Alleshia Young

Alleshia Young supports the W2R2 USA Engineering Research and Development Center in executing mission-critical procurement activities aligned with the Department of the Army’s focus on advanced engineering R&D for military infrastructure and environmental resilience. She manages acquisitions for specialized equipment and systems used in hydrologic modeling, cold regions engineering, and coastal defense testing, ensuring that technical requirements for physical experimentation and sensor-enabled data collection are met through compliant, performance-based contracting. Her work directly enables field-ready solutions for climate-adaptive military operations, with a strong emphasis on procurement processes that prioritize technical precision and operational readiness. Young maintains consistent partnerships with high-caliber research and engineering vendors, including the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education, Applied Research Associates, Inc., Michigan Technology and Research Institute, LLC, the University of Maryland, and Texas Pipeline Services LLC. These relationships reflect a pattern of engaging academic institutions and specialized small businesses capable of delivering advanced engineering prototypes, field-deployable sensor systems, and environmental simulation technologies. Her contracting approach emphasizes collaborative development, technical validation, and rapid prototyping cycles tailored to the Center’s experimental mission. She maintains a 100% Total Small Business Set-Aside preference across all procurements, demonstrating an unwavering commitment to socioeconomic contracting under FAR 19.5. This reflects a deliberate strategy to empower small businesses with niche technical capabilities in environmental engineering and defense-relevant systems, ensuring broad innovation capacity while fulfilling statutory obligations for small business participation. Her procurement portfolio is exclusively focused on NAICS 333415—Air-Conditioning and Warm Air Heating Equipment and Commercial and Industrial Refrigeration Equipment Manufacturing—indicating a specialized need for climate-controlled testing environments, cold-chain infrastructure, and thermal regulation systems critical to field experimentation in extreme environments. Her expertise lies in procuring high-performance HVAC and refrigeration systems engineered for rugged, remote, and polar operational conditions.