The AFIT Center for Directed Energy (CDE) has had great success with its research assistant program and Directed Energy Summer Interns (DESI). In fact, the lion’s share of the Center’s $1M research portfolio is executed by civilian graduate and undergraduate student research assistants and undergraduate interns mentored by AFIT faculty and CDE research staff. CDE research assistants are hired via a contract vehicle, work part time during the academic year and full time during the summer, and attend Dayton-area colleges and universities. DESIs come to AFIT from schools across the nation for a 12 to 14 week full-time research experience. This year’s DESI class, sponsored by the High Energy Laser Joint Technology Office in support of the Directed Energy Professional Society, hail from the University of Dayton, University of Oklahoma, The Ohio State University, Washington University, and Brown University. The 2008 DESIs are engaged in research areas including modeling atmospheric effects on directed energy propagation, bi-directional reflectance function measurement, experimental hardware design, and experimental adaptive optics. Students participating in both programs gain valuable real world experience in the application of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to real world DoD Directed Energy technology problems.
CDE is known throughout the Directed Energy and the Intelligence communities for its computational performance analysis tools. The production and maintenance of these software products would simply not be possible without the creativity, professionalism, and the desire to contribute exhibited by the Center’s present and past research assistants and interns. Furthermore, they continue and follow-up thesis research conducted by the military graduate students who participate in Center activities.
In return for their critical achievements, the Center nurtures the nascent careers of these young professionals. Matthew Krizo, a former CDE research assistant, became a full-time government Research Engineer within the Center, while completing his MS degree at the University of Dayton. Christopher Rice, another former research assistant, remained to get his MS from AFIT and is now a full-time doctoral candidate in the Engineering Physics department. Former intern Liesebet Gravley stayed at AFIT for her MS in Applied Physics instead of going to Ohio State and had her thesis published in the Journal of Directed Energy. Two DESI interns have returned for second internships.
The technical and programmatic success of any effort of this type is best demonstrated in terms of product produced, papers presented, awards earned, journal articles published, and student matriculation. Consider the following for the period 2004-2007:
Support to key DE performance modeling deliverables: HELEEOS and LEEDR
