About
Our Team
LPRC’s world-class team of loss-prevention specialists is fully committed to creating a safer, more profitable future for the retail industry.
Read Hayes, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Dr. Hayes started as a store detective in retail loss prevention and has more than 30 years of hands-on crime and loss control experience working with organizations worldwide. He is co-director of the Loss Prevention Research Team at the University of Florida and director of the retailer-supplier coalition Loss Prevention Research Council. Dr. Hayes co-founded the University of Florida’s globally used National Retail Security Survey in 1989 and has conducted more than 75 LP field research projects. He has spoken at more than 100 conferences and is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed journal articles, 150 magazine articles, and four top-selling books. He provides crime prevention expertise to Fox News, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, NPR, Oprah, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Fast Company, USA Today, and the BBC.
Chad McIntosh
Chad retired from Bloomingdale’s where he was vice president of asset protection and risk management. Chad is an accomplished loss prevention executive with more than 40 years of experience as a strategic partner with corporate leadership. Chad has retail loss prevention experience with various retailers including Neiman Marcus, The Home Depot, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Macy’s. Chad is a founding member of LPRC and is currently the director of operations for the council. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland with a degree in business administration.
Bryan Hayes
Chief Financial Officer
Bryan, a graduate of the University of Florida with a degree in Biology and Business Administration, brings a unique blend of scientific knowledge and business acumen to his role. With a proven track record in sales, business growth, and development, coupled with exceptional management skills and a sharp attention to detail, Bryan is a formidable asset to the Loss Prevention Research Council. Having dedicated four years to LPRC, Bryan is deeply committed to advancing the organization’s mission of fostering a safer and more profitable future for the retail industry. His strategic leadership and unwavering dedication have been instrumental in driving the LPRC towards its objectives and making a lasting impact in the industry.
Cory Lowe, Ph.D.
Director of Research
Cory Lowe was born and raised in Taylorsville, Georgia. He moved to Gainesville in 2016 to pursue his Ph.D. in criminology, law, and society at the University of Florida. At UF, he specialized in criminological theory, crime prevention, and research methods and defended his dissertation “Moral Communities in Chicago Neighborhoods: Examining the Relationship between Family and Neighborhood Religiosity and Youth Substance Use and Delinquency” in July 2020. He has published multiple peer-reviewed journal articles, several chapters, and entries in edited volumes, and has presented his research at numerous regional and national conferences. Prior to attending the University of Florida, he received his B.A. in history and political science from Shorter University in Rome, Georgia; and his M.A. in sociology and criminology at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, GA. His grandfather, Clayton Jackson Harris, is his hero.
Diego Rodriguez
Caleb Bowyer
Caleb Bowyer is a PhD candidate in engineering at the University of Florida, and his dissertation research is about determining how to best train cooperative autonomous agents from noisy and partially observed data for decision making tasks. At the LPRC, he is head of the LPRC’s DETECT research initiative and co-leader of the Data Analytics Working Group (DAWG). He researches, develops, and implements AI solutions related to detecting theft, fraud, or violence attempts earlier and further away from retail stores. For examples, his research spans everything from web scraping social media sites or forums online in Zone 5, to utilizing license plate reader technology in Zone 4, to running various object detection models in Zone 3, to trialing audio threat detection in Zone 2, down to what are the best protocols for Body-Worn Cameras in Zone 1 inside of a retail store. His dream goal at the LPRC is to integrate all of the AI sensors and models across the five zones of influence, once they are all sufficiently developed, into a production ready system for better alerting of offenders in real time and detecting repeat offenders on their journey to commit harm and then deflecting that harm. Caleb is also highly interested in new OSINT methodologies and leveraging better OSINT tools to help with improve outcomes in investigations and for retroactive studies of incidents. His list of research projects at the LPRC is ever evolving and expanding.
Christina Burton, Ph.D.
Christina is pursuing a PhD in criminal justice at the University of Central Florida where she focuses on situational crime prevention, intelligence-led policing and crime analysis, wildlife criminology, and environmental criminology. She previously received a Master’s Degree in criminal justice and a graduate certificate in crime analysis from UCF, and Bachelor’s Degrees in both anthropology and biology from the University of Florida. Christina joined the Loss Prevention Research Council as a part-time research scientist with the intention of transitioning into a full-time position upon completion of her PhD at UCF. Christina will apply her skills and knowledge to support LPRC research on supply chain protection, product protection, and other areas.
Josh Bush, M.S.
Jonathan Duong
Jonathan attended FIT in New York City where he studied design. He has more than fifteen years of experience working in technology and is passionate about user experience and teaching others. His hobbies include painting, sculpture, and volunteering in his community. He and his wife Kate also enjoy traveling and trying new cuisines.
Tiffany Frison, M.A.
Tiffany, a native of Gainesville, Florida, graduated from the University College Dublin, where she received her Master’s Degree in sociology. She has more than nine years of experience working in administration and international education and is excited to apply her experience to her new role as a research assistant at the LPRC. Tiffany is a creative at heart and enjoys going to concerts and anything to do with the arts.
Tom Keel
James Martin, M.S.
James specializes in geospatial analysis and data science. He previously worked as a research assistant at the Department of Environmental and Global Health at the University of Florida studying many issues including the social factors influencing COVID-19 mortality in northern Italy, the effects of air pollution on infant health outcomes in Florida, and the prevalence of work-related injuries among seafood workers on the gulf coast. James graduated from the University of Florida with a Master of Science in geography in 2019 where he studied the social and spatial dynamics of vector-borne viral diseases and gained experience in statistical modeling, machine learning, and network analysis. He graduated from the University of South Florida in 2017 with a Bachelor of Science in public health where he learned social theory. James is interested in applying new methods to loss prevention science to address the many challenges retailers face and help them thrive in a rapidly changing landscape.
Alex Palomar, M.B.A.
Alex Palomar graduated from the University of Florida in 2019 with a Bachelors of Criminology. She was able to excel academically, graduating Cum Laude and being involved in in the Criminology and Law honor society and the National Society of Collegiate Scholars while enrolled at the university. She immediately began her career upon graduation in the forensic behavioral health field and moved into program evaluation for forensics. This inspired her to begin her journey and pursual of a Masters of Business Administration, which she achieved in 2023 from the John’s Hopkins University. She was able to obtain a Dean’s Merit Scholarship from the University as well. Since then, Alex has grown in her career with project management and criminal justice through the LPRC. She is welcoming a newborn baby as of June 2024 and will enjoy splitting her time between Baby Jovie and her career.
Kim Ruffier
Jaclyn Siu
Justin J. Smith, Ph.D.
Hannah Williams
Sam Yeung, Ph.D.
Kam Leung (Sam) Yeung received his BS from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology at Iowa State University, where his research focused on consumer psychology, judgment, and decision-making. He conducted postdoctoral research at the University of North Florida and Iowa State. He has authored research reports in top journals such as Nature Sustainability and Educational Psychology Review, and an Op-Ed in The Washington Post on consumer behavior. He has extensive experience with experimental design and statistical modeling.
He is also well-versed in data science techniques such as SQL, Python, data visualization, machine learning, natural language processing, and big data analysis. He builds secure data pipelines, collects publicly available data at a large scale, and works on projects within the Innovate program and Retail Fraud working group at the LPRC.
He is always learning the latest data techniques. He is interested in biking, hiking, photography, and likes to spend time with his family.
