The challenges leaders face today rarely come one at a time.
Imagine a rescue team searching for people after a major storm. Drones can survey areas responders can't safely reach. Sensors can detect signs of activity. Artificial intelligence can scan thousands of images faster than any human team. But none of that answers the one question that matters most: Where should responders go first?
Leaders still have to determine how reliable that information really is, whether the different technologies can share what they know, what risks responders will run into, and where limited people and equipment will do the most good.
The setting changes, but the challenge doesn't: how do you bring together rapidly evolving technologies, specialized expertise, people and information to accomplish a critical mission?
At Old Dominion University, answering questions like that has become an increasingly important part of the University’s research enterprise. National security is one of ODU’s strategic research focus areas, supported by interdisciplinary strengths in artificial intelligence and machine learning, autonomous and networked systems, computational and data science, cybersecurity and modeling and simulation.
Now, ODU is bringing those capabilities together in a new way.
Preparing Leaders for Complex Decisions
Old Dominion University and the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (MDAA) are launching the Aptera MvS Executive Program in Mission Capability Development, a new nine-month executive development program beginning in January 2027.
The program is designed to strengthen the leadership workforce responsible for complex national security missions, bringing together accomplished professionals from the military, government, industry and other sectors.
A select cohort will work through an applied curriculum spanning mission engineering, artificial intelligence, modeling and simulation, cybersecurity, data science, policy and other mission-relevant fields.
The goal isn’t to turn executives into specialists in every technology. Instead, Aptera is designed to give leaders what the program calls “decision-grade fluency”: enough technical understanding to recognize what a capability can do, where its limits and risks lie, how it connects with other systems and when additional information or expertise is needed before acting.
Participants will also consider the organizational, cultural and policy environments in which those decisions are made.
Aptera builds on MDAA’s established university-based executive development model and serves as an Atlantic counterpart to its Pacific-facing university collaborations. At ODU, the program will have a distinctive focus on mission engineering and mission capability development.
Bringing ODU’s Research Strengths Together
The interdisciplinary model behind Aptera reflects the way ODU is increasingly approaching complex research challenges: bringing expertise from multiple fields together around problems that cannot be solved by a single discipline or technology.
Participants will work in small teams, applying what they learn to real-world, unclassified problems with guidance from faculty and expert mentors. Their work will culminate in presentations for national-level decision-makers, requiring participants to translate complex analysis into clear, actionable recommendations.
Supporting that work is expertise from across ODU in mission engineering, artificial intelligence, modeling and simulation, cybersecurity, computational and data science, cloud computing, decision science, spectrum operations, policy, international security and collaborative leadership.
Those capabilities also connect Aptera to ODU’s growing national security research enterprise. In 2026, the University established its National Security Institute to bring together applied research expertise around mission-focused national security challenges.
Aptera extends that interdisciplinary approach into executive development, connecting research and technical expertise with the leaders responsible for understanding how emerging capabilities can be applied to real-world missions.
ODU’s location in Coastal Virginia adds another dimension. Hampton Roads is home to a significant concentration of military commands and installations, maritime industries, federal partners, defense companies, research organizations and technology expertise.
For Aptera, that proximity makes the region itself part of the learning environment, creating opportunities to connect academic and technical expertise with the organizations confronting complex mission challenges every day. It also reinforces the program’s Atlantic orientation and ODU’s role at the intersection of national security, maritime systems and emerging technology.
Through Aptera, that combination of research expertise, regional partnerships and interdisciplinary collaboration will be focused on a single objective: helping leaders see how technologies, people and systems fit together so they can make better-informed decisions when the mission demands it.