National Security & Counter Terrorism

Yale University School of Management

Ed Kaplan is the William N. and Marie A. Beach Professor of Operations Research, Professor of Public Health and Professor of Engineering at Yale University School of Management. His research focuses on analytics, counter-terrorism, decision-making, operations research, policy modeling, public health and sports analytics. In 2014 and 2016, Kaplan served as the president of INFORMS.

He holds a B.A. from McGill University, an M.C.P., M.S. in statistics, M.S. in operations research, and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Highlights

• Areas of Expertise: Counter-terrorism, Policy modeling, Public health, Sports analytics

Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

James Howard is a data scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Previously, he worked for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System as an internal consultant on statistical computing. He has also been a consultant to numerous government agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Executive Office of the President, and the United States Department of Homeland Security. He also teaches mathematics and statistics at the University of Maryland. His research spans the applications of data science. His most recent published scholarship has modeled the population of Earth-orbiting satellites, analyzed the risks of flood insurance, predicted disruptive events, and sought to understand small business cybersecurity.

He holds a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Maryland, a M.S. in Public Administration from University of Baltimore and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Highlights

• Areas of Expertise: Statistical computing, Data science applications, Disruptive event prediction, Small business cybersecurity
• Worked for Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
• Consulted for numerous government agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Executive Office of the President, and the United States Department of Homeland Security

Consortium for Robotics and Unmanned Systems Education and Research (CRUSER)

Jeffrey E. Kline is a retired Captain of the United States Navy. Jeff Kline attended the University of Missouri, School of Engineering, graduating with honors in Industrial Engineering.

He is currently a Professor of Practice in the Operations Research department and Program Director for the Consortium for Robotics and Unmanned Systems Education and Research (CRUSER). He teaches Joint Campaign Analysis, systems analysis, executive risk assessment and contributes to maritime security education programs offered at NPS. Kline supports applied analytical research in naval warfare, maritime operations and security, theater ballistic missile defense, and future force composition studies. Additionally, Jeff is an Adjunct Professor at the Naval War College teaching an analytical series titled Joint Analysis for the Warfare Commander.

He has received several NPS faculty awards including the Superior Civilian Service Award, 2011 Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS) Award for Teaching of OR Practice, 2009 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Homeland Security Award, 2007 Hamming Award for interdisciplinary research, 2007 Wayne E. Meyers Award for Excellence in Systems Engineering Research, and the 2005 Northrop Grumman Award for Excellence in Systems Engineering.

Highlights

• Areas of Expertise: Artificial intelligence, Risk assessment, Maritime security
• Veteran, United States Navy

George Mason University

Karla Hoffman is a professor of Systems Engineering and Operations Research at the George Mason University Volgenau School of Engineering. Her research focuses on air transportation, optimization, military operations research, computational statistics, big data, machine learning, auction design, and testing. She has worked with a variety of government agencies and corporations on diverse problems. Currently, she is working as a consultant to the FCC on the “incentive auction.” Her published research is funded by government agencies such as the U.S. Department of the Navy and NASA.

She received her B.A. in mathematics from Rutgers University, and her M.B.A. and her D.Sc. in operations research from George Washington University.

Highlights

• Areas of Expertise: Air transportation, Optimization, Computational statistics, Auction design
• Has worked with the FCC
• Published research funded by the U.S. Department of the Navy and NASA

Northeastern University

Kayse Lee Maass is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Northeastern University. She was a research associate in the Department of Health Sciences Research at the Mayo Clinic, received her Ph.D. from the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering (IOE) at the University of Michigan in 2017 and holds a B.A. in Mathematics and Physics from Bethel University.

Her research focuses on the application of operations research methodology to social justice, access, and equity issues within the supply chain management, humanitarian logistics, and healthcare contexts. She is particularly interested in using her analytic skills to address human trafficking and mental health issues.  She currently serves as the INFORMS Section on Location Analysis Treasurer.

Highlights

• Areas of Expertise: Human trafficking, Mental health issues
• Was a research associate at the Mayo Clinic

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Laura Albert is a professor and Harvey D. Spangler Faculty Scholar in Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research applies operations research methodologies to important societal applications.  Her primary methodological base is discrete optimization, including integer programming and Markov decision processes. Her research also focuses on modeling and solving real-world discrete optimization problems with application to homeland security, public services, healthcare, emergency medical services, critical infrastructure protection, public safety, and disaster response and recovery.

She is the former president of INFORMS Women in OR/MS (2012-2014) and INFORMS Section on Public Programs, Services and Needs (2013-2015). She has a B.S. and M.S. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in General Engineering and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Industrial Engineering.

Highlights

• Areas of Expertise: Discrete optimization problems with application to homeland security, public services, healthcare, emergency medical services, critical infrastructure protection, public safety, disaster response and recovery
• 2023 INFORMS President
• Publishes popular blog Punk Rock O.R.

