Following a series of substantial contributions to the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command, biologist John Lehman with the USAMRDC's U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense was honored as the USAMRDC Employee of the Quarter on May 7.

"It is a great honor to be nominated and recognized for the work that I do," said Lehman, who has been serving in his current position at USAMRICD since late 2018. "This position has given me the opportunity to work with and support multiple offices across the organization, and I enjoy finding ways to help streamline and improve processes to benefit the organization and our ability to achieve our mission."

It is Lehman's efforts to streamline a number of processes within USAMRICD that earned him a nomination for the award. His efforts in designing and implementing a new budget tracking system for the Medical Toxicology Research Division during the first quarter of 2021 have already paid sizable dividends within the Institute. According to his supervisor, Sarah Beach – who serves as the deputy chief of the Biochemistry and Physiology Department – Lehman's new system allows for any member of leadership to unilaterally access the master budget spreadsheet at any time to view spending progress per project and, also, how such progress correlates to the customer-approved spend plan. In short – and just in the MEDTOX division alone – Lehman's improvements have reduced the annual amount of time spent accessing and downloading such detailed budget information from 45 days down to just hours.

"He is absolutely an exemplary team member" said Beach, who has worked alongside Lehman for the past decade and served as his supervisor for the past three years. "He is known for his professionalism, competency, calm demeanor, kindness and continued willingness to go above and beyond to assist whenever a need arises."

In addition to the aforementioned technical work, Lehman also manages four laboratories and their compliance schedules, schedules laboratory work in accordance with milestones and – in a nod to his enduring commitment to teamwork – trains junior laboratory members whenever needed. This in addition to independently analyzing data when requested and, of course, providing exceptional customer service to both internal and external stakeholders.

"[He] certainly leverages all of these strengths and attributes in his daily work, but also in going above and beyond his normal duties to serve the organization as a whole," said Beach. "And he truly does it all with a humble heart and the desire to simply help wherever there is a need."

For Lehman, those efforts are simply smaller parts of the bigger machine; smaller efforts that, when combined in total, allow for a marked advancement of the common goal – namely the continued support and protection of the nation's most important assets.

"The best and most rewarding part of my position with USAMRDC [are] the opportunities that it affords me to help and serve others," said Lehman. "I greatly value both the chance to directly assist those within my organization and the understanding that my individual efforts contribute towards an overall mission focused on helping our Nation and the Warfighter."