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From Soccer to Criminology – and Back. Meet NCITE's Callie Vitro

Growing up, NCITE graduate student Callie Vitro's plans to pursue Division 1 soccer were derailed by a series of knee surgeries. A beloved TV detective helped chart her path toward security studies, which she hopes will one day bring her back into the soccer sphere.

Callie Vitro speaks into a microphone at the IAPSS conference. She is holding a map with lines drawn in marker connecting various countries to each other.

NCITE's Callie Vitro takes the mic at the International Academic Partnerships for Science and Security (IAPSS) conference, held in London in March.

By Erin Grace
Director of Strategic Communications and External Relations

From the time she first donned a jersey at age three, NCITE graduate assistant Callie Vitro knew exactly what she’d do for the rest of her life: Play soccer.

She was convinced of this at age 10 when she had the first of what would be five surgeries on her right knee. She was convinced of this at age 15 when Division 1 coaches came calling.

Soccer, she said, “was my favorite thing in the world.”

Then, still in high school and right after knee surgery No. 3, her doctor gave a devastating assessment: You can either try to play soccer again. Or walk.

Your choice.

That was a decade ago. In the intervening years, Vitro graduated from her suburban Chicago high school, earned two undergraduate degrees at American University, spent a year as a research fellow at the University of Michigan, and is now about to complete her master’s degree in criminology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO).

Vitro recently was accepted into UNO’s doctoral program for criminology. This summer, she will celebrate by going to the Summer Olympics in Paris where she’ll be thinking about her chosen field – sporting events and security.

At age 25, Vitro's footing is firmly in establishing herself as an early career researcher or ECR. She’s among some three dozen NCITE ECRs whose education is funded in whole or part at UNO and among several hundred who are involved in the consortium’s growing terrorism research portfolio.

I can always count on Callie to be professional in any situation she enters. She is a great role model for students across the consortium.

 Gina Ligon, NCITE Director

This is a demographic that NCITE and other like academic groups are focusing on as they seek to develop the next generation of terrorism researchers. At a recent conference of terrorism scholars in London, Vitro was chosen to represent NCITE. She was among a handful of ECRs from other countries getting important exposure to the academic and national security issues at the fore. Issues like emerging threats, radicalization pathways, and artificial intelligence.

“It was incredible,” Vitro said of the International Academic Partnerships for Science and Security (IAPSS) conference, led by NCITE with its U.K. counterpart, the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST). “‘Refreshing’ is a word I think a lot of people used.”

Vitro explained: Being an early career researcher can be an invisible position to occupy, especially around veteran luminaries. But she and her peers from Canada, Germany, and Norway, were pleased to see themselves included as active contributors and participants. They weren’t just sitting and listening to others’ presentations.

“We were coming together to try and determine what the biggest challenges are and how we are going to work together to solve them,” she said. “We were taken seriously.”

The two-day event allowed Vitro and other ECRs to work with a variety of academic and government attendees. Vitro took it upon herself to help organize her fellow early career researchers and consider next steps in their development.

NCITE Director Gina Ligon, Ph.D., said Vitro “stood out as a force.”

“She was insightful, proactive, and perhaps most importantly – kind in a high-pressure setting,” said Ligon who is the principal investigator of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security grant that created IAPSS. “I can always count on Callie to be professional in any situation she enters. She is a great role model for students across the consortium."

Vitro's journey to the London conference started in middle school – off the soccer field. One might even give a hat tip to actor Peter Falk. Vitro loved him in The Princess Bride, and fell into a longtime TV rerun affair with Columbo. She liked the detective show’s premise of problem-solving, and it gave her an idea for a middle school science project involving nefarious real-life leaders. That science project taught her how to use research to answer nagging, difficult questions.

This became her refuge after the promising soccer future evaporated.

In that difficult period, Vitro couldn’t watch soccer at all – “it made me so sad.”

But her curiosity about the why of terrorism, her desire to solve complicated problems, and her thirst for research offered a different path. She earned bachelor’s degrees in psychology and justice law and criminology. A mentor at American University inspired her to use quantitative analysis and statistics as tools. Despite spending the last half of her undergraduate career in remote learning, Vitro followed her nose to Ann Arbor and then Omaha where she works alongside criminologist Erin Kearns, Ph.D., NCITE head of prevention research initiatives.

“Callie has a clear idea of her research interests while still demonstrating openness and curiosity to new things,” said Kearns, who earned her Ph.D. from American University. “This allows her to make connections and ask questions that span disciplines in a way that is so valuable in counterterrorism work.”

Kearns also used this word to describe Vitro: Grit.

“She will gladly tackle a complex stats problem until she figures out the answer,” she said.

Vitro has had to endure more surgeries. But she has taken life events in stride. And she has realized that soccer can still be part of her future. She is focused on how to keep major sporting events safe and is directing her threat assessment and security lens at national and international sports – namely soccer.

As an early career researcher, Vitro has encouraging words for other young people trying to discern what their futures might hold. If it’s research, Vitro said, “try it and see if you like it or not.” And she encourages her peers to just talk to people in the field.

“People love to talk to you,” she said. “That helps me. Putting yourself out there is what it all boils down to.”