Alumni profile: Patrick Kuiper, M.E. '16

Patrick Kuiper was serving in Iraq when he began to think about getting a graduate degree. A lieutenant at the time and alum of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Kuiper had a conversation with his company’s commander, who was about to pursue a graduate degree of his own at MIT.

“Math seemed like a very nice, broad tool set you could use on a lot of different problem sets that I thought were all interesting,” Kuiper said. “He was the one who steered me towards the Draper Lab in Cambridge.”

As a Draper Lab Fellow, Kuiper pursued a Master of Engineering degree in applied math at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). That experience reinforced his interest in the intersection between military service and academia. He recently completed his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at Duke University, and is now a math professor and Operations Research and Systems Analyst (ORSA) in the Dean’s Office at West Point.

“At Harvard, for the first time I fully understood what master’s and terminal degrees look like, and how the research ecosystem works,” Kuiper said. “I learned a lot as a cadet, but in terms of technical education, Harvard took me to such a higher level. There’s no way I could’ve completed a Ph.D., or even started down that path, without my time at Harvard. Their support of the military, and the way they structured their engineering education, was just really well done.”

Growing up in Houston, Kuiper attended a high school that historically produced many military recruits. Though it’d been several generations since anyone in his family had served, he still felt pulled to the Army’s mission and lifestyle.

“It was something that always appealed to me, and going to West Point seemed like a really awesome opportunity and great place to be,” he said.

Initially planning to major in economics, Kuiper ultimately chose operations research, a broader, more math-centric degree. After graduating, Kuiper was commissioned as an Armor Officer (think tanks and armored vehicles) and was initially stationed at Fort Lewis Washington. In 2008 he began his first deployment in Iraq. After finishing his second deployment, he took company command in the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell in Kentucky.

When it came time to pick a graduate school, Kuiper was drawn to the Boston-Cambridge research ecosystem. 

“At Harvard, the people who worked in math and computer science knew all of these other disciplines so well, and they knew how to apply their tool sets,” he said. “I thought that was really appealing, the ability to apply your tools and skills to a lot of different problems.”

The Draper Scholars program helps facilitate graduate-level thesis research through a national security lens. Kuiper partnered with the Natick Laboratory Army Research, Development, and Engineering Center to develop a program to optimize quality of life and sustainability goals at military base camps. He also partnered with the Harvard Office for Sustainability on several projects, including working with other SEAS students to study the costs of heating Eliot House in the winter. 

After finishing his degree, Kuiper was deployed back to Iraq, where he served on the staff of the combined joint task force for Operation Inherent Resolve, whose mission is the defeat of ISIS. 

“I worked for the operations directorate there, and being able to synthesize information quickly and communicate there used skills that I learned at Harvard,” he said. “I can’t over-emphasize how important those years at Harvard were. They gave me so much to bring back to the Army, whether as a teacher at West Point or on deployment.”

While at Draper, Kuiper also met Vahid Tarokh, Rhodes Family Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke, and he joined Tarokh’s lab in 2022 after finishing his fourth deployment. Similar to his quality of life optimization research at SEAS, Kuiper’s Ph.D. research focused on using artificial intelligence and natural language processing to predict armored vehicle failure and optimize repair schedules.

“Young people don’t always realize that in the military you can go to a school like Harvard, and you’ll get to just focus on your academic development,” he said. “After that, I got to spend another three years just being a Ph.D. student at another great university. You can join the military and still pursue amazing academic opportunities.”

As an analyst in the West Point dean’s office, Kuiper collects and processes data on a range of topics, including staff roles and time use, travel costs and other expenditures. The work draws directly on the technical skills of his master’s and Ph.D. education. Kuiper also continues to teach math at West Point.

“Student-driven research along with teaching is what I’m looking forward to the most,” he said. “Since the last time I was here, West Point has improved student-led research so significantly. The partnerships and opportunities are incredibly more robust than they were before, so continuing that at the academy level is something I look forward to as well. What’s nice about my role now is I can combine that with more of a strategic or policy perspective.”