The MITRE Corporation

Les Servi is the chief scientist for Cyber Operations Research at The MITRE Corporation and the Vice President of Financial Management on the Board of Directors Executive Council at the Military Operations Research Society (MORS). His knowledge spans operations research, data mining, systems engineering, and security. He has published five research papers in the field of operations research. As an INFORMS fellow, he served a six year term on the board of directors, served as a founding chair for the INFORMS Social Media Analytics subdivision and was a chair of the INFORMS Telecommunication Society. He has been an editor of Operations Research, Management Science, and INFORMS Journal of Computing. 

He holds a B.S. and M.S. in applied mathematics from Brown University, and a Ph.D. in engineering from Harvard University.

Highlights

• Areas of Expertise: Operations research, Data mining, Systems engineering, Security
• Served as editor of three science journals

Army Cyber Institute, United States Military Academy

Nathaniel D. Bastian is a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, where he serves as Chief Data Scientist and Senior Research Scientist at the Army Cyber Institute (ACI), as well as Academy Professor of Operations Research and Data Science with a dual faculty appointment in the Department of Systems Engineering and the Department of Mathematical Sciences within the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point. LTC Bastian leads the ACI's Data and Decision Sciences Division while overseeing the ACI's infrastructure, platform, tooling and pipelines for data engineering and management, advanced analytics, algorithm and model development, modeling and simulation, and testing and evaluation. He directs the ACI's Intelligent Cyber-Systems and Analytics Research Lab and the ACI's Internet of Things Research Lab, as well as co-directs the ACI's Cyber Modeling and Simulation Research Lab. As Principal Investigator and Technical Program Manager, his basic and applied research and development portfolio, in collaboration with Government, Academia, Industry, FFRDC, UARC and National Lab partners, aims to advance the body of knowledge in operations research, data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics, scientific computing, applied mathematics, and cognitive science to support the cyberspace domain for stakeholders across the Army, other Services, Department of Defense (DoD), Intelligence Community (IC), and Nation. He has co-authored over 80 refereed journal and conference papers, six book chapters, and one textbook. He is the recipient of numerous academic awards and honors, to include a Fulbright Scholarship and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and he has received $4M+ in externally-funded research monies from multiple government organizations (DARPA, OUSD, NSA, DEVCOM, AFRL, etc.). Prior to his current role, LTC Bastian served as the Chief Artificial Intelligence Architect at the DoD Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, where he provided strategic direction and technical direction for data engineering, data science, AI engineering, and systems engineering that directly enabled the rapid development, testing, evaluation and delivery of over 35 different AI capabilities to help accelerate the adoption of AI across the Joint Force to transform the DoD.
LTC Bastian received his Ph.D. degree in industrial engineering and operations research from the Pennsylvania State University, M.Eng. degree in industrial engineering from Penn State, M.S. degree in econometrics and operations research from Maastricht University, and B.S. degree in electrical engineering with honors from USMA. He serves as the INFORMS Military and Security Society Vice-President/President-Elect, MORS Advisory Director, DARPA Information Sciences and Technology Study Group Member, The Coding School Advisory Board Member, and Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences External Advisory Committee Member. He is an active member of INFORMS, MORS, ACM, IEEE and ACM.

Highlights

• Areas of Expertise: Optimization, Simulation, Statistical Computing, Machine/Deep Learning, Intelligent Systems, Big Data Analytics, Decision Science
• Textbook author

United States Naval Academy

Rob Curry is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics at the United States Naval Academy. His research focuses on methodology and algorithmic approaches in network optimization, combinatorial optimization, and integer programming. His algorithm research applies to energy systems, transportation and logistics systems, evacuation planning, and humanitarian systems. His most recent work focuses on decomposition methods and flow-augmenting algorithms for solving variations of the maximum flow problem having applications in wireless sensor network optimization. He has presented his research at several industry and INFORMS conferences. 

He holds a B.S. in industrial engineering from the University of Arkansas, an M.S. in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Florida, and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from Clemson University.

Highlights

• Areas of Expertise: Energy systems, Transportation and logistics systems, Evacuation planning, Humanitarian systems

Harvey Mudd College

Susan Martonosi is an associate professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California where she focuses her research on the application of operations research and analytics methodology. Her research uses mathematical modeling to address problems in homeland security, humanitarian logistics, and public policy. Her work has included probabilistic models to guide aviation security policy related to passenger and cargo screening and shipping container screening policy; game theory, social networks analysis and graph theory to solve problems in resource allocation and terrorist network disruption; epidemiological techniques coupled with optimization models for the efficient allocation of interventions against malaria; and game theory models for negotiating pediatric vaccine prices in the public sector. 

She holds a B.S. Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Operations Research from MIT. She is on the Board of INFORMS, currently serving as Vice President for Membership and Professional Recognition, a position elected by the membership.

Highlights

• Areas of Expertise: Homeland security, Humanitarian logistics, Public policy
• has created models and theories for solving problems in terrorist network disruption, aviation security screening, and negotiating pediatric vaccine prices in the public sector