Christina Ivler

About

Christina Ivler is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Portland's Donald P. Shiley School of Engineering. She holds a B.S. and M.S. from the University of California, Davis, and a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University.

Dr. Ivler joined the faculty at UP in 2017. Prior to UP, she spent more than a decade as a Research Engineer at the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC). Her teaching spans engineering computing, numerical methods, dynamic systems, and control — informed throughout by her deep expertise in rotorcraft dynamics.

Her research focuses on system identification and flight control of rotary wing and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). She flies a small hexacopter on campus with her students to develop and test maneuver requirements for UAV handling qualities, and has collaborated with NASA on technologies for electric multi-rotor air-taxi and planetary rotorcraft applications. She is Chair of the Engineering Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) and actively mentors undergraduate researchers in flight testing, simulation, and data analysis.

Christina is active across university, school, and professional service. At UP, she has served on the Academic Senate, the Faculty Welfare Committee, and the Fulbright Committee, and has been a long-standing Honors Program mentor and the university's NASA Oregon Space Grant Representative. Within the Shiley School, she has chaired the Mechanical Engineering Professionalism Committee and the Curriculum Review Task Force, and has participated in multiple faculty search committees across departments. Professionally, she serves as Engineering Division Vice-Chair for the Council on Undergraduate Research, is an active member of the Vertical Flight Society Handling Qualities Technical Committee, contributes to ASTM and UAS certification working groups, and is a peer reviewer for leading aerospace journals including the AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics and the Journal of the American Helicopter Society.

Education

• Ph.D., Stanford University (Stanford, California)
• M.S., University of California-Davis (Davis, California)
• B.S., University of California-Davis (Davis, California)

Links

• CV
• ResearchGate
• Google Scholar

Recent Publications

1. Godby, C., Ivler, C., Borek, U., Possedi, C., Pua, A., "Supervised Machine Learning for Identifying Motor Propeller System Failures Onboard Multicopters," AIAA SciTech, Orlando, FL, January, 2026.
2. Ivler, C.M., Vo, E., Schulze, C., Jones, M., "Validation of Scaled Automation Qualities, Framework for Group 1 to Group 3 Vertical Lift UAS," AIAA SciTech, Orlando, FL, Jan 2026.
3. Powell, J.D., Emami-Naeini, A., Ivler, C.M., Feedback Control of Dynamics Systems, 9th Edition, Pearson Education, New York, NY, March 2025.
4. Ivler, C.M., Geyer, W.P, "Outer Loop Requirements for Vertical Lift Unmanned Aerial System Automated Flying Qualities," Vertical Flight Society 80th Annual Forum, Montreal, Canada, May 7-9, 2024.
5. Walter, A., McKay, M., Niemiec, R., Gandhi, F., Ivler, C., “Hover Handling Qualities of Fixed-Pitch, Variable-RPM Quadcopters of Increasing Size,” Journal of the American Helicopter Society, Vol. 67, October 2022.