College of Aeronautics

College of Business

LuAnn Bean received her certification as a Forensic Certified Public Accountant (FCPA). The FCPA, administered by the Forensic CPA Society, is a designation that recognizes excellence in the forensic accounting profession. Forensic CPAs assist the public and the business community in investigations of fraud, shareholder or partnership disputes related to accounting records; prepare damage analyses;
and/or testify before an arbitrator, mediator or court. 

Deborah Carstens’ paper, “Error Analysis Leading Technology Development” was published in Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science.

B. Andrew Cudmore was a faculty adviser to students in a marketing principles class that joined in an EdVenture Partners competition to provide marketing ideas to the makers of the Cadillac. The class presented a marketing communications plan for a live case, focused on the launch of the new Cadillac CTS model, and placed fourth out of 53 schools in the undergraduate division’s first round of the National Case Study Competition.

Elton Daal’s paper, “Volatility Clustering, Leverage Effects, and Jump Dynamics in the U.S. and Emerging Asian Equity Markets,” was accepted for publication in the Journal of Banking and Finance. The paper develops and tests a new model for asset returns that can capture several stylized facts that are important for risk management and option pricing.

Roger Manley’s paper, “Understanding Organizational Culture and its Role in Organizational Change and Partnering,” was published by Common Ground Publisher at www.cgpublisher.com.

College of Engineering

Chang Wen Chen was conference chair for the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) Conference on Visual Communication and Image Processing 2007 in San Jose, Calif. Doctoral student Daewon Song and visiting professor Rongke Liu also presented papers at the conference.

Fred Ham and doctoral student Ranjan Acharyya were invited to write Chapter 3 for Part I—Signal Processing for Remote Sensing. The chapter, titled “A Universal Neural Network–Based Infrasound Event Classifier,” was published by CRC Press.

Lee Harris and graduate student Christopher Flanary presented “Nearshore Wave & Current Data for the Florida East Coast 2004 & 2005 Hurricanes” at the Florida Shore and Beach Preservation Association meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Sebastian Inlet District has sponsored this research since 1996 and many DMES graduate students have worked on it. Additional information and data are available at Harris’ Web site at  http://research.fit.edu/wavedata.

Daniel Kirk was elected as one of only two faculty members nationwide to serve on the AIAA Liquid Propulsion Sub-Committee.

Sam Kozaitis was a session chair at SPIE’s Defense and Security Symposium in Orlando for the conference on Independent Component Analyses, Wavelets, Unsupervised Nano-Biomimetic Sensors and Neural Networks V. He presented two papers: “Improved Denoising Approach Using Higher-order Statistics” and “Wavelet-based Fusion Approach Using Unique Reconstruction Approach,” the latter with graduate student Michel Ouendeno.

In addition, he is presented “Signal-to-noise Ratio for Cross-sensor Fusion Approach” at the conference on Multisensor, Multisource Information Fusion: Architectures, Algorithms, and Applications with Ouendeno.

Ashok Pandit was appointed as chair of the American Society of Civil Engineering Ground Water Quality Committee for two years.

Robert Sullivan received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Life Fellow and Life Member Pin this year for his long and distinguished service to the organization. He has been an active member for more than 20 years.

John Trefry presented an invited paper, “River-Shelf Interactions During Spring Floods in the Coastal Beaufort Sea,” at the American Geophysical Union Meeting in San Francisco, Calif.

Manolis Tomadakis’s manuscript was accepted for publication in Concepts in Magnetic Resonance. The paper presents a method for improving the processing of nuclear magnetic resonance data collected in fluid-saturated porous media. Applications include oil, gas and water reservoir exploration and recovery, and evaluation of the transport and structural characteristics of porous media and particle beds.

College of Psychology and Liberal Arts

Andrew Aberdein presented “Learning from Our Mistakes—but Especially from Our Fallacies and Howlers” at the Perspectives on Mathematical Practices 2007 conference in Brussels, Belgium.

Susanne Bahr is co-author of three papers that were accepted for presentation and publication by the 12th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction held in Beijing, China. The paper titles are “Nonverbally Smart User Interfaces: Postural and Facial Expression Data in Human Computer Interaction,” “Bilingual Mapping Visualizations as Tools for Chinese Language Acquisition” and “Multiple Heuristics Evaluation Table (MHET): Software Development and Usability Analysis Heuristics.”

