After Esrat Farhana Dulia earned her bachelor’s degree in her home country Bangladesh, she wanted to study an innovation that she was passionate about and at the same time would allow her to solve a world-changing aerospace engineering problem.
When Dulia discovered Kent State University’s Advanced Air Mobility program in the College of Aeronautics and Engineering she knew that this program is a game changer. She went on to earn her master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Kent State in 2023 and now she is working on a doctorate as well.
Advanced Air Mobility enables uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) to operate in low-altitude airspace, requiring a surveillance network to detect and track UAVs for safe operations and public security.
Dulia is a graduate assistant at Kent State's Green and Advanced Mobility Engineering (GAME) lab. The lab focuses on developing data-driven, intelligent decision-making systems for aviation based on artificial intelligence/machine learning, optimization and operations research techniques. Syed A. M. Shihab, Ph.D., assistant professor in the College of Aeronautics and Engineering, leads the GAME lab.
“From childhood, I was passionate about solving problems,” Dulia said. “I was thinking ‘what are some of the new problems that need to be solved?’ I want to be the pioneer of that innovation so that after 10 years when I see a flying Euro taxi in the sky I can say ‘Oh, I worked on that.’ It will be our future and I'm working toward it. And in every stage of my engineering program, I'm ensuring it will be safe for the people and the goods.”
Dulia won first place in Kent State’s 2024 Three Minute Thesis competition in the Graduate College for her innovative research in a surveillance sensor network that will enable Advanced Air Mobility operators to guide authorized UAVs in safe flight paths that would avoid potential collisions. As the first-place winner, Dulia will present her research at the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools conference April 2-4, 2025, in Indianapolis. Dulia and Shihab have also published journal articles about the topic.
The design of a surveillance sensor network for drones, which plays a crucial role in ensuring safer advanced air mobility operations, was funded by the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT), Dulia said. She developed the optimization models for the project. Currently, the GAME lab is in the process of collaborating with ODOT again to enhance the system. Dulia will work on the models with the ODOT-funded research project to make the models more reliable.
Recently, Dulia spoke with Kent State Today about her winning research project.
In April 2024, Dulia and Shihab participated in the Ohio Space Forum’s 2024 Poster Session Competition with the presentation “Dynamic Surveillance with Ground and Flying Sensors for Advanced Air Mobility Using Optimization and Computer Vision.” Her poster presentation won third place.
According to the Ohio Space Forum presentation, the existing surveillance network for Advanced Air Mobility is inadequate for two main reasons:
- It has limited ability to track smaller UAVs in lower airspace.
- Its placement is in restricted areas, primarily near airports and critical zones, whereas Advanced Air Mobility necessitates city-wide coverage.
To address this gap, the research project proposes a model to determine the optimal placements of the sensors within cities to develop a surveillance sensor network.
This is just the type of engineering problem that Dulia is passionate about – making the skies safe so that drones can not only distribute consumer goods and services but deliver emergency supplies like blood and vaccines in less time.
“This is an engineering problem, and I am the researcher,” Dulia said. “I am using my engineering skill to solve this problem and I want to make the future for advanced air mobility, a safe technology.”