Matthew Wanta will graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point class of 2026 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and mathematical sciences, both with honors, with a research focus on autonomous systems and machine learning for defense and national security applications.
At West Point, Wanta serves as company commander for Bravo Company, 2nd Regiment, president of Upsilon Pi Epsilon and vice president of Phi Kappa Phi. He is an Astronaut Scholar and Sapper school graduate. He will commission as an Army officer in the Cyber Corps and intends to pursue a doctorate in Operations Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in fall 2026.
Wanta’s work centers on machine learning for autonomous systems, integrating probabilistic modeling and computer vision into cooperative drone search and swarm control frameworks. In collaboration with DEVCOM Armaments Center, he developed computer vision models for detecting energetic defects in artillery munitions, enabling rapid, nonintrusive quality control in defense manufacturing. His work with U.S. Special Operations Command and Army C5ISR organizations focuses on autonomous aerial search and sensing, where he built simulation architectures for probabilistic target localization and multi-agent coordination.
Hailing from Jackson, Wisconsin, Wanta enjoys blacksmithing, running and Python.
