Imagination Reconnected

Taylor R. Cole serves as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the Naval Surface Warfare Center

(NSWC), Corona Division. In this role he provides leadership to a high performance team

representing the command's Navy Office of Research and Technology Applications

representative (ORTA), Deputy ORTA, Naval Innovative Science and Engineering (NISE) portfolio

manager, STEM and Naval Engineering Education Consortium (NEEC) Director, and NISE project

analyst. The command's CTO shop is responsible for the internal research and development as

directed by congress, K-12 robotic programs in support of schools, internships, academic and

industry partnerships, and patenting. Cole drives the command's culture of innovation in

his leadership role.

Taylor began his career at NSWC Corona in 2003, designing a systems engineering process

that resulted in the operational assessment and turnover of Navy Electronic Warfare (EW)

training simulators and acquisition radars. In 2005, he led Counter-Improvised Explosive

Device (C-IED) work under contract of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat

Organization (JIEDDO), working 30 fully embedded rotations at the National Training

Center, Ft Irwin, mentoring brigade battle staffs on operations research and Counter

Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (C-ISR) pattern analysis. In 2009, Taylor led a

specialized team to recreate, replicate, and surrogate Navy's Operations Research / Systems

Analysis (ORSA) capabilities for broad military applications. Taylor's team would support the

majority of Army Divisions and Brigades deploying in this time frame. In 2012, Taylor took

ORSA work to the Navy warfighter by deploying to Navy 5th Fleet for 3 months developing

tactical big data products for that area of responsibility. Following product success in

Bahrain, Taylor was selected as a technology fellow at the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO)

Strategic Studies Group (SSG), in Newport, RI where he worked on SSG33 (Expeditionary

Operations in the year 2030) and SSG34 (Revolutionizing the Navy Personnel System). In

this position he would help lead think tank sessions on CNO priorities and present findings

to Navy leadership. Upon return to Corona Division, Taylor would go on to run the command's

research and development portfolio in 2015. In 2018 Taylor was selected to be the command's

Chief Technology Officer and a technical high grade.

Taylor graduated with a BS degree in mechanical engineering from the University of

California, Riverside in 2003 and earned his MS degree in mechanical engineering from the

same college in 2007. Taylor is a current member of the US Parachute Team and an active

mountain unicyclist. Taylor has one daughter, Tessa, who is 10.