Ambassadors for Science

Guest: Emily Saulsgiver, Deputy Director, International Cooperative Programs Office

Host: Brittany Greco, Senior Communications Specialist, Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security

[00:00:00] Emily Saulsgiver We are the entry point for international partners to come to work with DHS Science and Technology. We really have a unique role of being that kind of ambassador for science for the department, which is really exciting.

[00:00:12] Brittany: Hi everyone and welcome to today's episode of Technologically Speaking. I am Brittany Greco, one of your hosts, and joining me today is Emily Saulsgiver, Deputy Director of our International Cooperative Programs Office, or ICPO. Emily, welcome. We're so glad to have you.

[00:00:39] Emily Saulsgiver Thanks for having me.

[00:00:41] Brittany: I want to get things started kind of broad. If you could just tell us a little bit about what ICPO does here at S&T.

[00:00:47] Emily Saulsgiver The core of what ICPO does for the department, and for the science technology directorate specifically, is we identify international collaborations in innovation, science, technology, research, and development, where we can find mutually beneficial collaborations so that we're saving resources. That's people, time, that's costs, that's taxpayer dollars, that is finding the smartest people around the globe to make sure they're thinking about the problems we care about. S&T has special authorities for international engagement in science and technology for homeland security matters. We are responsible for managing those authorities, that are actually at the undersecretary level - the head of our organization. Then we manage those relationships. We find the partners that we need to advance science and technology around the globe, and we find partners that actually are experiencing things we may experience in the future.

[00:01:46] Brittany: Okay, and when you say authorities, can you clarify what that means for folks who may not be familiar with that?

[00:01:51] Emily Saulsgiver Absolutely, so it's legal authority. Congress delegated the Undersecretary for Science and Technology special authorities to engage with international partners. The special part of our authority is that we can do a little deeper collaboration. We can collaborate by sending scientists abroad, we can host scientists here, we can send money across, other resources, we can do all that kind of deeper collaboration and not just “What did you learn from that event and how can we know that now.”

[00:02:31] Brittany: Sure, because that's one part of it, but it's also nice to be able to actually say we're working on these things together actively.

[00:02:36] Emily Saulsgiver Well, that happened to you? That happened to us too! Let's work together on it. Let's make sure it doesn't happen again or that we can collaborate so that it has less impact on our communities what it does.

[00:02:47] Brittany: Gotcha, and what are some of those shared issues that S&T is working on with our international partners?

[00:02:54] Emily Saulsgiver We work across the S&T mission with our international partners. We have some really close allies, traditional allies like the UK, right? We have the longest land border in the world with Canada, so, a lot of what the department does in border security we absolutely work with our Canadian colleagues there. In Australia, they have a history of natural disaster resilience, but also agricultural threats to their communities and to their infrastructure, their economy. We're working with them on how we better our ag defense work. Our Korean colleagues, our Japanese colleagues, our Singaporean colleagues have made leaps and bounds of progress in technical innovation, and industry engagement. We are working with them to say; Where is technology going? What does AI mean to us? How do we make sure that our cyber systems are secure and resilient? And how do we enable testbeds so that we can apply those technologies in a homeland security, or a civil defense environment, so that we're learning for our context, not just for what the companies and others that are developing these technologies are considering. 

[00:04:06] Brittany: That's a good point you raised, it's not just government to government information sharing, but also figuring out what is the private sector doing, and what should we be looking for? What standards should we be considering? What, you know, what innovation should we be looking for from our companies here domestically, but also abroad.

[00:04:23] Emily Saulsgiver Absolutely. We bring all of our industry engagement leads from across S&T into these international engagements. It's been a huge push for us this past year connecting the accelerator programs around the globe, innovation laboratories, that other governments are leading, all of those, making sure that's part of our S&T network.

[00:04:41] Brittany: So, when we say that we're engaging with other governments, how does that relationship start? Can you walk us through that a little bit?

[00:04:48] Emily Saulsgiver All of the work that we do is enabled through State Department. 

Brittany: Okay.

