Dr. Sean Warnick, (shown to the right with student Nghia Tran) Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Brigham Young University, was selected as the 2008 Distinguished Visiting Professor (DVP) by the National Security Agency (NSA) this week. The position, administered by the NSA Enterprise Operations Research, Modeling, and Simulation (OR/M&S) Group, is highly competitive and is offered to a professor with a distinguished record in both decision science applications and student mentoring.

“We first heard of Dr. Warnick’s work from a colleague at MITRE Corporation who tipped us off to BYU and what they are doing there with student mentoring,” said Francine Goode, Director of the Summer Program for Operations Research Technology (SPORT). “Visiting Warnick’s research group, the Information and Decision Algorithms Laboratories (IDeA Labs) last fall, I could tell it is an amazing environment where students from various disciplines come together to work on decision problems arising in a variety of areas, from microbiology to economics.”

Warnick received his Ph.D. from MIT in 2003 in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, with a minor in Mathematics. His work focuses on the feedback control of complex dynamical systems, with applications including proteomic network reconstruction, scheduling of batch manufacturing systems, and market power /valuation analyses in merger-and-acquisition studies. Warnick was a visiting scholar in the Control Systems Group at Cambridge University during the summer of 2006, and he is the founding director of IDeA Labs at BYU.

“I was quite surprised to get a call from the government last summer saying that they have reviewed my work and would like me to apply for this program,” Warnick said. “Apparently it’s not just an any ordinary summer position, but an opportunity to work on a wide range of important projects with a diverse set of NSA customers via the SPORT program. I am eager to spearhead a strong relationship between our students at BYU and the DoD.”

The SPORT program is a highly competitive graduate-level intern program that brings top students from around the country into the Department of Defense to work on key national security issues. Only about 3-4% of the applicants are admitted, and only top graduate students from rigorous programs such as Operations Research, Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering, or Statistics are considered. During the program, the students create mathematical models, conduct decision analysis, and employ sophisticated simulations on some of the most state-of-the-art computing facilities in the world.

“The DVP acts as a mentor to students and also a liaison between the students and the OR/M&S customers,” explained Goode. “It is important that we connect to the best emerging talent when solving critical problems. To help us with that, we conduct a national search and select a unique individual as DVP who not only understands the technical nature of the problems we are working on, but also has the ability to connect with students and bring out the best they have to offer. This year, we are excited to name Dr. Warnick as our DVP for 2008.”