The Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management has completed the academic year 2023-2024 promotion and tenure cycle. Seven 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 and learn more about their research areas of interest and career accomplishments at: www.AFIT.edu/bios. 

Dr. Lance Champagne earned promotion to Associate Professor of Operations Research with tenure within the Department of Operational Sciences. His research interests include simulation of autonomous system behavior, agent-based combat simulation, and neural network design for image, video classification, and textual analysis as well as agent-based and discrete-event simulation, machine learning techniques, artificial neural network classification and forecasting, and applied and multivariate statistics.

Champagne has demonstrated excellence in the 14 graduate courses he has taught since 2013 in various positions at AFIT including Adjunct Professor, Assistant Professor of Statistics and Assistant Professor of Operations Research. He has advised 17 M.S. students and 1 Ph.D. student, with another 4 M.S. and two Ph.D. students in progress. He has published 14 peer-reviewed journal articles with two additional articles accepted and performed peer-reviews for nine separate journals. Champagne received research funds and grants totaling over $1.7M.

Champagne was recognized with the Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Professor Award for 2022-2023, served as Program Chair for the Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis graduate certificate Program and served as President-elect and then President for the Dayton/Cincinnati INFORMS Chapter in 2020 and 2021.

Dr. Bruce Cox earned promotion to Associate Professor of Data Science with tenure within the Department of Operational Sciences. His research interests include large scale optimization, heuristic search, neural networks, and generative adversarial networks.

Cox has taught eight distinct courses at AFIT, for a total of 18 quarters of courses, and was honored as a 2022-2023 Dean's Distinguished Teaching Professor.

Cox has 12 published or accepted-for-publication peer-reviewed manuscripts, with six in journals ranked as QI by Scimago journal rankings and another six manuscripts in various stages of review. He has served as a referee for 22 manuscripts across six journals. Cox has supported research projects with grants over $900k including $500k in personal funding. He has advised 15 M.S. and two Ph.D. students, including two students who earned the Dean’s Award for best thesis, one who earned the 2022 Dr. Gregory S. Parnell Award, and one who earned the 2020 Dr. James T. Moore Graduate Research Prize.

Cox has also served as Program Chair for the Department of Operational Science’s Data Science master’s degree program and as an officer in the regional Cincinnati-Dayton INFORMS chapter for five years.

Dr. Darren Holland earned promotion to Research Associate Professor of Engineering Physics within the Department of Engineering Physics. Holland has co-instructed five classes, provided nine lectures, and taught 140 contact hours of the ENP computational short quarter classes.

Holland’s research interests include nuclear engineering: source detection and identification, design optimization, reactor design, radiation effects; mechanical engineering: vibrations, system identification, damping; aerospace engineering: turbine engines, testing and experimentation, bladed disks, damping coatings.

Holland has successfully graduated six M.S. students and published 11 journal articles and six conference papers. He has received $841k in sponsored research funds which has resulted in two patent awards, academic and national laboratory collaborations and service on 11 successful research committees.

Lt. Col. Ryan Kemnitz, Ph.D., earned promotion to Associate Professor of Aeronautical Engineering with military tenure within the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. His research areas of interest include process parameter and laser scanning strategy development for additive manufacturing of metal alloys, mechanical and microstructural characterization of additively manufactured materials.

Kemnitz has successfully advised 13 M.S. theses with another four M.S. theses in progress and is the current chair for one Ph.D. student. He has graduated one Ph.D. student as co-chair and has been or is currently a member of seven Ph.D. dissertation committees.

Kemnitz’s total funded research is $2.1M with assigned responsibility for over $1.5M as PI or co-PI. He has a total of 21 publications (four in 2023) with 198 citations and an h-index of eight from Google Scholar. Nine conference papers have been published and were accepted on basis of abstract review.

Highlighted professional contributions for Kemnitz include serving as Deputy Department Head of AFIT’s Aeronautics and Astronautics Department since 2023, acting as a member of several department committees, serving as Chair of the Aeronautics and Astronautics Best Thesis Committee and Session Chair for Advanced Manufacturing, Dayton-Cincinnati Aerospace Sciences Symposium (DCASS), 2018-2019.

Dr. Scott Nykl earned promotion to Professor of Computer Science within the Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering. His research interests include computer vision; computer graphics/augmented reality (AR); modeling and simulation/live, virtual, constructive (LVC); machine learning; parallel/concurrent programming/GPGPU programming; distributed real time visualizations; computational geometry / algorithms and computer networking / cyber security.

Nykl has taught 31 course offerings and developed a course with 100% new material to help students conduct research in vision-based navigation. He created and instructs a hardware-in-the-loop lab for AFIT’s annual ICE program.

Since 2015, Nykl has authored 20 peer-reviewed journal articles (18 in print or accepted, two under revision or review), authored two book chapters, contributed to 22 peer-reviewed conference papers and 25 peer-reviewed abstract conferences, and has been awarded two patents with one additional patent pending.

He supported 21 funded research projects totaling over $7.22M, including $3.49M in personal funding, and advised 21 M.S. (19 complete, six in progress) and three Ph.D. students. Seven of his students earned Distinguished Graduate status with one winning the Polk Award and another winning the Institution of Navigation Award.

Nykl has been recognized with numerous teaching awards including the SOCHE Faculty Excellence Award, the Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Professor Award, the Dr. Leslie M. Norton Teaching Excellence Award and the Eta Kappa Nu EE/CS Faculty Member of the Year Award. His work has earned two Air Force-level research awards – the Air Force Outstanding Scientist/Engineer of the Year (Junior) Award and the S&T Advanced Technology Development Award.

Nykl has an outstanding service record as a technical reviewer, member of numerous committees and journal reviewer for several prestigious journals. He serves as a speaker and advisor for several high-profile industry and government organizations.

Dr. Adib Samin earned promotion to Associate Professor of Nuclear Engineering with tenure within the Department of Engineering Physics.

Samin’s research interests include corrosion, mechanical properties, surface science, and radiation damage; multi-scale computational modeling of materials from the quantum scale to the continuum scale; numerical and analytical solutions of systems of differential equations and fitting model results to experimental data.

Samin has taught 16 different graduate-level course offerings (which included six unique courses) in addition to contributing to teaching refresher materials to new students.

In the area of research since arriving at AFIT in 2019, Samin has received sponsor funding totaling over $830k. He has successfully advised two AFIT theses and has over 40 refereed publications.

Samin has held several positions on Graduate School committees and served as secretary of the AFIT Faculty Council. Additionally, he regularly accepts invitations to review manuscripts for journals and has reviewed three funding proposals for various agencies.

Dr. Fred Schauer earned tenure at his current academic rank of Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering within the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Schauer’s research interests include energy, propulsion, power, novel cycles; laser diagnostics, combustion, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, heat transfer and hypersonics.

Schauer has 14 published journal articles plus one that has been accepted for publication. He has successfully advised 13 M.S. students and two M.E. students. Additionally, he has served as a committee member for 20 M.S., two M.E. and two Ph.D. students and as a Dean's representative for three Ph.D. students.

Since 2019, Schauer has had 21 conference proceeding publications, has reviewed papers for may high-profile journals and venues and has received over $333k in research funding.

In service to his profession, Schauer has served as co-chair of the JANNAF Pressure Gain Combustion Technical Committee, is a member of the AIAA Pressure Gain Combustion Technical Committee, and has organized ASME and IWDP meetings. He is also a member of the National Academy’s Frontiers of Engineering program.