Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Speaker: Evan Malone, Ph.D. President, NextFab Studio, LLC 

Speaker: Barbara Harris-Para and Laurie Zaleski - both former Federal Aviation Administration Employees

Wednesday May 19, 2010

Speaker: Jim Patterson, Jr. Federal Aviation Administration, Airport Safety Specialist

Wednesday April 21, 2010

We will be honoring three separate groups of students:

Wednesday March 17, 2010

Speaker: David A. Brown, Cisco Systems, Inc.    

TelePresence creates an "in-person" meeting experience over a converged network. It delivers real-time, face-to-face interactions between people and places in their work and personal lives using advanced visual, audio, and collaboration technologies. These technologies transmit life-size, high-definition images and spatial discrete audio. Now it's easier than ever to discern facial expressions for crucial business discussions and negotiations across the "virtual table." While this technology has been available for a number of years, is it still a relatively new technology being implemented by early adopters. An overview of TelePresence technology and its variants will be presented to provide a better understanding of the system. In addition, examples of current TelePresence solutions and implementations will be discussed.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Speaker: Robert L. Doney III, US ARL, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD   

The Armor Mechanics Branch at APG conducts research and improves armors on a variety of ground vehicles. A substantial portion of our efforts are guided via high performance computing through our Major Shared Resources Center (MSRC). The MSRC has several thousand processors available for massively parallel calculations. We use state of the art Department of Energy hydrodynamics codes and their coupled material models for this work. In this presentation, I will provide a general overview of ARL and various armor technologies. My focus will then turn to a V&V study we are currently investigating: exploding wires. Here we are interested in evaluating the robustness of the copper material model and the evolution of the expanding plasma.

Speaker: J. Russell Manson, Ph.D., P.E., Richard Stockton College  

In this talk Dr. Manson will discuss the past, present and future of high performance computing for modeling and simulation in the aviation industry and also in a wider technological opportunities context. He will review some definitions and concepts in high performance and supercomputing and then move to discuss various real world applications in aviation including computational fluid mechanics, agent based modeling for multiple interacting entities and model optimization and parameter searching techniques. Local opportunities for interaction with Stockton and beyond in this arena will be outlined.

Speaker: John Wiley, FAA Manager, Technical Strategies and Integration, Wm J Hughes Technical Center 

The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) introduces new operational concepts and complex system-of-systems. The potential for one system to affect the performance and end use of another system is greater as systems become more integrated. Testing will be more difficult as operational concepts changes. National Airspace System (NAS) components become part of the aircraft, and technology and procedural changes are initiated. As the NAS transforms into the next generation of complex systems -of-systems, many verification and validation challenges will occur. These challenges, as well as solutions such as best practices and life cycle verification and validation, will be discussed. 

Speaker: Roger Launius, AIAA Distinguished Lecturer and Senior Curator of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum

Both Venus and Mars have captured the human imagination during the 20th century as possible abodes of life.  Venus had long enchanted humans-especially after astronomers realized it was shrouded by clouds permanently hiding the surface from view.  Mars also harbored interest, with its observed seasonal changes, as a place where life had existed or might still exist.  These ideas were significantly altered, if not dashed, during the space age.  Missions to Venus and Mars revealed strikingly different worlds.  While hopes for Venus as an abode for life ended, the search for evidence of past life on Mars, possibly microbial, remains a central theme in space exploration.  This survey explores the evolution of thinking about the climates of Venus and Mars as life-support systems, in comparison to Earth.

Speaker: Scott Engle, Villanova University, PhD Candidate

Scott Engle graduated from Villanova University with a B.S. In Astronomy & Astrophysics. He is currently a Research Associate at Villanova completing his final work on his PhD. His ongoing research deals with ground-based photometry of variable stars and space-based observations of their UV to X-ray emissions. He has worked with data from the Hubble, Chandra, XMMM, IUE, FUSE, GALES and Spitzer satellites, has approved observation programs for the MOST and BRITE Constellation satellites, and has 30 plus research publications to his credit. The Secret Lives of Cepheids Program is an ongoing study being carried out at VU of the brightness and radial velocity changes of classical Cepheids over time, along with their high-temperature emissions. In some cases, over 100 years of observations have been collected and analyzed. We have also made the surprising recent discovery of strong FUV emissions in two bright, nearby Classical Cepheids from analyses of FUSE archival observations and one of our own observations just prior to the failure of the satellite. This phenomenon has never before been observed in Cepheids.

Speaker: Arlene Feldman, Esq., President, New Jersey Aviation Assn. (NJAA)

Arlene Butler Feldman is an attorney and pilot who has played a leading role in aviation for many years. She will enlighten us with a brief history of New Jersey general aviation and an overview of our airports, their importance and the economic benefits that they bring. She will also describe what NJAA does to protect and preserve aviation in our state. Ms. Feldman is the former FAA Regional Administrator, Eastern Region, and Deputy Director, FAA Technical Center.

Speaker: Donald Hall, PE, PEPCO Holding Co.

The speaker will present an overview of today’s electric power system in Southern New Jersey and hints of things to come. Power procurement, transmission, distribution, and something called the Smart Grid. The speaker is a Senior Supervising Engineer in the System Planning Group of Asset Management at Pepco Holdings Inc. (parent company of Atlantic City Electric) where his major responsibilities include supervision of power distribution system load forecasting, modeling, analysis, planning and design as well as internal consulting on the corporation’s Smart Grid initiatives. The topic discussed will address all of these elements of the power distribution system and as well as the futuristic Smart Grid.

Speaker: Jim Wain

Communication systems provide important tools for managing transportation and assisting with the security of public surface transportation systems. A variety of technologies are utilized that include, wire, radio and optical systems. This presentation will examine various communication systems used by two of the United States’ largest surface public transportation companies, NJ Transit (NJT) and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA). The purpose and attributes of the systems will be discussed as well as an overview of the underlying enabling technologies.

Jim Wain has over thirty years of experience working in all aspects of communications and electronic systems for NJ Transit and the SEPTA. Duties have included communications and electronic systems Maintenance, Maintenance Management, Engineering, and Project Management of systems design, construction and implementation. He also has fifteen years of part time experience working with Avionic communications and navigation systems with the NJANG 177th Fighter Wing, Atlantic City International Airport. Jim is currently employed by SEPTA as a Senior Project Engineer. Duties include project management of design, construction and implementation of communications and electronics systems. He also represents SEPTA on an international Technology and Engineering Security Roundtable. He is a senior member of IEEE.

Speaker: Confesor Santiago, FAA Wm J. Hughes Technical Center AJP-661

Please join us for a delicious dinner and an interesting presentation on ATC decision support software. In the current air transportation system, Decision Support Tools (DSTs) aid Air Traffic Controllers in monitoring air traffic in order to maintain minimum separation standards between aircraft. These automated systems provide this service by predicting aircraft flight paths (trajectories), in order to foretell potential conflicts. The User Request Evaluation Tool (URET), developed by MITRE Corporation’s Center for Advanced Aviation System Development, is an example of a DST, currently in operational use. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has developed a new air traffic control system to replace URET. This system is called ERAM, for En Route Automation Modernization, and is being developed by the Lockheed Martin Corporation. After the Factory Acceptance Test Run for Record (RFR), a study was conducted by the FAA’s Conflict Probe Assessment Team in support of the testing and evaluation of ERAM’s trajectory prediction accuracy and strategic conflict probe. This presentation will describe the partnership between the FAA and Rowan University established to develop visualization tools that aid FAA analysts in evaluating DST test data, most notably from the ERAM RFR. He will also describe various features of these visualization tools, how they were instituted during the study and success stories resulting from the collaboration.