On Dust Dynamics:

“When a helicopter lands in the desert, its downdraft can stir up enough dust to cause a zero-visibility ‘brownout’ — and Mars is effectively one big desert.” 

— Jason Rabinovitch, an assistant professor in Stevens’ School of Engineering and Science, describing the first real-world study of dust dynamics on Mars based on Ingenuity’s historic first flights on the Red Planet, paving the way for future extraterrestrial rotorcraft missions. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, December 2022. 

On Biased Bosses:

“Favoritism is a double-edged sword — it can be harmful to team dynamics, but in the right circumstances it can also help organizations to succeed.” 

— Howie Xu, an assistant professor in the Stevens School of Business, reporting, for the first time, that in some cases biased bosses who play favorites get better results — and not just from the workers they treat best. Personnel Psychology, December 2022. 

On Information Exchange:

“These kinds of partnerships aren’t easy, but if you can’t figure out how to work together using a digital simulation, you’ll never be able to collaborate on real-world space missions.” 

— Paul Grogan, associate professor in Stevens’ School of Systems and Enterprises, describing his team’s creation of a digital platform, the New Observing Strategies Testbed (NOS-T), which enables dozens of different organizations to model information exchanges between fleets of satellites and land-based antennae to better monitor and track earth-bound events, such as landslides and wildfires. Systems Engineering, March 2023. 

On Problem-Solving:

“Brain imaging is useful, but we can also learn a great deal simply by asking people to say whatever they’re thinking.” 

— Nick Byrd, an assistant professor in Stevens’ School of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, describing an online protocol for recording audio as people narrate all of their thoughts while answering a series of trick questions. The work may help scientists reveal how people solve reasoning problems and thereby help optimize analysts’ briefings that inform high-level decisions. Journal of Intelligence, April 2023.