Dr. Ralucca Gera, Professor of Mathematics, has been appointed Chair of the NPS Department of Applied Mathematics through April 2, 2028. Recognized for her exemplary leadership, innovative AI-based educational initiatives, and receipt of multiple NPS teaching awards, Dr. Gera is replacing Dr. Frank Giraldo, Distinguished Professor, who served as Chair since 2021.

Retired U.S. Navy Vice Adm. David H. Lewis, Professor of the Practice in Acquisition Sciences at the Department of Defense Management and a ‘95 MS in Systems Technology graduate, completed his Doctorate of Education capstone project, “Can the U.S. Navy Get its Mojo Back?” which assessed the U.S. Navy’s innovative technology adoption practices using the NPS faculty-developed methodology and innovation framework introduced in “The Innovator’s Way” by Dr. Peter Denning, NPS Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, and Robert Dunham.

Dr. Cynthia Irvine, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, provided her history as a contributor to the field of cybersecurity as part of the research materials on the evolution of information technology being collected by the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota.

U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Mark Kuperman, USCG Deputy Sector Commander – Anchorage and a 2024 graduate of CHDS’ Executive Leaders Program, published an article in Homeland Security titled, “In Lean Times, Emergency Responders May Need to Make Sustainable, Effective Change,” showing how innovative approaches like the USCG Force Apportionment Initiative are reshaping emergency response strategies to ensure effectiveness even in lean times.

U.S. Navy Reserve Lt. j.g. Robert Wagner, a 2021 Security Studies (Homeland Security and Defense) graduate, started a new position as a Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD) Capabilities Officer at the U.S. Army Nuclear and CWMD Agency.

Cmdr. Steven Terjesen, MS in Mechanical Engineering  '14, assumed command of the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG 69) on January 15, 2025. His prior assignments include serving as Executive Officer aboard USS Higgins (DDG 76) and Commanding Officer of USS Zephyr (PC 8).

Virginia Perkins, MS in Systems Engineering ‘19, has joined the ranks of senior executives as the Chief Engineer for the Missile Defense Agency. With a distinguished career in defense systems engineering, she brings extensive expertise in missile defense technologies and program development. Her leadership will play a pivotal role in advancing MDA’s mission to enhance national security.

Dr. Paul Lester, Associate Professor of Defense Management, co-authored a paper, “A Meta-Analysis on the Crossover of Workplace Traumatic Stress Symptoms Between Partners,” selected by the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (IOP) for the 2025 Schmidt-Hunter Meta-Analysis Award. The paper reflects the best advances in IOP meta-analyses published in the last three years, a topic highly relevant to DOD.

Dr. Geoffrey Xie, Professor of Computer Science, is the co-inventor on a patented discovery in collaborative machine learning selected for the top prize in the 2024 Defense Innovation Unit / National Security Innovation Network Foundry Showcase, an effort to match startups with promising DOD-invented technologies with high-potential for developing solutions to national security challenges.

Dr. Thomas Jamison, military historian and Assistant Professor of Defense Analysis, published the book, The Pacific's New Navies: An Ocean, its Wars, and the Making of U.S. Sea Power through Cambridge University Press. The book explores the relationships between the “New Navy” and its late 19th century Pacific conflicts, including with China.

Dr. Neil Rowe, Professor of Computer Science, published a chapter on cyber deception in Encyclopedia of Cryptography, Security, and Privacy, 3rd edition.

Dr. Geoffrey Xie, Professor of Computer Science, received $75K in FY25 funding from Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific to continue his technical support for their joint tactical edge network development, a part of Project Overmatch.

Dr. Shannon Houck, Assistant Professor of Defense Analysis, attended the SOCPAC Commander’s Special Operations Conference, and met with stakeholders about “Enhancing Understanding of GPC Dynamics Through SSCI,” a project that was recently awarded funding through the Naval Research Program.

Dr. James Wirtz, Professor of National Security Affairs, published "The Battle of Midway: Five Intelligence Takeaways for Today" in Naval Institute Proceedings, December 2024. The article won second prize in the Naval Intelligence Essay Contest sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute and Naval Intelligence Professionals.

Phil Candreva, J.D., Senior Lecturer of Budgeting and Public Policy of DDM, authored "Budgeting for Defense in the United States,” which has been accepted for publication in the April international periodical, Economics of Peace and Security Journal (Vol. 20, no.1).

Dr. Ian McNab, Research Professor of Physics and member of the Space Systems Academic Group, presented two papers at the 20th Electromagnetic Launcher Symposium, “Railgun Armature and Barrel Cost Considerations” and “Electromagnetic Launchers and Space,” both of which were rated by the referees as “Excellent” and published in the IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science Journal.

