Photo: Asa Trainer receives Brad Rigdon award from PDES General Manager Allison Barnard Feeney, CEO and Board President Dr. Michael Jahadi of Lockheed Martin Company

The 2025 Brad Rigdon Technical Management Award winner is Asa Trainer, retired from ITI, a Wipro company. Over the past year, Asa has served as the leader of the Vendor Group for the Persistent Identifier project. His role in the integration and consistent use of Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs) across  multiple engineering domains, enabled him to lead the development and testing of UUID implementation within the CAx-IF culminating in the work on Research Results and Recommendations for Universally Unique Identifiers in Product Data Standards (NIST AMS 300-12, July 2024), which addresses key gaps and provides industry-wide guidance.

The expertise gained in the UUID work has enabled Asa to clearly identify, understand, and communicate the different approaches to PID implementation and helped PID team understand how capabilities are tested in the CAx-IF, ensuring that the PID capabilities will be tested and implemented in future editions of the ISO 10303 standard.