Andy Emerson

Section Chief, Data Analytics, U.S. Strategic Command

I was born and raised on a farm in deep rural Maine, which perhaps makes me an unlikely candidate for a data scientist and AI researcher. Nevertheless, here I am.

My academic career began at my family’s alma mater, the University of Maine, where I studied philosophy and mathematics. Philosophy taught me what a good question looks like; mathematics taught me what a good answer looks like. I continued my education in graduate school at Claremont Graduate University, where I was project manager for the Mathematics Clinic and a teaching assistant for both Discrete Mathematical Modeling and Graph Theory. I recently began working on my dissertation in the Computational Science Ph.D. program.

My military career began over 15 years ago as an operations researcher. I am currently Section Chief for Data Analytics at U.S. Strategic Command, on loan to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to stand up a data modeling team. Previously, I was an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley, where I was director of the Leadership Lab and developed a new course, Philosophy and Leadership, which introduced theories of leadership through a close reading of the great books, such as Homer, Plato and Shakespeare.

Education

Ph.D. candidate, Computational Science · Claremont Graduate University Project Leader, Mathematics Clinic Teaching Assistant, Discrete Mathematical Modeling Teaching Assistant, Graph Theory

M.S., Mathematics · Claremont Graduate University Inducted into Pi Mu Epsilon, the mathematics honor society

M.A., Politics · Claremont Graduate University Inducted into Pi Sigma Alpha, the political science honor society

B.A., Philosophy · University of Maine Inducted into Phi Sigma Tau, the philosophy honor society