Future 5: Jarrett Holcomb

	Jarrett Holcomb

In today's Future 5 profile, we focus on Jarrett Holcomb. Jarrett joined Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Warner Robins, GA, as an intern in January 2018. After graduating from Mercer University later that year with a BS in Electrical Engineering, he earned a fulltime position at SwRI as a research engineer.

Jarrett says that from his earliest years, he always wanted to know the "why" about something. He says, "… I quickly realized that if I could answer the 'why' question, then all the 'what,' 'when' and 'how' were easier to answer. For me the typical answer to "why" in EW is simple: to save the warfighter. Unfortunately, not everyone shares this same answer. That is why my ultimate career goal is to create, inspire, and motivate EW leaders to answer their why question in a similar manner."

"I wish that someone had taught me earlier about the importance of EW earlier in my career path," he says. "My younger self was always looking for opportunities to make a difference, but I often looked at various other career paths to accomplish this. Had I known about the importance of EW, I would have started applying my research to solve EW problems sooner. This is why my career goal includes speaking about my passion for the importance of EW at as many conferences, colleges, and schools as possible."

Jarrett says his greatest career achievement so far has been to help develop SwRI's SPARTA software. "When I first started testing EW systems at SwRI," he explains, "the required tools for verification and analysis lacked the precision and measurement resolution for me to confidently test the system’s functionality. This caused my team and I to acquire internal research and development funds to develop an EW domain specific test software designed to adequately measure Electronic Attack (EA) system outputs. After many great successful internal demonstrations, I led multiple outreach efforts to proliferate the tool to protect warfighters on more platforms. Several successful government contracts later, SPARTA received an R&D 100 award presented to the top 100 revolutionary technologies of 2020."

You can learn more about Jarrett and his fellow Future 5 professionals here.

For more information about the AOC's Future 5 program, visit here.