I am an engineer/scientist with a diverse research and educational background. I would like to welcome you to my website which I have established primarily to share professional information pertaining to my research, publications, and career. You can also learn a little about my hobbies.
I currently work for BRC as a contractor supporting Marshall Space Flight Center. We are working on building the biggest rocket anyone has ever seen. I support the systems engineering effort. My initial focus was on developing the detailed interface design documentation for the upper stage interfaces with ground systems. I am currently working requirements verification.
Prior to my move to MSFC, I worked at Corvid Technologies providing technical and programmatic leadership to a diverse team of engineers and scientists in support of the ballistic missile defense system mission.
I previously worked for AEgis
Technologies Group as a research scientist and technical manager of
several R&D programs. I primarily supported Direct Energy testing and
evaluation research. As the technical manager of the Directed Energy
research group, I served as principal investigator for numerous
programs. I oversaw the technical execution of these programs, which included development
of novel detectors using micro- and nano-scale technology. My responsibilities included guiding the
technical direction of the research, providing guidance to a multi-disciplinary
team of R&D scientists and engineers, providing inverse heat conduction subject matter expertise to
the team and to customers, and interfacing with senior management. I served as the proposal manager for my division and revamped the group's proposal process with a particular focus on supporting responses to broad agency announcements and small business innovation research solicitations.
I previously worked as a Research Engineer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alabama and supported a United Space Alliance program that was funded by NASA. During this program, I conducted computational heat transfer simulations to evaluate the significance of using one-dimensional algorithms for heat flux predictions with experimental wind tunnel temperature measurements. I also evaluated the error associated with thermal disturbances due to the presence of thin film temperature gages.
Prior to my role as a Research Engineer, I spent a year as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Alabama supporting the Near Space Engineering Research and Technology (NSERT) group, a team dedicated to realizing the full potential of unmanned vehicle technology in near space. With the NSERT team, I employed a commercial computational fluid dynamics software package to investigate the heat transfer phenomena within a near space payload. The focus of my research was to establish baseline models for convective and radiation heat transfer within a cavity under various boundary conditions including velocity slip and temperature jump conditions.
During my doctoral research, I developed a high fidelity computational heat transfer model of a system in which an embedded thermocouple was subjected to large heat loads. I applied Beck’s kernel method for correcting thermocouple measurements, a technique that involves a derivation that yields a convolution containing a kernel function that can be expressed in terms of discrete numerical data in Laplace transform space. An adaptation of Beck’s sequential function specification method is shown to be the most reliable technique for obtaining the kernel values. This methodology was demonstrated to yield improvements of the root mean square errors for the temperature histories of greater than 90%. Subsequent inverse calculations of surface heat fluxes with corrected experimental temperatures yielded increases of the heat flux estimates ranging from 48% to 85%.
Please feel free to explore my website and learn more about my research and my personal life.
