Morison finds dream work in developing ‘cool stuff’
Alex Morison’s career path has been evolving into a role designed perfectly for him ever since he earned his PhD in ISE in 2010.
While he was finishing his degree, his doctorate advisor Professor Emeritus David Woods and former Ohio State Senior Vice President of Research Morley Stone – who was then working at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton – worked to bring Morison on as an Ohio State research scientist for the AFRL.
Morison served as a technical expert to Jeff Graley, then a program manager at AFRL. At the time, Graley managed the research and development program in Air Force intelligence analysis.
The following year, Graley decided to put his entrepreneurial skills to the test and co-founded Mile Two, a custom software company, where he now serves as the president. As a part-time research scientist with Ohio State and part-time Mile Two employee, Morison helped write proposals and worked on early funded research. He eventually came on board full-time in 2018 as Mile Two’s chief science officer.
“Our niche is combining cognitive engineering and software design and development,” Morison says. According to the company’s website, Mile 2’s “process focuses on the intersection of people, technology and work, uncovering complexity and creating effective human-machine teams to address our client’s most significant challenges.”
Morison says he frames his role as, “I’m trying to create a private sector version of the Cognitive Systems Engineering Lab (at Ohio State). I want to be doing what the lab was always doing – expert work with a wide set of people doing really significant work.”
Judging by the company’s growth, they’ve found their groove. In seven years, Mile Two has grown from five employees to 120. Morison says Mile Two has hired a number of ISE graduates and interns.
Clients include everyone from small businesses to the Department of Defense, including Morison and Graley’s former employer, the AFRL.
One of the company’s most high-profile projects is a partnership with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s EDGE program, which stands for Enhancing Design for Graceful Extensibility. Morison says Mile Two is working on adaptive systems to enable new kinds of capabilities for DARPA. The EDGE program is looking to design human-machine interfaces to give more control over technology glitches in autonomous vehicles.
The partnership fits with Mile Two’s tagline: “We do cool stuff with cool people.”
Morison says some of the company’s other projects have centered around developing business support tools that can help streamline such areas as hiring and bookkeeping. By building the infrastructure, Morison says Mile Two can supply the algorithms that provide easier and faster results.
“I wanted us to be able to create real capabilities with real tools,” he says.
Morison acknowledges that it’s not often that someone creates their own job by doing what they have often dreamed of doing. “If there was anything of a dream, this was definitely it,” he says, adding, “It’s much beyond what I could have dreamed.”
Story by Nancy Richison
