introduction
Welcome to my page!
Hi! My name is Napoleon Paxton and I'm a senior level technologist eagerly searching for an opportunity to work with an enthusiastic team that is ready to change the world! I have spent the last 20+ years of my life as an active team member taking products from conception through development; with a majority of that time being in a leadership role. During my journey I have learned that establishing and maintaining a positive culture and communicating clear expectations are key components to building great teams. This page was created to display a verbose form of my background and experiences, which I believe are important for any potential working partner to review. After a summary of my experience and education, I give a short description of highlighted roles I have excelled at over the years. Following the descriptions, I go into more detail with a chronological story which adds more context to my experience. I then provide a few examples of how I worked through situations at work. The remaining items on the page are a few highlighted accomplishments. Please feel free to reach out to me to discuss working together or if you have any questions or comments. Thanks!
chronological story of education and work experience
U.S. Marine Corps (1996 - 2002)
I was fortunate enough to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps as a Satellite Systems Repairman. This position is where I learned how to troubleshoot electrical circuits as well as computer systems. I also learned how to effectively lead. I was promoted rapidly and served as technical chief of my unit even though that position was supposed to be assigned to higher ranked staff non commissioned officers. My team was highly successful. We frequently performed more successful repairs than any other unit.
Elizabeth City State University (2002 - 2005)
As an undergraduate I initially planned to major in business administration because I enjoyed and was good at identifying solutions to problems. I changed my major to computer science because I was offered a scholarship working with the CERSER center for remote sensing research due to my experience in the U.S. Marine Corps working with satellite systems. It was through this scholarship program that I first learned how to conduct research. I graduated two classes (6 credit hours) shy of a double major in computer science and business administration. My end result was a major in computer science and a double minor in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Business Information Systems (BIS).
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte (2005 - 2011)
At UNCC I entered the Information Technology Doctoral program with a focus on cyber security. In this program I was given several leadership roles shortly after arriving. I was a founding member and chapter lead of the UNCC Honeynet Chapter, which was part of the International Honeynet Alliance. Shortly after establishing the honeynet chapter, I was appointed as the Director of Research for the Cyber Defender program. My role was to coordinate the research projects for the Master's students in the program and provide research guidance to students that received funding to complete their Master's degree in the program. Many of the projects the students conducted were projects I designed based on honeynet technology. These projects led to additional funding from the Bank of America to perform monitoring and analysis of current threats. I eventually began presenting weekly briefings to Bank of America leadership regarding the results of the analysis. This meeting gained in popularity so we expanded the invite list to additional businesses as well as the FBI and other local and federal government entities. My individual research was geared around extracting as much meaningful information as possible out of data as possible without incurring a significant cost. My goal was to develop practical proactive cyber defense. I explored a variety of approaches including Naïve Bayesian methods for data analysis as well as my chosen approach of community detection, which was a graph theory based approach that attempts to extract meaning from data through connections with the underlying metadata. For my PhD thesis, I utilized this approach to characterize the actors within a live botnet we were able to detect using our honeynet.
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (2009 - 2016)
I joined the Applied Network Security Section which is part of the Center for High Assurance Systems at The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington DC as a Computer Scientist while completing my PhD at UNCC. At this time I had finished all of my requirements except for research and dissertation credits. In order to complete the research credits I was required to attend a weekly in-person seminar each Friday for two semesters. NRL allowed me to commute to Charlotte each week for a year to attend the research seminars. While at NRL I worked on many successful projects, this included being the Principal Investigator on several of them (see Principal Investigator in Highlight Roles above). At NRL I was also a point of contact for commercial companies which wanted to sell their products to NRL and the Navy Cyber Defense Operations Command (NCDOC).
