phd dissertation georgia tech

Welcome to the ETD Submission System

Welcome to Georgia Tech's system for submitting your graduate thesis or dissertation. Undergraduate Research Option Theses are submitted here as well.

Once you have passed the final defense and satisfied the requirements of the committee, you are ready to submit your manuscript to the Thesis Office for review. This submission process is fully electronic, and is made through an online application developed and maintained by the Texas Digital Library, in conjunction with the Texas A&M, MIT, and UIUC.

To get started with your submission, click the link below. You will be asked to authenticate using your GT Account:

Your help can make things better...

Your feedback is very important to us; it allows us to continue to improve the system. Please feel free to notify us directly at [email protected] if you have any suggestions to increase the usability or effectiveness of this application. You can talk to the your Thesis Office regarding any issues that may arise during the submission process.

Please contact the Thesis Office if you have any questions.

If you have questions about an UNDERGRADUATE thesis, please contact the UROP office:   https://urop.gatech.edu/content/contact-us

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Dissertation and Graduation

Graduation forms and procedures.

In the beginning of the semester in which you wish to graduate you need to apply to graduate on line by filling out the  Online Application for Graduation  (be sure to click the "Graduate" tab to get the correct information). For the precise deadline see the  Official School Calendar .

Details of all the required forms and deadlines for submitting your thesis can be found on Georgia Tech's Office of Graduate Studies'  Theses and Dissertations webpage . In particular, you need to turn in the following. 1.   Doctoral Minor Form .  For "School/Program Graduate Coordinator" put the graduate chair Xingxing Yu. 2.   Admission to PhD Candidacy Form . For "School Chair" put the graduate chair Xingxing Yu, and for "Graduate Coordinator" put Chris Jankowski.  This form should be completed well before your dissertation defense.  3. After your defense, you need to have completed your Thesis Approval Form .  For "School Chair OR Graduate Coordinator" put the graduate chair Xingxing Yu. 4. In addition, there is the SMARTech Repository Agreement Form and the Dissertation Abstract to be submitted.

See the GT document checklist  for full details.

In general students need to be registered for the semester in which they wish to graduate; however, if they have already satisfied all degree requirements, then they may be exempted from registration by filing out the  Enrollment Waiver Form . For more details and further info see  Requirements for the Doctoral Degree  described in the  GT Catalogue .

Defense of the Dissertation

The final official event in the PhD program is the defense of the thesis, which is also known as the final oral exam. Please refer to Georgia Tech's  Office of Graduate Studies  for official rules. In the School of Math defense takes place in the student's last semester, two weeks or more before the dissertation is due (in final form!) in the Graduate Office, and it should be preceded by several officially registered events: Comprehensive Exams, Approval of Minor, and Admission to Candidacy.

The Dissertation Committee and the defense should be approved by the School's  Director of Graduate Studies  (DGS) two weeks in advance and then submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies.  At this time, a copy of the dissertation is placed on public display in the faculty lounge, and the time and place of the defense are announced to the public. The Dissertation Committee consists typically of five members including the dissertation advisor and at least one academic member from outside the School of Mathematics. The Committee is selected by the advisor in consultation with DGS.

The student takes responsibility for announcing the dissertation defense by going to our seminar page , clicking "Add Seminar" and then selecting "Dissertation Defense" as the appropriate seminar series and completing the page.  The student must also handle the room reservations, deliver copies of the dissertation, etc. The student and/or his/her advisor, must make a copy of the thesis available to all members of the Dissertation Committee at least two weeks before the defense date, or as otherwise agreed with the Committee's members.

The final defense is a public event, and after a presentation of the dissertation everyone is invited to ask questions of the candidate. The public is then dismissed and the Committee continues to ask probing questions. Eventually the candidate leaves the room and the Committee deliberates, then announces the decision. The Committee reports the result of the defense to the DGS and to the Vice Provost. The dissertation is archived electronically.

Forms to Bring to the Defense

The student will need to request that the committee complete the Thesis Approval Form upon a successful defense. Furthermore the student should bring to the exam a copy of the  Dissertation Defense Survey   (here is the new Dissertation Defense Survey beginning in Fall 2023 ) for each committee member. The student's advisor will collect these forms at the conclusion of the exam and hand them to DGS. Committee members who participate in the exam via remote video conferencing may fill out the form online and email it to DGS.

