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Millennium Management has welcomed Xinlu Xiao as a quantitative researcher. Xiao joined Millennium in June following his two-year stint as vice president for quantitative strategies at Goldman Sachs. He also worked at Citi for three years, joining the exchange-traded funds market-making and macro trading section, focusing on international ETF optimal hedges and fair value arbitrage, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The D. E. Shaw Group has appointed Rohan Desai as a financial research associate for data analytics. Prior to joining D. E. Shaw, Desai was a senior associate for credit risk management at DIAGEO India. He spent his internships at The Westin Hyderabad Mindspace and at Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, according to his LinkedIn profile.

A U.S. Air Force official said earlier plans to retire the B-1 Lancer in the early 2030s had been dropped. According to Brig. Gen. William Rogers, program executive officer for bombers at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, the military service has a multi-pronged strategy to ensure that the fleet can remain operational until its more modern replacement, the B-21, comes online. Parts obsolescence is one of the key concerns of the AFLMC with all aging platforms. Rogers is focusing on ensuring the aircraft can sustain operations and eventually retire gracefully, Air and  Space Forces Magazine reported.

Frontgrade Technologies, a Veritas Capital portfolio company and a space electronics supplier, has completed its acquisition of Aethercomm, which manufactures radio frequency solid-state power amplifiers and switches. According to Todd Thornton, Aethercomm’s founder and CEO, the acquisition will increase investments in space electronics research and development. As a new Frontgrade division, Aethercomm will offer integrated RF and antenna solutions to aerospace and defense customers, Frontgrade said Monday.

CodeMettle has received a contract to provide network operation software licenses for National Guard Air Force Special Warfare all-domain command and control systems. According to the company's chief operating officer, Mike Mostow, the new solution will simplify the Air National Guard's increasingly complex hardware and networking requirements at the edge, easing the deployments of communications units at the frontline. The C2 systems will be bundled with the software that enables the management of disparate node components like backhaul, electronic warfare, dismount radio frequency and tactical data link, CodeMettle said Monday.

Lockheed Martin has completed the critical design review for the Space Development Agency's Tranche 1 Transport Layer integrated ground and space system, advancing to the program's production phase. The CDR included validation tests for supplier designs and a system optical communications terminal interoperability test. The program's integration and testing phase now begins at a new small satellite processing facility, Lockheed said Monday.

The University of Hawaii at Manoa John A. Burns School of Medicine will capitalize on $430,375 from the National Institutes of Health to conduct research into a protein potentially tied to a form of hereditary spastic paraplegia. Matthew Pitts, a cell and molecular biology researcher at JABSOM and study lead, said his team will seek to understand the role that selenoprotein I plays in neurodevelopment and neurodegenerative diseases. According to Pitts, animal models of selenoprotein I knocked out in their central nervous system recapitulated impaired growth and disrupted myelination of human patients. The NIH-backed research effort will run for two years, the university said Monday.

Executive Mosaic's GovCon Index closed in the green Wednesday amid mixed results among U.S. stock indexes as investors take profit ahead of anticipated economic updates. The GCI ended at $137.29, up 1.09 percent, with V2X (NYSE: VVX) leading the daily percentage gainers.

Executive Mosaic's GovCon Index and the major U.S. stock indexes surged as investors watched a bill to suspend the debt ceiling and cap government spending move through Congress on the first trading day of June.

Executive Mosaic's GovCon Index ended the month of May in negative territory as U.S. stocks declined ahead of a U.S. House of Representatives vote on the bipartisan deal between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to suspend the debt limit for two years.