The Lab

The Lab

The Naval Postgraduate School’s (NPS) CORE Lab was established in 2007 and supports military, interagency, and law enforcement professionals engaged in counter-network and irregular warfare (IW) operations by sharing knowledge, skills, and abilities related to several domains, such as complexity and social networks, as well as the methodologies and the analytic tools (i.e., software) associated with them.  Specifically, the CORE Lab leverages system dynamics, geospatial, temporal, text, and social network analyses. The application of these methodologies allows partners to understand and develop strategies to enable or counter a broad range of offline networks, such as resistance, terrorist, and maritime networks, as well as online networks, such as Twitter and YouTube propaganda networks. 

Our students, both U.S. and international, as well as our partner organizations in DOD and law enforcement, are the foundation of our three pillars of efforts: research, graduate-level courses, and outreach and education.

Mission

The CORE Lab’s mission is to serve as a leading DOD organization in providing research and education to U.S. and foreign military officers in advanced methodologies and cutting-edge, analytic technologies. The Lab focuses on, but is not limited to, social media, social network, geospatial, temporal, and textual analyses as well as system dynamics. We seek to enable academics, students, and operational practitioners to collect, manage, and fuse data to create a more complete picture of the common operational environment. Our niche is bridging the gap between theory and operational capability.

Our Goals

  • Collaborate with community of partners.
  • Operationalize advanced analytic methodologies and techniques.
  • Research new tools, techniques, and methodologies.
  • Educate operational practitioners.

Our Methodologies

The Lab’s expertise, as well as its emphasis in courses and research, is in system dynamics, geospatial analysis, temporal analysis, and relational analysis.