation introduces an ontology-driven, AI-enabled framework for integrating and analyzing levee infrastructure data. The approach combines the Levee System Ontology (LSO), built on BFO and CCO, with a Neo4j-based knowledge graph aligned with the National Levee Database to enable a consistent representation of levee systems, components, and failure processes. Building on this semantic foundation, a GraphRAG layer supports hybrid retrieval, natural language question answering, and automated translation of user queries into graph-based operations. Using data from the USACE Rock Island District, the framework demonstrates scalable integration, traceable reasoning, and enhanced accessibility for both technical and non-technical users.

Armita Davarpanah is an Assistant Professor at Spelman College whose research focuses on ontology engineering, semantic technologies, and AI-enabled infrastructure analysis. Her recent work integrates BFO- and CCO-aligned ontologies with knowledge graphs and GraphRAG systems to support flood risk governance and levee infrastructure decision-making.