Dr. Florina Cristiana Matei, Senior Lecturer of CHDS and National Security Affairs, and Dr. Nadav Morag, faculty member of CHDS, published an article, “Going to War with COVID-19: Securitizing the Pandemic in France, Israel, and Peru,” in the Central European Journal of Security Studies, Volume 2, Issue 1. Dr. Matei was also interviewed by the Libertatea, a Romanian daily, on “Civilian Control and Oversight of Intelligence Services in a Democracy.”

Dr. Britta Hale, cryptographer and Assistant Professor of Computer Science, co-authored “Cryptography is Rocket Science: Analysis of BPSec,” published in the Communications in Cryptography Journal. A second co-authored paper, “The Role of Deceptive Defense in Cyber Strategy: Lessons from Decoy Vessels of the Great War” was published the NATO Maritime Interdiction Operations Journal.

Dr. Ruriko Yoshida, Professor of Operations Research, published “Maximum Inscribed and Minimum Enclosing Tropical Balls of Tropical Polytopes and Applications to Volume Estimation and Uniform Sampling” in Computational Geometry.

Dr. Oleg Godin, Professor of Physics, had two papers, “Fidelity of Infrasound Measurements with Balloon-Borne Sensors” and “Underwater Sound Propagation over a Layered Seabed with Weak Shear Rigidity” published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

Dr. Robert Mortlock, Professor of the Practice and Principal Investigator for the Acquisition Research Program, published “NPS Achieves Accreditation for Graduate Acquisition Education” in Defense Acquisition, Volume LIV, NO. 1 DAU 302.

Dr. Pantelimon Stanica, Professor of Applied Mathematics, had two co-authored papers, “On Combining Arbiter-Based PUFs” and “The Second-Order Zero Differential Spectra of Some Functions over Finite Fields” accepted by the Springer journal, Cryptography & Communications. He also was co-chair of and delivered a series of invited talks under the title “Hero in the Shadows: Cryptographic Boolean Functions” at the International Conference on Cryptology.

Doctoral candidate CDR Darius Ahmadi, PE article on “Stall Margin Improvement in a Transonic Axial Compressor Using Self Recirculating Flow Control” has been selected to appear in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Showcase

Dr. Afshon Ostovar, Associate Professor of National Security Affairs, discussed his new book, Wars of Ambition: The United States, Iran, and the Struggle for the Middle East on an episode of the Project on Middle East Political Science Podcast. He was also interviewed by the Washington Post for the article, “Iran, Already on the Defensive, Braces for Second Trump Term.”

Dr. Neil Rowe, Professor of Computer Science, presented “Testing Effects of Potential Adversary Manipulations of Ship-Tracking Data” at the International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence.

Dr. Thuy Nguyen, Faculty Associate - Research of Computer Science, presented two co-authored papers, “A Zero Trust Architecture for Critical Operational Technology Systems” and “A Resilient Dual-Purpose Web Honeypot for Analyzing Attacks on Industrial Control Systems” at the 58th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Dr. Ying Zhao, Research Professor of Information Sciences, presented “Quantum Theoretic Values of Collaborative and Self-Organizing Agents in Forming a Hybrid Force” at the 29th International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium, and delivered an oral presentation at the ONR NEPTUNE Program Review on addressing Arctic Ocean data gaps affecting naval operations, published at the 2024 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining.

Dr. Frank Narducci, Professor of Physics, gave an invited talk, “The Pit and the Pendulum,” about the development of state-of-the art quantum gravimeters and gravity gradiometers for detection of small gravitational signatures on operationally relevant time scales, at the prestigious and international Physics of Quantum Electronics Conference, and at the Photonics West Conference, part of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers 2025 Conference.

Dr. Shelley Gallup, Research Associate Professor of Information Sciences, presented "Pragmatism and Possibilities: Implementing New Fleet Responses to Near-Term Threats" at the Royal Institute of Naval Architects Warships 2024 Conference.

Dr. Wei Kang and Dr. Hong Zhou, Professors of Applied Mathematics, co-authored “A Surrogate Prediction Model for Systems Governed by Partial Differential Equations,” delivered at an invited presentation at the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

Dr. Frank Giraldo, Distinguished Professor of Applied Mathematics, co-authored two presentations, “ICAMS Common Model Architecture Implementation Team” and “A Study of Nonhydrostatic Equation Sets for Low-and High-Altitude Atmospheric Modeling,” presented at the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting.

