Deon joins us from MITRE, where he was a senior optimization modeler for military and healthcare operations and logistics improvement initiatives. Previously, Deon worked at United Airlines and at the US Army on critical operations and maintenance optimization projects. From the University of Florida, Deon earned his PhD in Industrial and Systems Engineering; his dissertation was on multi-commodity fixed charge capacitated network design. He also earned his MS in Industrial and Systems Engineering as a Department of Defense SMART scholar at the University of Florida. Deon earned his BS in Mathematics from the University of Maryland. Deon was an army brat and grew up in Texas, Florida and other locations. In his spare time, he enjoys learning foreign languages: he is conversant in Russian and Italian and he is studying French and Spanish.