Emily Saulsgiver We go through the process to establish treaty level engagements with international partners. That's probably the most robust partnership. We can have things that are less robust, but if we want to do everything together, that takes about two years to establish. It is that we find the right science agency to collaborate with.

[00:05:14] Brittany: Okay.

[00:05:15] Emily Saulsgiver At the beginning, we start with a science agency. We try to identify where our best partner is, and that's evaluating government structures at our international partners, because not every government in the world is organized like ours. Finding that right partner, who's willing to take on that kind of framework level engagement, takes time. And then we do the legal negotiations to make sure that we're protecting our information, our IP, all of those pieces, and the security pieces as well, in those partnerships. And then we say, what do we really want to start with? Do we want to start with cybersecurity? Do we want to start with first responders or natural disasters? Where does this partnership really benefit both of our countries in the best manner as a first step? And then where does it go from there?

[00:05:58] Brittany: So that it's stuff that we know is important nationally, but also maybe something that administrations are thinking about, in terms of, if there are global priorities that we want to be focusing on. S&T is really helping carry water for those efforts.

[00:06:11] Emily Saulsgiver Absolutely. We work with the department's priorities closely. Our Indo-Pacific strategy, for example, is very focused on what the department and the White House are trying to achieve in the region, and where science and technology plays a part in that. I'll say we just were approved through the State Department for a new science and technology attaché at the Singapore Institute of Technology.

[00:06:35] Brittany: Oh

[00:06:36] Emily Saulsgiver That will be our first S&T person in the region. DHS has a lot of people around the Indo-Pacific, but it's been a White House and S1 push to establish more of a presence in the region, and we're part of that with this attaché. And that means science advice is right in the team in the region. And that's really exciting. 

[00:06:58] Brittany: That's great. What do you want folks to know about ICPO that they may not know already?

[00:07:04] Emily Saulsgiver We are the entry point for international partners to come to work with DHS Science and Technology. And in managing that role, we have to make sure we can represent all the equities science and technology has at play, and where our priorities are, where our investments are being made. We really have a unique role of being that kind of ambassador for science for the department, which is really exciting. We're extending S&T's reach and coordination into those teams around the globe. We have 14 international partners. We work with about 30 countries on a regular basis, but the 14 bilateral partners are those framework agreement…

[00:07:45] Brittany: Mm-Hmm.

[00:07:46] Emily Saulsgiver …Um, that's where we have an established government to government relationship. We can surge that number up to 30, probably more. Our key partnerships, largely, the folks we work the most with around the globe, the UK, of course our Five I’s partners. Five I’s is an intelligence term from after World War II that references our UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand partners. It was intelligence based, so it basically was establishing that we trust each other enough to share intelligence freely. It has since grown into a more robust partnership and actually we have stood up a five country, so taking I's out of it because we don't do intelligence, five country research and development partnership, 5RD, which is based on those historic relationships and is able to establish closer ties for research. We work with Israel, we work with Sweden, Singapore, Korea. We have a partnership with Mexico, that I wish we could do more, I hope we do more with, in the future. We have partners in Germany, and France, and Spain. The same, I'd love to do more with those partners. We are growing a partnership with Finland, with Japan, with Norway. So there's a lot of work happening right now.

[00:09:01] Brittany: Wow, that is a lot. Do you see across that portfolio, are there areas where we specialize with certain countries and certain things?

I know earlier you mentioned that we might have more intelligence sharing with certain countries, or we have more tech focused interests with other countries. Someone like Finland, for example, maybe we're looking at more environmental issues. I wonder if you could explain some of that.

[00:09:25] Emily Saulsgiver Absolutely. Conversations have changed over the past few years with a number of partners based on what they're experiencing. I would say climate and the effects of climate change on many of our partners has become a critical conversation. When you think about our engagements in the Scandinavian countries experiencing fires and floods for the first time.

[00:09:50] Brittany: Oh Wow!

[00:09:51] Emily Saulsgiver And it's fascinating to be a part of an experience where we have experience to provide to them, they also have this very rich environment of untested space. So, where we are constantly dealing with legacy equipment here, because we've been facing challenges for many iterations of technology, they may not have those same concerns or constraints. It gives us a potential pathway where we could explore where technologies could be deployed in a fresh environment and how that could inform our own planning.

