Isaac Maya, PhD, PE

Dr. Maya is an Interagency Personnel Act (IPA) detailee to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), where his area of focus is helping develop advanced analytics, modeling and simulation capabilities in support of CBP operations. This follows his one-year assignment to the US Coast Guard’s Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) program, where he explored opportunities to increase the value of R&D, enhance transition success and increase R&D’s operational impact. His prior executive management and strategic planning experience includes industrial, commercial and academic environments, and business development in the government and commercial sectors. His fields of endeavor include homeland security, information technologies, systems engineering, advanced nuclear power reactor systems and start-up university centers and high technology businesses.

Dr. Maya’s experience includes hands-on R&D, product development, commercialization and field deployment, technology transfer, and intellectual property protection and licensing. As Director of Research at the National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE), he has enabled the transition of research products to government use, and led the formation of CREATE’s first spin-off company in homeland security. Prior to CREATE, at the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC), he increased technology transfer, licensing and commercialization of prototype technologies, instilled an entrepreneurial culture among faculty, increased awareness and appreciation for patent protection of intellectual property, and facilitated the creation of spin-off companies.

Dr. Maya is a co-recipient of a USCG Operational Excellence Award for contributions to the implementation an advanced security boat patrol scheduling tool; and has been awarded by DHS S&T for his personal contributions to CREATE’s success. He was a finalist in NASA’s Astronaut Candidate Selection, and a Fellow of NASA’s Center for Program/Project Management. He is a Registered Professional Engineer (Nuclear) in the State of California, and a member of the Association of Cuban Engineers. Dr. Maya has over 100 refereed journal publications, conference proceedings, and other technical reports, spanning a broad spectrum of disciplines, including risk and decision analysis, economics assessment, social science, nuclear engineering science, chemical engineering and program/project management.