At a bustling security checkpoint at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, vacationers moved swiftly by means of the road, unaware that an experiment was quietly unfolding within the background.
Algorithms designed by Arizona State University college students have been testing how real-time staffing choices may scale back delays whereas protecting the skies secure.
For seven years, this type of behind-the-scenes innovation was the calling card of the Center for Accelerating Operational Efficiency, or CAOE.
Established in 2017 as a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence, the CAOE reworked uncooked knowledge into instruments for decision-makers whereas coaching lots of of scholars to tackle the complicated challenges of nationwide security.
Though the middle has since concluded its operations, its affect continues within the careers of alumni, the collaborations it cast and the analysis that continues to be energetic throughout ASU and past.
Building a cross-university mission
Led by ASU and joined by a 25-university consortium, the CAOE was a hub for tackling issues that lower throughout the homeland security enterprise. Projects spanned every little thing from provide chain resilience to knowledge privateness — all the time balancing pressing operational wants with the broader purpose of making ready the following technology of consultants.
Ross Maciejewski, director of the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, a part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at ASU, and Pitu Mirchandani, now a Fulton Schools emeritus professor, co-founded the middle. Maciejewski served as its director.
“For students, CAOE wasn’t just a research center,” Maciejewski says. “It was a launchpad for careers in government, industry and academia. We wanted them to graduate with both theoretical depth and the ability to solve real-world problems.”
A frontrunner who noticed the large image
For Maciejewski, who started his graduate research within the wake of 9/11, homeland security analysis has all the time been private. His early work in visible analytics was funded by the Department of Homeland Security, and CAOE gave him the chance to proceed in utilized drawback areas the place knowledge and decision-making instantly affected lives.
“As director, Ross created an environment where faculty and students alike could take on problems of national importance while growing their own expertise,” says Ronald Askin, a Fulton Schools emeritus professor and former CAOE assistant director. “Ross had the rare ability to maintain an emphasis on both rigorous research and student development while keeping us focused on how our work would make a difference outside the university.”
Maciejewski’s management continues at the moment within the Fulton Schools, and within the broader knowledge science group the place he was just lately inducted into the distinguished Visualization Academy by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, underscoring his nationwide affect in analytics and decision-making.
Turning analysis into real-world affect
The CAOE’s portfolio spanned a variety of nationwide security challenges, with initiatives that reached from airports to waterways to knowledge networks.
Working with IBM and the TSA, researchers developed simulation instruments to predict passenger flows and optimize officer schedules. Their “plan of day” scheduler was piloted in dwell operations at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and examined at a minimum of two different main airports, a major instance of educational analysis instantly shaping federal observe.
Beyond aviation, the middle constructed fashions to safeguard marine transportation, serving to companies anticipate how pure disasters or geopolitical occasions would possibly ripple by means of fragile provide chains.
As cyber threats grew, the CAOE superior privacy-preserving strategies that enabled analysts to acquire insights from delicate datasets with out compromising civil liberties, whereas additionally pioneering cryptographic approaches to safe biometric and facial recognition data in an period of increasing surveillance.
The heart additionally labored on the entrance traces of chemical risk preparedness, utilizing red teaming workouts to assist the Department of Homeland Security anticipate rising dangers and put together responders for eventualities past at the moment’s playbooks. Together, these efforts exemplified the middle’s mission of mixing rigorous analysis with real-world affect.
“Our strength was being able to span agencies, academia and problem domains,” Maciejewski says. “We weren’t siloed. We were a place DHS could come for science and solutions.”
Training the following technology
Workforce growth was on the coronary heart of the CAOE’s mission. Undergraduate and graduate college students alike participated in analysis initiatives, hackathons and immersive packages such because the summer time Quantitative Analytics Workshop.
Students took half in design challenges, just like the annual Designing Actionable Solutions for a Secure Homeland, or DASSH, competitors, the place groups tackled actual DHS drawback statements beneath professional mentorship. These experiences usually served as steppingstones, with many contributors happening to careers in federal companies, protection contractors and tutorial analysis.
Reflecting on that affect, former assistant director Amy Bennett notes that the middle broadened college students’ view of security.
“CAOE showed students that homeland security isn’t just about what you see at the airport or the border,” she says. “It’s also about engineers, economists and computer scientists using their skills to strengthen systems we all rely on.”
Closing a chapter, carrying ahead the mission
The CAOE formally concluded in 2025, after the Department of Homeland Security closed most Centers of Excellence.
Even so, its legacy lives on in each analysis and management. Faculty proceed to advance initiatives seeded by the middle, and Maciejewski has carried classes in staff constructing and utilized science into his function directing one of many nation’s largest pc science diploma packages.
Nadya Bliss is the manager director of the Global Security Initiative, beneath which CAOE was housed. She says CAOE was an necessary a part of ASU’s broader security mission.
“Centers like CAOE prove that universities can be trusted partners in addressing national security challenges,” Bliss says. “CAOE exemplified GSI’s vision of security research. Its work was interdisciplinary, applied and deeply connected to national needs.”
Looking forward, Maciejewski is optimistic about the way forward for ASU’s analysis enterprise and its skill to deal with challenges far past homeland security. From knowledge visualization to human-AI collaboration, from resilient infrastructure to privacy-protecting applied sciences, he sees alternatives for the college to stay an important a part of fixing complicated, high-stakes issues.
“These aren’t finished stories,” he says. “They’re foundations that others will keep building on.”