Philip Martin

After receiving his undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Harvey Mudd College, Philip spent over a decade as a software engineer before returning to school to continue his academic pursuits. He later received an M.S. and Ph.D. in Decision Analysis from Stanford University. Philip spent his time in Stanford’s Management Science and Engineering department studying under Ron Howard, one of the creators of Decision Analysis. Philip’s academic career and research covered many areas including Mathematics, Probability, Optimization, Game Theory, and Ethics. He developed and taught one of the department’s Probability courses and received a Teaching Award from the Stanford Center for Professional Development.

Philip has spent most of his professional career in the software engineering industry, both as an engineer and in recent years, a program manager. He has worked for Raytheon as a software engineer, and with companies such as Blue Origin and Collins Aerospace as a program manager. Most of this work in recent years has been with avionics software companies working on testing and verification of their software to be in compliance with the FAA’s safety standards. In addition to program management, Philip has been responsible for developing new training methodologies and tools for engineers, as well as providing risk analysis assessments for projects and proposals.

Philip’s academic research focused on small, repeated decisions and strategy optimization. With the application of Decision Analysis to areas where decisions are frequently made but not analyzed with extensive rigor, the thought was to identify areas where models and mathematics may suggest certain actions, but those actions are not observed in actual human behavior. This attempt to align the math and optimizations to how people actually behave ultimately led to his dissertation, titled: Habit Analysis: Using Decision Analysis to Take Control of Habits. People still don’t always do what the models suggest they should, but in some cases we can identify why that is the case.