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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) explored innovative tools to improve current livestock evaluation and grading methods. Existing processes relied on manual measurements and limited digital automation, which could introduce human error and constrain reporting coverage. The team needed a way to capture accurate livestock measurements without physical contact while staying aligned with established AMS grading standards. They also needed an approach that could scale and remain usable in field settings. A USDA-sponsored proof of concept (POC) was designed and developed to capture non-contact visual measurements of livestock using advanced technologies. AMS livestock grading subject matter experts and methodologies were leveraged, alongside LiDAR cameras, to support skeletal mappings using artificial intelligence and machine vision algorithms. The work included requirements workshops, real-world data capture sessions, exploratory analysis, labeled dataset creation, and data cleaning with metadata augmentation. A modular, cloud-native web application prototype was built to demonstrate data processing and scoring with multimedia datasets. The technology platform proved feasible and was positioned to enhance AMS reporters’ toolsets and modernize grading methods. The effort delivered a roadmap to increase livestock grading efficiency through automation and improved data accuracy and reliability for AMS reporting. It also enabled stronger data-driven decision support for cattle grading and produced an adoption strategy for using the application beyond feedlot settings and across species. Overall, the POC marked a step toward faster, smarter, and more reliable livestock grading to strengthen U.S. agriculture.

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The NSF Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate (MPS) needed an integrated communications strategy to share research breakthroughs with diverse audiences. It faced the challenge of translating complex scientific concepts into accessible narratives while keeping content consistent and accurate across platforms. MPS also needed to streamline workflows and coordinate stakeholders to keep communications timely and efficient. Maintaining high-quality web and email communications required additional capacity and specialized editorial support. Ensemble supported MPS under a direct 8(a) sole source contract by providing copyediting, writing, web content management, and mass email communications. The team combined in-house staff with specialized scientific communications personnel using a flexible staffing model. It managed publication workflows with AP-style editing, stakeholder previews, and approval processes for announcements and events. The work also included a large-scale content migration, task tracking, and analytics-informed email campaign execution using tools such as GovDelivery. The engagement completed a major content audit and migration effort on schedule and within budget. More than 4,000 pieces of legacy content were reviewed and audited, and the web presence was modernized to improve accessibility and cohesion across directorate and division pages. The team wrote, edited, and fact-checked over 40 new web pages, producing and editing more than 7,000 words and curating many dozens of images. Overall content quality and operational efficiency improved through consistent editorial standards and streamlined workflows.

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The Federal Aviation Association (FAA) needed an enhanced LAANC interface to improve the usability and functionality of a tool used by Air Traffic Managers across the country. The existing experience required UI design enhancements to better support authorization processes for small unmanned aircraft systems operating near select airports. The effort also had to meet critical technical and safety requirements while improving access and reducing barriers to airspace use. Ensemble, in partnership with Topcoder, delivered a series of design-and-build prize challenges to crowdsource an improved interface and functional prototype. The work was organized into three phases—design, build, and quality assurance/testing—by breaking requirements into discrete features that became prize challenge competitions. The build phase produced an AngularJS-based prototype (with technologies including TypeScript, Google Maps API, TailWind CSS, and Prettier), followed by UAT and performance testing that captured measures like page load time and time to task completion. The program implemented 10 prize challenges and produced an enhanced, intuitive LAANC prototype interface that incorporated the defined functional, interactive, and interface requirements. Participation spanned global UX/UI and software development talent, resulting in 258 registrants and 41 final submissions. The project awarded $16,400 in cash prizes to 8 unique challenge winners and delivered artifacts including five UI mock-up PDFs, an Angular JS prototype codebase, and installation/transition-in documentation.

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National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) needed to drive market research and engagement for the 2023 Sunny Awards, a prize competition recognizing equitable community solar best practices. The program aimed to increase engagement and the diversity of participants among community solar projects and amplifiers. NREL sought more challenge registrations and stronger visibility for the awards. The team conducted a comprehensive market scan to identify relevant community solar projects, programs, and amplifiers. It implemented personalized email outreach tailored to recipient engagement and organizational context, with increased outreach intensity in the final weeks. It also amplified the awards through social media promotion on LinkedIn and Twitter, including collaboration with relevant organizations and accounts to extend reach. The market scan identified 134 relevant projects, programs, and community solar amplifiers for targeted outreach. In the final two weeks of registration, email outreach contributed to a 36% surge in teams joining the challenge page. By the end of the effort, the 2023 Sunny Awards reached 181 challenge page followers and totaled 38 registered teams.

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NASA’s Convergent Aeronautics Solutions (CAS) Discovery Team needed interdisciplinary expertise to investigate complex “wicked” societal problems through an aviation lens. The work required niche skills spanning innovation, economics, social science, ethics, and technical generalist capabilities. CAS also needed the team to collaborate effectively across virtual and periodic in-person sessions while producing high-quality deliverables on schedule. A freelancer staffing model was implemented to provide on-demand, cross-disciplinary talent without long-term commitments. Candidates were sourced through targeted recruitment, then rigorously vetted and onboarded with preparatory training aligned to CAS goals and values. Structured collaboration was supported through facilitated sprints, bi-weekly meetings, workshops, and deliverable management for reports, literature reviews, trend analyses, and scenario planning documents. Ongoing support included performance monitoring and seamless replacements to maintain momentum and quality. The program rapidly built a team of seven technical specialists to support future scenario planning needs. Six unique Discovery Sprint designs were created to enable rapid iteration and continuous project improvement. Based on successful performance, the engagement received multiple contract modifications that expanded the scope of work. The customer also provided high ongoing satisfaction, including an “Excellent” CPARS rating.