IOMAXIS (2016 - 2020)
Eventually I decided to explore more challenges outside of Federal Government, so I decided to leave for IOMAXIS which is a technology company that provides goods and services to both the Federal government and the private sector. At IOMAXIS I was given the opportunity to continue to develop approaches for proactive network defense. Initially I worked alone and developed prototypes which I then pitched to current and potential customers. I also discussed these technologies at conferences and private vendor meetings located at venues such as AFCEA and SPAWAR technology exchanges. My initial approaches utilized automation and community detection as a way to reason over data, but during this time I also began exploring more AI based approaches because cloud computing significantly reduced the barriers for machine learning. Over time I was able to convivence the C-Suite at IOMAXIS that we should create an AI section within R&D. I was able to hire and directly manage four data scientists. I also directly managed four cyber security subject matter experts, which allowed us to engineer high quality data for algorithm training. This combination of talent led to the successful business capture of approximately 10 million dollars in new contract money over a two year period. In addition to my role of assembling and managing the AI team, I was also the lead writer on many of the technical approach responses. On responses in which I was not the lead writer, I also served as a proposal response reviewer for PINK, RED, and Gold team reviews.
Additional Information
MIT Sloan Executive Program: Artificial Intelligence Implications for Business Strategy
This program helped me to develop a strategy on how to profit from AI infused cyber security projects. It served as a very good primer for building business cases for AI and it introduced me to AI winters and how to avoid overselling capabilities.
Stanford Machine Learning Classes
I believe that continued education is mandatory for effective leadership; especially in a field like AI where breakthroughs happen daily. I was given the opportunity to enroll in CS 229 and 230 Machine Learning and Deep Learning classes at Stanford which were taught by Professor Andrew Ng of Google Brain fame. I led projects, one which included an on campus graduate student, to produce applied results. Here is a link to the project for class CS229 hosted at Stanford.edu. Here is a link to the project for class CS230 hosted.
AI as an Enabling Technology
I agree with Professor Andrew Ng in saying AI is the new electricity. Like electricity, AI is infused in a variety of products to enhance operation and capabilities. Cyber security is no exception to this statement. Not only is AI becoming increasingly important for defenders, but it is also being used by cyber criminals to optimize their attack methods.
Berkeley HAAS Executive Program: The Innovative Organization
Business certificate program geared around instructing leaders how to foster a culture of innovation in organizations that work with and depend on technology. I leaned on tools learned here to enhance the culture and effectiveness of the AI section at IOMAXIS.
Presenter at NASA STS-116 Space Shuttle Launch
One of three NASA Harriot G. Jenkins fellows to attend and present graduate research at the STS-116 space shuttle launch. My talk was on the importance of maintaining updated software in NASA subsystems. My talk was the only talk that was allowed to go over the allotted time.
Presenter at NATO conference in Estonia
I was selected as one of two computer scientists at NRL to present my research at a NATO conference held in Tallinn Estonia. In 2007 Tallinn was the site of what some consider to be one of the first major cyber terrorism attacks. This attack was said to be caused because of uproar over the Estonian government moving the statue of a Russian soldier (shown in the picture to the right). After the attack, the government of Tallinn forged a partnership with their civilian organizations to prevent these types of attacks in the future.
Winner of Inaugural Explainable Research Award
I was fortunate enough to win the explainable research award at UNCC. This award went to the graduate student that was able to explain their research the most effectively within a 5 minute time frame.
Internship Mentor
Over the years I have mentored many students from high schools and colleges. This includes formal internship programs such as the NRL Science and Engineering Apprentice Program (SEAP) and the Navy Research Enterprise Internship Program (NREIP).
Internship Judge
In addition to mentoring students in the SEAP program, I was also one of the few mentors chosen to judge the research projects each year I was involved in the program.
Board Member of Reaching Everyone at Any Cost for Hope 501c3
Founding board member of REACH not for profit organization. I authored and submitted the 501 c3 application. For the organization I provide process structure, technical assistance, as well as donation of time and financial assistance. Recently we provided a food giveaway for Thanksgiving (270 turkeys and food baskets) and Christmas (70 turkeys and food baskets). I also routinely provide workshops on personal cybersecurity.
Principal Advisory Board Chairman
I serve as the inaugural principal advisory chairman at Covington Harper Elementary School. I sit on a panel that helps the principal review budgets, personnel, and educational activities at the school. I was also the only parent on a panel that was given the opportunity to help select our next vice principal. My recommendation for the vice principal pick was chosen.
Research and Teacher Assistant
I served as both teacher and research assistant during my time at UNCC. I taught classes on malware analysis and introduction to cyber security. I also performed various research tasks beyond what was previously mentioned.