Leadership

Dr. Wayne Porter – Co-Director

Dr. Wayne Porter, CAPT, USN (ret), is a Senior Lecturer in the Defense Analysis and Systems Engineering Departments of the Naval Postgraduate School, where he also serves as Co- Director of the CORE Lab and Director of the Littoral Operations Center.  He holds a Ph.D in Information Sciences and two Masters of Science degrees – in Computer Science and Joint C4I Systems Technology - from the Naval Postgraduate School.  Military duty included Japan, England, Italy, the Balkans, Bahrain (COMFIFTHFLT ACOS Intelligence and MOC Deputy of Operations in the Persian Gulf/East Africa), and three tours on the personal staff of ADM Mike Mullen, including Special Assistant for Strategy to both the Chief of Naval Operations (N00Z) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.  He subsequently served as Chair, Systemic Strategy and Complexity at Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and retired from the Navy in July 2014 after 28 years of active service.  Dr. Porter was hired as a faculty member at NPS in 2015 and in 2017 he provided systems analysis for the SECNAV’s Strategic Readiness Review.

While working for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ADM Mullen, CAPT Porter co-authored, with Colonel Mark Mykleby, “A National Strategic Narrative.” Published by the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars a National Strategic Narrative was subsequently cited Pulitzer Award winning author Tom Friedman, CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria, former UK Secretary for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs David Miliband, former Foreign Minister of Israel Shlomo Ben Ami, and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan among many others (www.nationalstrategicnarrative.org).  His articles have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Journal of American Foreign Policy Interests, The HotSpring Quarterly, the Washington Times, two OSD/JS White Papers, Naval Institute Proceedings, and the 8th Euromicro Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Processing. Dr Porter contributed the chapter, The Value of System Dynamics Modeling in Policy Analytics and Planning the textbook, Policy Analytics, Modelling, and Informatics: Innovative Tools for Solving Complex Social Problems, Springer Publishing (2018).

Wayne’s doctoral dissertation was an action research case study in which he used system dynamics to model the Steinbeck Innovation Cluster strategy he helped develop linking the technology and innovation of Silicon Valley with the agriculture and aquaculture industries of Monterey County, California and the Salinas Valley.  Articles describing concepts of that strategy have appeared in the Financial Times and Forbes Magazine.

Dr. Porter was recently named a Lifetime Achiever by Marquis’ Who’s Who in America. His civilian and military awards include the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, the Vice Admiral Rufus B. Taylor Award for Professional Excellence in Naval Intelligence, the Defense Superior Service Medal, four Legions of Merit, and the NATO Meritorious Service Medal.  Dr Porter is a “Walton Fellow” at Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability.

Dr. Sean Everton – Co-Director

Dr. Sean Everton is a Professor in the Department of Defense Analysis and the Co-Director of the CORE (Common Operational Research Environment) Lab at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). Prior to joining NPS in 2007 he served as an adjunct professor at both Santa Clara and Stanford universities. He earned his MA and PhD in Sociology at Stanford University and wrote his doctoral thesis on the causes and consequences of status on venture capital firm performance. He has published in the areas of social network analysis, sociology of religion, economic sociology, and political sociology and currently specializes in the use of social network analysis to track and disrupt dark networks (e.g., criminal and terrorist networks). His first book, Disrupting Dark Networks, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012, and his second book, Understanding Dark Networks (co-authored with Daniel Cunningham and Phil Murphy), was published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2016. His more recent book, Networks and Religion, which explores the interplay of networks and religion, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018.

Chris Callaghan – Deputy Director of Education Operations

Chris Callaghan is a Research Associate in the Defense Analysis Department’s CORE Lab at the NPS. His work leverages open-source data analytics for understanding and modeling a variety of national and homeland security problems. Prior to joining the NPS, Chris served as a Research Associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS) at Monterey where he worked on multiple efforts dealing with local and international ‘citizenship’. Chris received his MPA from MIIS and a B.S. in Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Karen Flaherty – Executive Administrator

Karen Flaherty has been with the CORE Lab from since 2007 and was the first staff person hired for the Lab.  She is the office administrator and manages the budgets.  She has a background in conference planning and supports our training and seminars.  She has a contracting background and handles all purchasing for the lab.  She support the two co directors, staff and students. Most of her professional career has been supporting the government first as a contractor and then as a government employee.

Robert Schroeder – Faculty Associate for Research

Rob Schroeder is a Faculty Associate for Research in the CORE Lab within the Defense Analysis Department and a PhD Student in the Information Sciences Department at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). He is currently researching how to use open source information gathered largely from social media in order to understand and map the changing dynamics in conflict areas and exploring the use of network analysis to analyze maritime traffic patterns. He has presented some of this research at conferences (INFORMS and INSNA).