61-70 of 75 results

  • IUSE/PFE: RED Innovation: Using Scrum to Develop an Agile Department

    PI Massood Towhidnejad

    CO-I Omar Ochoa

    CO-I James Pembridge

    Efforts to implement these kinds of changes are often slowed down by department cultures or faculty attitudes about the amount of time and work that would be involved. In this project the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University will implement an innovative approach to become a department that responds quickly to student and industry needs.

    The next generation of engineers will need essential technical and professional skills to solve the complex problems facing society. Changes to how departments operate, the curriculum, and teaching practices in engineering programs are required to better prepare students for the profession. Efforts to implement these kinds of changes are often slowed down by department cultures or faculty attitudes about the amount of time and work that would be involved. In this project the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University will implement an innovative approach to become a department that responds quickly to student and industry needs. This approach will apply agile development methods typically used in industry to deliver the best products faster. Agile methods involve working on teams in short cycles which allow shared work responsibility, frequent feedback, and adjustments between cycles. The EECS Department will use the Scrum agile method to organize how the department carries out its normal operations. The department will also embed Scrum agile product development into courses across the curriculum. The new approach will allow faculty to achieve quicker changes and implementation of prioritized items for the department. Examples of prioritized items will include incorporating more evidence-based practices in courses such as just-in-time teaching, case-based teaching, active learning, and peer instruction; fostering inclusive learning environments; updating course materials; revising department procedures; and recruiting diverse students and faculty. Consequently, both faculty and students in the department will gain expertise with this agile professional skill. The project will investigate how the changes to department operations enhance faculty and student experiences. The findings would help inform other engineering departments about practices to improve the education of a diverse student population to be well-skilled engineers for the workforce.

    The objectives of this project will be to radically transform the EECS department into an agile department that: 1) develops students into engineers with agile skills desired by industry, and 2) develops an agile faculty culture which models the use of agile practices for students. Faculty will work collectively in Scrum teams to innovate the practices, policies, and culture of the department. Students will use Scrum in individual and team projects throughout the middle two years of the curriculum to progressively build their expertise for the culminating capstone courses in the senior year. The research study will use an explanatory case study design guided by social cognitive theory. Quantitative and qualitative analyses will be performed using data from interviews with faculty and students, feedback from stakeholders, and artifacts from Scrum teams. Research results could lead to transformations in engineering education by offering a model on the novel use of Scrum as an agile organizational practice and its influences on the collective efficacy of faculty. This project is jointly funded by the Division of Undergraduate Education and the Division of Engineering Education and Centers reflecting the alignment of this project with the respective goals of the divisions and their programs.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • Developing Artifact Peer Review Assignment Methodologies to Maximize the Value of Peer Review for Students

    PI Matthew Verleger

    This engineering education research project seeks to develop a proof-of-concept peer review matching algorithm and demonstrate if it is a valuable and viable methodology for conducting peer review. Peer review is a proven method that has positive impact on student learning. The project will test the algorithm on Model Eliciting Activities in the engineering classroom, and investigate how changing peer review can affect student learning.



    ​The broader significance and importance of this project is the transformative potential of improving peer review processes, since peer review is used throughout STEM and medical fields. Thus this preliminary investigation can extend outside the realm of improving student learning. This project overlaps with NSF's strategic goals of transforming the frontiers through preparation of an engineering workforce with new capabilities and expertise. Additionally NSF's goal of innovating for society is enabled by supporting the development of innovative learning systems.

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    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • Platform for Investigating Concept Networks on the Instrumentality of Knowledge (PICNIK)

    PI Matthew Verleger

    This engineering education research project seeks to develop a concept network for engineering and a platform for helping students identify how concepts are connected across a curriculum.  The goal is to better understand and improve how students value the concepts being taught throughout their education.



    By data mining course materials (i.e., textbooks, course notes, syllabi, video transcripts, websites, etc.), a concept network can be developed for that course. With each additional resource, the network connectedness become more fully representative.  By mapping materials from courses throughout a curriculum, and then overlaying the resulting map on a degree plan of study, students will be able to better identify and value how concepts being taught today are connected and used throughout the rest of their education. For instructors, curricular redesign becomes significantly easier, as they will be able to more fully contextualize how other courses depend on their material.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • Optimizing Countermeasures for Spaceflight-Induced Deconditioning

    PI Christine Walck

    This research focuses on understanding space deconditioning and developing comprehensive systems to mitigate the adverse physiological effects of microgravity on astronauts.

