COL Julia Coxen

COL Julia Oh Coxen is the head of the Department of Systems Engineering. Julia is a senior-rated jumpmaster who commanded three times at the company level and also commanded a battalion in the U.S. Special Operations Command. She earned her Ph.D. in operations research from the University of Michigan. Julia was also among the top 50 finalists out of 18,000+ applicants for the NASA astronaut selection in 2017.

Julia is a Distinguished Military Graduate from the University of Pennsylvania where she majored in Systems Engineering and minored in Music. She commissioned in the Signal Corps and started her career in Korea. She continued to serve in various leadership and staff positions at the 82nd Airborne Division as a signal platoon leader, company executive officer, S1, and the forward SYSCON OIC for Task Force Panther in support of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM.

She previously taught in the Department of Systems Engineering at West Point from 2007-10 after attaining two master's degrees from Columbia University. She served the following years with the U.S. Special Operations Command from 2010-18 in Fort Belvoir, VA, working extensively with interagency partners and the intelligence community. She commanded two different troops, served as an Executive Officer, and also deployed as the J6/XO of a brigade-sized task force in support of the Global War on Terror. She spent the final two years of her tour in Virginia as a Battalion Commander simultaneously launching the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) Data Initiative.

Her Ph.D. research was an interdisciplinary effort that took a risk analysis and data-driven approach to combatting sex trafficking. This expanded her research interests in data science, anomaly detection, machine learning, and operations research for vulnerable populations.