Exit Survey

As new PhD recipients of the School of Math, you are asked to please fill out our  PhD Exit Survey  and send it to the graduate director. The replies to these questions will be tabulated anonymously for internal evaluation of our PhD programs, while the individual identity of the respondents will be held in confidence by the Graduate Director.

Thesis and Dissertation Policy

POLICY ON THE ADVISEMENT OF GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH AND THE APPOINTMENT OF THESIS ADVISORY COMMITTEES

Doctoral Theses

There are two committees that function to advise, approve, and conduct the final doctoral oral examination of the thesis and the student's knowledge of the field in which it lies.

The first committee is called the Thesis Advisory Committee or the Thesis Reading Committee and consists of at least three people, one of whom is the Thesis Advisor. This committee approves the research topic, provides advice and guidance during the research, and is charged with approving the thesis when the research is completed and presented as the doctoral thesis. When the Thesis Advisory Committee considers the thesis to be satisfactory, a recommendation is made to the Vice Provost for Graduate and Postdoctoral Education for the appointment of the second committee, which is called the Final Doctoral Examination Committee, and it consists of at least five individuals.

The Thesis Advisory Committee consists of at least three members satisfying the following: (1) the thesis advisor shall be a member of the Graduate Thesis Faculty (which is defined below). If the thesis advisor is an Adjunct Faculty or part-time faculty member, then there must be a co-advisor who is a full-time member of the Graduate Thesis Faculty. (2) the majority of committee members shall be members of the Graduate Thesis Faculty. The Committee is approved by the Graduate Curriculum Committee or its equivalent in the academic program, recommended by the School Chair or the faculty director of graduate studies in the program, and appointed by the Vice Provost for Graduate and Postdoctoral Education.

The Final Doctoral Examination Committee consists of at least five persons including at least three members of the Graduate Thesis Faculty. This committee always contains the Thesis Advisory Committee members and others as appropriate, who are recommended by the school or college to the Vice Provost for Graduate and Postdoctoral Education for approval. The thesis advisor will serve as the chair of the Final Doctoral Examination Committee. At least one member of the Final Doctoral Examination Committee must be external to the unit in which the student is enrolled. A committee member is eligible to be the “external” member if they have a terminal degree and either 1) are a faculty member from a unit that is distinct from the unit in which the student is enrolled, or 2) are not employed by Georgia Tech and are active in research related to the topic of the dissertation.

It is recognized that some Schools and Colleges may wish to appoint a Thesis Advisory Committee that consists of five or more persons, and to recommend this committee to serve as the Final Doctoral Examination Committee. Where the constraints outlined above are met for both committees, this is permissible.

Master's Theses

For Master's Thesis advisement, the Thesis Advisory Committee consists of at least three members, the majority of whom must be members of the Graduate Thesis Faculty. The thesis advisor who serves as the Chair of the Thesis Advisory Committee must be a member of the Graduate Thesis Faculty. If the thesis advisor is an Adjunct Faculty or part-time faculty, then there must be a co-advisor who is a full-time member of the Graduate Thesis Faculty. The committee is recommended by the School Chair or the faculty director of graduate studies in the program and appointed by the Vice Provost for Graduate and Postdoctoral Education.

Graduate Thesis Faculty

The Graduate Thesis Faculty of an academic program consist of the tenure-track faculty in the program plus any additional faculty (emeritus, academic, research and adjunct) who have been approved to serve as primary thesis advisors by the Graduate Curriculum Committee or equivalent governing faculty committee of that academic program based on the following primary qualifications and any additional criteria established by that academic program faculty:

• Active in research or scholarly work
• Experience or training in teaching or mentoring graduate students
• Terminal degree

In the case of interdisciplinary programs, the governing faculty committee for that program may choose to include both the Graduate Thesis Faculty of a student’s home school and the Graduate Thesis Faculty of the academic program when determining the membership of thesis committees.

The Office of Graduate Education will maintain the list of non-tenure track faculty approved to be Graduate Thesis Faculty, as provided to them by the academic units. The Office of Faculty Affairs maintains the list of tenure-track faculty; together these two lists comprise the Graduate Thesis Faculty. This Graduate Thesis Faculty designation is meant for the purposes of this policy only and is not a faculty rank. The designation alone does not carry with it any employment implications or rights as outlined by Georgia Tech Faculty governance. 

