Case studies: Operational researcher: Stephanie Lord

Stephanie is a strategic analyst at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). She studied an undergraduate degree at the University of Birmingham in mathematical sciences with time spent studying in Lyon, France. She then completed an MSc in Operational Research at Lancaster University...

I joined Dstl in 2006 following my graduation from Lancaster University. I spent half of my time working in the Command, Control, Communications and Computers, Intelligence, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (C4ISTAR) team working on a number of strategic balance-of-investment studies for our customer, the UK Ministry of Defence.

I spent the rest of my time working in the Coercion, Deterrence and Resilience (CDR) team, part of the Strategic Analysis group. In CDR, I worked on a number of studies for other government departments, such as the Home Office and the Department for Transport helping stakeholders make decisions in the area of homeland resilience.

Following a restructure of CDR, I decided to focus my efforts into the resilience and security area and have been a full-time member of this team since 2009.

When I joined Dstl I did a lot of quantitative work in the C4ISTAR team so I used parts of my mathematics degree, in particular the computer programming languages and also Excel modelling.

However, in the Strategic Analysis group, I have employed more of the techniques I learned on my MSc in Operational Research. In particular, I use a lot of the soft operational research methods including facilitation methods, strategic decision-making techniques and questionnaires in order to gather information from key stakeholders.

Over four years at Dstl, I have worked for a large number of customers in wide-ranging areas of defence and security. I have completed both quantitative and qualitative analysis and problem structuring with the customers to help them to make the right decisions. Recently I have become more focused into qualitative analysis and strategic decision making, in particular in the resilience area. I have worked as a project manager for some large studies, which tests a different set of skills. In the long term though, I see myself continuing in a technical role.

There has been a huge amount of variety in the projects on which I work and because the projects are generally fairly short term, I am always enthused and engaged. There are many opportunities to develop skills through training in new analytical techniques and I have also had the chance to engage with academia and industry as a member of the operational research conference committee over the last few years.

Some of the most complex decisions to be made come from central government and, in particular, where we are looking at increasing security and saving lives. As part of the resilience and security team I have been working on current issues in homeland security to aid the decisions made in this area.

I would say to students and graduates who would like to begin a career like this, to stick with what you enjoy. Dstl recruits from a wide range of disciplines and your background and experiences can be adapted to the projects you work on. As long as you have enjoyed your academic experiences previously, you will enjoy working at Dstl.