UNMANNED VEHICLE AND ATMOSPHERIC
INVESTIGATION LAB
Dr. Marc Compere, PhD
Dr. Compere is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach Florida. His background is physical systems modeling, nonlinear dynamics, multi-vehicle scenarios, instrumentation, and sustainability. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in vehicle dynamics, electric power systems, instrumentation, modeling and simulation, and sustainable design courses, including Capstone Senior Design.
Dr. Dan Macchiarella, PhD
Nickolas D. "Dan" Macchiarella, Ph.D., is a Professor of Aeronautical Science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Florida. At the university Dan has held research, teaching and administrative leadership positions. His research portfolio includes serving as principal investigator (PI) and operational test pilot on varied projects. Dan’s research expertise focuses on the creation and application of virtual environments to meet research, educational and training needs. His recent projects apply photogrammetric techniques that use unmanned aircraft system (UAS) captured imagery and LIDAR data to build detailed and correctly scaled virtual objects that are exportable and reusable. This work includes modeling telecommunications infrastructure, historically significant buildings and environmentally sensitive locations within coastal areas. Dan has extensive experience flying and sensing with infrared systems in operational settings. These systems include aviation Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) and target acquisition and designation infrared systems. He serves as a standing member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Modeling and Simulation Technical Committee.
Dr. Marwa El-Sayed, PhD
Dr. El-Sayed is an Assistant Professor in environmental engineering in the Civil Engineering Department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU). Dr. El-Sayed’s research interests lie in characterizing the processes and sources of atmospheric pollutants to better understand how human's perturb these processes in order to ultimately quantify their impact on climate change, policy making, and human health.
Dr. El-Sayed received her PhD at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in Chemical, Biochemical & Environmental Engineering working on air pollution projects which focus on characterizing atmospheric aerosols particularly in the eastern United States. She holds a Masters degree from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in Engineering for Sustainable Development. She received an M.Sc. and a B.Sc. degrees in Chemical Engineering with honors from Cairo University in Egypt.
Dr. El-Sayed joined Colorado State University as a postdoctoral fellow in the Atmospheric Science Department where she conducted several field studies to investigate the air quality in the western United States. Prior to her doctorate degree, El-Sayed has worked as a research fellow at the National Research Center of Cairo where she applied the concepts of cleaner production in Egyptian industry. In addition, she worked as an environmental consultant for several projects in the Middle East and Europe.
Dr. Ronny Schroeder, PhD
Dr. Ronny Schroeder's background is in geoinformatics, physical geography and earth system research with a strong emphasis in satellite remote sensing, GIS applications (ESRI and QGIS), and climatology. Dr. Schroeder's specialty is in the synergistic fusion of various satellite remote sensing data sets and platforms for the long-term study and assessment of environmental processes and change. Ronny has previously worked at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California where he collaborated with internationally recognized scientists on various research projects on earth science satellite and airborne missions. Dr. Schroeder's current research activities include using NASA and NOAA satellites that support National Weather Service (NWS) snowmelt streamflow forecasts in the Red River of the North basin. Professor Schroeder has also initiated collaborative seed research with Dr. Adkins to investigate sources of convective initiation and suppression within the orographic planetary boundary layer (PBL) over Arizona during the North American Monsoon using a unique suite of meteorological instruments mounted onto both unmanned and manned Embry-Riddle aircraft.