Stephen Hobbs, Scientist (Mathematician) at SPAWAR Systems Center, UCSD Alumnus of 1985

FOCUS TECHNOLOGIES
  1. Communications: Line of Sight, Satellite, Digital (CDMA, etc.), Cryptography
  2. Command, Control & Intelligence: Gathering, Processing, and Displaying Information
  3. Surveillance: Radar, Sonar, IR
  4. Modeling & Simulation: Large Scale Battlefield Simulations, Many Others

PERSONNEL

Numbers (guess):

800 BA/BS

500 MA/MS

200 PhD

1500 Total Engineers and Scientists


Degrees:

Electrical Engineering (many)

Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science (some)

Chemistry, Psychology, Biology (few)

TYPICAL WORKING GROUP

(1) Project Manager (MS — PhD, lots of experience)

(1-2) Lead Engineer or Scientist (MA — PhD, lots of experience)

(1-2) Support Engineer or Scientists (BA — PhD, little — some experience)

(2-4) Programmers & Computer Admin (BA, little — lots experience)

KEY MATHEMATICAL AREAS
  1. Stochastics Processes, Probability, Statistics, Numerical Methods, Algebra, Harmonic Analysis, Others.
  2. Not very high level, some Statistics (Decision Theory, Information Theory, Data Fusion), great need for clear, logical thought.
  3. Stochastic Processes, Statistics, Numerical Methods, Harmonic Analysis, Differential Equations, Probability, Stochastic Filtering.
  4. Usually not vey high level, some Physics — Based, high level Mathematical models.

WORKING AS AN APPLIED MATHEMATICIAN

What I do on a daily basis: (14 year average)

Study/pencil & paper analysis and problem solving 40%

Discussions & meetings with other scientists and engineers 20%

Programming 15%

Writing reports & papers 15%

Administrative junk 10%


Things I like about my job:

Frequently learn new things.

My applied work/problems motivate good "pure research" questions.

Diversity of work over the years.

There is a chance to create your own job to some extent.

Mathematicians play role of organizing and abstracting engineering technology.

There is rarely a need to put in more than 40 hours/week to be reasonably successful.


Things I dislike about my job:

I occasionally miss teaching.

I occasionally miss colleagues & research in "pure" mathematics.

I occasionally miss the academic yearly pace.