Featured Researcher
Lara Schmidt
Senior Engineer
Lara Schmidt is a member of a team of PAF researchers who are helping the U.S. Air Force map out the rapidly developing frontier of potential threats in space. With a doctorate in mathematical statistics from the American University, her original intention was to pursue an academic career. But a position at the U.S. Naval Observatory working on atomic clocks and GPS brought her face to face with the real-world challenges that the engineers and users of the models she was designing have experienced. “I was suddenly surrounded by physicists and engineers who spoke a different language, but the reasoning was the same,” she recalls. Determined to bridge the gap, she read everything she could find on GPS and other satellite systems and spent a great deal of time in the lab testing how statistical theories played out in the physical world.
An essential part of her education was to understand what it means to be a user of space-based capabilities. According to Schmidt, having to wake up in the middle of the night to solve a problem helps you understand something: “You begin to focus on the system, not just as a piece of hardware, but as a capability that people on the ground are counting on, possibly in life-or-death situations.” Soon Schmidt was expanding her work from GPS to other military systems, such as satellite communications.
It was this combination of analytical skill, operational knowledge of space systems, and ability to master new disciplines that made Schmidt attractive to RAND. Myron Hura, a senior engineer at RAND since 1987, was among the first to involve Schmidt in PAF’s space research. “Lara came in as a statistician,” he recalls. “She has a mathematician’s ability to structure and carry out analyses. But she also has a specific knowledge of space systems that gets deeper all the time. It allows her to see the bigger operational picture behind the analysis.” Since joining RAND in 2003, Schmidt has worked with Hura and other senior PAF researchers, such as Russell Shaver and Gary McLeod, on a series of projects that are examining problems involved in developing, utilizing, and protecting military space capabilities.
Reflecting on the future security of U.S. space assets, Schmidt is optimistic. “Most Americans don’t worry about how much they themselves rely on space systems like GPS and satellite communications every day,” she says. “We want to make sure they don’t have to.”
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