Judy Strother attended the International Association of Science and Technology for Development (IASTED) conference in Chamonix, France. She chaired a session on blended learning and presented a paper entitled “Acculturated Blended Learning: Localizing a Blended Learning Course for Russian Trainees, co-written by master’s degree students Zohra Fazal and Michael Gurevich. Strother serves on the International Program Committee for IASTED.

Robert Taylor is the new head of the department of humanities and communication. He is the author of seven historical works, including his most recent, Florida, An Illustrated History. Taylor presented a lecture on Florida in the Civil War at the Orange County History Center in
Orlando, Fla.

David Wilder was appointed to the editorial board of Behavior Analysis in Practice, a new journal published by the Association for Behavior Analysis International. He was also appointed to a three-year term on the editorial board of the journal Education and Treatment of Children.

College of Science

Ravi Agarwal has been listed among the 300 most highly cited mathematicians in the world by Thomson Scientific. The honor goes to those with the highest number of citations in mathematics over two decades.
A citation is a note in a paper by another scientist of a reference from a published work. Less than one-half of one percent of all publishing authors meets the criteria for inclusion on ISIHighlyCited.com. The Web site includes more than 5,000 researcher profiles in 21 categories. The ISI Web of Science provides the source data for the site.

Florida Institute of Technology was recognized as Stone Middle School’s Business Partner of the Year for 2007. Debra Blenis, who serves on Stone Middle School’s Advisory Council, accepted the award for the university.

This honor is part of the annual effort made by Brevard Public Schools and the Brevard Schools Foundation to acknowledge outstanding school business partners and foundation business partners. 
Students from Florida Tech’s science and mathematics education have tutored students, assisted with science fair projects, judged science fairs and completed their teaching internships at Stone Middle School in Melbourne.

Joe Dwyer, Niescja Turner and Ming Zhang presented papers at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, Calif.

Marcus Hohlmann, adviser for the Florida Tech chapter of the Society of Physics Students (SPS), announced the organization was selected as an Outstanding SPS Chapter for 2005–2006. This is the third consecutive year the chapter has received this recognition. Less than 10 percent of the SPS chapters nationwide are chosen—an average of one per state.

Nasri Nesnas collaborated with Columbia University to publish a paper about the synthesis of visual molecules that are light stable, thus enabling a better understanding of vision. The paper appeared in a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry that was dedicated to the 80th birthday of Alfred Bader, the founder of the Aldrich Chemical Co.

Hakeem Oluseyi co-wrote a paper that was accepted for publication in Proceedings of The Total Solar Eclipse Conference on African Cultural Astronomy, Springer Publishing Co. He said the paper, “Participation and Research of Astronomers and Astrophysicists of Black African Descent, 1900–2005,” is the most comprehensive document on the topic to date.

Terry Oswalt was re-elected to a third term as Physics and Astronomy Councilor in the national election of the Council on Undergraduate Research. He was the first astronomer elected to the council in 2000—there are now three. His current term is 2007–2010.

Virender Sharma’s paper published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B: “Mössbauer Characterization and in Situ Monitoring of Thermal Decomposition of Potassium Ferrate (VI), K2FeO4 in Static Air Conditions.” The work described in the paper was conducted in collaboration with a scientist in the Czech Republic.

Richard Turner chaired a session on reproduction and development and presented a paper on sexual dimorphism in tropical Atlantic sea urchins at the 12th International Echinoderm Conference at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, N.H.

Robert van Woesik wrote “The Transition Zone Chlorophyll Front Acts as a Trigger for Acanthaster planci Outbreaks in the Pacific Ocean: a Historical Confirmation” that was published in the Journal of Oceanography.

Matt Wood co-wrote “The Physical Origin of Negative Superhumps” that was accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. 

University College

Mary Bonhomme, associate provost for online learning, moderated a session titled “Using Blended/Hybrid Learning to Achieve Efficiencies in Learning: Lessons Learned from Industry and Higher Education” at the Conference on Industry and Education Collaboration in Palm Springs, Calif.

Catherine Elder, Hampton Roads Extended Studies Division, was appointed to the Learning Technology Advisory Committee of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. The committee assists the council with technology enriched teaching and learning initiatives.

Kermit Zieg’s article, “Allocating Capital to Multiple Trading Signals,” was published in the November 2006 issue of Active Trader magazine (www.activetradermag.com). Zieg is with the National Capital Region Extended Studies Division in Alexandria, Va.