Scholarship

The work collected here begins with a fairly ordinary question: what is this system doing, and what follows if it behaves that way? The systems are not ordinary. They have included disease surveillance, flood insurance, satellite populations, blockchains, education, military operations, and artificial intelligence. The methods change with the problem, but the underlying task is usually the same: build a model that is honest about its assumptions, then make it useful to someone who has to decide what to do.

That is why the record is broad without being random. A disease model and an inspection system both have capacity constraints. A blockchain proposal and a flood-insurance program both have governance problems. A piece of numerical software and an online mathematics course both fail if the machinery works but the person using it cannot tell what it means. The selected work below is a way into those recurring questions; the complete record remains below it for anyone who needs the citations.

Selected Work

Forecasting, Artificial Intelligence, and Complex Systems

Crystal Cube: Forecasting Disruptive Events (2021, with Anna L. Buczak and colleagues), Applied Artificial Intelligence. Crystal Cube treated disruption forecasting as a practical systems problem: combine disparate signals, make the model useful, and confront the difference between a prediction and an operational decision.

Agent-Based Modeling for Evaluation of a Wearable-Sensor-Based Disease Surveillance Network (2023, with Ivan Stanish and colleagues), SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing. This work used agent-based modeling to ask whether a disease-surveillance network could detect what it claimed to detect under realistic operating assumptions.

Forecasting Artificial Earth Satellite Populations (2018), Joint Statistical Meetings. Satellite populations are a small example of a larger habit: find the mechanism behind a number that looks simple, then model the mechanism rather than merely extrapolating the number.

Risk, Policy, and Operational Decisions

Socioeconomic Effects of the National Flood Insurance Program (2016). This book grew from research on the policy, economic, and social consequences of a federal insurance program that exists precisely because risk refuses to stay inside a spreadsheet. It remains the clearest single record of the public-policy side of this work.

Handbook of Military and Defense Operations Research (2nd ed., 2024, co-editor with Natalie M. Scala). Operations research is what happens when good intentions encounter limited time, limited resources, and a decision that cannot be postponed. This volume brings together work on those problems in defense and security settings.

Mixed Reality for Post-Disaster Situational Awareness (2020, with Arthur O. Tucker IV and colleagues), Johns Hopkins APL Technical Digest. A post-disaster system has to make information usable under conditions that are actively hostile to usability. The work joined sensing, visualization, and response rather than treating any one of them as sufficient.

Mathematics, Statistics, and Scientific Computing

Computational Methods for Numerical Analysis with R (2017). Numerical analysis becomes much more interesting when the computation is visible. This book uses R not as decorative software around mathematics, but as a way to make approximation, error, and algorithmic choices concrete.

Phonetic Spelling Algorithm Implementations for R (2020), Journal of Statistical Software. A scholarly software paper on the phonics R package, which implements phonetic algorithms for record linkage and related work. It is a good example of software treated as a method that should be inspectable, reusable, and citable.

Blockchain Compliance with Federal Cryptographic Information Processing Standards (2020, with Maria E. Vachino), IEEE Security & Privacy. This paper asks the unglamorous but necessary question behind a technical proposal: whether a blockchain design can satisfy the standards and governance requirements of the system it is supposed to serve.

Quantitative Learning and Technical Communication

Teaching and Learning Mathematics Online (2nd ed., 2025, co-editor with John F. Beyers). Online mathematics education is not a matter of putting a textbook behind a login screen. The work in this volume concerns what students can actually do, see, test, and explain when the classroom is distributed.

Teaching STEM Online at the Tertiary Level During the COVID-19 Pandemic (2023, with Mina Sedaghatjou and colleagues), International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology. The pandemic forced the question in real time: which parts of technical teaching are genuinely portable, and which have to be redesigned when the room disappears?

Complete Scholarly Record

Complete Bibliography

Books and Edited Volumes

Articles, Chapters, Proceedings, and Dissertation

Software and Technical Publications

Public and Professional Writing

Reviews and Other Publications

Presentations and Talks

Grants and Research Support

  • Co-Principal Investigator, Data Dashboards for Individual Risk of Covid-19—Integrating Local and Population Levels of Data, Johns Hopkins Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science (Co-PI: Tom Woolf), Seed Funding Program 2022, ($25,000).
  • Principal Investigator, Travel Grant, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Janney Energize Award 2019, (INFORMS 2019, $6,500).
  • Principal Investigator, Development Grant, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Ignition Grant 2018, ($10,000).
  • Principal Investigator, Europa Lander Orbital Tours, Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), Startup Allocation TG-DBS170012 National Science Foundation (NSF), 2018, (33,562,428 NUs, $13,652.86).
  • Co-Investigator, Crystal Cube—The Future Is Here. Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, (PI: Anna Loskiewicz-Buczak), Propulsion Grant 2018, ($500,000).
  • Co-Investigator, ANTICS—Advanced Network Technology for Integrating Communications in Space, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, (PIs: Dave Copeland and Ed Birrane), Propulsion Grant 2018, ($500,000).
  • Co-Investigator, Dynamic Causal Decision Trees for Explainable AI, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, (PI: Mark Matties), Combustion Grant 2018, ($50,000).
  • Principal Investigator, Defense and Security Applications for Blockchain Conference, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Janney Energize Award 2017, ($40,000).
  • Co-Investigator, Blockchain for Supply Chain Management and Tracking of National Security Assets, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, (PI: Jaime Arribas Starkey-El), Ignition Grant 2017, ($20,000).
  • Principal Investigator, Phonetic Spelling Approaches to Indexing Large Populations, Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), Startup Allocation TG-DBS170012 National Science Foundation (NSF), 2017, (4,655,650 NUs, $1,346).
  • Co-Investigator, Marco Polo. Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, (PI: Romina Nikoukar), Propulsion Grant 2017, ($250,000).
  • Co-Investigator, Crystal Cube—The Future Is Here. Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, (PI: Anna Loskiewicz-Buczak), Propulsion Grant 2017, ($350,000).
  • Co-Investigator, ANTICS—Advanced Network Technology for Integrating Communications in Space, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, (PIs: Dave Copeland and Ed Birrane), Propulsion Grant 2017, ($350,000).
  • Principal Investigator, Blockchain-Assured Network Name Service, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Combustion Grant 2017, ($50,000).
  • Augmenting the Classroom with Web-Based Interactive Demonstrations. University of Maryland University College, Center for Teaching and Learning Professional Development Grant 2014, (2014 Joint Mathematics Meeting, $508).
  • Estimating the Net Social Benefits of the National Flood Insurance Program. UMBC Graduate Student Association, Travel Grant 2013, (Fifth Annual Conference and Meeting of the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis, $500).
  • Measuring the Impacts of National Flood Insurance Program. UMBC Graduate Student Association, Travel Grant 2012, (William and Mary Graduate Research Symposium, $500).