Dr. Daniel DeLaurentis
Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Dr. Daniel DeLaurentis is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, College of Engineering, at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. His appointment at Purdue began in August of 2004. Prior to this appointment, he was Research Engineer and then Visiting Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech's School of Aerospace Engineering and a staff member of the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL). Dr. DeLaurentis' recent research has been in several areas: foundational methods for problems characterized as system-of-systems (especially in transportation), robust design for aerospace systems (including uncertainty modeling/management), and numerical and visual tools for capturing the interaction of system requirements, concepts, and technologies. The context for these activities has been the design of revolutionary air vehicles for which present sizing/synthesis models are incomplete (e.g. uninhabited air vehicles, UAVs). Several recent projects illustrate the extension beyond individual vehicles to the design of systems of vehicles. Applications include the design of an autonomous network of UAVs as an airborne, logistics architecture as well as intermodal transportation systems for enhanced mobility featuring advanced, personal air vehicles (both rotary and fixed wing). These activities have been conducted under grants from the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the NASA Langley Research Center, the NASA Ames Research Center, and the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). Additionally, at Georgia Tech, he has collaborated with other faculty on two interdisciplinary projects. Research on neural-network-based technology prediction was performed with the School of Electrical Engineering while a project involving the development of a "Design for Affordability" method for next-generation Marine Corp fighting vehicles was conducted in conjunction with the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). Both projects were funded by ONR.
Dr. DeLaurentis has been active in the publication of research results. He is lead author on a paper concerning derivation of future transportation requirements that appears in the Jan./Feb. 2004 issue of AIAA Journal of Aircraft. He has co-authored two journal articles on the topics of robust design simulation and probabilistic frameworks for aircraft design & technology infusion. He has two additional papers (as primary author) submitted to leading journals. In addition, he has also authored or co-authored over 20 conference/symposia papers ranging from uncertainty modeling for complex systems to transportation system design. In the process of leading research projects and publishing results, he has also served the role of research advisor and mentor for over 15 graduate students. In this role, he recently led a team of students to a 2nd place finish in the nationwide 2002 NASA Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) National Student Competition. Dr. DeLaurentis, a Senior Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), was recently selected as the Co-Technical Chair for the 9th AIAA/ISSMO Symposium on Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization, held in Atlanta, GA in Sept., 2002. The symposium is the primary conference for design methodology and optimization researchers and practitioners within aerospace community (and beyond).