Master of Science in Computer Engineering, University of Dayton, 2022, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Automated monitoring of low resolution, deep-space objects in wide field of view (WFOV) imaging systems is an important and emerging technology for Space Domain Awareness (SDA). SDA involves the holistic process of monitoring and characterizing space objects in order to ensure a safe environment for satellite operations and employment. With the proliferation of satellites, referred to as ‘Resident Space Objects' (RSOs), in all orbits, SDA requires WFOV optical sensors to detect and track the growing population of multiple low-light objects. The PANDORA sensor array, located in Maui at the Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site, is an exemplar of a scalable imaging architecture that can detect dim deep- space objects while maintaining a WFOV. The PANDORA system captures 20◦×120◦ images of the night sky oriented along the GEO belt at a rate of two frames per minute. The PANDORA sensor system makes possible the passive monitoring of hundreds of RSOs, but requires advanced image processing and exploitation techniques to autonomously and reliably be utilized. This thesis explores image processing and deep learning techniques to exploit PANDORA sensor data for use in SDA. To benchmark object detection performance, a synthetic dataset and annotated physical dataset of PANDORA imagery is prepared. Classical feature- based object detections are explored, which are tailored to specific space object morphologies in PANDORA imagery. Single frame object detection performance with developed classical methods are evaluated on the synthetic PANDORA dataset. Deep learning object detection techniques are then employed, which set a standard for WFOV low-resolution object detection. We present a deep learning RSO detection and tracking architecture: PASTOR (Persistent All- Sky Tracking and Object Re-Identification). This architecture consists of a deep-learned object detector using YOLOv5, with an object tracker consisting of Kalman filters. We present detailed analysis o (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Vijayan Asari (Advisor) Subjects: Computer Engineering; Computer Science

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2020, Management

Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) projects, despite significant commercial intent in the initial application process, typically do not result in clear financial success, with many successful technology outcomes falling into the “Valley of Death” without commercial application. This study investigates the antecedent effects upon Radicality and Commercial Success in SBIR projects to consider the duality of positive and negative outcomes that entrepreneurs' variance-decision styles may simultaneously induce upon innovation processes. Using the constructs of Experimentation and Planning, this study also considers the causal inference from stakeholder communication and Risk Tolerance. Entrepreneurial orientation has had considerable literature support of positive association innovation contexts. However, this study investigates the possible double-edged sword effect that variance-inducing development styles (EO) may be both a positive and negative when it comes to effects upon Commercial Success. The implications for investments in innovation and Radicality which may influence greater Commercial Success are discussed.

Committee: Jagdip Singh PhD (Committee Chair); Kalle Lyytinen PhD (Committee Member); Nicholas Berente PhD (Committee Member); Daniel Cohen PhD (Committee Member); Lori Kendall PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Management

Doctor of Management, Case Western Reserve University, 2016, Weatherhead School of Management

Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SME) are a significant contributor to USA employment and GDP but are disappointingly understudied. Small firms may often carry a label of “entrepreneur” yet it is now commonly understood that not all small firms are necessarily entrepreneurial nor does lacking that orientation mean that SMEs uniquely fail to innovate. We conducted two sequential studies to identify what other factors besides entrepreneurial orientation (EO) contributed to small firm innovation and whether those constructs could stand on their own in the absence of EO. What we found in our qualitative study was that firm-wide culture—namely empowerment, play, and organizational learning (OL)—were more prevalent in our 29 successful SME than EO. When we tested those firm- wide cultural factors' effects on innovation in the absence of EO, we found that small firms did innovate without EO, but more surprising was the substantive increase in predicting innovation in small firms when BOTH EO and OL were present. These studies are important for scholars in that we have added to the literature concepts of small firm innovation that eschew EO as a requisite for innovation. For practitioners, this is even more important in that small firm owners and senior leaders need not be entrepreneurially inclined to innovate but when they are and also support certain internal culture development, they are more likely to innovate than when only EO or OL exist on its own.

Committee: Kalle Lyytinen, Ph.D. (Advisor); Kathleen Buse, Ph.D. (Advisor) Subjects: Entrepreneurship

BA, Oberlin College, 2000, English

The ideal of consilience - the inductive concurrence of seemingly disparate ways of thinking into a single, unified, all-encompassing intellectual system - or more simply put, "unified learning" - has been largely set aside since the rise of the industrial age and the championing of the industrious, better-be it individualized mind of the enlightenment. The Catholic Church was the last western world-dominant institution to actively perpetuate and work according to the rubric of a unified field of knowledge. Our thoughts and everything else were under God and indivisible: our ethics and our physics alike were the immaterial idea-stuff of the divine, benevolently nudging us towards some golden age. But, with grandiloquence and a hell-uv-a-lot of liberation rhetoric, reason found itself in a dominant position within the hegemony of intellectual and academic discourse. A preference for reasonability and individuation dictated that we divide up our disciplines, that we allow each scholar to pursue a particular field of interest without insisting that that field collapse into theology in its most fundamental stages. It was either that our humanist logics were not sophisticated enough to synthesize all of the natural or conceptual oppositions flourishing at that time, or that we had come to disregard the ironically rigorous project of righteousness and truth just enough to see a use and a truth of a differing quality in dividing up our conceptual schemes. The separation of church and state might be seen as a manifestation of this "divided front" approach. Perhaps it was with the same spirit that William Wordsworth and William Blake distinguished their subject matter - literature and poetry - from others with a sense of purpose, offering an aesthetics and an ethics to an increasingly scientific, humanistic intellectual community that seemed to them sorely lacking in emotionality and spirituality. These, perhaps, were steps in a process of genesis: genesis as religious begin (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: William Patrick Day (Advisor) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Electrical and Computer Engineering

