The Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management has completed the academic year 2023-2024 promotion and tenure cycle. Nine faculty members underwent a rigorous evaluation of their teaching, scholarship and service resulting in a promotion in academic rank. Search AFIT Graduate School faculty bios online to learn more about their research areas of interest and career accomplishments at: www.AFIT.edu/bios.

Dr. Abigail Bickley
Associate Professor with Tenure

Dr. Abigail Bickley earned promotion to associate professor of nuclear engineering with tenure within the Department of Engineering Physics. She also serves as the Radiation Safety Officer for AFIT and manages the high performance computing cluster used by the nuclear engineering graduate program. 

Bickley specializes in the development of novel techniques for identifying signatures of nuclear proliferation. Her work spans the field of nuclear forensics to include materials analysis, computational nuclear reactor modeling and artificial intelligence aided identification of nuclear fuel cycle facility activities. Bickley's teaching interests include residual effects of nuclear weapons, technical nuclear forensics and non-proliferations of nuclear weapons and technologies. 

Bickley has taught seven distinct courses and served as committee chair for 10 master’s theses and four dissertations. She is a prolific author with more than 60 peer-reviewed publications. 

In 2021, Bickley was named the AFTAC Endowed Term Chair for Nuclear Treaty Monitoring. Other recent awards include the AFIT GSEM Distinguished Teaching Professor Award in 2021 and the AETC Nuclear Deterrence Operations Team Award in 2020.

Dr. Santasri Bose-Pillai
Research Associate Professor

Dr. Santasri Bose-Pillai earned promotion to Research Associate Professor in AFIT’s Center for Directed Energy within the Department of Engineering Physics. Her research interests include beam propagation and imaging through atmospheric turbulence; turbulence characterization, compensation, and mitigation; aerosol effects and optical coherence and statistical optics. 

Bose-Pillai has taught three distinct courses at AFIT and served as advisor to three master’s students and 20 interns. She has published more than 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and over 100 conference presentations and proceedings and is a senior member of SPIE and Optica (formerly Optical Society of America). She has been an invited speaker at several conferences and holds one U.S. patent. Bose-Pillai is a Topical Editor for Applied Optics, an Optica journal, and chairs a SPIE and an Optica Conference. She has served as the Chair for Optica’s Laser Systems Technical Group in the past. 

Bose-Pillai received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering with a focus in optics in 2008 and her M.S. in electrical engineering in 2005, both from New Mexico State University. She received her B.S.E.E with honors from Jadavpur University, India in 2000.

Dr. Frank Ciarallo
Associate Professor with Tenure

Dr. Frank Ciarallo earned promotion to associate professor of logistics and supply chain management with tenure within the Department of Operational Sciences. His research interests include logistics, supply chain management, inventory management, simulation, digital twins, game theory and modeling uncertainty in operations. 

Ciarallo has taught more than 20 distinct courses at AFIT and was honored as a 2023 Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Professor. As an AFIT faculty member, he has successfully graduated 40 master’s and 13 doctoral students. 

Ciarallo has published 32 journal articles and peer-reviewed articles for more than 15 journals. In addition, he serves as the editor in chief, of the Journal of Defense Analytics and Logistics. Ciarallo’s research has appeared in journals such as Management Science, Decision Sciences, IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, European Journal of Operations Research, and Journal of Air Transport Management. 

For research he has conducted at AFIT, Ciarallo has received $3.5M in research funding and has been funded by sources such as the National Science Foundation, Ohio Department of Transportation, Air Force Material Command and Cardinal Health.

Dr. Michael Febbraro
Research Associate Professor

Dr. Michael Febbraro earned promotion to research associate professor of nuclear engineering within the Department of Engineering Physics. 

He joined the faculty at AFIT in 2023 after his postdoctoral research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) where he became a staff scientist in 2017 and led a wide research program. His primary research interests relate to experimental nuclear physics, radiation detection and scintillating materials, and scientific instrumentation. He has over 10 years of experience in experimental nuclear physics measurements at particle accelerator facilities across the United States. 

In his role at AFIT, Febbraro has served as research advisor to three master’s degree students and is the author of 83 published journal articles. 

Febbraro’s research has been awarded $10M+ in funding since 2015 and has resulted in three U.S. patents and three invention disclosures filed with Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Additionally, he has served as PI/Co-PI on several Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE NNSA) projects. 

He is the recipient of the 2017 Joule Award – U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Agency.

LTC Phillip LaCasse
Associate Professor with Military Tenure

LTC Phillip LaCasse, U.S. Army, earned promotion to associate professor of operations research with military tenure within the Department of Operations Research. 

LaCasse is assigned to the Department of Operational Sciences as per a Memorandum of Agreement between AFIT and the U.S. Army Functional Area 49 Proponent Office by which FA49 branch provides a faculty position in exchange for credit of tuition fees for Army FA49 officers to pursue a graduate degree at AFIT. 

