CORE Leadership

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.

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.

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.

Seth Gray – Faculty Associate for Research

Seth Gray is a Research Associate in the Defense Analysis Department’s CORE Lab at NPS. His work focuses on machine learning applications and open-source data analytics for understanding and modeling a variety of security problems. Prior to joining NPS, Seth served in several intelligence community roles and received multiple awards, including a citation from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Seth has a MA in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies and a MS in Business Intelligence and Data Analytics. 

Chad Machiela – Faculty Associate for Research

Chad Machiela is a retired Army Special Forces Warrant Officer with over 30 years’ Special Operations experience working throughout the Indo-Pacific, Central, and European Commands. He has employed CORE Laboratory methodology to build dark networks, expose dark networks, and develop civil-military resilience networks in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Mali, and Thailand. Chad holds an MS in Defense Analysis from the Naval Postgraduate School and graduate certificates in Security and Governance from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and Project Management from Fayetteville State University. Chad co-wrote the National Ground Intelligence Center’s monograph Ethnographic Intelligence Support to Village Stability Platform Establishment (available for download from NGIC’s classified library). His monograph Enhancing Civil Affairs Assessments Using Social Network Analysis was published in Joint Special Operations University Report 10-4.

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).