Dr. Pooja Patel
Senior Applied Psychologist
Dr. Pooja Patel is a Senior Applied Psychologist at The MITRE Corporation working on the Insider Threat Capability Team. She contributes to a growing portfolio of work that leverages the behavioral and cyber sciences to improve insider threat deterrence, detection, and mitigation across the US Government and Critical Infrastructure Industry. Dr. Patel has over 10 years of experience in designing, executing, analyzing, and reporting cognitive and behavioral psychology research. Prior to joining MITRE, Pooja was a Senior Research Analyst supporting the Office of Naval Research (ONR). She served as a SME consultant and manager on incoming and active Navy funded research programs. Before supporting ONR, Pooja was a scientist at a private research company in Minneapolis, Smart Information Flow Technologies (SIFT). At SIFT, she provided Cognitive and Behavioral Psychology expertise to support defense funded efforts. One such project explored online extremist discourse to understand signals that indicate intent to harm oneself or others, while another project (partnered with NASA) looked at interpersonal development and team cohesion in isolated environments. Pooja holds a Doctorate degree in Human Factors and Cognitive Psychology from the University of Central Florida.