Elizabeth Connelly

Elizabeth Connelly graduated from Furman University in 2011 with bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics and Economics. She received her M.S. (2013) from the department of Systems and Information Engineering at the University of Virginia. She is currently a research assistant in the Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems at UVa and is expecting to graduate with her Ph.D. in Systems Engineering in December 2015.
Her dissertation topic involves integrating risk analysis methods with environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) to recommend research and development priorities for aviation biofuels. As a 2014-2015 recipient of the Airport Cooperative Research Program Graduate Research Award Program on Public-Sector Aviation Issues, her current research includes performing a systems analysis of the potential for aviation biofuel production in the Commonwealth of Virginia. More broadly, her research interests are on risk analysis to support economic and environmental sustainability of energy, transportation, and other complex systems.
She has experience working on projects relating to risk assessment, decision analysis, and asset management for the Virginia Department of Transportation, U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, the Port of Virginia, and Virginia Department of Aviation. She is a member of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS), and the National Society of Professional Engineers. She was selected as a 2014-2015 Scholar of the Metropolitan Washington Chapter of Achievement for College Scientists (MWC/ARCS).