Tom Stefanick is a nonresident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. From 1988 to 2018, he had a career in scientific consulting, initially as a technical analyst and eventually as a senior vice president at Metron, Inc. The work that he developed and managed supported Navy and intelligence community research and development and operations analysis for the Pentagon, Navy System Commands, and Warfare Centers.
Stefanick initiated and managed over a dozen technical efforts in machine learning, image recognition, autonomous planning, statistical modeling, sensor modeling, and simulation of military operations and U.S. border security operations. He founded business units that conducted research and development for the Office of Naval Research in autonomy and lidar technology for military applications. Another project that he led involved the use of advanced statistical methods to assess foreign nation attitudes toward cooperative security exercises conducted by the United States, based on data from targeted surveys and social media data.
As a senior executive at Metron, Stefanick participated in overall corporate governance responsibilities with the CEO and COO, including legal and regulatory responsibilities. He oversaw planning of overall corporate cybersecurity improvements to Metron’s networks. He served on the board of directors of Metron Inc. from 2009 to 2018, and as treasurer from 2015 to 2018.
Prior to joining Metron in 1988, Stefanick was awarded a Congressional Fellowship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science to work in the House Armed Services Committee from 1987 to 1988. Stefanick was a member on a special panel convened by then-chairman Les Aspin to investigate U.S. and Soviet submarine and anti-submarine warfare technology. Prior to his work on the Armed Services Committee, Stefanick wrote the book “Strategic Antisubmarine Warfare and Naval Strategy” (Lexington Books, 1987). This book was one of the runners-up for the Furniss Award from the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at Ohio State University. Portions of the book were rewritten for publication in Scientific American magazine as “Nonacoustic Detection of Submarines.”
Affiliations
- American Statistical Association, member
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Past Positions
- Senior Vice President, Metron Inc. (2016-2018)
- Various corporate and technical positions at Metron, Inc. (1988-2016)
- Science Fellow, House Armed Services Committee (1987-1988)
- Federation of American Scientists (1986-1987)
- Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (1981-1986)
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (1979-1980)
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Education
- M.S., Statistics, Colorado State University, 2012
- Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, George Washington University, 2002
- M.S., Civil & Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1979
- B.S., Civil & Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1978