[00:10:26] Brittany: That's really interesting. I hadn't thought about it that way. You know, it's sort of a clean slate in some areas if they don't have those legacy systems, then you know, what does it look like to not have to worry about interoperability from older systems, which we know is like constant issue here.

[00:10:42] Emily Saulsgiver We've seen that around the globe in various environments. You think of telecommunications, right? Certain parts of Southeast Asia and Africa never had telecommunications up until recently, and they were able to jump a few of the systems that we still rely on because they didn't have it, and they didn't need to rely on, and so it looks different there.

[00:11:02] Brittany: During your time here at S&T, how have you seen the international coordination evolve over time?

[00:11:08] Emily Saulsgiver Oh, great question. It has changed extremely over my time at S&T. When I started at S&T, I was part of our research divisions, and we did international engagements based on project specific needs. I think our international office really was designed that way in that you would have a program manager who knew what the research was and came in saying, you know, Germany has this capability and I want to work with them, and they would establish an agreement to make that happen. When I joined a couple of years ago, it was really starting to shift and our director, Stephanie Okimoto, really has a lot of credit there. But also leadership up to the top to say, we have these special authorities, we need to be using them more strategically. And we've really tried to do that. The new strategy that we rolled out last year, which was the first time that DHS rolled out a global innovation research and development strategy, which our office led for the department, was focused on just that. The first tenet of that strategy is that we do develop things together - so we develop tools and solutions. The second part of that, though, is that we develop scientific networks. We know where expertise is, we know who to call when we have a question, and we can surge those relationships when a disaster strikes. And we saw that with COVID. 

Brittany: Okay, yeah.

Emily Saulsgiver The third one of that, though, is science diplomacy. We're a science agency and we work with the State Department. We do science diplomacy. Science needs to be a part of our foreign affairs. And as fast as technology is advancing around the globe, and how quickly it changes, and the experiences of people around the globe, we have to be science informed. So that's really quite a shift from the beginning of my time at S&T.

[00:13:05] Brittany: I want to switch over to a little bit more about your background. What did you study, and did you see yourself getting into international relations and science policy?

[00:13:15] Emily Saulsgiver So what did I study? I came out of high school - and I just gave a talk at a high school, so this is all fresh in my mind - who I was in high school and what I wanted to be when I grew up. When I came out of high school my thought was that I would go into an English program. Study journalism and become a photojournalist.

[00:13:36] Brittany: Cool.

[00:13:37] Emily Saulsgiver I think that came out of my family background and what dinner conversations were all about. We were always…I've always been very curious about world events and how they affected the U.S. When I got to college I was in an English program. I graduated with an English degree in undergrad, but I had a language minor and a technical communications minor.  And with that technical communications minor, I got an internship at DARPA.

[00:14:05] Brittany: DARPA.

[00:14:06] Emily Saulsgiver And that was funny, because I thought, what does the Department of Defense's research agency need with an English major? And they said, well, we're trying to communicate.

[00:14:18] Brittany: Imagine. 

[00:14:20] Emily Saulsgiver We're trying to talk about what we do to non-technical or non-scientific audiences, and we think you might be a good fit.

[00:14:26] Brittany: What a cool idea.

[00:14:27] Emily Saulsgiver It was very cool, and I really credit the program manager who had the idea. It was a great summer. I got exposed, I've always been a bit of a science enthusiast, I should say, so being in the heart of that, and then seeing that there was a real need for non-scientific personnel as part of those teams, was really eye-opening for me, and that changed my whole trajectory.

