Michelle Darrah Ziegler

Biography

Michelle Ziegler is a project associate in the Technology and Applied Sciences group at RAND Corporation, working with the RAND Arroyo Center and the Acquisition and Technology Policy Center in the RAND National Security Research Division (NSRD). Her background is in astrophysics with research focused on quasars in the submilllimeter wavelengths at the Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array (SMA) on the Big Island of Hawaii. At the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition in Florida, Ziegler's main focuses were sensory substitution for wounded servicemembers and designing and modeling a fractal hierarchy control system for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In the Software Acquisition and Process Department, part of the Air Force Space and Missile Command programs, at the Aerospace Corporation, she handled metrics analysis, researched new data mining techniques for deficiency report analysis, analyzed the software development plans for compliance to the Department of Defense (DoD) and ISO standards, and modeled the software test and fix cycles of programs that were falling behind schedule. Ziegler, who has a B.S. in astronomy and physics from the University of Hawaii, is pursuing a Ph.D. in astrophysics from James Cook University.