The Defense Analysis department's drone research team successfully tested the Skydio X2 drone’s performance in extreme cold and high-altitude environments at the USMC Mountain Warfare Training Center in California and in Mongolia. These tests demonstrated the drone’s ISR capabilities while highlighting challenges such as reduced battery life in cold conditions, high wind speed effects and human performance factors in cold weather. Phase 2 will focus on manufacturing and testing cost-effective 3D-printed drones.

The Center for Cyber Warfare, NPS Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, briefed Dr. Molly Smith, Chief of Talent Learning and Development and Commandant of the National Cryptologic University, regarding ongoing research activities. The CCW received an additional research award of $91K, bringing the FY25 funding total to $1.571M in support of FutureG, as well as cybersecurity research on naval embedded systems.

Dr. Carl Oros, Assistant Professor Information Sciences and Dr. Fabio Alves, Professor of Physics, were selected for the 2025 CRUSER SEED research project titled "Network Integration of Bio-Inspired MEMS Acoustic Vector Sensors (AVS) for Counter UAS Target Acquisition (Phase II)." The research builds on 2024 work to couple the novel sensors with GPS/INS data and link them within a tactical wireless network to acoustically detect and compute the triangulation of potential UAS targets.

Dr. Troy Ansell and Dr. Walter Smith, Associate Professors of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, were awarded patent #2020016US02, 3D printed Oxide Reinforced Titanium Composites and Methods, through a research collaboration led by the late Dr. Andy Nieto. The research focuses on additive manufacturing with oxide reinforced titanium powders, and the impact on key properties of the resulting printed metal.

Dr. Paul Sanchez, Research Associate Professor Emeritus of Operations Research, released v2.3 of the SEED Center’s Data Farming software distribution, which includes a unified interface for generating very large-scale statistical designs of experiments. The software has been downloaded more than 14,000 times since its initial publication.

The Space Systems Academic Group executed the first set of new Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) collections as part of the LP-CRADA with ICEYE, a commercial SAR company. ICEYE satellites collected data over locations in Monterey, Okinawa, and Pajaro Dunes in support of current faculty and student research projects, and exercises in PH3052, Physics of Remote Sensing. Continued collections will be coordinated to support future research activities.

The NPS-developed Otter CubeSat was launched on a Falcon 9 out of Vandenberg Space Force Base on January 14, 2025. The team is currently performing spacecraft checkout operations before starting on mission operations with FVEY partners.

On March 20 and 21, the HRO is offering mandatory training in Antiterrorism Level 1 Awareness 

• Microsoft Teams meeting - Thursday, Mar 20, 2025 from 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m
• Microsoft Teams meeting - Thursday, Mar 20, 2025 from 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
• Microsoft Teams meeting - Friday, Mar 21, 2025 from 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Information Sciences is currently seeking 80 student, faculty or staff volunteers to evaluate the impact of stress on neurophysiological processes as measured by an eye tracking paradigm called nFit. Schedule a time to participate (GL-103), or e-mail mollie.mcguire@nps.edu for more info.

The FY25 performance cycle ends on March 31, 2025. All employees are encouraged to conduct self-assessments and should engage in discussions with their supervisors to ensure they have met their goals, align with those of the institution, support personal development and add to mission success. For assistance, check out the DPMAP Toolkit.

April 30 is the last day for NPS faculty to submit an FY26 Initial Research Estimate Form (IREF) to the Naval Research Program. The period of performance is October 1, 2025 through December 31, 2026. Project funding is capped at $150,000, but can be increased at the discretion of the sponsor. Four submissions in total will be accepted per researcher, but the maximum award is one funded FY26 project per PI. March 19 is the final day for topic submissions. Visit the ARP Topic Portal for info.

The NPS 22^nd Annual Acquisition Research Symposium and Innovation Summit, “Creating Synergy for Informed Change – Technology Transfer” will be held virtually from May 7-8 in Monterey. Register today!

NFEE Local 1690 stewards are recommending that bargaining unit employees ensure their SF50 forms are accurate, download copies of all appraisals and keep in your personal files. Be sure that box 37 on the SF50 has “2420” or “NV2420,” the bargaining unit status code. If marked incorrectly, email HR and ask that it be corrected, and copy Rebecca Pieken at rpieken@nps.edu on the message.

The deadline to submit nominations for the DOD Civilian Leader Development Curriculum program is June 20. Available to permanent, career GS-7 to GS-12 and equivalent pay schedules, all applicants must have one year of DON employment experience at the time of nomination. The application and a resume must be submitted to Lisa Roberts at lroberts@nps.edu. Check out the DCELP Overview, application template and training dates for more info.

NSAM will be conducting its Monthly Installation Zone cleanup on Friday, March 28, at the beach dunes, and volunteers are welcome! Public Works will provide all items for use during the event. Contact john.hoellwarth@nps.edu for details. 