[00:14:52] So once I finished undergrad I started working at DARPA as a contractor, and then I moved over with my contracting company to DHS Science and Technology. And that's where I've been ever since. It took me a few years after that to go for my master's degrees and I ended up at this sort of fork in the road; Do I want to go and study data analytics? Which is where my professional background is. For 10 years I was part of our data analytics team and our cyber security team. And so I was thinking perhaps I should go and study Cybersecurity at Carnegie Mellon, right? And then it was like, well, is that the best way to use my talents? I could do that. I could not love it as much, maybe. But I didn't want to necessarily be the SME. I didn't want to be the subject matter expert. I wanted to help the subject matter experts because there's lots of really smart people doing amazing work. I felt like the best use of my talents was really in the international relations side. So I did a master's degree in Australia. I didn't want to study international relations in the U. S. I thought, you know, I've got enough of that perspective. Let me broaden it. I had just gotten married and I told my husband, okay, we've got two choices. I got accepted to a university in Germany, and a university in Australia. And he was like, oh, let's go to Australia. So, I ended up in Australia and it was a fantastic experience studying international relations from a close partner of ours, who also has very close relationships with other countries, and having professors and lecturers coming from even, you know, just different parts of the world, different experiences. I think we get that in U. S. institutions as well, but I was the only American student, which was fantastic. So whenever you start talking about what's the U. S. doing in this situation, they said, well, what's the American in the room. So it was a great experience, and I stayed for another master's degree while I was there in public policy. So that's where I'm at now. I came back to the U. S., This job in ICPO was available, and I thought, well, this is just perfect. So here I am. 

[00:17:08] Brittany: That's really interesting to think about learning international relations abroad. What perspective do you think that they brought there that might be different from an American-led course?

[00:17:19] Emily Saulsgiver I think an American-led course, we have such pride, and we have a very strong culture of patriotism. That's from a U. S. perspective. We have to remember that all engagements the U. S. has had, have had another side to that. Potentially, ramifications that cascade, and humans are in that loop.

[00:17:48] Brittany: Yeah.

[00:17:48] Emily Saulsgiver Humans that aren't military families, from a family where my grandfather landed his plane and we were out there, you know, waving flags celebrating that. But he dropped bombs.

[00:18:02] Brittany: Yeah.

[00:18:03] Emily Saulsgiver And he, you know, people were on the receiving end of that. So, I think going into international relations you really have to have that historical context, and where people's frameworks are when they come to the negotiating table. If I don't have respect for that situation, if I don't have time to listen, or if I don't know where they're coming from, I could really mess up a negotiation. And it's not to say that I'm less patriotic for that. I like to think of my patriotism as being a little bit more empathetic.

[00:18:38] Brittany: Sure.

[00:18:39] Emily Saulsgiver I had a great conversation recently. I spoke at the World Police Summit last year in Dubai. I was with some other DHS colleagues and we were trying to advance an MOU. And our Emirati colleagues wanted to sit down for tea and we know the process, right? You don't talk business, with some groups, until you've had tea, and you ask about their family, and they learn about you, because you're building trust. And I respect that. You're not going to sit down with somebody and sign your house away unless you know who are, you know? It's like you're going to marry somebody before you know their background? No, so, if you think about it as a relationship that you're trying to form, you have to build trust and some cultures do that in a systematic way. You sit down for tea, you have coffee, and you need to be inclusive and build that into your program. I think I was told by one of our colleagues that, oh, Americans aren't so bad at that. Some of our European partners apparently worse with like getting straight down to business. But, as an international relations specialist, I need to know that,  need to know that we need to build time to sit down for dinner first, before we introduce an agreement of any sort.

[00:19:56] Brittany: Honestly, something that we could use more of just in our work environment, too. Like, what if we had snacks? What if we took our time with this? 

Emily Saulsgiver And gifts! 

Brittany: Yes! Oh, I would love a gift.

[00:20:05] Emily Saulsgiver We get so many gifts, and they're lovely, and I feel like it's always a rush on our side because, we're not really good at the gifts. We get the most beautiful gifts, and they're part of the demonstration of that trust. 

Brittany: Absolutely. 

Emily Saulsgiver Symbolism as part of the gifts, so we need to do better with the gift exchanges. 

[00:20:27] Brittany: We'll mark that down for where we can improve moving forward. That's good to know.

[00:20:32] Emily Saulsgiver Our leadership knows. 

[00:20:35] Brittany: I'm excited to hear about what the catalog…

[00:20:36] Emily Saulsgiver Well, there's also groups that we are not going to ever beat them or tie them. You do a gift exchange and the Koreans are going to come with these gorgeous tea sets and we just can't reciprocate, right? We legally can't reciprocate over a certain threshold.

