The US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health (HHS-OASH) needed marketing and communications support for the LymeX Innovation Accelerator Program. The program aimed to accelerate innovation to prevent, diagnose, and treat Lyme and other tick-borne diseases. It also required engagement with Lyme patients, advocates, and stakeholders across academia, nonprofits, industry, and government. Ensemble developed marketing and communications strategy and content to support multiple LymeX programs. The work included marketing, communications, and direct outreach for a webinar on the trust gap between Lyme patients and medical professionals, the release of a Human Centered Design Report, and an Education and Awareness Healthathon. The team also developed and maintained the lymex.org landing page, created tailored messaging and graphics, and helped cultivate a Lyme innovation community on the Crowdicity platform. They conducted community outreach and produced social media posts and imagery to increase engagement. The effort supported a $25M, three-year public-private partnership between HHS and the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation. The Education and Awareness Healthathon crowdsourced creative assets and received participation from registered teams/individuals and submitted entries. The Human Centered Design Report was produced with nearly 698 total hours of discovery and highlighted diagnostic and treatment journeys to increase awareness of Lyme disease impacts. Overall, the research, outreach, and communications plans were described as ensuring the success of LymeX programming.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supported the Million Hearts Hypertension Control Challenge (HTN 2020) and launched the Million Hearts Hospital / Health System (MHHHS) Recognition Program as a new effort to foster collaboration with hospitals. The program required a public-facing website experience and a way to manage nominations. The team also needed ongoing coordination, maintenance, and communications with nominees. Existing challenge materials and implementation plans required review and refinement. Ensemble supported both the HTN 2020 Challenge and the MHHHS recognition program and coordinated with NACDD staff on a biweekly basis to provide progress updates. The work included website development and maintenance, plus communication with nominees. The team reviewed existing challenge materials and implementation plans and provided recommendations covering participation rules, application content and guidelines, timeline, nomination collection, promotional activities, and judging protocols. They also delivered a custom submission portal, UX/UI and creative development, communications planning, PR/earned media support, and DevOps/SysOps. The engagement enhanced the website look and feel through a WordPress CMS upgrade. IT security was improved by transitioning the site to the .hhs.gov domain. A custom submission form was delivered with improved UI/UX to support the nomination process. The program operations were supported through ongoing biweekly coordination and maintenance activities.

College of Southern Maryland’s Velocity Center needed to promote its new innovation space and engage the Indian Head, MD community in solving local problems. The program also aimed to connect academia, the Navy, and the Southern Maryland region around actionable challenges. To succeed, the effort required a structured event format, participant recruitment, and a mechanism for teams to collaborate and submit solutions. A multi-challenge hackathon (VelocityX) was designed and executed using Brightidea’s innovation platform to host the event website, collect registrations, and support collaboration and submissions. Stakeholders from CSM and the Indian Head community were engaged to identify needs and shape three distinct challenges, including range testing analytics, cost coordination, and technology evaluation. Branding, marketing materials, and an outreach plan were developed, leveraging email, social media, and community connections to recruit participants and judges. The event was run virtually and in person at the Velocity Center. The hackathon ran from May 19–May 20 and drew 12 teams, with 7 attending in person and 5 participating virtually. The program included 5 judges and 6 mentors to support teams and evaluate submissions. A $12,000 prize pool was awarded across first-, second-, and third-place winners for each challenge, with prizes set at $3,100, $1,600, and $1,100 respectively. A top student team also received a membership to the Velocity Center’s Makerspace.

A global technology company specializing in the distribution of electronic components sought to enter the crowdsourcing market with a new platform and service offering focused on electronics product innovation and R&D. It faced a crowded market with many established platform players. It also needed to build a team with the right open innovation skills and repeatable processes. A comprehensive review was conducted of the client’s existing go-to-market and product strategy to shape an innovation strategy for the new crowdsourcing offering. The assessment evaluated sales prospecting, marketing, target industries, crowd incentive structures, the solver community, personnel roles and responsibilities, and training materials. A site visit and informal interviews were also performed to gauge the client’s familiarity and expertise with crowdsourcing innovation. Product feedback was delivered to identify potential user experience issues with the platform. This helped the client understand where the platform experience could be improved as it prepared its crowdsourcing offering. The engagement produced actionable insights aligned to the client’s market entry goals.

NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) needed a branded, browser-based web platform for its Virtual Guest Program. The platform had to translate key NASA event times into the local time zones of virtual guests worldwide. NASA also wanted the experience to be engaging and interactive for online attendees. A design-and-development team built a user-friendly interface for both NASA KSC Virtual Guest Administrators and Virtual Guests. The solution included a WordPress plug-in application to convert global time zones and present event information through guided workflows. Administrators used a back-end interface to create and manage event profiles, which fed a front-end time converter where guests selected an event, confirmed their local time zone, and viewed converted event times on a global map. Social sharing and downloadable imagery were also implemented. The project delivered a high-quality web application aligned to the needs of both administrator and guest audiences. Virtual guests were able to see localized event details (including broadcast time and launch time) presented on a global map visualization. Users were also able to share events on social media with automated imagery and download a map image containing their event details.

NASA needed to radically simplify the analysis and visualization pipeline for space weather models hosted at the Community Coordinated Modeling Center. The existing workflow faced data integration and collaboration challenges across space weather models and instruments. The effort also needed stronger core software robustness to support high-performance interpolation, visualization, and modeling. Overall, the goal was to enable easier communication and use of model outputs. During Phase 1 of Kamodo’s development, the team focused on improving the robustness of Kamodo’s core software and advancing it as a high-performance interpolation, visualization, and space weather modeling tool. They deployed a containerized dashboard and a web API to simplify analysis, visualization, and communication of models and instruments. The implementation aimed to improve compatibility between data formats and applications. The delivered components included containers, a REST API, and a user interface prototype. By the end of Phase 1, the team produced “Kamodified” space weather resources using the containerized approach. They delivered automated dashboards for scientifically relevant variables within model or data sources. They deployed REST APIs to support machine-to-machine communication. They also delivered a containerized solution deployable to cloud infrastructure (including AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure) and enabled distributed access to deployed solutions from workstations.

NASA and the Catholic University of America needed a custom citizen science web application to crowdsource observations of Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) and sprites. The goal was to create a central hub where storm chasers and space weather scientists could contribute imagery and data. They also needed the resulting database to support scientific study and lay groundwork for a first-ever event catalog of TLEs. Ensemble supported the development and hosting of the Spritacular platform starting in October 2021 on behalf of the Catholic University of America, with support from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The solution included custom user registration and login, a scientific observation upload form, an observation gallery, and image detail pages with user comments and engagement. It also provided user tutorials, a dynamic observation/training quiz, a blog and informational pages, plus an admin dashboard with analysis, approval, querying, and export capabilities. The web-based application launched in Summer 2022. After launch, Spritacular was used by sprite chasers around the world. The project also gained external visibility by being featured on NASA.gov and in outlets including Interesting Engineering, Futurism, and the New York Post.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) sought novel approaches to solving data science problems in the intelligence community. They needed unique machine learning algorithms to support key capabilities in computer vision and acoustical analysis. Specifically, the goals included detecting circular-shaped objects in satellite imagery and geo-locating video/audio recordings using non-speech ambient sound.

NASA generated vast amounts of Earth science data daily, but turning raw data into commercially viable, revenue-generating solutions remained difficult. The agency needed a way to encourage entrepreneurs and researchers to translate public Earth-system datasets into practical applications. It also sought a pathway to identify high-potential concepts aligned with future Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) opportunities. Ensemble, partnered with Freelancer.com, designed and executed the NASA Sustainable Business Model Challenge to source sustainable business models using NASA data. The team developed the competition framework, rules, eligibility criteria, and evaluation structure, and managed recruitment of a qualified judging panel. They also planned structured SBIR training, workshops, and mentorship to help winning teams improve funding readiness. A multi-channel outreach strategy, including partnerships, marketing campaigns, and webinars, was implemented to drive participation. The program expanded engagement by hosting a public webinar that drew 115 registrants and provided direct access to challenge guidance and expert Q&A. The challenge structure supported transparent submission review through the Freelancer.com platform and broadened access to a global talent pool. As an expected impact, the initiative aimed to bridge the gap between Earth science and commercialization by guiding participants toward SBIR-aligned pathways and scalable sustainability solutions.