-
Piyush Mehta
CISER is led by Piyush Mehta, who is an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources at WVU. Mehta has received federal funding from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, the advanced research and development arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, to detect, identify, and track lethal non-trackable millimeter-sized space debris. Presently, no technology exists for detecting and tracking LNT objects. Mehta's team is the only university-led group out of four performer teams to receive funding through the Space Debris Identification and Tracking program. -
Hang Woon Lee
Hang Woon Lee, assistant professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering, a member of CISER and part of the WVSSC, is a recipient of the prestigious 2023 NASA Early Career Faculty Award. Lee’s project will undertake innovative research focused on active debris removal using space-based laser phenomenology. Space-based lasers are known to be the most promising, technically viable option for addressing debris of varying sizes, both small (less than 10 cm in characteristic length) and large. While state-of-the-art ADR methods such as those utilizing hooks, harpoons, and physical sweepers are suited for debris of significant size, these methods cannot scale to handle small debris, thus making space-based lasers a promising technology to help solve the debris problem. -
Earl Scime
Earl Scime is the Jefimenko Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Director of the Center for KINETIC Plasma Physics. Scime is an experimental plasma physicist with active research programs in space plasmas, thermonuclear fusion, fundamental plasma science, plasma thrusters, and plasma processing. He has been an instrument co-Investigator for three different NASA science missions and the principal investigator for one Department of Defense space instrument. He is currently developing a new method of constructing compact space plasma instruments for CubeSat missions and is leading experiments to explore the possibility of detecting and tracking small space debris through signatures left by the debris in the space environment. Scime is a Fellow of the American Physical Society's Division of Plasma Physics. -
Weichao Tu
Weichao Tu, Associate Professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, is a member of CISER. Dr. Tu has been extensively involved in the quantitative analysis and numerical modeling of energetic particles in Earth’s inner magnetosphere. She has authored and co-authored numerous peer-reviewed publications, with four of them selected as “Editor’s Choice” of Space Weather Journal. Dr. Tu is the recipient of the prestigious APS Katherine E. Weimer Award and the NSF CAREER Award. -
Andrew Rhodes
Dr. Andrew Rhodes is a Teaching Assistant Professor at West Virginia University. His teaching discipline is in the areas of spacecraft dynamics, spacecraft propulsion, spacecraft design, and orbital mechanics. His other teaching interest include automatic controls and dynamics.
Partners
The WVSSC, led by civil and environmental engineering professor David Martinelli and Scott Zemerick from TMC, will work closely with CISER to enable orbital debris research and development by providing SmallSat lifecycle engineering, digital-twin and simulation support, and SmallSat mission design.
-
David Martinelli
Martinelli earned his BS and MS degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and his PhD from the University of Maryland, all in Civil Engineering. As a research professor of civil engineering at WVU, he conducts research in the areas of transportation engineering and transportation economics. He co-founded the Northern WV and Eastern Panhandle branches of ASCE and served as the WV Section President. Martinelli served as Chairman of WVU’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 1996 through 2007, presiding over growth in its many academic programs. In this period he emerged as a national leader in transforming Civil Engineering education through his service on board-level committees of ASCE and as Chairman of the National CE Department Heads Council. He is a pioneer of Holistic Engineering, a whole-systems approach to engineering education. -
Scott Zemerick
Scott Zemerick is TMC’s Chief Scientist and Engineer and an adjunct associate professor in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Zemerick has over 23 years of industry experience spanning various domains such as power systems, unmanned vehicles, software/hardware integration, product development, digital twin technologies, NASA spacecraft, SmallSat engineering, modeling/simulation, and program management.