Dr. Gregory Battle, an associate professor of mathematics at Grambling State University, has performed successfully at NASA, where his field of research dealt with air traffic flow management. He worked in the Systems Modeling and Optimization Branch, Code AFO, of the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. The NASA engineers and contractors who work in Code AFO assist the Federal Aviation Administration in developing better strategies and mechanisms for air traffic controllers to perform their daily duties.
During his Summer Fellowship in the Education Associates Program at NASA Ames Research Center, Dr. Battle developed a new numerical method to improve the performance of air traffic flow management.
The two types of delays most airline passengers experience are ground delays and airborne delays. The FAA collaborates with NASA to get solutions from its engineers on modeling the minimization of aircraft delays in the national air space.
Dr. Battle created a numerical method for NASA to put statistical confidence estimation on the random capacity constraints which arise in its stochastic linear programming model of air traffic delay costs.