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The Naval Postgraduate School’s (NPS) Operations Research (OR) Department offers M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. Located in Monterey, California, it is one of the oldest, largest, and highest ranking OR departments in the world. It is without peer in terms of the extent to which graduate education is integrated with a commitment to solving real military problems. The NPS Military Operations Research Society selected four graduate students as finalists for the top thesis award. The students presented theses examining a variety of research topics, including machine learning, surface ship maintenance and active shooter scenarios, to a panel of judges for the Military Operations Research Society (MORS) Stephen A. Tisdale Thesis Award, held May 21, 2020.
Following the detailed presentations and deliberations, the judges awarded Ensign Lauren O’Malley (parents Brian and Shelley O’Malley and graduate of Lassiter High School (2015), Marietta, GA and United States Naval Academy (2019), Annapolis, MD) with the MORS/Tisdale Award and asserted that her research represented the most immediate or near-term value to the defense of the United States and its allies. In her thesis entitled, “Level Loading Surface Ship Maintenance Availabilities,” Ensign O’Malley developed a mixed integer linear programming model to produce an optimal surface ship maintenance schedule to provide private shipyards with a more sustainable and predictable workload, which in turn reduces the risk of maintenance backlogs for the Navy. Ensign O’Malley’s timely research promises to be applied immediately to real-world applications in order to improve current maintenance planning. Her research strives to advance the state-of-the-art surface ship maintenance, extending previous research conducted by NPS graduates Lieutenant Commander Adam Hilliard (2019) and Vice Admiral Richard Brown (1992).
“We’re all very proud of Lauren and the work she has done while at NPS; winning the MORS/Tisdale Award is always a great accomplishment, and she was in very strong company,” stated Dr. Matt Carlyle, Operations Research Department Chair. O’Malley joins a lengthy roster of students earning the esteemed award dating back to the 1970s. “The MORS Tisdale competition is a time where we, as a department, get to celebrate the excellent work that our students do,” said Carlyle. “Anytime anyone asks me about examples of the work we do here, I have a long list of examples that I can show to anyone who’s interested about the fantastic, relevant work that we do in this department.”
O’Malley presented her Award Winning Thesis to Vice Admiral Richard A. Brown, Commander, Naval Surface Forces/Commander, Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet. O’Malley next reports to her ship home ported in San Diego, the Destroyer USS John Finn, where she will receive her designation as a Naval Surface Warfare Officer. From there, Lauren will attend the Navy’s Nuclear Power School in Charleston, SC, studying Nuclear Engineering which will ultimately lead her to being responsible for the operations of the nuclear propulsion system on an U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier.
The MORS/Tisdale Award is named in honor of Lieutenant Commander Stephen A. Tisdale, who graduated from the Naval Post Graduate school in 1989 with two master’s degrees: an M.S. in Operations Research and an M.S. in Space Systems Operations. His outstanding and influential thesis, “Assessing Optimal Utilization of Potential Anti-Satellite Architectures,” won the MORS prize. The MORS prize was renamed in honor of this outstanding officer-scholar after his tragic death in the collision of two P-3 Orions conducting a submarine tracking exercise at low altitude off the California coast on 21 March 1991.
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