William T. Weldon

 I grew up on a small sheep farm in Greenfield, IN, achieved Eagle Scout in 2009, and graduated high-school from Greenfield Central Highschool in 2011. I attended Indiana State University from 2011 to 2015 and majored in Aviation Management with a minor in Unmanned Aerial Systems. During this time I also earned my Private Pilot certificate with Instrument Rating. 

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I started my M.S. in Aviation and Airline Management in August 2016 and completed the degree in December 2017. My Thesis was titled Leveraging UAS for 3D Orthomosaic Aircraft Images to support Maintenance Activities. The focus of my Thesis was the use of UAS to create digital twins of airline aircraft, with the intent of creating a history of high fidelity 3D digital models of the aircraft for enhanced maintenance tracking. 

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I began my Doctorate in January 2018 and am still in progress. My Doctoral research has focused on the use of UAS in emergency response, specifically Search and Rescue. During this time I have worked with local and state level emergency response agencies, and international volunteer agencies to model my research off of the realities faced by SAR professionals. As a part of these relationships I have provided training, assisted in SAR operations, and tested new programs and processes. 

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While working on my M.S. and PhD, I wrote courses and curriculum plans for the Unmanned Aerial Systems major at Purdue University. Since 2016 I have taught or assisted in teaching all eight of the major specific UAS courses, and written in full or part of 6 of these. I served as the course writer and Instructor of Record for the 100 and 200 level courses, lab writer and instructor for the 300 level courses, and a stakeholder for the 400 level capstone courses. These experiences allowed me to join with faculty in redesigning the UAS major curriculum in 2019, and in this redesign I focused on increasing practical experience through increasing student UAS flights. To support this increase a fleet of Mavic 2 Pro aircraft were purchased, and I developed fleet management processes. These processes allowed for a dramatic increase of flight operations. The previous semester saw roughly 40 flights, and with the new fleet and fleet management practices 3,483 UAS flights were conducted. These flights led to 646 flight hours gained, roughly 32 hours per student, and required only 22 propellers to be replaced, an average of roughly one every 158 flights. 

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Following the completion of my Ph.D. I began working as an Assistant Professor and Unmanned Systems Program Coordinator at Indiana State University.