U. S. Army Signal Center of Excellence
Deputy to the Commander
Mr. Nelson (Ned) Keeler
Nelson Keeler was assigned as the Director of the U.S. Army CECOM Software Engineering Center effective 31 August 2008. In this capacity, he leads the Command’s efforts to provide life cycle state-of-the-art software engineering products and services throughout the Army and the Department of Defense. These products and services include more than 420 systems/programs that enable warfighting superiority and information dominance across the enterprise.
Mr. Keeler leads a global organization of more than 5,000 military, civilian and industry employees in ten major locations and manages an annual budget in excess of $1.5 billion. Prior to this assignment, he served as the Director of Aviation Programs at the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center where he led a directorate of 160 federal personnel and 300 contractors providing approximately $140 million of annual systems engineering support to the Federal Aviation Administration, National
Aeronautic & Space Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Park Service and Postal Service.
Prior to that appointment, Mr. Keeler completed a successful assignment as the Director of NASA’s Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) Facility in Fairmont, W.V. from 2001 to 2006. In this position, Mr. Keeler was responsible for the overall operations and management of the IV&V Facility, which was established in 1993 as part of an agency-wide strategy to assure the highest achievable levels of safety and effectiveness for NASA mission critical software.
From 1994 through 2001 he held several senior positions in the private industry, first working for Stanford Telecommunications as
Navigation Department Manager, and then for GTECH Corporation as World-wide Projects Director and senior consulting systems
engineer. Prior to his stint in the private sector, he served as a Deputy Director in the Space Station Freedom program and then in
the Office of Space Flight’s Advanced Launch Technology and Advanced Flight Systems programs at NASA from 1991 to 1994. His
civilian positions were preceded by a career in the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) where he served as an aviator and as an electronics/
avionics engineer/researcher. His final USCG assignment was as the Commanding Officer (0-6) of their Research and Development (R&D) Center and R&D program manager from 1988 to 1991. In all of his assignments, his principal commitment has been the delivery of service and product excellence, development of the team and personnel, and mission success through enlightened leadership and dedication to performance.
Mr. Keeler was awarded a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and was commissioned as an
officer in 1963. He received his aviator’s wings in 1965 and amassed more than 6,000 pilot hours during his career, principally
flying both search and rescue and law enforcement missions. In 1970, he received his master’s degree in Electrical Engineering
from the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology.
Mr. Keeler has received numerous awards and recognition for his achievements including the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal for the period he served as the Director of the NASA IV&V Facility; the Meritorious Service Medal for his work as the Commanding Officer of the USCG R&D Center; and the Air Medal for rescue of three fishermen in extremely hazardous night-time conditions. He has been recognized both nationally and internationally for heading U.S. delegations negotiating bilateral treaties with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Japan, Argentina, Norway, Germany, including US/USSR LORAN CHYKA Agreement signed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and then President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev at the 1988 May-June Summit.