Updates and Executive Orders on DOD Guidance are on MyNPS

Executive Orders, Memos, DOD Guidance, and FAQs related to current issues affecting NPS travel, purchasing, and personnel actions can be found under the “Important News” banner on myNPS.

Travel Office issues an update

Travelers authorized or approved on a travel voucher must now claim reimbursements for conference registration fees within the Defense Travel System. Review the latest guidance before submitting travel authorizations and vouchers or contact the Travel Office for assistance.

New DBIDS card requirements for motorcycle riders

Effective May 1, NSAM will require a DBIDS card for those who ride motorcycles onto the base. To apply for and receive the required card, go to Vehicle Gate Access Services or call ext. 3643 (M-F from 7:00-11:30 and 12:00-3:00). Non-NSAM DOD-affiliated persons and retirees may enter the base using a valid registration, insurance, and a motorcycle-endorsed driver’s license.

Free tax services are available

MilTax e-filing software is free for service members, eligible family members, survivors, and recent veterans up to 365 days from their separation or retirement date. Help with MilTax or any tax-related questions is available at no charge through Military OneSource at 800-342-9647.

Building Modernization Updates

Bullard Hall is scheduled for completion in March, and Halligan Hall is on track to be awarded to a contractor the same month. Check out the new Building Modernization website for the latest photos, timelines, schedules and information regarding the projects.

Mandatory trainings are being updated

The DON “Civilian Sexual Assault Prevention and Response” (SAPR) training has been updated and is in Waypoints at https://don.csod.com/.  The required training for “Individual Managing Your Risk” (NSC-ORM-MYRY-2.0) is not on Waypoints. NPS personnel can find it here. Once completed, send your certificate to lroberts@nps.edu.

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency has released a report on threats to industry and academia, highlighting foreign intelligence entities' efforts to acquire U.S. technologies and information through access via non-traditional and cyber operations. See the Full Report.

Pending Congressional approval of the final plan, a new organization combining parts of the Strategic Capabilities Office, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), and the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office will procure cutting-edge commercial products, take over DIU's procurement functions and shift from working directly with combatant commands to moving funding acquisitions to the services. Investments will shift away from research in "abstractions" like "artificial intelligence" to focusing on more tangible weapons and business systems.

To accelerate the fielding of new technologies and weapons, the DOD is considering adopting the Software Acquisition Pathway (SWP) as the preferred method for software development, enabling faster delivery of capabilities to warfighters into platforms within six months or less, preferably hours or days, and build closer collaborations with commercial tech companies.

Saronic, a robot shipbuilder, has secured substantial funding to build a new kind of shipyard called Port Alpha, and plans to mass-produce medium and large uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) for the Navy in a manner similar to how trucks and cars are manufactured, which could simplify workforce requirements.

BioMojo has developed a digital human twin platform that incorporates physical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral data to create a holistic, real-time representation of an individual and detailed simulations for testing new wearable equipment like body armor and new training systems for injury prevention. A version of the technology will be delivered to the Navy to aid in developing new life-saving equipment for its personnel.

The NPS Department of National Security Affairs hosted Madame Tsiporah Fried, Senior Strategy Advisor to the Vice Chairman of the French Joint Chiefs of Staff and Chief of Defense. Her talk focused on France's long-awaited strategy for the Indo-Pacific, and the nation’s perspectives on the key strategic challenges in the region and beyond.

The Defense Energy Seminar by NPS' Energy Academic Group hosted Mr. Robert Bryans, Vice President of State Relations and Strategic Alliances of CORE POWER, who spoke on “Maritime Civil Nuclear Program: Enhancing American National Security.”  

An in-person fireside chat open to the entire NPS community on “Addressing the China Challenge” was led by Dr. Elizabeth Economy, Hargrove Senior Fellow and co-chair of the Program on the U.S., China and the World at the Hoover Institution, and Dr. Christopher Twomey, NPS Associate Professor of National Security Affairs. 

CRUSER hosted “Introduction to TETAC,” a developer of unmanned vehicle-delivered explosive systems, by the company’s CEO Mr. Mark Benson and its COO, Mr. Pete Noto, and “An Overview of the NPS CIRPAS Airborne Research Capability” by Dr. Anthony Bucholtz, NPS Research Professor of Meteorology.

The Physics department hosted a presentation, “New Tools for Dark Matter and Gravitational Wave Detection: Cryogenic Optical Resonators and Long-Baseline Atom Interferometers” by Dr. Tim Kovachy, an Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy and a member of the Center for Fundamental Physics at Northwestern University.