Note On Joint Degrees and Departments

For joint (inter-institutional) departments or degree programs, committees should have at least one faculty member from each institution, and a majority should be joint program faculty. Joint program faculty will have undergone a nomination and appointment process in the joint program to qualify for the right to advise students in the joint program.

POLICY ON PUBLICATION OF THESES

A policy of the Georgia Institute of Technology is that Doctoral and Master's Theses are openly published. Extraordinary delays are not to be allowed to protect the proprietary interests of sponsors.

It is anticipated that all Ph.D. theses and a significant fraction of master's theses be published in the open, refereed literature.

In all cases, doctoral research should meet the "Guidelines for Ph.D. Dissertation Research", and in no situation should these be compromised to allow for concealing important research results because of security classification or a sponsor's proprietary interest.

Students may routinely elect to have publication of their theses withheld for a period of one year, if recommended by the student's thesis advisor. Requests for extensions beyond one year must be justified and approved by the Vice Provost for Graduate and Postdoctoral Education.

A Georgia Tech doctoral dissertation in its final form may not be used or have been used to meet the requirements for a separate degree at another institution.

GUIDELINES FOR PH.D. DISSERTATION RESEARCH

• The research should provide a useful educational experience for the student emphasizing creativity, independent action and learning, research methodology, and scholarly approach.
• The research must be relevant to the field in which the student is pursuing a degree.
• The contributions to knowledge must be original and as such, should represent a substantial addition to the fundamental knowledge of the field or a new and better interpretation of facts already known. The research must demonstrate creativity. Dissertations based on well-known principles, techniques, and models applied to situations only somewhat different from previous applications are not acceptable.
• The dissertation should contain clear statements about (a) the relevance and importance of the problem and (b) the significance, originality, and generality of the research results. The relationship of the research to the literature of the field should be described.
• The research should possess the major characteristics of the scientific method, namely objectivity and reproducibility. Assumptions should be clearly stated in both experimental and theoretical research.
• The dissertation should reflect a level of competence indicative of significant achievement beyond the master's level. Thus, the research is expected to draw directly upon advanced learning in the student's major field and demonstrate mastery of that knowledge.
• The dissertation must demonstrate understanding of the theory and methodology related to its main thrust. Further the dissertation should reflect knowledge of the application area.
• The research should result in at least one paper or creative work that is publishable through an external peer review process for the public.
• The dissertation should demonstrate a high degree of proficiency in written communication of research results. It should conform to the Institute's requirements as outlined in the Office of Graduate Studies and Research "Manual for the Preparation of Graduate Dissertations and Thesis".

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George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

Ph.D. Residency Requirement

Doctoral students must spend at least two full-time semesters in residence at the Georgia Institute of Technology and ordinarily must complete research for the dissertation while in residence. Under special circumstances, candidates who have met the residency requirement may receive permission to pursue their research in absentia, provided the chair of the appropriate school approves and a faculty member directs the project. In either case, doctoral students working full time on thesis research should be registered for a full course load of "9000" dissertation hours each semester.

Guidelines for Ph.D. Dissertation

Doctoral research should provide a useful educational experience that emphasizes creativity, independent action and learning, implementation of research methodology, and a scholarly approach.  The research must be relevant to the field in which you are pursuing a degree.  The dissertation should demonstrate a high degree of proficiency in the written communication (in English) of research results.  It should conform to the Institute's requirements as outlined in the Thesis Manual.

After adequate preparation, you must complete a searching and authoritative investigation in your chosen field, culminating in a written dissertation covering that investigation.  The dissertation either must be an addition to the fundamental knowledge of the field or a new and better interpretation of facts already known.  The dissertation must demonstrate that you possess powers of original thought, a talent for research, and the ability to organize and present findings.

The contribution must be original and, as such, should represent a substantial addition to the fundamental knowledge of the field or a new and better interpretation of facts already known. Dissertations based on well-known principles, techniques, and models applied to situations only somewhat different from previous applications are not acceptable.

The dissertation should contain clear statements about the relevance and importance of the problem as well as the significance, originality, and generality of the research results.  The relationship of the research to the literature in the field should be described fully.  The dissertation must demonstrate an understanding of the theory and methodology related to its main thrust, and it should reflect knowledge of the application area.

