Alion led the Army Research Laboratory’s Advanced Decision Architectures Collaborative Technology Alliance (ADA CTA), the Army's largest basic research program in cognitive and computer science. Alion led a team of 15 partners from academia and industry to work with government partners who complement each other with expertise in human factors, artificial intelligence, psychology, engineering, and computer science. The Alliance designed and tested new cognitive and computer science innovations that help Soldiers better understand the tactical situation and more thoroughly evaluate courses of action. The research is organized into four technical areas:

·         Cognitive Process Modeling and Metrics:  Cognitive processes were modeled, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Issues about trust and automation were explored and modeled to better understand the impact on performance.

·         Team Communication and Collaboration:  Tools and intelligent systems were created to support distributed teams in making collaborative decisions, sharing data in meaningful ways, and examining the impact of their decisions.

·         Context-Sensitive Information Presentation:  Cutting edge displays (i.e., haptics, multimodal, flexible) were used to present the right information to the Soldier at the right time. We researched the impact of network limitations on the Soldier's ability to understand the situation and make appropriate decisions.

·         Fusion and Intelligent Architectures:  Information fusion and intelligent architectures were developed to manage resources such as the allocation of robotic sensors. We researched architectures to help Soldiers reason about and understand the digital battlefield.