Rachel Costello is a senior analyst and principal investigator at RAND where she specializes in quantitative and qualitative methods to inform decision making under uncertainty. She is a lead researcher on a series of projects for U.S. Air Force and Department of Defense sponsors to identify cost-effective ways to maintain air operations during a high-intensity conflict. Her work balances operational effectiveness and logistic feasibility and explores tradeoffs between air base posture, airfield infrastructure, passive defense, active defense, and novel operating concepts. Costello served as an operations researcher in the Office of the Secretary of Defense Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (OSD-CAPE) office, where she supported the Deputy Secretary of Defense's Analysis Working Group. She received her B.A. in physics from the College of Wooster and her master's in physics from the University of Utah.
M.S. in physics, University of Utah; B.A. in physics, College of Wooster
