Making Aviation Safer

By Denise Jones

My story is probably different than most NASA researcher engineers. I didn’t go to school for engineering, aviation, or psychology. Back when I was coming along (late 70’s), my Dad would say, ‘Computers are the way of the future’. So I majored in computer science. I attended Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. While attending, I was a member of the Association for Computing Machinery. We took a tour of NASA Langley Research Center, which included the simulation facilities. I thought it would be really cool to work there, little to know that someday I would. I thought that only geniuses that were really good in math could work for NASA. That was not the case. I filed my resume with the University. My first supervisor scanned through the resumes and called me for an interview. He was looking for a researcher that could develop their own software for displays in the cockpit.

At first, working at NASA was a little overwhelming. I didn’t know anything at all about aviation or aircraft so I had to do a lot of reading and take short courses along the way. I also had to learn what it meant to be a Principal Investigator and the process required to conduct experiments. Thankfully, I had an outstanding mentor early in my career.

I have been working as a researcher at NASA for 26 years now. Most of that time I have worked in the area of crew / vehicle interface where concepts are developed for the flight deck and evaluated through piloted simulation and flight tests. My main tasks are to be knowledgeable about state-of-the-art in my research area, design and conduct studies, analyze data, and publish results to disseminate to the aviation community. My area of interest has been airport surface safety. I have conducted research on airport surface maps in which the flight crew is shown a moving map of the airport with the location of their aircraft and the locations of other traffic on the airport. Surface maps give the pilots additional information about the situation on the airport and help prevent them from getting lost. Airport moving maps are starting to be installed in aircraft today. I have also conducted quite a bit of research in the area of airport terminal area conflict prevention. The system onboard the aircraft can detect if there will be a potential collision with another aircraft on the airport surface, i.e. runway incursion, and the flight crew is alerted so they can take the appropriate action to avoid a collision. Companies are starting to develop this technology also. Maybe it will be installed in aircraft before I retire.

I am very thankful to have the opportunity to work for NASA. It has been very rewarding working with the high caliber people at NASA and the aviation community. It is very satisfying to have contributed to technology that will make aviation safer and may actually save lives.