Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute mathematics student Daniel Kosmas has been awarded a National Institute of Justice Graduate Research Fellowship. The three-year award will support Kosmas’ research in disrupting human trafficking networks.

Kosmas is exploring how to model and disrupt human trafficking with a goal of developing quantitative tools to assist criminal justice practitioners in policy making for combatting human trafficking. His work will expand upon network interdiction models to appropriately model the nuances of how trafficking networks operate, and develop new solution methods that account for these nuances.

The National Institute of Justice is the research, development, and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice. The institute’s graduate research fellowship is awarded to doctoral students pursuing research that supports the mission of the institute, which is “dedicated to improving knowledge and understanding of crime and justice issues through science” through knowledge and tools that aid decision-making to reduce crime and advance justice at the state and local level.