Professional Experience

US Naval Academy

Aptitude Officer, Commandant's Staff, January 2003—19 July 2005.

More senior officers hold this position at the Air Force Academy and West Point. I administer the semiannual military performance evaluation program for 4400 midshipmen and I conduct a board review process which identifies and discharges those midshipmen who "possesses insufficient aptitude to become a commissioned officer" per Title 10 of the US Code, section 6962. I also oversee the student leadership organization, which includes 1200 positions a year and I administer the prizes and awards program for the Commandant.

USS Nimitz (CVN 68)

Assistant Weapons Officer, June 2001—December 2002.

I reported aboard this nuclear aircraft carrier at the end of a three year drydock overhaul in Newport News, Virginia. I was responsible for personnel actions, a $250,000 quarterly budget, all correspondence, and maintenance of all instructions in the 200-sailor Weapons Department. I was also the department's security manager, responsible for all classified weapons material. Three enlisted yeomen reported to me. My most significant project in this traditional administrative capacity was revising the Hazards of Electromagnetic Radiation to Ordnance bill. After overhaul Nimitz had a unique array of all new sensors and armament; electromagnetic waves induce current in fuse wires, so the question is what radars and radios must be turned off to load each bomb and missile? How blind and deaf do you have to be to fight? Revision of this 280+ page document required technical problem-solving with Naval Sea Systems Command and Naval Ordnance. In addition to these traditional duties, shortly before I checked aboard the Captain assigned the antiterrorism program and force protection of the ship to my immediate superior, the Weapons Officer, who was a land-based maritime reconnaissance pilot with no prior shipboard experience. As his assistant and a surface warfare officer I assumed the role of developing the ship's standing plan, port plans, training plan for a crew of 4,000, and implementing all, employing assets of other officers to train and equip thousands of watchstanders and dedicated personnel. Ship's plan in action during transit on 19 September 2001 was featured on the cover of the Naval Institute's Proceedings in December 2001.

Tactical Action Officer, December 2002.

I qualified Tactical Action Officer, with weapons release authority for Sea Sparrow missiles, Rolling Airframe Missiles (RAM), and fighter aircraft under Nimitz control. Carrier TAOs are usually 10 years senior with prior weapons release authority.

Force Protection Action Officer, August 2001—December 2002.

After the Cole bombing the Chief of Naval Operations directed warships to train Force Protection Action Officers (FPAOs) with weapons release authority and control of all weapons and security watches in foreign ports. I wrote the qualification standards for the Nimitz. The captain qualified 15 officers with at least 10 years of prior weapons release authority and me. I administered the watch bill and developed watch procedures. Along with the other FPAOs I directed the ship's response on 9/11. After that we stood the watch in all ports, including home port, continuously.

Watch Officer, USS Nimitz, October 2001—November 2002

Stood watch underway in the Combat Direction Center first as CDC Watch Officer conducting surface and subsurface engagements, then as the Ship's Weapons Coordinator, responsible for the much faster air war (including surface and sub-launched missiles).

USS Wadsworth (FFG 9)

Damage Control Assistant, March 2000—May 2001

Assumed duties as Damage Control Assistant and Repair Officer after post-deployment shipyard refitting. Responsible for six hull technicians (welders and fitters), three machinists, and six damage-controlmen. Responsible for saltwater systems, sewage plant, ship's hull, damage control, damage control training for fire and flooding (including fuel, oil, and water flooding). Qualified Officer of the Deck in January 2001, responsible for safe navigation of the ship in all conditions. Qualified Surface Warfare Officer, a board qualification.

Officer of the Deck, November 2000—May 2001

Deployed on six month counter-narcotics deployment in the Caribbean and Pacific, including port calls to Cartagena, Columbia; Guatemala; Manta, Ecuador; Aruba, Curacao; Jamaica; Mexico, and Panama. Most port visits were brief stops for fuel, about 12 hours.

Legal Officer, April 2000—May 2001.

Personally conducted various Special Court-Martial procedures assisting a judge-advocate general for one violent offender, including apprehension, confinement, confinement review (bail) hearing, and subsequent hearings. Additional work included administration of about 50 Captain's Masts (non-judicial punishment hearings for driving under the influence of alcohol, larceny, etc), and nine administrative separation cases of crew members for drug use and other offenses.

Electrical Officer, March 1999—March 2000

Responsible for 12 electricians and a 4 megawatt shipboard power distribution plant. Annual budget: $80,000 for repair parts.

Personal Interests

Medicine

Volunteer Service

National Naval Medical Center's pediatric clinic, ER, and lab, August 2004—June 2005. I've learned how to perform electrocardiograms, PKUs, bili sticks, how to nebulize asthmatic patients, and draw blood.

Observation

May 2002, 50 hours. I shadowed Commander Tim Mologne, an orthopedic surgeon at Balboa Naval Medical Center, now in private practice, during my last week of convalescent leave after he performed a Bankart repair on my left shoulder. I had the rare opportunity to scrub in for an autologous chondrocyte transplant operation and observed numerous other surgeries.

