The United States Department of Defense last month announced that second-year GT-AE graduate studentTimothy Murphy has been chosen to receive a three-year National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) scholarship.

The highly competitive grant will enable Murphy to continue his doctoral studies at Georgia Tech without seeking additional sponsorship. Not only does the NDSEG cover his tuition and fees, it provides $102,000 in living expenses  for the next three years. A DoD spokesperson confirmed that the 2015 NDSEG scholarships were awarded to just 180 of the more than 3,500 top-tier graduate students who applied.

Murphy, 24, of Drexel Hill, PA, is currently working with his advisor, Dr. Marcus Holzinger, on research that focuses on space situational awareness (SSA)  -- the monitoring and analysis of debris that poses a potential threat to spacecraft and satellites. Murphy spent last summer doing SSA research at the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in New Mexico, where he will return this summer.

"I've been working on specific image processing algorithms to detect small, easily missed objects," he said.

"Mainly, I'm using optical systems to locate them and then developing ways to predict how fast they are going and what their trajectories might be. If you can predict their path, you can avoid a collision."

Traveling at an average rate of seven kilometers per-second, space debris the size of a pea could cause serious damage to any number of deployed assets in earth's orbit and beyond.

Murphy earned his undergraduate degree at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He believes his current association with the Air Force may lead to work in the military after he graduates, but is also open to a career in academia.