    Spaceflight-induced deconditioning presents a major challenge to human health during and after long-duration missions, contributing to muscle atrophy, bone loss, cardiovascular dysfunction, and sensorimotor impairment. This research investigates the underlying mechanisms of physiological decline in microgravity and evaluates integrated mitigation strategies using a combination of ground-based analogs (e.g., head-down tilt, LBNP), biomechanical modeling, and real-time physiological monitoring. By developing a modular countermeasure system — featuring tools like the Lower Extremity Force Acquisition System (LEFAS) and personalized exercise protocols — we aim to preserve musculoskeletal and cardiovascular integrity throughout space missions. The findings contribute to NASA’s broader efforts in preparing astronauts for lunar and Mars exploration.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • A Biologically Inspired Architecture Screening Tool to Improve Electric Grid Transient Response Design

    PI Bryan Watson

    The objective of this research is to develop and validate a new approach to design-for-transient resilience that provides additional insights, is less expensive, and can be used early in the design process.



    Electrical distribution needs to protect society by providing reliable power, even under changing conditions. The current approach to design electrical distribution grids often focuses on steady state design requirements or response to a subset of potential faults. Even small and gradual changes in loading, however, can cause voltage transients and lead to major blackouts due to voltage collapse. As electric demand increases and infrastructure operates near its design limits, these events are likely to become more common. While designers can examine slowly changing load transients, this occurs after creating a model of the proposed grid, which can be costly. Thus, this research examines the following gap: A cost-effective approach is needed early in the electrical distribution design process to screen candidate architectures for their expected response to slowly changing operating conditions. 

    There is an opportunity to examine unexpected voltage collapse through the lens of ecosystem critical transitions. Critical transitions occur when an ecosystem shifts suddenly from one stable configuration (e.g. forest) to another (e.g. grassland) due to slowly changing environmental conditions (e.g. annual rainfall). The mathematical framework established to evaluate and classify critical transitions has been well studied but has not been used to design electrical distribution. The central hypothesis examined in this proposal is If we screen initial electrical distribution architectures with graph theory (Ecological Network Analysis), then the resulting designs will have improved critical transition performance over non-screened architectures. Critical transition performance has two aspects: 

    1.superior ability to absorb additional loading before voltage collapse (i.e. margin to critical transition), and 

    2. transition to desirable, stable secondary configurations following voltage collapse, rather than cascading throughout the system and causing a complete blackout (i.e. type of Bifurcation).

    The objective of this research is to develop and validate a new approach to design-for-transient resilience that provides additional insights, is less expensive, and can be used early in the design process.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • Creating Connections: Bed bugs to UAV Swarms

    PI Bryan Watson

    ​The overarching goal of our research is to advance our understanding of bed bug behavior and use this understanding to improve performance of aerospace swarms.

    Modern aerospace systems need a new approach for swarm consensus that is distributed, operates with local knowledge, and uses simple agents. The overarching goal of our research is to advance our understanding of bed bug behavior and use this understanding to improve performance of aerospace swarms. The first step is to understand individual bed bug response to stimuli (CO2, heat, light) and individual neural characteristics, before considering group dynamics. The objective of this research was to establish a collaboration between biologists and engineers at ERAU to design and implement a test-platform to enable new data collection for bed bug movement. This collaboration begins by examining individual bed bug response to CO2 concentration. Our central hypothesis is that if we record bed bug response to CO­2 exposure, then we will be able to improve our understanding of collective decision making because the bed bugs coordinate their response to environmental conditions. The research involved five undergraduate students from three campuses.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • Learning from Zombie Ants to Increase UAV Swarm Resilience to Faulted Agents

    PI Bryan Watson

    This proposal examines the issue of faulted-agent mitigation through the lens of Biologically Inspired Design.

