Michael Flory, Ph.D.

Through the research, we help [educators] better understand what does it mean to 'be effective?'

As a research analyst with CNA’s Institute for Public Research, Dr. Michael Flory has worked on several projects covering a variety of public and defense-related subjects—including college readiness, early childhood education, low-performing schools, and program evaluation design in the public sector and Fleet interoperability, Joint training issues, unmanned air systems, and improvised explosive devices for defense clients.

Currently Flory serves as the on-site research analyst for the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) for as a member of the CNA team that manages the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Appalachia at CNA. As an on-site analyst Flory provides real-time analysis and research
support to KDE on such topics as early childhood education, low-performing schools, college
readiness, assessment/accountability models, and data systems. Support includes data analysis,
literature searches and summaries, technical reviews, and evaluation design (including overall
framework and measures of performance or effectiveness). He also serves as a liaison between REL/CNA and Kentucky stakeholders, on such issues as needs assessment, audience identification, and data sharing.

Flory began his career with CNA in 2007 when he joined the Combat Systems Team of CNA Operations and Tactics Analysis. While there he was involved in numerous research efforts, including studies on:

Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) – reconstructing critical (IED) events, including Blue Force Tracker (BFT) data, to identify patterns in Blue force activity and analyzing the effectiveness of strategies to deter IED emplacement;

Battle Force Interoperability – analyzing interoperability metrics and Single Integrated Air Picture (SIAP) attributes for combat system interoperability testing events conducted at Navy Distributed Engineering Plant (DEP), and conducting a bottom-up review of the DEP testing process to identify improvements, demonstrate requirements traceability, and eliminate communication gaps within NAVSEA; and the

Marine Corps Deployed Unit Database (MCDUD) – participating in the semi-annual update to CNA’s MCDUD by researching SITREPs and operations briefs for data on deployed units and serving as the point of contact for outside users of the database.

Before joining CNA, Flory was a research assistant at the University of Arizona Department of Chemistry, from 2003-2007, where he conducted laboratory research on bonding and quantum mechanics in small molecules with unpaired electrons.

Flory holds Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Arizona and earned a B.S. with Distinction in Chemistry Education, at Purdue University. He won the International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy’s Rao Prize in 2007, was a Galileo Circle Scholar, School of Science, University of Arizona, in 2006 and was named Outstanding Senior Chemist at Purdue’s School of Science in 2002.  (Click here to see a video interview of Dr. Flory.)