This dissertation addresses two important aspects regarding the sensing of radio-frequency electromagnetic fields using integrated optical ring resonator devices. The first topic involves the theoretical design, fabrication and demonstration of a new field sensor based on electro-optically (EO) active integrated optical ring resonators. The second topic addresses the problem of enhancing the response from a single-mode ring resonator of a given ring waveguide loss through modifications in the device geometry. The miniature integrated optical EO ring resonator sensor consists of low-dielectric constant polymers, is metal-free and is supported by a thin, flexible substrate. The low-invasive platform is achieved through the development of a new fabrication process. The waveguide cores of the devices are constructed of polycarbonate doped with the EO chromophore Disperse Red 1 and are poled using the contact poling method. The measured loaded quality factors of the poled EO rings are between 15,600 and 18,900. The fields emanating from a microstrip resonator circuit at 3.9 GHz are measured. It is determined that the measured modulation from the four-ring linear array is largest when the optical wavelength is biased on the steep slopes of the resonance lineshapes as theoretically predicted. Using electric field values obtained from electromagnetic simulations of the microstrip circuit, the EO coefficient is 0.72 pm/V. The sensitivity for electric fields in free-space field is 142.2 V / (m Hz0.5). The sensitivity is obtained for an off-resonance optical power of -9 dBm at an optical wavelength near 1550 nm, a photoreceiver conversion gain of 900 V/W, and a system impedance of 50 ohm. Also, sensing from asymmetric lineshapes due to the bistable effect in the ring resonators is also demonstrated. This EO field sensing demonstration is the first reported using EO ring resonator sensors built on a metal-free flexible integrated optics platform. The second part of this d (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ronald Reano PhD (Advisor); Betty Anderson PhD (Committee Member); Fernando Teixeira PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Electrical Engineering; Electromagnetics; Electromagnetism; Optics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2008, Computer and Information Science

This thesis addresses the fundamental tasks of detecting objects in images, recovering their location, and determining their silhouette shape. We focus on object detection techniques that 1) enable simultaneous recovery of object location and object shape, 2) require minimal manual supervision during training, and 3) are capable of consistent performance under varying imaging conditions found in real-world scenarios. The work described here results in the development of a unified method for simultaneously acquiring both the location and the silhouette shape of specific object categories in outdoor scenes. The proposed algorithm integrates top-down and bottom-up processing, and combines cues from these processes in a balanced manner. The framework provides the capability to incorporate both appearance and motion information, making use of low-level contour-based features, mid-level perceptual cues, and higher-level statistical analysis. A novel Markov random field formulation is presented that effectively integrate the various cues from the top-down and bottom-up processes. The algorithm attempts to leverage the natural structure of the world, thereby requiring minimal user supervision during training. Extensive experimental evaluation shows that the approach is applicable to different object categories, and is robust to challenging conditions such as large occlusions and drastic changes in viewpoint. For static camera scenarios, we present a contour-based background-subtraction technique. Utilizing both intensity and gradient information, the algorithm constructs a fuzzy representation of foreground boundaries called a Contour Saliency Map. Combined with a low-level data-driven approach for contour completion and closure, the approach is able to accurately recover object shape. We also present object detection and segmentation approaches that combine information from visible and thermal imagery. For object detection, we present a contour-based fusion algorithm for b (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: James Davis (Advisor) Subjects: Computer Science

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2012, Arts and Sciences: Geology

A chronicle of the Variscan Orogeny is recorded in high grade pelitic schists of the Guilleries Massif of the Catalan Coastal Ranges of northeastern Spain which preserve multiple rounds of deformation and metamorphism. The massif records a classic Variscan low-pressure and high-temperature metamorphic field gradient and represents part of the metamorphic core of the Variscan Orogeny. The lack of overprinting from the younger Alpine Orogeny makes the massif an ideal location to study the early stages of the Variscan Orogeny. Pelitic schist and gneiss of the Osor formation are characterized by andalusite + cordierite and biotite + garnet + sillimanite assemblages. In garnet porphyroblasts, folded S1 inclusion trails with monazite are truncated by the regionally dominant S2 cleavage. Andalusite + cordierite grade rocks and S2 are syntectonic with the 323 Ma Susqueda Diorite. In the aureole of the Susqueda Diorite, contact metamorphism reached pyroxene + garnet + cordierite grade. Biotite and two-mica microgranites, ranging from meter-sized dikes and sills to mm-sized veins, trending northeast with crystallization ages of ca. 300 Ma, cross-cut all the country rocks of the massif. 232Th-208Pb ages of monazite from preserved S1 inclusion trails are 341 Ma, 340 Ma, and 334 Ma and 232Th-208Pb ages of monazite from S2 inclusion trails are 312 Ma and 313 Ma. The older ages record a phase of deformation and metamorphism that predates the peak low pressure-high temperature Variscan thermal metamorphism that is related to the intrusion of granite. Relict kyanite preserved in the matrix of rocks with S1 inclusion trails provides evidence for a phase of nonmagmatic thrusting and higher pressure metamorphism prior to the peak metamorphic event.

Committee: Craig Dietsch PhD (Committee Chair); Francisco Martinez DS (Committee Member); Warren Huff PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Geology