The Air Force Institute of Technology, AFIT is located at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, and is committed to providing defense-focused graduate education and related research, and operationally relevant initial skills training and professional continuing education to Department of Defense Air Force members, civilians and contractors.  [contributed photo]

Lt. Daniel Piech, acquisition officer, AFSC 63A in the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center is a current part-time systems engineering and management graduate student at the Air Force Institute of Technology.

Piech commissioned into the Air Force in 2022 shortly after completing his undergraduate degree, and wanted to begin working in his career as soon as he commissioned so he could remain competitive with other young professionals in his field. 

In January 2024, Lt. Piech began his systems engineering and management degree at AFIT as a part-time distance learning student.   Attending part-time has allowed him to get a head-start on a master’s degree and the opportunity to complete two major career milestones before being promoted to the rank of Captain.

As an acquisition officer in AFLCMC’s Fighter and Advanced Aircraft Directorate’s F-15 Division, Lt. Piech collaborates between and manages various programs that require him to comprehend the programs in their entirety and prioritize requirements within a given period of performance.  As a part-time AFIT student, he is able to apply the knowledge from his system engineering courses to his current career.

“The systems engineering and management graduate degree program has not only taught me how to make decisions based on the data in front of me, but has also honed my modeling systems and architectures skills that I utilize and refine daily.  Most of my counterparts in industry are systems engineers and AFIT is teaching me how to see and think like they do” said Lt. Daniel Piech.

“Furthermore, AFIT’s faculty has exceeded the standard in every single way.  Every professor, advisor and administrator has been a pleasure to work with and the utmost professional at what they do.  After I complete my graduate degree, I hope to return to AFIT to pursue my Ph.D.,” said Piech.

Lt. Piech’s thesis will focus on how systems or procedures can be modeled and integrated in a way that maximizes efficiency when introducing new technology to a legacy system or procedure.  His research will involve a collaboration between two departments within AFIT’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management.

“As his advisor, Daniel is a great example of how GSEM’s departments, systems engineering and management and engineering physics, can work together across multiple domains to bring together methods, applications, and best practices to solve relevant and difficult problems from across the Department of Defense; from problems found in program offices, such as F-15, all the way to highly specialized research fields,” said Maj. Mark Bateman, assistant professor of systems engineering, and director, systems engineering distance learning program, AFIT GSEM department of systems engineering and management.

“Overall, from the systems engineering DL perspective, we encourage all of our part-time students doing research to engage with topics that are either relevant to their work centers or something they have or want to have domain knowledge about.

We then work to have the students apply the skills, tools, and methods they have learned through our classes to deliver value back to the DoD, either by their own work centers or other applications; whether in the form of novel applications, or approaches to solving tough problems.  All the while, the students are learning to conduct sound research and formulate and defend a technical argument,” said Bateman.

The Air Force Institute of Technology, AFIT is located at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, and is committed to providing defense-focused graduate education and related research, and operationally relevant initial skills training and professional continuing education to sustain the technological supremacy of America's air, space, and cyber forces. 

AFIT’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management provides in-residence and distance learning graduate degrees and certificates in engineering, applied science, mathematics and management. GSEM provides its students with several significant advantages, including a more personalized educational experience; academic programs with a defense-related focus, and research on high-priority defense problems.

Degree and certificate programs are open to active-duty U.S. military members, DoD government civilians and contractors, and international allies.   For more information, please visit https://www.afit.edu/EN/ .