LaCasse has taught 10 distinct courses at AFIT, and a total of 13 overall across three institutions. In addition, he has successfully advised 17 master’s students. His research areas of interest include natural language processing, smart manufacturing, simulation, machine learning and artificial intelligence. 

LaCasse has published 13 archival peer-reviewed journal articles as well as three refereed conferences and one patent. He has secured $229K in research funding for student research supporting the Army, Air Force, and DoD.

Dr. Anil Patnaik
Professor with Tenure

Dr. Anil Patnaik earned promotion to professor of Physics with tenure within the Department of Engineering Physics. He specializes in the theory and experimentation of fundamental laser-matter interactions, both in the realm of classical and quantum regime, and their applications. 

He has worked on a wide range of topics in quantum optics, non-linear optics, laser-based diagnostics and state-of-the-art DAF applications, leading to about 250 publications and presentations, including highly-cited peer-reviewed journal publications, book chapters, plenary and invited talks, seminars and conference presentations. 

Patnaik has authored multiple authoritative review articles on the optical diagnostics techniques for reacting flows and plasmas, with one of them having the top 1% cited engineering journal paper status in Web of Science. 

Patnaik has received a remarkable $6.6M in research funding and is responsible for establishing a new lab for quantum optics (QuOTe) at AFIT. In additional to his research successes, he has developed four new courses and graduated 18 students. 

In service to his profession, he has been actively involved with professional societies such as American Physical Society (APS), Optica, SPIE (the international society for optics and photonics) and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). 

Patnaik’s recent awards include: QuOTe laboratory’s work awarded for “Videos in Science” competition in Dayton-Cincinnati Aerospace Science Symposium (2024); kHz-rate D-D Fusion paper chosen as Editor's Pick and cover page in High Power Laser Science and Engineering Journal (2024); Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Professor Award (2021). 

Dr. Jonah Reeger
Associate Professor with Tenure 

Dr. Jonah Reeger earned promotion to associate professor of mathematics with tenure within the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. 

His research areas of interest are numerical analysis, scientific computing, radial basis functions, optimal control and Reeger has received over $500K in research funding. 

Reeger has taught seven distinct courses at AFIT, has successfully advised four master’s students to graduation and has served as a frequent M.S./Ph.D. committee member. Additionally, he is the author of 18 journal articles Within AFIT’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics, he was named Fall 2024 Instructor of the Quarter and 2024-2025 Instructor of the Year.

Within AFIT’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics, he was named Fall 2024 Instructor of the Quarter and 2024-2025 Instructor of the Year. 

Dr. Jonathan “Dan” Ritschel
Professor with Tenure

Dr. Jonathan “Dan”Ritschel earned promotion to professor of systems integration and cost analysis with tenure within the Department of Systems Engineering and Management. His research interests are in the fields of economics and cost analysis—specifically: public choice, defense cost economics, acquisition reform, cost estimating and cost analysis. 

Ritschel has taught eight unique courses at AFIT and was named a 2021 Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Professor. In addition, he has successfully advised 26 master’s degree students to graduation. 

Ritschel has a prolific publication history at AFIT totaling 64 peer-reviewed journal articles and 42 journal articles co-authored with AFIT Professor of Statistics Dr. Tony White. In addition, he has acquired $1.248M in research funding. 

Ritschel personally led a brief to the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management and Comptroller (SAF/FM) and Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (SAF/AQ) during 2015 CORONA, where leaders gather to address a range of important strategic issues for the Department of the Air Force.

Dr. James Rutledge
Professor with Tenure

Dr. James Rutledge earned promotion to professor of aeronautical engineering with tenure within the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. His research interests include experimental and computational investigations of gas turbine heat transfer, unsteady fluid mechanics, inverse heat transfer and aerothermodynamics. 

Rutledge’s has spent the last 13 years as an AFIT faculty member, in both military and civilian positions. In 2019, he became AFIT’s first Graduate School of Engineering and Management permanent senior military faculty member as a Lieutenant Colonel in the USAF. He applied to a civilian faculty member position upon retirement from the Air Force in 2022. 

Rutledge has taught seven distinct courses and has advised 17 master’s and 3 doctoral students to completion. He has obtained approximately $375K in research funding while at AFIT. Rutledge’s research has resulted in five patents and more than 50 journal publications. 

Rutledge is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), senior member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and a member of Tau Beta Pi and the ASME K-14 Gas Turbine Heat Transfer Committee. 

Recent awards include: 2021 Outstanding Science & Engineering Educator, USAF; 2021 Best Paper in Heat Transfer for ASME Turbo Expo 2020; 2021 Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Professor.