Announcement of the 
Outstanding Students of the Year 2007

DOT Awards  

Andrew F. Braham – COE for Airport Technology

Andrew F. Braham, a student at the University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign conducting research at the Center of Excellence for Airport Technology, has been selected as a Department of Transportation FAA Outstanding Student of the Year.  Andrew was recognized for his extraordinary efforts at the TRB Student of the Year Ceremony held in Washington , DC on January 12.

Andrew F. Braham

Braham has performed research on the behavior of asphalt concrete for use in airport pavement rehabilitation. His work has contributed to the FAA COE project on Development of New Methodologies for Mechanistic Design of Asphalt Overlays by identifying and summarizing the most recent studies and technologies related to reflective cracking mechanisms and mechanics-based modeling of pavement overlay systems. He is also developing and conducting mixed-mode fracture tests on asphalt concrete materials in his Ph.D. thesis research.

 

Andrew graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 2000 and 2002 with a B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering, respectively. His M.S. degree was conducted under Professor Hussain Bahia, and his thesis was entitled: “The Use of Blended Recycled Foundry Sand in Hot Mix Asphalt.” He is expected to complete his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at UIUC in 2009.

 

Allison Barber – COE for General Aviation

Allison Barber, a student at the University of North Dakota conducting research at  the FAA Center of Excellence for General Aviation, has been selected as a Department of Transportation FAA COE Outstanding Student of the Year.  

Barber is pursuing her Masters degree in aviation at the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences.  She received her undergraduate degree in Aviation Management in August 2007.  Barber immersed herself in her flying by joining the Flying Team and in spite of the tremendous time commitment, has remained an integral part of the team for five years and has been critical to UND taking home the national trophy in 2006.   Additionally, Allison has successfully competed in computer accuracy, navigation and simulator events.

While she was attending the University of Maryland , Allison interned with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center where wrote navigation instructions to be sent to the Cassini spacecraft; she told it where to look, when to look at an object, and for how long.

At the University of North Dakota, Allison designed a series of test cards that simplified gathering and recording of in-flight test data. She worked with the lawyers on the staff and designed a thorough consent form for subject pilots to sign. She also worked with the FAA Aeromedical Institute in Oklahoma City on a series of human factors issues.

Katrina Groth – COE for Airworthiness Assurance

Katrina Groth, a student at the University of Maryland conducting research as part of the Center of Excellence for Airworthiness Assurance, has been selected as a Department of Transportation FAA COE Outstanding Student of the Year.  

Katrina Groth

Groth is a doctoral student studying Reliability Engineering and has been working on a project titled “Integrated Methodology for Aviation Systems Hazard and Risk,” funded through the FAA Center of Excellence for Airworthiness Assurance (AACE).  For the past three years Groth has been an integral member of the UMD modeling team.  She assisted in the development of multilevel risk modeling software:  The Integrated Risk Modeling System (IRIS).  As a member of the research team Groth developed models, led the software testing and validation team, and developed software documentation, including the users’ manual.   In addition to software development, Groth was the student team representative at all interactions with FAA and acted as the point of contact on IRIS technology transfer to the FAA. 

Groth has been honored as an A. James Clark Fellow at UMD and Graduate Fellow at Idaho National Laboratory.  She has served as an officer for the UMD chapters of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) and the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi.  She has been recognized as an outstanding student and leader by the DC area chapter of ANS.  In addition to authoring IRIS-related documents for the FAA, Groth has co-authored six journal articles and conference papers. In 2004, Groth received her undergraduate degree in Nuclear Engineering at UMD, where she is currently researching dependencies between human actions in high-risk settings, and Bayesian statistical methods for analyzing human performance data across industries.  She expects to receive her PhD in late 2008.

Sarah McGuire – COE for Aircraft Noise and Aviation Emissions Mitigation   

Sarah McGuire, a student at Purdue University conducting research as part of the Center of Excellence for Aircraft Noise and Aviation Emissions Mitigation (the FAA/NASA/ Transport Canada Partnership for AiR Transportation Noise and Emissions Reduction – PARTNER) has been selected as a Department of Transportation FAA COE Outstanding Student of the Year.

Sarah McGuire

McGuire has worked on PARTNER Project 2 which focuses on the measurement and assessment of aircraft community noise impacts. Aircraft noise impacts are recognized as one of the most significant potential constraints on NextGen growth.

