Meet the team

Dr. K. Merve Dogan


Director of the FAST LAB

Dr. K. Merve Dogan is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University since August 2020. Prior to joining the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, she held the Research Assistant position in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of South Florida between 2015 and 2020, where she received her Doctor of Philosophy degree in 2020. Before joining the University of South Florida, she held a Research/Teaching Assistant position in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the Izmir Institute of Technology between 2012 and 2015, where she received her Master of Science degree in 2016. Dr. Dogan is a Co-Director of the Forum on Robotics and Control Engineering (FoRCE), and is a member of AIAA and IEEE, including several technical committees. She has been an IEEE Conference Editorial Board Associate Editor since 2022. 

Besides, she is a recipient of the Recipient for the 2022 Dave Ward Memorial Lecture Award from the Aerospace Control and Guidance Systems Committee (ACGSC), 2021 Excellent Reviewer; AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, 2020 Outstanding Thesis and Dissertation Award (USF), recipient of 2019 Student best paper award; Adaptive and Learning Control Systems (IFAC, Winchester, UK), her co-authored paper titled by "Learning control of robot manipulators in task space," is listed in the 2019 Top 20 Most Read Papers; Asian Journal of Control, recipient of 2019 Best session presentation; in AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference (San Diego, California).

Islam A. Aly


Ph.D. Student

Islam is a graduate student of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University since January 2021. He earned his B.Sc degree in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Aerospace Engineering and his M.Sc degree in Mechatronics Engineering from the American University of Sharjah. He has some industry experience in components, flight controls, and nacelles repairs in Emirates Airlines and Lufthansa Technik. His dynamical systems and controls research specializes in mobile robots, robot manipulators, autonomous vehicles, and designing unmanned aerial vehicle. 

Atahan Kurttisi


Ph.D. Student

Atahan is a graduate student of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University since August 2021. He received both Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the Department of Control and Automation Engineering, Yıldız Technical University in Istanbul/Turkey in 2018 and 2021, respectively. He studied jerk optimal trajectory generation and adaptive control of a package delivery quadcopter system in his M.Sc. thesis. Together with his academic studies, he worked for Cezeri Artificial Intelligence and Robotics company as a Guidance, Navigation and Control engineer in the Cezeri Flying Car project. His study is mainly built on optimal and adaptive control of the aerial vehicles together with dynamical modeling and system identification. He also focuses on stability analysis and control of the flapping-wing flight.

N. Eren Sarioglu


Ph.D. Student

Eren is a soon to be graduate student of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University starting from May 2022. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechatronics Engineering from Sabanci University/Istanbul in 2020 and he worked in UAV industry nearly 2 years as a control system engineer concentrated on quadcopter systems. He mainly focused on Guidance, Navigation and Control areas of drone vehicles and has experiences on calibration, validation and isolation of onboard sensors.

Kyle Vernyi


Ph.D. Student

Kyle is a graduate student of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Embry-Riddle. He received his B.S. in aerospace systems engineering and his minor in appliead mathematics from the University of Akron in Ohio in 2023. He has industry experience in creating large-scale flight simulators, pilot training, and embedded sensor systems. In addition, he has worked at NASA Glenn on the High-Rate Delay Tolerant Network (HDTN) project. There he augmented HDTN with 4K video streaming capabilities. 



Nathaniel Sisson


Ph.D. Student

Nathaniel is a Ph.D. student in Aerospace Engineering at Embry-Riddle. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering and B.Sc. in Computation Mathematics from Embry Riddle. His research interests are control theory application to aerospace systems

Andrew Bray


Ph.D. Student

Andrew graduated from University of Alaska Fairbanks with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering with an emphasis is embedded circuits. He returned to school after two years working on power transmission and substation design to peruse a PhD in aerospace engineering. Andrew's interests are the design and implementation of unmanned aerial systems and electrification of aircraft.

Thitiphun Vongkunghae


Ph.D. Student

Thitiphun is a graduate student of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University since August 2021 and aims to achieve a PhD in this field. He received his Bachelor of Engineering in Aeronautical Engineering degree from Navamintra Kasatriyadiraj Royal Air Force Academy, Thailand in 2019. He has worked as a teaching assistant at the Navamintra Kasatriyadiraj Royal Air Force Academy and has worked on methodological V-TOL designs for fixed-wing designs as well as fabrication and flight test of the design as a research assistant. 

Thitiphun completed his MSc in Summer of 2023 at ERAU.

Bronson Saulo


M.Sc. Student

Bronson has been a graduate student of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University since August 2023. He earned his Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Spring of 2023 and is excited to further pursue his education, with some focus on flight control and navigation. 

Matthew Stanko


M.Sc. Student

Matthew is a graduate student of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Embry-Riddle with a concentration in Dynamics & Controls. He received his B.S. in Aerospace Systems Engineering from the University of Akron in Ohio in May 2022. Matthew has experience leading a collegiate sounding-rocket team and developing mechanical systems for the primary structure and instrument mounting on lighter-than-air vehicles.

Blake Rohweder


M.Sc. Student

Blake is a graduate student of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University since August 2021. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from the Department of Aerospace Engineering, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach in 2021. He is currently a part of the Men's Tennis team on campus and has been for the last five years. He was born in Midland, Texas, and raised in San Antonio, TX. He is currently working as a Research Assistant, a Graduate Teaching Assistant, and a Chief Engineer for a Vehicle Safe Manufacturing company called Lock'er Down in San Antonio, TX.

Alumni



Eren Sarioglu completed his MSc in the Fall of 2023 , and he started his PhD in the Fall of 2023 at FAST.

Sebastian Comeaux completed his MSc degree in the Fall of 2023, and he got a position at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control group.

Thitiphun Vongkunghae completed his MSc in the Summer of 2023 , and he started his PhD in the Spring of 2023 at FAST.

Kevin R. Puopolo completed his UG degree in Spring of 2023, and he attended Air Force.

Julia Sherrill completed her UG degree in the Spring of 2022.

Mafalda Soares completed her UG degree in Spring of 2022, and she attended Airbus.

Sebastian Comeaux completed his UG degree in the Fall of 2021, and he started his MSc at FAST.