Ethan Boone, a 2017 alumnus of Gunston has been awarded the Military Operations Research Society Stephen A. Tisdale Award for Graduate Research from the Naval Postgraduate School during the Fall 2022 quarter. After graduating from Gunston in 2017, Ethan joined the Naval ROTC program at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. There, he graduated magna cum laude with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering. 

Boone reflects fondly on his time at Gunston, and is thankful for teachers like Mr. Linn and Mrs. Shepherdson, who were “quite tough” and pushed him academically. He says that the homework in his classes made him well prepared for college and taught him how to separate “work time and play time.” He always knew he wanted to go into a military program of some sort, and is thankful for the opportunities he has been given. Particularly, the ability to attend the Naval Postgraduate School as a Shoemaker Scholar, a program for high-performing United States Naval Academy and Naval ROTC graduates waiting to enter the naval aviation pipeline. “Coming to NPS so early in my career [was] a great opportunity,” Boone said. “The exposure to the diverse backgrounds of my peers was very insightful as an ensign. I got exposure to and learned about communities across all branches that I would not have otherwise gotten.” 

This fall, Ethan received the Military Operations Research Society Stephen A. Tisdale Award for Graduate Research. The Tisdale Award is presented quarterly to the Operations Research graduate whose thesis research presents the greatest potential for near-term impact on the security of the U.S. and its allies. Boone’s project applied two different machine learning algorithms to the publicly-available Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) Project in an effort to identify what features are most important in predicting when an area is going to have an increase in violent events with fatalities.“Using machine learning on the ACLED database, we were able to create models that provide these features to the stakeholders,” Boone said. “Additionally, we were able to provide a monthly prediction of whether an area is going to have an increase or decrease in violent events … The stakeholders were particularly excited about the insights that were provided that would not have been accessible when the data was in its raw format. “I first heard about my topic from a brief that Army Operations Research and Systems Analysis officers from the Army’s TRAC Research and Analysis Center office on campus gave during one of our thesis workshops,” Boone said. “I was immediately drawn into the project because it addressed an immediate need within the DOD, and it is something that needed to be built and delivered to stakeholders.”

Boone is now located in Pensacola, FL where he is patiently awaiting the start of his flight school for the Navy. 

Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro and Ethan Boone at NPS graduation December 2022