JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas-- Throughout the Air Force, teams referred to as Spark Cells serve as a hub for innovation. The 59th Training Group’s Alamo Spark Cell is a collaborative team that focuses on improving training at the Medical Education and Training Campus.
“Our Spark Cell team works with the whole campus here and also works with the Air Force Medical Modeling and Simulation Training at Randolph,” said Tech. Sgt. Daniel Hauversburk, 382nd Training Squadron biomedical equipment technician course instructor. “We have every person we can get involved within the campus, and we brainstorm ideas. We ask ourselves, how can we innovate and accelerate training?”
Even during the pandemic, these innovators have implemented new ideas to help improve their students’ education.
“We’ve accomplished creating an environment for supplemental training aids within the student dormitory,” said Hauversburk. “We are working toward providing them with high-speed internet, giving students the ability to use virtual reality and augmented reality tools. This makes it possible for students outside the classroom environment to get hands-on experience training.”
However, innovation goes beyond the training environment. The Alamo Spark Cell is consistently working toward simplifying time-consuming tasks. This was highlighted when the Alamo Spark Cell won ‘Best Team Robot’ in the 2021 Robot 4 Every Airman competition.
“The Robot 4 Every Airman competition is an Air Force and Space Force-wide cyber challenge,” said Hauversburk. “We identify a process that could be automated, saving time and energy for our Airmen and Guardians to focus on their actual jobs. For the competition we created a weekly activity report robot. Our WAR bot collects data from various simplified excel sheets that our Airmen have filled in and then produces a PowerPoint within the fraction of the time it used to take.”
After the WAR bot won ‘Best Team Robot’, Alamo Spark Cell expanded it throughout the Air Force.
“The WAR bot has been briefed and demoed at countless bases as part of the effort to push more units into learning how our process automation robot can benefit the Air Force,” said Hauversburk. “Different organizations contact me and I refer them to the Air Force Center of Excellence for our process automation. They train and provide them with all resources.”
The Alamo Spark Cell also focuses on machine learning, printing 3D models for training and recently proposed the Functional Academic Skills Test project, said Hauversburk.
“The Functional Academic Skills Test allows students with civilian-recognized accreditation to accelerate training,” explained Hauversburk. “For some of the programs, up to 12 months of training time is saved, which means a huge cost savings at $450 a day for each student.”
Airmen and Guardians can join Spark Cells and help bring their innovative ideas to a possible tangible reality.
“If anyone has passion for innovation they can reach out to us or their local Spark Cells,” said Hauversburk. “We all want to collaborate together and leverage each other’s skills to accomplish projects for the Air Force.”
For more information on pursuing innovation, reaching out to Spark Cells and utilizing Squadron Innovation Funds, visit the Air Force Innovation Hub at https://www.afwerx.af.mil/index.html.
You can also find more resources at https://digitalu.af.mil/. Digital University provides Airmen with free enrollment in more than 12,000 courses.