Amado Cordova

Amado Cordova
Senior Engineer
Off Site Office

Education

Ph.D. in electrical engineering, Stanford University; M.S. in electrical engineering, Stanford University; Diplome d'ingenieur in electrical engineering, Ecole Superieure d'Electricite; B.S. in physics, Univ. Autonoma Metropolitana

Overview

Amado Cordova is a senior engineer at the RAND Corporation, with research aimed at answering policy questions in homeland security and national defense. He has been principal investigator in various RAND research units - Project Air Force (PAF), Arroyo Center, Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC), and RAND Health Care - and has led projects on subjects such on acquisition, strategic planning, identification of innovative technologies and technology roadmaps.

As examples of recent work: He led the Communications and Information Technology (Comms/IT) team for the HSOAC Puerto Rico recovery project; his team collected data, interviewed stakeholders, prepared 33 courses of action worth 3.2 billion dollars, and wrote the recovery plan for the Comms/IT sector of the island. For PAF his team assessed what improvements in timeliness, reliability and maintainability can be achieved in the Minuteman ICBM by implementing new navigation and guidance technologies. For Arroyo he worked on investigating the impacts of adopting common architectures within the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program. He was member of the modeling team of COMPARE (Comprehensive Assessment of Reform Efforts) to analyze the impact of the Affordable Care Act.

Prior to RAND he was Chief Technology Officer of Copley Networks, California. Before that, at Litton Industries, he and his team designed and developed the world-most-robust fiber-optic gyroscopes for military and other applications. For his contributions he received Litton's C. Thornton Advanced Technology Award. He earned a Ph.D. in EE from Stanford University, a Diplome d'Ingenieur from SUPELEC (France) and a B.S. in Physics from UAM (Mexico). He is author or coauthor of 23 U.S. patents and of 48 publications (RAND reports and journal articles).

Recent Projects

  • HSOAC Puerto Rico Recovery Project: Communications and Information Technology
  • Navigation and Guidance Technologies for Strategic Systems
  • Understanding the Value of Commonality in Army Systems
  • Planning the Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) ISR Force in the Post-OND/OEF-A World
  • Simulation of Participation in the Affordable Insurance Exchanges (AIE) and Small Business Health Option Program (SHOP) Exchanges for the Fifty States and the District of Columbia

Selected Publications

Amado Cordova, Christine Eibner, Raffaele Vardavas, James Broyles and Federico Girosi, "Modeling Employer Self-Insurance Decisions after the Affordable Care Act," Health Services Research (HSR) Journal, 2013

Amado Cordova, Sarah Nowak, Christine Eibner, Kenneth Finegold and Federico Girosi, "The COMPARE Microsimulation Model and the U.S. Affordable Care Act," International Journal of Microsimulation (IJM), 2013

Christine Eibner, Carter C. Price, Raffaele Var davas, Amado Cordova and Federico Girosi, "Small Firms’ Actions in Two Areas, And Exchange Premium and Enrollment Impact," Health Affairs, 31(2), 2012

Elizabeth A. McGlynn, Amado Cordova, Jeffrey Wasserman and Federico Girosi, "Could We Have Covered More People At Less Cost? Technically, Yes; Politically, Probably Not," Health Affairs, 29(6), 2010

Amado Cordova, Markus Deserno, William M. Gelbart and Avinoam Ben-Shaul, "Osmotic Shock and the Strength of Viral Capsids," Biophysical Journal, 85, 2003

Alkire, Brien, Abbie Tingstad, Dale Benedetti, Amado Cordova, Irina Elena Danescu, William Fry, D. Scott George, Lawrence M. Hanser, Lance Menthe, Erik Nemeth, David A. Ochmanek, Julia Pollak, Jessie Riposo, Timothy William James Smith, and Alexander Stephenson, Leveraging the Past to Prepare for the Future of Air Force Intelligence Analysis, RAND Corporation (RR-1330), 2016

Cordova, Amado, Lindsay D. Millard, Lance Menthe, Robert A. Guffey, and Carl Rhodes, Motion Imagery Processing and Exploitation (MIPE), RAND Corporation (RR-154-AF), 2013

Honors & Awards

  • Silver Medal (2012), Health Unit
  • Bronze Medal (2010), Health Unit
  • Charles B. Thornton Advanced Technologies Achievement Award, Litton Industries Conglomerate for Technical Innovation

Languages

Spanish; French

Commentary

Publications