The research should possess the major characteristics of the scientific method, namely, objectivity and reproducibility.  Experimental and theoretical research assumptions should be clearly stated.  The scope of the research should be such that it requires at least the time and effort equivalent to one year of full-time graduate study.  The research should result in at least one paper that might be published in a refereed journal of engineering, science, management, or architecture, as appropriate.

Ph.D. Dissertation Defense Process

Your defense must be at least six (6) months after your proposal presentation.

After adequate preparation, you must complete a searching and authoritative investigation in your chosen field that culminates in a written dissertation describing that investigation.  An oral defense of the dissertation will be scheduled.  The following procedure must be followed at the time of the dissertation defense.

Step 1. Provide your completed written Ph.D. Dissertation to the members of your Ph.D. Reading Committee.

You must provide copies of the completed final draft of your dissertation to each member of the Ph.D. Dissertation Reading Committee. This must be done at least two weeks before the final dissertation defense. The defense may be scheduled only after the members of your committee have reviewed the written document and consider the dissertation to be satisfactory.

Step 2. Schedule your Ph.D. Dissertation Defense and submit your Ph.D. Dissertation Defense announcement to the Office of Student Services.

Poll your committee and establish a date and time for the defense.  Reserve a room, and prepare an announcement of the defense.  Submit your announcement at the following link: https://www2.me.gatech.edu/graddb/forms/student/

This step must be completed at least two weeks (14 days) before your defense. The announcement will be posted to the Woodruff School Calendar.

Step 3. Submit your Certificate of Thesis Approval.

A. The Thesis/Proposal/Dissertation Assessment form is now available in Qualtrics . Each committee member must complete the Qualtrics form at the conclusion of the presentation. The form will be routed to the Office of Student Services for further processing.

B.  After your presentation, please complete the Certificate of Thesis Approval for Doctoral Students form via DocuSign. Please list Dr. Andrei Fedorov as the Graduate Coordinator/Staff Administrator. An email will send automatically requesting the required signatures. Everyone will receive a final, signed copy of the form. Please email the final, signed copy of your form to your Staff Academic Advisor.

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

You must be registered during the semester in which the final presentation occurs, unless an Enrollment Waiver ( http://registrar.gatech.edu/docs/pdf/Enrollment_Waiver_form.pdf ) is requested and approved.

Submitting your Dissertation

Format Check

You are urged to have your thesis format checked before making the final copies for your committee. To make an appointment to have the format of your thesis checked, please call the Graduate Thesis Office (Savant Building, Room 318) at 404-894-3092, or e-mail [email protected] .

There are deadlines for the initial format check that is one week before the final submission deadline. There is a recommended deadline, but initial format checks will not be done in the week leading up to the thesis deadline; only final submissions will be checked that week. The specific requirements for the format, publication, and distribution of the thesis are explained here: http://gradadmiss.gatech.edu/theses-dissertations

Electronic Submission of Theses and Dissertations

Paper copies should be given to your advisor and the members of your reading committee, unless the members request a different format.

Please submit your theses electronically to the Graduate Studies office: grad.gatech.edu/theses-dissertations-electronic-submission

Enter the requested information about yourself and your thesis/dissertation and upload your thesis or dissertation in PDF format. Once you submit the documents electronically, an e-mail notice will be sent to your committee members.

The Thesis Approval Page will be the second page in your thesis/dissertation, but it will not show any signatures. List the committee members who approved your thesis or dissertation, but remove the signature lines and be certain you type in the date, which is the date that the final draft of your thesis/dissertation was approved.

The Graduate Office will check your electronic document and let you know about any corrections you must make. Make the corrections and resubmit the corrected file. If the Graduate Office has all the related documents, your thesis/dissertation will be approved and they will notify the Registrar's Office that you are eligible to graduate. Once you have graduated, your thesis/dissertation will be released for electronic circulation.

Publication of your Dissertation

It is the policy of the Georgia Institute of Technology that doctoral dissertations and master's theses are to be published in the open literature.  Extraordinary delays to protect proprietary interests of sponsors are allowed.  It is anticipated that all Ph.D. dissertations and a significant fraction of master's theses be published as archival publications in the open, refereed literature. In all cases, doctoral research should meet all the requirements given in the section on General Guidelines for Ph.D. Dissertation Research, and in no situation should these items be compromised to allow for concealing important research results because of security classification or a sponsor's proprietary interest.

