Associate Professor Gregory Battle of the Department of Mathematics was awarded a 2009 NASA Science & Technology Institute’s Faculty Fellowship by the United Negro College Fund Special Programs (UNCF-SP). Dr. Battle’s research in the programming of air traffic flow management at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., led to a collaboration to get Grambling science and engineering students acquainted with the numerical modeling of air traffic flow.
Their on-site research at Grambling will be matched with funding. NASA Ames Systems Modeling and Optimization Branch (Code AFO) promised to award these interested Science
Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) students whom Dr. Battle mentors in mathematical algorithms to minimize aircraft delay costs.
Approximately 50,000 aircraft are in operation daily in the national airspace. The cost of airline delays was estimated to be approximately $5.9 billion in 2005 with an increase in future years, according to data in the 2006 edition of the Journal of Air Traffic Control.
The shared goal of the United Negro College Fund Special Programs Office, the NASA Ames Systems Modeling and Optimization Branch, and Dr. Battle is to create research and summer internships that will enable GSU science scholars to improve operations for the federal air traffic controllers.