George Mason University

Nathaniel D. Bastian, PhD is an FA49 (Operations Research and Systems Analysis) Officer in the United States Army. He currently serves as the Chief Artificial Intelligence Solution Architect and Acting Chief, Data Science & Artificial Intelligence Engineering Division at the Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC). In this role, Nate provides strategic direction and technical leadership for artificial intelligence (AI) activities in direct support of the Office of the DoD Chief Information Officer digital modernization efforts, as well as the technical advisement, expertise and oversight of data science and AI engineering functions across the JAIC Directorates, leading to the operationalization of AI-enabled products, capabilities, policies, plans and programs in support of the Military Departments, Joint Staff, Combatant Commands, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and other DoD Components to solve novel, complex problems that span the DoD enterprise and accelerate the adoption of AI to achieve mission impact at scale. Nate also serves as Senior Research Scientist and Adjunct Assistant Professor within the Intelligent Cyber-Systems and Analytics Research Laboratory (ICSARL) at the Army Cyber Institute (ACI) at the U.S. Military Academy (USMA), where he conducts research in the areas of autonomous cyber decision-support, adversarial machine learning, and AI system security.


Nate is leader, practitioner, researcher, and educator of mathematical, computational, analytical, data-driven, and decision-centric methods to support the improvement and enhancement of decision-making in cyber security, national defense, and military operations. As a decision analytics professional, his expertise lies in the scientific discovery and translation of actionable insights into effective decisions using algorithms, techniques, tools and technologies from operations research, data science, artificial intelligence, systems engineering, and economics to design, develop, deploy and operationalize intelligent decision-support systems and models for descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics. Nate holds a Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the Pennsylvania State University, M.Eng. degree in Industrial Engineering from Penn State, M.S. degree in Econometrics and Operations Research from Maastricht University, and B.S. degree in Engineering Management (electrical engineering) with honors from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His primary disciplinary expertise includes optimization, simulation, statistical computing, machine/deep learning, intelligent systems, and big data analytics. His primary research interests are computational stochastic optimization and learning for making inferences and decisions under uncertainty, as well as game-theoretic network science, graph mining and social network analysis for real-world, complex networks.


Nate has authored over 50 refereed journal articles and conference proceedings, two book chapters and one textbook. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors to include a Fulbright Scholarship and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, along with multiple research grants. He serves as an Associate Editor for five journals, as well as a Referee for over 20 journals. Nate currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Military Operations Research Society (MORS), as well as on the Council of the Military and Security Society within the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). He also serves as a Member of the Information Science and Technology (ISAT) Study Group with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Nate also serves as a Research Affiliate and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Operations Research at the Air Force Institute of Technology, as well as a Research Affiliate with Penn State University’s Institute for Computational and Data Sciences. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor teaching online graduate courses at several universities. Nate previously served as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, as well as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the National Security Agency. He is an active member of MORS, INFORMS, ACM, IEEE, SIAM, AAAI and AAAS.

Chris McGuire is a Director for Research and Analysis on the National Security Commission
on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), where he leads the Commission staff’s efforts on protecting
existing U.S. technology advantages and on AI hardware and microelectronics. Congress
established the NSCAI in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act as an independent
Commission to consider the methods and means necessary to advance the development of
artificial intelligence, machine learning, and associated technologies to comprehensively address
the national security and defense needs of the United States. Chris is detailed to the Commission
from the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, where he
previously served as the expert lead for U.S.-Russia nuclear arms control policy. Chris has also
served as a Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph
Dunford, on the Chairman’s Action Group. Before working in government he spent several
years as an analyst at McKinsey & Company in New York. He holds a Master’s in Public Policy
from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a Bachelor of Arts from Pomona College.

William E. Halal is Professor Emeritus of Management, Technology, and Innovation at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. An authority on emerging technology, strategic planning, knowledge, innovation, and institutional change, he has worked with General Motors, AT&T, SAIC, MCI, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, International Data Corporation, the DoD, the Asian Development Bank, foreign companies, and various government agencies. Halal substituted for Peter Drucker in giving a talk to 2000 managers at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Prof. Halal’s work has appeared in journals such as Nature/BioTechnology, California Management Review, Strategy & Business, Knowledge Management Review, Academy of Management Executive, Journal of Corporate Citizenship, Human Relations, Systems & Cybernetics, Foresight, and Technological Forecasting & Social Change. He has also published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Toronto Globe & Mail, Advertising Age, Executive Excellence, and The Futurist. He has produced six books: The New Capitalism (Wiley, 1986), Internal Markets (Wiley, 1993), The New Management (Berrett-Koehler, 1996), The Infinite Resource (Jossey-Bass, 1998), 21st Century Economics (St. Martin’s Press, 1999), and Technology’s Promise (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Halal is the founder of TechCast, a web-based system that pools the knowledge of experts to forecast breakthroughs in technology, social trends, and wild cards to assist decision makers in planning for a changing world. TechCast was cited by the National Academies, featured in the Washington Post, Newsweek, the Futurist. and otherwise recognized as one of the best forecasting system available. Halal co-founded the Institute for Knowledge & Innovation as a collaborative effort between the GW School of Business and the School of Engineering.

Halal studied engineering, economics, and the social sciences at Purdue and Berkeley. Previously, he was a major in the U.S. Air Force, an aerospace engineer on the Apollo Program, and a Silicon Valley business manager. His work has received prominent recognition. His article, “Through the MegaCrisis” was awarded “Outstanding Paper of 2013 by Emerald Publishing, and an earlier article “Beyond the Profit-Motive,” won the 1977 Mitchell Prize and an award of $10,000. Halal received a medal from the Freedom Foundation for Excellence in the Study of Enterprise. Macmillan’s Encyclopedia of the Future ranks him among “The World’s 100 Most Influential Futurists,“ including H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Alvin Toffler, and Daniel Bell.