    Modern aerospace systems often approach problems by connecting many smaller agents, rather than using a single, more expensive platform. For example, it is often advantageous to have a fleet of lower-cost UAVs searching an area than a single, highly capable platform (airship). These sophisticated networks, however, are vulnerable to cascading faults.  For example, errors in data from a single UAV could lead the entire search party away from their intended target. Although recognized as a vulnerability for multi-agent systems, current fault-mitigation methods have significant limitations. Centralized monitoring methods are too computationally expensive and do not work well at large scale, while solutions that rely on agents reporting their own failures may not work in situations where the units are under attack or experiencing certain types of faults (e.g. communication failures). Additionally, current approaches often have strict assumptions that may not apply in real-world systems. As a result, large-scale aerospace systems are at risk of individual agent failures that can spread throughout the entire network, causing problems with system operation, and putting personnel in danger. This proposal examines the issue of faulted-agent mitigation through the lens of Biologically Inspired Design. The objective of this research is to investigate and evaluate a new biologically inspired approach to increase multi-agent system resilience. The Ophiocordyceps camponoti-rufipedis (OCR) or Zombie Ant Fungus provides an example of fault resilience in nature. The fungus infects the ant's nervous system and alters their behavior, ultimately leading to death. However, ant colonies have developed a unique foraging and organizational structure that contains the spread of the fungus. The central hypothesis is that an examination of colony response to OCR will allow derivation of information sharing protocols to increase multi-agent system resilience to fault propagation.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • Navigation and Control for Autonomous Vessels

    PI Darris White

    PI Eric Coyle

    PI Patrick Currier

    Development of closed-form solution for control of over-actuated maritime systems.

    A method for controlling the position, orientation and velocity of a marine vessel in a body of water with multiple, independently steered propulsion devices. The method involves receiving a command to move to a specific position and orientation. Utilizing position/heading feedback control, a control algorithm is used to calculate the required forces and moments to move the vehicle. Steering angles and thrust forces are determined for each of the vessel's propulsion devices. The thrust and angular displacement limits of each device are used to determine if the required forces and moments are achievable using one of three modes of operation: parallel steer, counter steer and combined parallel/counter steer. The approach fully utilizes the solution workspace for the over-actuated system without requiring the use of an optimization. The approach is used for smooth autonomous navigation in scenarios that include station keeping, path following, transitional states, disturbance rejection and object avoidance.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • Intelligent signal processing for secure mobile wireless communications with spectrum and energy efficiency

    PI Thomas Yang

    In modern wireless communications, scenarios often arise in which the receiver is required to perform detection of multi-user transmissions on the same channel or suppress co-channel interferers. In these scenarios, signal separation techniques based on statistical properties can be highly effective.

    In modern wireless communications, scenarios often arise in which the receiver is required to perform detection of multi-user transmissions on the same channel or suppress co-channel interferers. In these scenarios, signal separation techniques based on statistical properties can be highly effective. However, for wireless systems operating in highly dynamic environments (such as mobile and vehicular communications), the rapidly time-varying channel condition remains a major challenge for block-based signal processing, in which the estimation of statistical properties is performed through averaging over a block of data samples. When the channel parameters change with time, long blocks mean substantial variation of mixing matrices within each block, which inevitably degrades the source separation performance. On the other hand, short blocks render the estimation of signals’ statistical properties inaccurate and biased, thus resulting in poor estimation performance.

    We addresses the above-mentioned challenge via the adoption of signal separation algorithms specifically designed for dynamic channel conditions, and artificial data injection applied to short processing data blocks in wireless receivers. Through theoretical and simulation studies, we concluded that the data injection method has great potential in improving signal detection accuracy and/or processing speed for multi-user detection in wireless receivers under dynamic channel conditions. The physical layer security of these mobile communication systems is also being addressed. The research is supported by Air Force Research Laboratory’s Information Directorate (AFRL/RI).

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • Langrangian Wind Tunnel

    ERAU is supporting industry (i.e. Global Aerospace Corp.) in the development of a novel hypersonic wind tunnel by using high-fidelity computational fluid dynamcs.

    GAC is leading development of a wind tunnel in which the test article is propelled thru the test section at hypersonic speeds using a novel, proprietary approach.  Due to proprietary restrictions a simplistic version of the test article is illustrated below as it moves Mach 10 from right to left.  Shock waves may be observed reflecting off tunnel walls.  A Phase I Air Force STTR effort has been completed and Phase II is expected to begin in the near future.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

61-70 of 75 results