This week I will be starting employment at Delta Air Lines. I will be working out of their Atlanta headquarters as a specialist in Network Strategy, part of the Network Planning department. My responsibilities will include analysis on Delta’s route network and its performance, assessing areas for growth, and long-term planning.
This past week I was invited to lecture at Boeing Commercial Airplanes at their Seattle headquarters. Traveling with my advisor Dr. Garrow, I presented a shorter version of my defense, discussing the revenue impacts of airline hub depeaking. An audience of about 40 Boeing employees in their sales group attended. Below is a photo of model Boeing aircraft in the lobby of their headquarters.
It was my first trip to Seattle, so during my visit, I also went to check out the University of Washington rowing’s regatta venue. It is located in the Montlake Cut on the south side of campus.
This past Friday, I graduated with my Ph.D in Civil Engineering from Georgia Tech. The ceremony was held at the newly renovated Georgia Tech basketball arena, the McCamish Pavilion, for all Master’s and Ph.D graduates. My parents and my in-laws came into town to see me receive my degree. The graduation speaker was Ralph J. Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences. My advisor, Dr. Laurie Garrow, hooded me on stage. Below is a photo of Dr. Garrow and myself after commencement.
My Doctoral dissertation, entitled Revenue and Operational Impacts of Depeaking Flights at Hub Airports, was submitted this week to Georgia Tech’s Graduate Studies office, and I have received notification that it has been accepted. With the dissertation complete, I will graduate this December with my Ph.D in Civil Engineering. The dissertation can be downloaded at the above link, or from the Writings page.
The document has been my focus over the past two years, and I received guidance from my advisor Dr. Laurie Garrow, as well as committee members Drs. Jorge Laval, Michael Rodgers, Jeffrey Newman, and Matthew Higgins. The dissertation is an examination of the effects of schedule depeaking (also known as implement a rolling hub or continuous schedule) on airline and airport revenue and operations. I develop a way to measure depeaking and and build upon past studies that have examined depeaking for its cost effects. I studied six different cases of depeaking in the first part of the 2000s and analyzed them to see what factors played a role in shifts in revenue. In addition, I explored how airlines depeaked their schedules and what decision making processes they used to change flight frequency to spoke airports.
Last Tuesday, I presented my doctoral work to my committee and a crowd of students. The presentation entitled “Revenue and Operational Impacts of Depeaking Flights at Hub Airports” was about 50 minutes long. After the presentation, the audience was given time to ask questions. They were then excused, and I faced the committee’s questions. After about 40 minutes of questioning, they excused me from the room so they could deliberate. I was invited back in after 15 minutes and informed than I had passed!
I will be posting my completed dissertation later this week, and including it in the Writings section.
I haven’t posted in awhile because I’ve been preparing my dissertation for my committee. The past few months have involved extensive writing and polishing of my results. I submitted my dissertation last week, and now am preparing my presentation for my doctoral defense scheduled for next Tuesday, November 6. It will be held at 11:00 AM in Room 1103 of the U.A. Whitaker Biomedical Engineering Building. The title of my dissertation is: “Revenue and Operational Impacts of Depeaking Flights at Hub Airports”.
My committee which I finalized in August consists of five members, one of which was required to be a faculty member at Georgia Tech outside of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. My committee is:
Dr. Laurie Garrow, Committee Chair
Dr. Jorge Laval, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Dr. Michael Rodgers, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Dr. Jeff Newman, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Dr. Matthew Higgins, Scheller School of Business
Between writing and running lots of SAS code, I have been interviewing for positions for after graduation. I applied to around 50 positions. So far I have interviewed with Delta Air Lines, LeighFisher, Ricondo, and Sabre Holdings. In the next few weeks I will consider my offers and prepare for a move (if necessary).
A paper I prepared from this work for the Airport Cooperative Research Program Graduate Award Program entitled “Depeaking Schedules: Beneficial for Airports’ and Airlines?” will be presented at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. in January.
About five months late now (I haven’t thought to post while writing my dissertation). On June 3, Amy and I were married in Miami Beach, Florida at the Alexander Hotel. Recently, our JDate story was posted as a success story on their website. Below is a photo of us on our wedding day, and others can be found on the Altmix Photography blog.
My next paper has been officially published in the Journal of Public Transportation. The National Center for Transit Research’s website posted the announcement for the paper in the most recent issue of the journal. The paper “The Impact of Bus Door Crowding on Operations and Safety“, was published in the Journal of Public Transportation on pages 71-93. I uploaded the publication copy to the Writings section of the site. Below is a screenshot of the start of the paper as it it appears in the journal.
I’ve been writing a lot lately for both my final paper for the Airport Cooperative Research Program and my dissertation. I took a couple of hours yesterday morning to write a CSL file for Mendeley for use in Transportation Research Board publications. The following describes why this is useful and how to use it.
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Mendeley is a piece of software used in academic writing to organize academic papers. The students of my chapter of the Institute of Transportation Engineers here at Georgia Tech use it constantly. One of the benefits of Mendeley is its use in Microsoft Word to automatically create in-text citations and bibliographies. You can then choose what journal style you want from a drop-down menu so that your citations and bibliography are formatted to be the style of that journal.
One of the most common journals transportation engineers submit to is the Transportation Research Record (TRR), the journal produced from Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting papers. In Mendeley, however, there is no style set for TRR. Thus I created a style, called a CSL file, to be used in Mendeley for TRR papers , following the rules on the TRB website. Below are instructions on how to use it in Word for yourself (taken from theMendeley blog instructions).
First, here is the file zipped: TRR CSL File for Mendeley
Unzip the file and copy it into the following directory (on your PC): C:\Users\<user-name>\AppData\Local\Mendeley Ltd\Mendeley Desktop\citationStyles-1.0
Restart Mendeley Desktop. Select “View” > “Citation Styles” > “More Styles…” and search for “Transportation Research Record”.
The style is now able to selected in Word.
Disclaimer: The CSL file does not automatically do the excessive citation style that TRB suggests for its own TRR papers, but rather treats TRR papers like all other journals. Thus if you want to do what TRB asks for its own papers, you will need to change the bibliography directly in Word.
Earlier this month the spring semester wrapped up, and the Georgia Tech chapter of the Institute of Transportation Engineers had its final meeting of the school year. The exciting news at this meeting was that our chapter won Student Chapter of the Year for the Southern District (composed of 9 states), our second time winning the award in the last three years. The award is judged based on what is written in our annual report, which can be viewed at our chapter’s website.
Part of the meeting was an election for next year’s leadership. All positions were contested this year, and James Wong won the position of President. I enjoyed leading the chapter as President this past year, and am pleased to pass on the role to James.