[00:20:56] Brittany: What kinds of foods are your favorite to seek out when you're traveling internationally?

[00:21:00] Emily Saulsgiver When I travel internationally…actually, I had a student ask me this week at the high school and I was like, how do you acclimate to a place? And for me, it's through food. One of the first stops, especially if I've never been to a country, or if I'm new to a different part of that country, is I'll go to the grocery store the markets, and just eat local food. Thankfully, I don't have any allergies or anything, so I'll just go and walk around and suss it out. Funny story I have is, it was a holiday for me and my husband, though, was in Finland and we walked into the grocery store and I've never seen so much like canned and jarred fish, but it's delicious. It's so good. It was locally canned, right? But you have to try it. You have try it. So for me, it's, yeah, food would be a good way to settle in. When I seek out, I think I just want to try what they're known for. I want to try like authentic Thai food. I want to have authentic Chinese food. And it's not General Tso's chicken.

[00:22:00] Brittany: Yeah, we agree. I know my favorite thing is you go find a bakery and you're just like, what is everyone ordering? What's running out? Like, let me try one of those.

[00:22:09] Emily Saulsgiver I have someone on my team who's really good at sussing out where those are, and she's a foodie, and so usually if I'm going to a new place, she'll be like, Oh, I saw this on Instagram, you have to go check it out. 

[00:22:19] Brittany: What a crucial member of the team, to have somebody who's actually caring about the details like that.

[00:22:24] Emily Saulsgiver She really loves it.

[00:22:26] Brittany: What a gift. I'm gonna ask another just kind of light question, Which for you is worse, packing for a trip or unpacking after a trip?

[00:22:35] Emily Saulsgiver Unpacking after.

[00:22:36] Brittany: 100%.

[00:22:38] Emily Saulsgiver I don't know if I ever fully unpack. My poor kids, I mean, I think my kids think that my suitcases are actually toys, because one is just constantly open, ready for the next trip. And so they're just climbing in suitcases in my bedroom a lot.

[00:22:53] Brittany: They're trying to get going on the trip, about the good food. They're like, maybe we'll go check out this canned fish situation? So, what would the world be like without ICPO? What would it look like if S&T didn't have this dedicated force of people who are considering international agreements, international cooperation?

[00:23:10] Emily Saulsgiver We'd be less informed. And we'd have less dollars, because we actually do bring in money from our international partners to supplement our work. I think that's recognizing both that the U. S. has prowess in certain areas, and we have partners who are experiencing similar threats, and we need to work together. Sometimes that means they send us funding to help us with explosives detection on airplanes. And we're able to enable that very quickly. One of my team members turned around an agreement in two days this year to enable millions of dollars from the UK in transportation security. And I'll take that as a pride point.

[00:23:46] Brittany: That's great. That's fantastic, so building on that, where do you hope to see the office move in the future? Or what do you hope to see S&T achieve through international coordination in the future?

[00:23:59] Emily Saulsgiver [00:24:00] I think we're really pushing S&T as a science agency and recognizing that the Department of Homeland Security has that capability.

[00:24:06] Brittany: Absolutely.

[00:24:07] Emily Saulsgiver We do that on a global stage, but we also work through our partners to do that. So more and more I'm briefing on our international authorities that can be used by other parts of the U. S. government.

[00:24:19] Brittany: Oh, okay.

[00:24:20] Emily Saulsgiver And that's really fascinating. Again, back to the what did I think was already being done. We could do more interagency wise with international collaboration, and that aligns research on both sides, our side, their side, together. I'll give an example, to that point, is right now we're focused a lot on the resilience of the Pacific Island countries. I've been to a number of events where our defense colleagues are there trying to help, and talk about space, and defense, and how we need to send up more satellites to get them more data, and that's brilliant. That will absolutely be needed after fiber optic cables get to those countries. And that's where the defense side, those kind of large investments in technology, can play. Where we can come in and say, they're on the front lines of climate effects, and we have capabilities like fire sensors, flood sensors that are pretty flexible, and can be deployed pretty rapidly, in a new environment to understand those threats and keep their communities safe.