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NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) needed an efficient, secure way to assess and prioritize technology gaps critical to future space exploration. The organization had to gather detailed expert input that included both quantitative and qualitative feedback. It also needed the experience to align with NASA branding while meeting strict federal security and accessibility expectations. The work had to be delivered on an exceptionally fast timeline. NASA hired Ensemble to design and build an online data collection platform tailored to technology shortfall assessments. The implementation included secure registration and login, password encryption, session management, and a centralized database with encryption and access controls. The feedback tool was built with 200 questions and used dynamic branching and conditional logic to tailor questions based on user inputs. The team also ensured Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 compliance and provided data export plus an analytics dashboard for in-house analysis. The platform captured 542 responses, enabling structured collection of both quantitative and qualitative insights on technology shortfalls. Full compliance with Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 supported accessibility for all users. Security protocols protected sensitive information and helped maintain confidentiality and integrity of submitted feedback. NASA used the results to refine STMD priorities to better focus future technology investments for lunar, Mars, and beyond-Earth exploration.

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The U.S. Department of Energy needed communications and recruitment support for two American-Made Challenges prize competitions: the Digitizing Utilities Prize (Round 2) and the Lab MATCH Prize. The goal was to foster innovation and collaboration across energy, cybersecurity, and data science. DOE also needed broader reach and stronger diversity and inclusivity among potential solvers. These challenges required targeted outreach to recruit capable innovators and drive engagement on the challenge platforms. Ensemble served as a supporting Power Connector and executed a strategic communications plan across both prizes. The team conducted comprehensive market scans to identify relevant organizations and contacts, then ran personalized email outreach based on engagement and organizational context. It also amplified both challenges through social media promotion on platforms including LinkedIn and Twitter. Outreach intensity increased in the final weeks to boost participation and page engagement. For Digitizing Utilities Prize Round 2, Phase 1 ended with 62 teams and 294 innovators registered on the challenge page. For Lab MATCH Prize Phase 1, 33 teams and 225 innovators registered, leading to 19 Phase 1 winners. The Digitizing Utilities Prize initiative totaled $1.85 million, with Phase 1 prize categories offering up to 8 winners in Track 1 and up to 6 winners in Track 2 at $75,000 each. The Lab MATCH Prize was a $620K competition, and each Phase 1 winning team received a $2,500 award.

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NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) needed a new platform and expanded services for NASA@WORK, a NASA-wide system where employees could find technical solutions, new ideas, or expertise through prize-based challenges. The existing environment required an updated platform approach and support to resolve multiple platform problems. The effort also needed to satisfy NASA’s technical and security requirements during transition. As a service partner and integrator, the team selected IdeaScale to meet the demands of the NASA Internal Innovation & Collaboration Environment (NIICE). They managed a phase-in plan and executed data migration from the legacy platform while meeting NASA’s technical and security requirements. The implementation included a customizable site structure, enhanced administrative tools, improved communications offerings, and scalability for additional programs and a growing community. The platform was hosted on the FedRAMP instance and included built-in security features. In less than two months, the team migrated over 90,000 records from more than 23,000 users with 99.9% accuracy. The IDIQ service offering provided versatility to deliver a full suite of personnel training, marketing, and technology services for NIICE. The platform transition addressed key platform problems while supporting growth and program expansion.

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Well-child visits and associated vaccination counseling, administration, and documentation declined following the COVID-19 pandemic. The Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) at HRSA needed to reverse this trend and improve access to well-child visits and immunization services. They also needed a structured way to surface and validate practical, community-level approaches that could address disparities across different populations. The challenge required broad outreach and rigorous data collection across multiple phases. HRSA/MCHB selected a two-phase prize competition to drive innovation from health care organizations and community partners. A custom submission and reporting process was used to collect, organize, analyze, and report data from participating teams across both phases. Outreach materials, graphic design, and original content were developed, and pediatric media outlets were engaged to expand awareness. Over 20 advisor stakeholders (including pediatric practitioners, scholars, professors, and nonprofit leaders) were recruited to support contestants in making their approaches actionable. The program attracted over 1,400 registrants in the first round. In Phase 1, 50 teams received $10,000 each, and in Phase 2, 20 winning teams received $25,000 each, contributing to a total of $1,000,000 awarded. Winning teams spanned school districts, community organizations, pediatric clinics, and hospitals and implemented approaches ranging from mobile vaccination units to telehealth and community events. In many winning submissions, vaccination and annual well-visit counts doubled or tripled among target populations.

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NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge aimed to close technology gaps in lunar resource harvesting and mobility for sustained human presence on the Moon. The effort needed robotic excavation and transport concepts that could operate in extreme conditions, including permanently shadowed regions at the lunar South Pole. NASA also needed an end-to-end challenge framework to attract, manage, and evaluate a global field of competitors across multiple phases. The program required clear rules, strong outreach, and rigorous eligibility and judging processes. A prize challenge design and operations partner delivered end-to-end services to design, build, launch, and administer the multi-phase competition. Work included challenge brand identity and communications assets, a custom challenge CMS and website with downloadable rules, and a submission/registration workflow. The team managed participant communications via a dedicated email admin account over three years, handled questions and concerns, and conducted eligibility and financial responsibility verification. They also facilitated virtual judging by helping recruit judges, running an orientation webinar, and aggregating scores to produce ranked winners. The challenge registered 374 teams for Phase 1 and attracted participants from 31 states and 48 countries. The website recorded over 26,000 sessions and over 1,000 eligibility form downloads, and participation included 42 U.S. teams and 18 international teams. Phase 1 concluded with 31 eligible submissions and 13 teams eligible for cash prizes. Across Phase 2 levels, teams received awards including an equal share of a $500,000 prize pool (Level 1), $850,000 total in Level 2, and $1,500,000 total in Level 3, with a $1,000,000 first-place award in the final stage.

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