Paul J. Nicholas, PhD

Systems Engineering & Operations Research Department

Dr. Paul J. Nicholas is an adjunct faculty member in the Systems Engineering and Operations Research (SEOR) Department at George Mason University. He teaches a graduate course on analytics and decision analysis as part of GMU's Data Analytics Engineering (DAEN) program. Paul is an operations research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU APL), and also serves in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve.

Paul's research focuses on the use of advanced analytic techniques to examine problems in national security, in particular communications systems, cyberspace operations, and electronic warfare. He is interested in large-scale combinatorial optimization and simulation.

Paul received his B.S. from the U.S. Naval Academy, his M.S. from the Naval Postgraduate School, and his Ph.D. from George Mason University. On active duty, he deployed several times to Iraq and Afghanistan in support of combat operations as a communications officer and operations research analyst. He was a visiting fellow to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, and an MIT Seminar XXI Fellow. He is a member of MORS, INFORMS, and IEEE, and is currently serving on the MORS Board of Directors.

Research Interests

  • Large-scale combinatorial and network optimization
  • Constraint programming
  • Tactical communications systems
  • Cyberspace operations and electronic warfare
  • Agent-based simulation
  • Decision analysis

Contact Info

SEOR Department
Engineering Building, Rm 2100, MS 4A6
George Mason University
Fairfax VA 22030
Email: pnichol6 [at] gmu [dot] edu