Nine selected for long-term training

ERDC PAO
Published April 2, 2018

VICKSBURG, Miss. (March 28, 2018)--Dr. David W. Pittman, director of the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Mississippi, has announced the selection of nine ERDC team members for long-term training during the 2018-2019 academic year.

Dr. Mark Chappell, with the Environmental Laboratory, will work on an algorithm to augment his ability to quantify how accurately he can predict soils in remote areas; the work will be conducted at the Soil Security Laboratory, University of Sydney, under the ERDC sabbatical program. Chappell has developed one core theory of the algorithm; University of Sydney researchers have developed a second part. The expectation of the sabbatical is that Chappell will develop the complete soil-matching algorithm to enhance the Army’s modelling abilities.

Representing the Information Technology Laboratory are Willie Brown, Quincy Alexander, Alex Baylot and Jed Richards. 

Brown will pursue a doctorate in Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and will focus on human factors in technology; Alexander will attend the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, to pursue a doctorate in civil engineering. He will develop improved methods for monitoring civil infrastructure conditions to avoid catastrophic failure, providing safe and reliable infrastructure to support the nation's water resources.

Baylot will earn a doctorate in systems engineering from University of South Alabama, focusing on the application of systems engineering to the tradespace exploration and linkage of system performance, cost and reliability with computational modeling; and Richards will attend Worcester Polytechnic Institute to obtain a doctorate in systems engineering and will concentrate on systems engineering methods during early defense acquisition programs — specifically, tradespace exploration enabled by integration of design, performance and cost models while the system definition is still immature. 

Chris Rabalais, Geotechnical and Structures Laboratory, will attend University of Texas at Austin to pursue a doctorate in civil engineering.  His studies will focus on the rapid repair of bridge components and systems. 

Selected from the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, Tate McAlpin will attend Louisiana State University to seek his doctorate in civil engineering. His studies will focus on investigating the processes associated with bedload transport in rivers.  

The final two selectees are Meghan Quinn and John Eylander with the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. Quinn will attend the University of Rhode Island to pursue a doctorate in civil and environmental engineering and will focus on environmental effects of soil-sensor coupling in urban areas.

Eylander will pursue a doctorate in environmental science at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. He will develop a surface hydrologic model that improves representation of soil thermal and salinity properties. He will use the model in climate simulations to assess long-term impacts on agriculture, such as crop yield.

ERDC supports funded university LTT at the doctorate level only. CP-16 Engineers and Scientists (non-construction), CP-18 Engineers and Scientists (resources and construction), careerists and those interested in the ERDC Sabbatical Program are encouraged to apply. Employees in these categories must have full career status and a performance score of 2.5 or higher under the Personnel Demonstration Project or a fully successful or better rating under the Total Army Personnel Evaluation System to meet eligibility requirements.