Dr. Steven K. "CAP" Rogers is a U.S. Air Force Senior Scientist focused on artificial intelligence enabled Autonomy at Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force, Ohio. Dr. Rogers initiates, technically plans, coordinates, evaluates and conducts research and development to advance artificial intelligence enabled autonomy. Dr. Rogers provides technical leadership to the AFRL Autonomy Capability Team (ACT3) in the rapid advancement of autonomy R&D to operationalize AI at scale for the U.S. Air Force and Space Force. Dr. Rogers’ personal research focuses on Qualia Exploitation of Sensing Technology(QuEST); how to build autonomous systems by replicating the engineering characteristics of consciousness.
Dr. Rogers has had an extensive career in both government service and civilian industry. He retired from the Air Force after 20 years active-duty service, beginning his Air Force career as a flightline enlisted logistics specialist. He was later commissioned though the Airman Education and Commissioning Program and assigned as research engineer developing of a new high order programming language. Following the completion of his advanced degrees he served as a professor at the Air Force Institute of Technology for more than a decade. While at AFIT he directed research efforts in areas that included identification of targets in a variety of sensors. He also did ground-breaking work in learning algorithms.
As Founder, President, CEO and Chief Scientist of Qualia Computing, Inc., later CADx Systems and then iCAD, Inc., Dr. Rogers led the effort to bring intelligent information processing to women's healthcare. Under his direction the company not only became the leader in mammography computer-aided design, it also developed a multi-modality CAD platform to facilitate the quick and efficient application of the technology to many medical detection problems. Dr. Rogers also has worked on developing practical applications of advanced information processing techniques for other medical products. He has authored several hundred publications and has been awarded more than 20 patents.
EDUCATION
1978 Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, with honors, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
1981 Master of Science, Electrical Engineering (electro optics), Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio
1984 Doctor of Philosophy, Electrical Engineering, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
CAREER CHRONOLOGY
1. 1973–1978, U.S. Air Force Enlisted Flightline Logistics Specialist
2. 1978–1980, Research and Development Engineer, Aeronautical Systems Division, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio
3. 1980–1984, Graduate and Doctoral Student, Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, and the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
4. 1984–1996, Professor, Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio
5. 1996–1997, Director, Cognitive Systems, Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, Ohio
6. 1997–2005, President, CEO and Chief Scientist, Qualia Computing Inc. and CADx Systems, Beavercreek, Ohio
7. 2005–2006, Founder and Chief Scientist, Quale LLC, Beavercreek, Ohio
8. 2006–present, Senior Scientist for Automatic Target Recognition and Sensor Fusion / AI Enabled Autonomy, Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio
AWARDS AND HONORS
1981 Commandant's Award - Most Outstanding Research, Air Force Institute of Technology
1986 Air Force Research and Development Award
1994 Organizing chair, first Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers World Conference on Computational Intelligence
2002 Plenary speaker, WCCI
2015 Presidential Rank Award, Meritorious Senior Professional
2021 Presidential Rank Award, Distinguished Senior Professional Fellow, IEEE and SPIE
(Current as of December 2023)