June - July 2004, 15 hours. I observed at the Calvert Memorial Hospital Emergency Room under Drs Jonathan Fears and Ron Elfenbien.

June - August 2004, 5 hours. I scrubbed in for two surgeries with LCDR Randy Smargiassi: a Lapidus procedure and an operation to remove a chronically inflamed portion of a woman's plantar fascia.

Research

Unpublished review of dermatomyositis and its variants. September—December 2003. This paper started as an assignment in Biology and evolved into a final paper of five pages and 65 references. Most significantly it was an opportunity to learn the ropes of the National Library of Medicine and the AMA Manual of Style.

Computer model to predict the draft of the USS Wadsworth. May 2000—April 2001. Ships rise and sink in the water depending primarily on how much fuel, water, and cargo are on board, although cargo doesn't change appreciably from the beginning to the end of a voyage. If a ship's draft, the depth of its lowest point below the water, is too deep then the bottom will run aground in shallow water. The Wadsworth, since sold to the Turks, is 448 feet long, so it behaves like a seesaw: as the forward fuel tanks were emptied the bow rises, the stern sinks, and the center of gravity moves aft. Ships have curved hulls and many piping systems running through them, so tanks are of irregular sizes and shapes and are at various distances from the ship's varying center of gravity. As it happened, the enginemen on the Wadsworth recorded the fuel and water levels of each tank daily in a spreadsheet. To measure the amount of fluid in say, a fuel tank, a weight tied to a measured string is dropped into the tank until it hits the bottom and the highest wet mark on the string, a sounding, is recorded. For each tank the sounding depth corresponds to a volume. One looks up the volume of each tank using a table of sounding and volume values that accounts for the shape of the tank. My job was to calculate the ship's draft at the bow and the stern based on these volumes. For a hundred years and more this involved two hours of using nomograms (curves on graph paper, so if one knows x then, with a square, one can estimate y) to determine the ship's draft by noon daily and before entering port. I used the data points on each nomogram to find equations that accurately described each curve and then tied the variables to the enginemen's spreadsheet. The draft report then took no time, it even printed itself. While in port the draft can be measured using draft marks welded on the hull. Comparing my predictions to the observed draft I was able to determine the distribution of salt water that had leaked into various unsounded voids. The Navy requires the observed draft to be recorded to within 3 inches, which is half the distance between weld marks. There is no standard for the accuracy of the draft underway because the weld marks can't be directly observed. My method, unofficially, improved so that my predictions (for the ship underway) agreed, by my own estimate, to within two inches of the observed draft in port.

New England Journal of Medicine subscriber, April 2003—Present. I make a point of reading the case studies, review articles, and clinical practice articles every week. This isn't observation, per se, but greatly amplifies my learning during observation opportunities.

Cycling

Naval Academy Cycling Team 1996—1998, 2003—2005. Raced Collegiate B junior year and won the conference criterium. Raced A (equivalent to a varsity starter) as a senior. Team consists of 25 traveling members, evenly divided among A, B, and C men and A and B women. I raced mountain, road, and track.

Officer Representative, 2003—Present. Road season included trips to North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, various locations in Maryland, and Nationals in Madison, Wisconsin. Responsible for all aspects of team movements, $8,000 budget, additional fund raising, and home race promotion.

Photography

Naval Academy yearbook staff junior and senior years. I've been a member and contributor to the photography community photo.net since July 2002. Images are also posted at Flickr. Images have been published by the Trident newspaper in Annapolis and Navy Times, a subsidiary of USA Today.

Information Design

I am a regular contributor to Ask E.T., a refereed forum on analytical design hosted by Yale professor emeritus Edward Tufte. The forum addresses various issues of statistics, representation and misrepresentation of data, and publishing. I have also been learning web-publishing and web application design through Philip Greenspun's online textbooks. My homepage.

Education

Accepted, Tulane School of Medicine, Class of 2009

United States Naval Academy, B.S. in Physics, 1998

Post-baccalaureate work

I recently completed Biochemistry and two semesters of Biology at the United States Naval Academy. The first Biology class was an introductory survey, the second was on the principles of physiology. At the University of Maryland I took one year of Organic Chemistry from September 2003 through May 2004; I've enrolled for Drug Action and Design for spring 2005. Attended Edward Tufte's one day course, Presenting Data and Information, in November, 2004.

Navy schools

Surface Warfare Officer School, September 1998 - March 1999, was a three month program of weapons, maneuver, and watch standing, a one month engineering lecture/lab course, and a nine week damage control course. The Damage Control course was a train-the-trainer course including human responses to radiologic, chemical, and biologic agents, and shipboard toxins (halon, jet fuel, sewage fumes, fire, and smoke), preventive action, triage, decontamination, and emergency resuscitation, including auto injectors.

Anti-terrorism Officer School, August 2002, was a one week course on designed base and shipboard force protection plans.

Ship's Weapons Coordinator School, May 2002.

Legal Officer School, March 2000. A four week course for officers who will be responsible for all legal matters for a small command, including potential foreign port entanglements, investigations, non-judicial punishments, and courts-martial.

Personal

Born 27 January 1976. Married, two children.

Last Updated: 13 June 2005.