Under unusual circumstances and with the approval of the Dean of Graduate Studies, the dissertation may be held by the Dean for a period of time not to exceed one year before transmittal to the Georgia Tech Library for online posting as a PDF file.

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• PhD Program

Curriculum: Ph.D. Dissertation

The primary requirement of the Ph.D. student is to do original and substantial research. This research is reported for review in the Ph.D. dissertation.

There are three milestones for a dissertation: 1) passing the qualifying exam; 2) writing and successfully defending a thesis proposal; 3) writing and successfully defending a thesis. Students are responsible for regularly viewing and understanding the processes and specific requirements for these milestones as detailed in the ML Ph.D. Handbook , as well as any additional requirements of their home unit.

Thesis advisors for the ML Ph.D. can be any of the participating ML Ph.D. Program Faculty, regardless of whether they are in the same unit as the student. Students will be eligible for Graduate Research Assistantships and Graduate Teaching Assistantships in accordance with the policies of their home units.

Qualifying Exam

The purpose of the Qualifying Examination is to judge the candidate’s potential as an independent researcher.

The Ph.D. qualifying exam consists of a focused literature review that will take place over the course of one semester. At the beginning of the second semester of their second year, a qualifying committee consisting of three members of the ML Ph.D. Program Faculty will assign, in consultation with the student, a course of study consisting of influential papers, books, or other intellectual artifacts relevant to the student’s research interests. The student’s focus area and current research efforts (and related portfolio) will be considered in defining the course of study.

At the end of the semester, the student will submit a written report the demonstrates their understanding of both the technical content and the context of each artifact. Subsequently, the student will have a closed oral exam with the three members of the committee. The exam will be interactive, with the student and the committee discussing and criticizing each work and posing questions related to the student's current research to determine the breadth of the student’s knowledge in that specific area. 

The success of the examination will be determined by the committee’s qualitative assessment of the student’s understanding of the theory, methods, and ultimate impact of the assigned syllabus.

The student will be given a passing grade for meeting the requirements of the committee in both the written and the oral part. Unsatisfactory performance on either part will require the student to redo the entire qualifying exam in the following semester. Each student will be allowed only two attempts at the exam.

Students are expected to perform the review by the end of their second year in the program. Students taking the qualifying exam should register for CS 7999. To receive a permit or if you have any questions about the qualifying exam, please contact the ML Academic Advisor, Stephanie Niebuhr at  [email protected] .

Research Proposal

As the first step towards completing a dissertation, the student must prepare and defend a Research Proposal. The purpose of the proposal is to give the faculty an opportunity to give feedback on the student’s research direction, and to make sure they are developing into able communicators.

The Ph.D. proposal consists of a short document - 30 pages or less - describing the student's thesis, and a presentation to a proposal committee consisting of three  ML Ph.D. Program Faculty  chosen by the student. All coursework must be completed before the proposal can be scheduled.*

Ph.D. Thesis

The Ph.D. thesis committee consists of five faculty members, including the three ML Ph.D. Program Faculty who served on the proposal committee, and two additional members. At least one member must be external to the ML Ph.D. program. The committee is charged with approving the written dissertation and administering the final defense.  The defense consists of a public seminar followed by oral examination from the thesis committee.

Institute guidelines and requirements for formatting the document can be found in the Georgia Institute of Technology Graduate Studies Thesis and Dissertation Manual.  

*The Research Proposal and Ph.D. Thesis both require several forms before and after scheduling and moving forward with these milestones. Please review the ML Handbook and contact the ML Academic Advisor, Stephanie Niebuhr at [email protected] at least one month prior to express the intent of submitting your thesis proposal or defense, review coursework (due at the time of the proposal) and committee requirements, and clarify all details of the process.

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College of Computing

Ph.D. in Computational Science and Engineering

Admissions Requirements

Interested in applying for the CSE Ph.D. program? Submit an application through Georgia Tech admissions and be sure to designate a home unit.* 

To find out more about home units, TOEFL requirements and the other steps to admission in the CSE Ph.D. program, visit our Admissions Requirements page.

