Research

Continuation of the rapid advances in density and speed in electronic and optoelectronic systems needed for modern commercial and defense applications depends heavily on the development of optimal and high authority control and estimation algorithms for the manufacture of arrays of nanoscale (< 100 nm) semiconductor devices.

Sulfide corrosion of concrete in wastewater collection systems causes millions of dollars in damage in the U.S. each year.  Sulfide corrosion occurs when microorganisms in anaerobic films below the water surface produce hydrogen sulfide.  The sulfide evaporates into the atmosphere and redissolves in moisture which has condensed on the portions of the pipe above the wastewater.

The rapid development of space communication technology and its wide spread  applications have significantly increased the demand for accurate determination and forecasting of the conditions of the ionosphere.  The conditions of the ionosphere can drastically affect space communication systems. The deployment of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and the vast network of GPS ground stations as well as low earth orbiting satellites provide large amounts of measurements of the ionosphere.

Presently researchers and clinicians investigating alcoholism, the physiological effects of alcohol in humans or animal models, or the efficacy of treatment regimens, have only two ways to collect field measurements of blood alcohol concentration (BAC) on volunteer subjects or patients.  One is the breathalyzer, which produces an estimate of BAC by measuring the concentration of alcohol in exhaled breath and then multiplying it by the partition ratio of 2100 to 1, the ratio of breath alcohol to blood alcohol.  However the use of the breathalyzer as a mean of collecting field data has a number of significant drawbacks.

This work is in part motivated by the desire to seek new designs for optical and RF components.  The functionality of photonic crystals in relation to its spatial geometry is studied. Among some of the objectives of this work are to model and develop algorithms and computational code to identify configurations of dielectric cylinders that achieve predetermined electromagnetic  responses. Some of the mathematical challenges include, finding global minima of non-convex functions, sensitivity of solutions with respect to different problem parameters.