SHM - Key Persons
Colin Olson earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado State University in 2003 and was inspired to study Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) by a stint at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Dynamics Summer School. There he met Dr. Michael Todd and recognized an opportunity to be involved with a new lab from its inception while studying nonlinear dynamics in an SHM context. He earned his M.S. in Structural Engineering in 2005 and his Ph.D. in 2008 with support from the LANL Engineering Institute and a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship.
His dissertation considered the use of biologically-inspired optimization routines to design custom nonlinear vibration profiles for improved damage detection, localization, and classification using novel pattern detection algorithms. The multi-disciplinary nature of the research required an education in, among others, the fields of probability theory, time-series analysis, signal processing, nonlinear dynamics, structural mechanics, machine learning, parameter and system identification, and optimization.
He went on to a post-doctoral research position at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington D.C. with support from an American Society of Engineering Education fellowship. He is currently a research engineer with NRL where his multi-disciplinary education has proved useful for projects that include real-time detection and tracking in maritime scenes, tailored force fields for the construction of optical metamaterials, and manifold-based anomaly detection in hyperspectral images.
Dustin completed his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in May 2009. He attended the 2009 Dynamics Summer School program at Los Alamos National Laboratory followed by a year of research as a post-baccalaureate with the LANL Engineering Institute. During this time, Dustin was involved in development of the structural health monitoring software package SHMTools and completed an intensive 6-month national security project.
Dustin began graduate school at UC San Diego in September 2010 under the advisement of Dr. Michael Todd. His research interests include structural health monitoring, digital image correlation and analysis, symbolic dynamics, and digital signal processing. In 2011, Dustin received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research and National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowships.
Job Titles:
- Fellow in the Structural Health Monitoring Research Group at the University of California
Eric Flynn is a postdoctoral fellow in the Structural Health monitoring research group at the University of California, San Diego in the department of Structural Engineering, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2010 as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. He earned his M.S. and B.S. in Engineering from the California Institute of Technology and Harvey Mudd College, respectively, with coursework focus in signal processing and structural dynamics and research focus in structural health monitoring (SHM) and laser imaging interferometry. Eric's Ph.D. dissertation research was on Bayesian experimental design approaches to structural health monitoring with emphasis in the area of ultrasonic guided waves. He specializes in the design of statistically optimal algorithms and sensing system hardware configurations for detecting the presence of defects in structures according to safety- and/or cost-based specifications. These risk-minimizing designs are derived according to a Bayesian framework that supports, among other things, non-uniform distributions of prior probabilities of damage, arbitrary costs associated with detection error, heterogeneous sensing types, and potential sensor malfunction. Central to Eric's work in SHM are a number of interdisciplinary collaborations with Los Alamos National Laboratory, including the design and field-testing of wireless sensor nodes and the development of software libraries for statistical processing of sensor data. Eric has authored 13 peer-reviewed journal articles and 16 conference proceedings in SHM and holds a US patent in the field.
Luke Overbey attended the Catholic University of America, where he received a Bachelors degree in Civil Engineering in June 2003. He received his Master of Science degree in Structural Engineering from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in June 2005 with a Jacobs School Fellowship. Luke continued at UCSD with support from the National Science Foundation, the Naval Research Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
His Ph.D. research focused on nonlinear time series analysis and pattern classification approaches to vibration-based damage detection and localization in structures. Research approaches included the use of state-space attractor reconstruction, information theory, neural networks, and multi-feature classification algorithms. He completed his Ph.D. in February 2008 with 20 publications resulting from his graduate work.
Since graduating, Luke has worked in pattern recognition, behavioral modeling, graph theory, and other nonlinear dynamic systems research. Luke, his wife Jessica, and daughter, Alana, currently reside in Mount Pleasant, SC.
Luke completed his B.S. in Structural Engineering with an emphasis in Civil/Seismic Design in June of 2011 from UC San Diego. During his undergraduate academic career he was active in student organizations where as a member of The Society of Civil and Structural Engineers he had the privilege of being co-project manager of the student steel bridge project as well as captain of the land survey team. Luke was also was a member of Tau Beta Pi, UCSD's engineering honor society, where he volunteered his free time participating in the Florence Elementary outreach program teaching young student the importance of math and science. After earning his degree he spent a summer working for a structural design firm as a structural engineering intern where he assisted project managers in completing needed hand calculations, plan checks, and drawing markups. His final project was designing a single story light gauge steel structure. Luke was awarded a fellowship with Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2011 and is currently pursuing his M.S in Structural Engineering with a Specialization in Structural Health Monitoring. His research is centered on condition based monitoring of rotating machines, a nonintrusive predictive based maintenance method used for monitor machine health while in operation. In addition to investigating and attempting to improve upon traditional CBM damage feature detectability and classification, Luke is developing a CBM module for the SHMTools/mFUSE MATLAB package developed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory/UC San Diego Engineering Institute (LANL SHMTools). Luke is expected to graduate summer quarter 2013. ).
Timothy Fasel attended Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he graduated summa cum laude with a B.S.E. in Aerospace Engineering in 2002. He was admitted to, and attended, the prestigious Los Alamos Dynamics Summer School at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in the summer of 2001. Through this experience he became interested in the field of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and met Dr. Michael Todd, who was then working at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. When Dr. Todd became a professor in the Structural Engineering Department at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 2003, Tim immediately recognized that enrolling at UCSD and working for Dr. Todd would be an excellent opportunity to continue his education in the field of SHM (as well as to enjoy the outstanding San Diego weather). Tim enrolled in the Ph.D. program at UCSD in the fall of 2003 and was awarded a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship from 2004-2007. He also received support from the newly formed Engineering Institute, which is a collaboration between LANL and the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering whose mission is to develop a comprehensive approach for conducting mission-driven, multidisciplinary engineering research. Tim's Ph.D. research focused on nonlinear time series analysis, pattern recognition and classification, and the use of novel piezoelectric transducers used in combination to detect, locate, and classify incipient damage in bolted and bonded structural connections. He completed his Ph.D. in 2009 after authoring 6 peer-reviewed journal articles and 10 conference proceedings. After graduation Tim has worked at a San Diego consulting engineering firm as an Analysis Engineer with expertise in the static, dynamic, nonlinear, and aeroelastic analysis of mechanical and aerospace systems using FEMAP and NASTRAN and specializing in the areas of signal processing, statistics, and pattern recognition.