Ph.D. in CSE Admissions Requirements 

Program of Study

If you are interested in applying into the Ph.D. in CSE program, the program of study information will inform you of the hours and course-load required to complete the program.

Ph.D. in CSE Program of Study

CSE Qualifying Examination

This examination is designed to ensure the student has achieved sufficient knowledge in core areas of computational science and engineering as well as in their chosen specialization area as preparation for advanced research.

• Written qualifying exam: This written exam encompasses core areas of Computational Science and Engineering. Students select two areas among numerical methods, discrete algorithms, modeling and simulation, computational data analysis, and high performance computing. Material covered by the examination will normally include topics covered in core courses in the core area augmented with a reading list provided to the student as preparation for the examination. The format is a day-long written examination.
• Specialization exam and artifact defense: This portion of the exam has two purposes: to ensure that the student has acquired sufficient knowledge in his/her specialization area in a computing, engineering or science discipline for advanced research, and to ensure that the student can demonstrate an ability to integrate knowledge in mathematical foundations/computational methods and knowledge in a specific engineering or science discipline to synthesize a concrete computational artifact, e.g., a significant computer program. Specifics concerning the specialization exam and artifact defense depend on the home unit.

The qualifying exam must be attempted by the end of the second year of enrollment in the CSE doctoral program and in some home units the exam must be passed by the end of the second year. Please refer to the CSE graduate student handbook for detailed information.

CSE Doctoral Dissertation

The doctoral dissertation (thesis) forms a central component of the CSE Ph.D. program. Students must demonstrate the ability to perform independent research in collaboration with a faculty advisor that can be defended to a committee of faculty. To complete the doctoral thesis, students must complete three principal milestones: the Ph.D. proposal defense, the Ph.D. dissertation, and the Ph.D. dissertation defense.

From the Catalog:

Questions? 

Contact: Academic Advisor, CSE

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Final doctoral examination and defense of dissertation.

A student's thesis research may be carried out under the direction of any member of the program faculty. Research topics may therefore be chosen from a wide range of subjects in combinatorics, complexity and the analysis of algorithms, and combinatorial optimization.

The dissertation and final doctoral examination must meet the usual criteria of the Institute and the additional ACO requirements described below. Dissertation advisory committees and doctoral examination committees must include at least one faculty member with full-time appointment in the student's home department and at least one faculty member with full-time appointment in the  other unit(s) participating in the program.

Each ACO thesis must be available for public viewing at least one month prior to the scheduled defense. An ACO thesis should include results that in the judgment of the dissertation committee are publishable in top specialized journals in the corresponding field. For each ACO thesis a recognized expert in the field (other than the advisor or coadvisors, if any) must be designated as "reader". The reader may or may not be from Georgia Tech, and may or may not be a member of the thesis committee. A report from the reader must be available to the thesis committee and the ACO Director at least 48 hours prior to the defense. The reader's report should comment on the main research contributions, readability and publishability of the results.

Guidelines on joint authorship of thesis work.  All joint work included in a thesis must be properly credited. This is especially important in case of student coauthors. While students should feel encouraged to collaborate, faculty advisors should ensure that if a substantial part of thesis work is joint with another student(s), then the author of the thesis played a leadership role in the research. 

Every member of the dissertation committee will be asked to fill out an assessment rubric .

Current students should consult the FAQ page for more information. Past dissertations are available.

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Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering

College of engineering, ph.d. defense: carlota bonnet.

Location URL

Ph.D. Defense

Carlota Bonnet

(Advisor: Prof. Marilyn J. Smith)

will defend a doctoral thesis entitled,

Physics and Modeling of Nonlinear Sharp-Edged Transverse Gust Encounters and Applications to Urban Environments

Tuesday, April 30 

9:00 a.m. Montgomery Knight 317 and virtual on Teams:  https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_MDc1ZWI5ZTQtNDllMi00Mjg0LTk3NDgtYzI2YjE3YjU5ZGE3%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22482198bb-ae7b-4b25-8b7a-6d7f32faa083%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22af0448b1-ec41-4245-99ba-fb5b74e6bb1b%22%7d

Meeting ID: 298 435 175 267

Passcode: D8kWhy

The advent of smaller, lighter Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAV) focus on missions that are performed primarily in urban and nap-of-the-earth environments. These vehicles, with slower forward flight speeds and reduced mass ratios flying through large transients, have led to a renewed interest of gusts (discrete turbulence) and their impact on vehicle response. This knowledge is required to ensure both safety and the reduction of noise during operations, in particular during takeoff and landing (terminal operations). 