[00:25:27] Brittany: Are there any big successes that you can tell us about that ICPO's helped bring about?

[00:25:32] Emily Saulsgiver The transportation security collaboration with UK is probably our biggest success thus far. Bringing in around $10 million into our program so that we can work more closely with the U. K. and do more testing and better understanding of different explosive threats. We were able to do that really quickly and we knew who to talk to in the U.K. So, when our attaché started hearing from our Homeland Security colleagues that we've got this new investment coming. We've got this threat that we're concerned about. He was able to turn around and call some folks in the UK and say, this is exactly what you guys have been talking about too. And making those connections, making that tie really quickly to make sure that we would have the resources jointly to address that threat. That's been a big one for this year. 

[00:26:25] Brittany: And I think it's important to reiterate that even though each nation, each country, has their own particular history and context and capabilities. There are these shared challenges. Climate, that you've mentioned several times. There are definitely security considerations that everyone wants to make sure that we think about. What do you think are some of the top of mind challenges, as you look internationally, that you can see there's a lot of consensus around we need to do something about X?

[00:26:52] Emily Saulsgiver Last year, Canada had wildfires. We had smoke around DC and all down the East coast because Canada had wildfires. Nobody thought 10 years ago that was going to happen except for maybe our client scientists, but we deployed fire sensors up into Canada. We have been working fire sensors at science technology for a number of years. It's a great team, really, creative solutions for that problem that we were having domestically, and we're seeing a lot of interest in that internationally. Deploying them to Canada, we have had interest from a number of global partners around that capability, and that's interesting for a couple different reasons. It's looking at detection of wildfires from ignition points, so that hopefully you can respond fast enough to get it squashed before it becomes a giant wildfire, but it's also looking at how, if the fire is already going, how do you get communities out? And overlaying that sensor data with traffic apps? So if somebody's trying to get out of their town and the fire is actually going to cross over that highway, it'll redirect them automatically. That kind of work where we're merging information and intelligence signals from very local to all the way up into the satellite information that we're getting is going to keep people safer. And that's a global problem. We're seeing, I mean, Dubai had floods.

[00:28:22] Brittany: Yeah.

[00:28:23] Emily Saulsgiver So now they're interested in flood sensors, but also Dengue. Mosquito borne diseases happen after flood waters go away. And there's just all these pools of water sitting around. That's never been a concern. So we've got a whole lot of information and knowledge to be shared on these topics and a lot to learn too about how our world is changing and how that’s going to affect our DHS, or just national security, missions in general.

[00:28:50] Brittany: Definitely. And that's a good point. There's a lot of like unprecedented times lately, and so learning from folks who, you know, based on their geographic location, based on their history, may have experience, may have knowledge, may have solutions that can be adapted. It's so critical.

[00:29:06] Emily Saulsgiver And where emerging technologies like AI come into play for that, we have a good sense of sensing capabilities, no pun intended. But, you know, there's a lot of fields of technology that are based on a great many decades of knowledge and experience. And we can adjust different capabilities for different environments. But then there's these new, emerging, evolving capabilities, and those can both have threats and opportunities as part of them. So how can we deploy AI algorithms so that our sensor networks are better informed, or that we're preserving battery lives longer, so that we're able to actually extend those capabilities into further environments? All that's really exciting and we have a lot of partners already looking at that, and developing testbeds for how we can do that. We don't have to build those testbeds domestically. We could actually deploy, design, a test to where we test something in the Australian outback in really hot, dry, intense environments. So if something survives in the Australian outback, we're pretty confident it could probably survive here.

[00:30:15] Brittany: It’s a pretty rough place. Did you ever get out there when you were studying abroad?

[00:30:21] Emily Saulsgiver Oh, I've been all over Australia. I'd proudly say I've been to every state in Australia, and territory, 

[00:30:27] Brittany: When you say working with other teams, what does that actually look like? Is that sending an email? Is that going to meet in person? What is the process like?