One of the challenging questions in this regard is why community complaints continue to increase while traditional noise metrics show reductions in number of people impacted. McGuire's work focuses on the development of metrics that more accurately predict human annoyance and physical responses (e.g. sleep awakenings).  

McGuire’s research is focused on determining how exposure community response models for aircraft noise can be validated by using existing survey data and to determine whether newer loudness models can be used to improve predictions of community response to transportation noise. The gathering of data from past surveys is challenging due to poor archiving, unwillingness to share data, and the type of data archived, yet she has been successful in gaining data from several surveys. She has developed strategies to “fill-in” missing data and based on her experiences she has come up with draft recommendations for the structure of a survey database. She has also investigated several sleep disturbance models and examined differences in responses to aircraft, road and rail noise. She has developed an algorithm to make sound sources less identifiable while retaining the temporal characteristics of the sound; this will be used to generate stimuli to determine whether transportation source knowledge impacts people’s responses.

FAA COE Awards

 Steven Abreu-Hill – COE for General Aviation  

Steven Abreu-Hill, a student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University conducting research as part of the Center of Excellence for General Aviation, has been named as a Federal Aviation Administration Outstanding Student of the Year. Currently, Abreu-Hill is a spring 2008 candidate for the Master of Science in Aeronautics with specializations in safety and management. Throughout his graduate career, Abreu-Hill served as the Communications and Planning Coordinator for the FAA’s Center of Excellence for General Aviation Research (CGAR). Supported by FAA COE funding, Abreu-Hill has been able to work with the FAA on aviation weather research for the Operational Suitability Evaluations of the GTG and NCV weather forecasting products. By integrating his weather skills and aviation knowledge, Abreu-Hill’s goal in life is to improve the safety and efficiency of our National Airspace.  

His most recent research involved the coordination of the FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center Weather Sensors Group Operational Suitability Evaluation (OSE) of the Graphical Turbulence Guidance (GTG) Product. Here, Abreu-Hill worked closely with our COE partner universities in the arrangement of selecting pilots for this study in support of the FAA’s weather forecast products approval project.  

Abreu-Hill also serves as a lab assistant at ERAU’s Weather Center , where he is actively involved in tutoring undergraduates, pilots, and air traffic controllers in aviation meteorology. He has also assisted professors of the department in hurricane forecasting, briefings, and air races.

Christopher Griffis – COE for General Aviation  

Christopher Griffis, a student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University conducting research through the Center of Excellence for General Aviation, has been named as a Federal Aviation Administration Outstanding Student of the Year.  

Christopher Griffis

Griffis is a spring 2008 candidate for the Master of Software Engineering degree at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach , Florida.  Griffis has managed teams for six different major software-engineering projects.  

Funded by the FAA through the COE, Griffis was able to perform a technology survey of unmanned aircraft propulsion systems. This survey categorized, examined, and described the disparate Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) propulsion technologies, providing the advantages and disadvantages of each, as well as associated high-level technical issues. Moreover, in executing this technology survey, Griffis developed a framework for the conceptual decomposition of the described unmanned aircraft propulsion systems, resulting in a similarly titled successful team submission to the 2008 IEEE Aerospace conference.  

During the summer of 2007, Griffis served as a software engineering intern at Boeing in Everett , WA , where he worked as a test automation engineer for the 787 software configuration extract reports web-portal. As a result of his work at Boeing, he received the highest possible performance rating, as well as two achievement awards and one accomplishment award.  

Currently, Griffis is again being funded through the COE for General Aviation to extend work performed in the UAS technology survey. This is a two-part project, first evaluating regulatory gaps as they relate to the introduction of UAS into the National Airspace System, and then performing a subsequent risk analysis of the associated technical issues.

 

Andrew Braham, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, COE for Airport Technology, Representative James Oberstar (MN), and Professor Bill Butler, UIUC, COE for Airport Technology (L-R)	Andrew Braham,  and Bill Butler, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, COE for Airport Technology, Barry Scott, FAA Acting Director, Operations Planning R&TD, James White

Click on a Student of the Year below for more information

Arlen Planting
DOT COE Student of the Year 2007

Zachary Grassley
DOT COE Student of the Year 2006

Stephen Lukachko
DOT COE Student of the Year 2005

Bruno Miller
DOT COE Student of the Year 2004

Lamia Salah
DOT COE Student of the Year 2003

Tasha Innis
FAA COE Student of the Year 2002