As such, a greater understanding of the flow physics of large canonical wing-gust interactions is required in order to accurately model these physics during vehicle design, especially for manned and autonomous control law development.  This understanding requires the development of physical and computational experiments that accurately capture the details of the flow field so that existing linear models can be expanded or new theories developed.

This defense will present the development of a computational methodology to model nonlinear sharp-edged transverse gusts and validate the results against experimental data. The methodology is then used to characterize the behavior of a lifting surface encountering transverse gusts of varying amplitudes and widths to isolate the fundamental physics which characterize the transition from traditional linear gust responses to nonlinear gust responses for traverse gusts with a top-hat profile. Lastly, the effect of vertical motion on the vehicle response is analyzed.

• Prof. Marilyn J. Smith – School of Aerospace Engineering
• Prof. Brian J. German – School of Aerospace Engineering
• Prof. Jonnalagadda V. R. Prasad– School of Aerospace Engineering
• Prof. Juergen Rauleder – School of Aerospace Engineering
• Dr. John Hrynuk – Research Mechanical Engineer, DEVCOM Army Research Lab
• Dr. Brett Peters – Senior Aerodynamics Engineer, REGENT Craft Inc.

Graduate Education

Office of graduate and postdoctoral education, phd defense by ben metcalf, may 1, 2024.

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in Bioinformatics

in the School of Biological Sciences

Benjamin Metcalf

Defends his thesis:

The Interrelationship Between Bacterial and Societal Factors Drives Pneumococcal Transmission and Disease Progression

Wednesday, May 1, 2024

BME Whitaker building, Room 1214

Thesis Advisor:

Dr. Sam Brown, Advisor

School of Biological Sciences

Georgia Institute of Technology Co-Advisor: Dr. Kristofer Wollein Waldetoft, Co-Advisor

Georgia Institute of Technology

Committee Members:

Dr. Marvin Whiteley

Dr. Joshua Weitz

Previous Affiliation: School of Biological Sciences

Georgia Institute of Technology Current Affiliation: School of Biology University of Maryland

Dr. Joe Lachance

Dr. Bernard Beall

Division of Bacterial Diseases

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Streptococcus pneumoniae (Spn) is a gram-positive opportunistic pathogen and a leading cause of bacterial pneumonia, meningitis, and sepsis worldwide. Spn is typically categorized by serotype and in most cases colonizes the nasopharynx asymptomatically (defined as carriage). On rare occasions, it can spread into normally sterile sites and cause severe infections known as invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD). Both the ability of Spn to cause these life-threatening illnesses ( i.e., its invasiveness) and the length of time in carriage ( i.e., its carriage duration) vary substantially across serotypes. IPD cases can occur in isolation or, occasionally, spread as localized outbreaks, often arising within disadvantaged communities like people experiencing homelessness (PEH) and people who inject drugs (PWID). In this dissertation, we seek to explore how pneumococcal life-history traits, host demographic factors, and the interrelationships between them can impact invasive disease at the population level.

In Chapter Two we show that variation in carriage duration can confound serotype invasiveness measurements and identify the best performing metrics for invasiveness. Our results also support previous work showing that when invasion occurs, it does so at or near the time of carriage acquisition. In Chapter Three we show that Spn transmission is host density-dependent, resulting in a stratification of serotypes by human population density. The fourth chapter provides evidence that the risk of IPD and IPD clustering is in part governed by human social conditions, with increased risks in disadvantaged populations. In the final discussion chapter, we provide a broader discussion of potential future directions of research, building on the work in this thesis.

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School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

College of engineering, ph.d. dissertation defense - yash-yee logan.

Title:   Data-Centric Approaches for Exploiting Meta-Information and Mitigating Model Regression to Aid Neural Networks Committee: Dr. Aaron Lanterman, ECE, Chair, Advisor Dr. Vince Calhoun, ECE Dr. May Wang, BME Dr. David Anderson, ECE Dr. Pamela Bhatti, ECE