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Featured Alumni: Bryan Still

NOVEMBER 30 2021 | Bryan Still, President and Chief Operating Officer for Basic Engineering Concepts and Technologies (BecTech), received his Ph.D in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Rhode Island, studying under Dr. Valerie Maier-Speredelozzi.

Still leans on lessons that continue to resonate with him from his time as a student. “The main value of any Ph. D. program is developing your ability to formulate and then systematically solve problems, irrespective of your specific research topic.  My course work gave me additional tools for solving problems, and my research helped me better understand the behavior of complex systems.  I draw on these lessons most every day and like to think they help me make better decisions.”

“Towards the end of my Navy careers, I was a student and then Military Professor at the Naval War College.  I joined the Gravely Naval Research Group and undertook a research project that examined the use of distributed networked systems for anti-submarine warfare.  I really enjoyed the opportunity to work with fellow students from other services and backgrounds and engineers at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, as well as the chance to work with and learn from Gravely Group founder, Professor William Bundy, a true legend in the Submarine Force and mentor to generations of U.S. Navy leaders.”

BecTech is a small business that provides engineering, program management and professional consulting services to US and international defense programs. “I have a keen interest in model-based design and engineering, and the use of model-based tools to develop operational concepts and new technologies for undersea warfare.  We have started working with partner companies, and my goal is to bring these ideas to fruition over the next one to three years so that we can deliver meaningful new capabilities for undersea warfare.”