Aerospace Masters Student Obtains National Fellowship

The highly competitive National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowships provide recipients the opportunity to pursue a STEM-based doctoral program at any United States university of their choice.

Timoth Arnett, of the University of Cincinnati's College of Engineering and Applied Science's

Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics (AEEM)

, has just received the fellowship. Arnett received his UC bachelor's of science degree in aerospace engineering, and this summer, he will receive his master's of science in aerospace engineering, with a focus on dynamics and controls.

Fascinated by genetic fuzzy, artificial intelligence (AI) systems and collaborative unmanned vehicles (UAV), Arnett fully intends to enhance and develop these engineering research areas under the guidance of his NSDEG fellowship. Aside from receiving the highly competitive NSDEG fellowship this spring,

Arnett received the prestigious Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)/Dayton Area Graduate Studies Institute (DAGSI) award

for his research on fuzzy logic this past academic year.

Autonomous machines, such as autonomous car technologies, are becoming increasingly popular in today’s technological landscape yet are being held to increasingly strict performance and safety standards. “One of the major roadblocks toward implementing UAV’s into full scale-production,” explains Arnett, “is verifying that the machines will consistently perform as expected.”

Arnett’s research will enhance collaborative decision-making control of multiple UAV’s by taking a non-traditional approach to fuzzy logic control systems. His doctoral research efforts will enhance our confidence in UAV’s to perform and operate in a more predictable manner.

Kelly Cohen, AEEM professor and Arnett’s undergraduate and graduate advisor, inspired Arnett to pursue in-depth research on genetic fuzzy systems.

Said Arnett, “I recall the specific moment when Professor Cohen introduced me to Nick Ernest’s PhD research on genetic fuzzy systems. Ernest’s research was showing promising results, but before the technology could be matured and possibly introduced into real systems, it needed to meet myriad safety and operating standards. My future research will deal with producing and guiding the necessary training of these control systems by identifying key areas where performance specifications are being violated.”

Having received this highly notable fellowship and accompanying funding, Arnett will have the ability to focus all of his efforts on his research.

“Not only will the NSDEG fellowship allow me to devote all of my time towards research, but it will also help with traveling to the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) for collaborative efforts. More generally, it will help drive implementation towards more-complex control algorithms and increase safety and performance in autonomous systems,” added Arnett.

“I am incredibly honored to have been selected to receive an NDSEG fellowship, and I owe much to the guidance given to me by my CEAS advisors Kelly Cohen and Nick Ernest, and Matthew Clark, my research advisor at AFRL.”

The NSDEG fellowship program is sponsored by the

Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)

, the

Army Research Office (ARO)

, the High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCM) and the

Office of Naval Research

under the direction of the

Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E)

.

Select for further information the NSDEG Graduate Fellowship.