[00:30:35] Emily Saulsgiver I think at this point in my career, I'm a master facilitator of communication of all kinds. I send emails all the time and if you ever send me an email and don't respond, please send it again because I get lots of them. We're on phone calls, more so we're on video calls. We use, you know, video messaging, and chats, and things all the time. We travel. There's nothing like face to face exchanges, especially when you're talking about getting to know somebody and building a relationship. I'm on an airplane, I get to conferences, I walk to people's offices, I sit down with them in their offices, sometimes I sit down for dinner at their homes. I'm really about relationship building and communication. I think relationship building is best face to face, or over video, but a lot of our work is done coordinating, and that is often just email after email.

[00:31:28] Brittany: Making sure people know, okay, we're going to pick you up here, we're going to drop you off there. 

[00:31:32] Emily Saulsgiver It's a lot of logistics and protocols. When you're engaging people at our undersecretary's level, you need to know where they are going to meet us at the airplane. Where the car is going to show up, or how we need to reciprocate that same protocol when they come here.

[00:31:51] Brittany: So how do you get from these conversations, meeting in person, to then an official agreement, officially governments working together?

[00:31:59] Emily Saulsgiver As soon as we identify that, okay, we've got a shared interest in combating child exploitation online, I say, I know a person. And I bring in our experts to do that. And what I get to do at that point, or what I really have to do very quickly, is to articulate the need that this partner has, capabilities that they're investing in, or what they're doing to combat that, at a strong enough level to make sure our subject matter experts hit the ground running.

[00:32:29] Brittany: Are there any real-world examples where you saw something in the news, let's say, and you could point to it and say, Oh, my team helped with that. We did that.

[00:32:38] Emily Saulsgiver We've been working with the Australians since 2015, specifically on emergency management.

[00:32:45] Brittany: Okay.

[00:32:46] Emily Saulsgiver It's been largely information sharing, but one of the states in Australia actually adopted a technology that S&T was the first creator of, they took it off on their own and did incredible things with it. What they did for this, it's an information sharing platform, but what they did was adjusted it to be a public information sharing.

[00:33:09] Brittany: Oh, okay.

[00:33:10] Emily Saulsgiver So, where we were working on how do we share across firefighters, or emergency managers information, they said, that's great, like, hold my beer, I'm going show you how you can actually communicate with the public. And they've created a public facing application where, cleverly, they started tracking sharks on it so that everybody paid attention. But also it's, you know, evacuate this way. And using public speak or generic terminology to communicate what's happening to the public.

[00:33:43] Brittany: So what is a typical day for you?

[00:33:45] Emily Saulsgiver My day is never typical. Absolutely not typical. we work with partners around the globe. That means some of my days start very early, so that I can have a video call with somebody in Seoul. It could go very late, because I have to have a call with somebody in Canberra. If I'm in the office here, it means I am working with our scientists, and our technologists, and our leadership, to say we have opportunities, where do you want to take this forward? How do we build out a collaboration? If I'm in country, I'm engaging with their scientists and learning more about what they're doing to hopefully advance that same partnership. I'm constantly learning. That's why I love my job. I learn something new all the time. And it's a lot of fun because I work with really great people who are also really passionate about what we do. And, I think the largest concern I have for my day is that I have to shut off at some point. Just because you need sleep and you have other things, like your family and your friends, and your hobbies, and other things you need to get to. So, managing both of those things can sometimes be challenging, but my typical day is just not typical.

[00:34:52] Brittany: I think that's helpful for folks because everyone’s career is going to look a little bit different, but in general, you know, you can be someone who is steeped in the knowledge, and doing the work, and making that happen.  And then there's folks who think, I'm actually really good at running these teams, and making sure that everyone has what they need to be successful. And it's, you know, often, two different skill sets.

[00:35:11] Emily Saulsgiver We have some great technologists on staff who are working on consuming that knowledge with passion every single day. And I'm excited to be a part of the team that pushes that forward. 

[00:35:21] Dave: Thank you for listening to Technologically Speaking. To learn more about what you've heard in this episode check out the show notes on our website, and follow us on Apple Podcasts, and YouTube, and on social media at DHS SciTech. D H S S C I T E C H. Bye!