Plenary I: Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning
Tuesday, 8 September
Plenary Keynote
Jon Damush
Jon Damush is senior director of new business ventures for Boeing NeXt, a business division building the ecosystem that will define the future of urban, regional and global mobility. He is responsible for collaboration with third parties to advance Boeing’s future mobility initiatives, including oversight of the SkyGrid joint venture that is developing a software platform for the safe integration of unmanned and autonomous vehicles into the global airspace.
Jon was formerly the chief growth officer for Insitu, Inc., a Boeing subsidiary whose unmanned products have more than 1.3 million operational flight hours. During his tenure at Insitu, he established the commercial business unit and oversaw the strategy and marketing functions of the company. Damush came to Insitu through Boeing’s acquisition of 2d3 Sensing, where he was president and CEO. He holds a Bachelor of Science in mechanical and aerospace engineering and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of California, Irvine. He is also a licensed commercial pilot and certified flight instructor.
Plenary Moderators
Marouan Chida
Marouan Chida is the head of digital transformation and innovation at SESAR JU (SJU), the European ATM modernisation program. He is in charge of the strategic research and is leading the digitalization of aviation together with its related technological innovations (ATM/UTM, CNS, avionics, autonomy, artificial intelligence, and connectivity). He is experienced in advanced ATM concepts, avionics and ground systems, involved in technology and architecture development across the SESAR program. Before joining the SJU, Marouan worked for Airbus, where he led ATM and avionics development teams. He graduated from the Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile (ENAC), the French school of civil aviation, where he achieved an engineering degree in civil aviation as well as a master’s degree in air-ground collaborative systems engineering.
Joseph Post
Joseph Post is the acting director of Systems Engineering & Integration at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Mr. Post has over 35 years of experience in aerospace, defense, and civil aviation. He has worked at Sikorsky Aircraft, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), Princeton Consultants, TRW, and the CNA Corporation. Immediately before joining FAA, Mr. Post was the military space analyst in the National Security Division of the Congressional Budget Office.
Mr. Post earned a bachelor’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from M.I.T., a master’s degree in engineering and applied science from Yale University, and a master’s degree in economics from George Mason University. Mr. Post is a co-inventor of three patents relating to helicopter flight controls, and holds FAA commercial pilot and remote pilot certificates.
Plenary II: Global Harmonization
Wednesday, 9 September
Plenary Moderators
Donald Ward
Don Ward is currently serving as an air navigation commissioner at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The Air Navigation Commission is a panel of 19 independent experts appointed by countries from around the world. They advise the ICAO Council on the adoption of international standards and oversee the technical panels that develop those standards.
Previously, Don served as the FAA group manager in charge of the development and implementation of a suite of aviation modernization programs, to include aeronautical information management, NextGen weather systems, flight services program, unmanned aerial systems, air traffic flow/collaborative decision making, and system-wide information management.
Don has more than ten years of direct experience in international relations. He was stationed in Brussels, Belgium as the FAA air traffic representative to Europe, Middle East and Africa. Don was also stationed in Singapore as the FAA senior international representative to Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Don has a strong link to the FAA NextGen modernization initiative and was previously in charge of the NextGen international office.
Paul Bosman
Paul Bosman has worked for EUROCONTROL for over 25 years in many different roles and functions. He is now the head of the (ATM) Infrastructure Division. This newly created division in the Network Manager Directorate aims, in close cooperation with all ATM stakeholders, to manage & support European ATM/CNS planning, deployment, reporting, and monitoring programs digitizing the Single European Sky (SES).
ICNS Conference Chairs
Conference General Chair
Dr. Gregory Woo
Dr. Gregory Woo is chief of the Aviation Systems Engineering division at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center. He has more than 30 years of broad experience encompassing data center management, information technology and network management, risk management, and leadership of technical research and new product development programs. He has led a wide variety of projects at the Volpe Center ranging from air traffic systems engineering projects, to aviation risk management and safety assessment exercises, to testing of instrumentation and technologies for low-visibility operations in the airport terminal environment. The Aviation Systems Engineering division that Dr. Woo oversees provides safety risk analysis; safety risk management; complex data analysis, modeling, and simulation; and systems engineering analysis for emerging aviation system technologies and new air traffic management systems.
Dr. Woo is a volunteer member of the FAA’s New England Safety Team, serving as a safety counselor and stage check pilot in the general aviation industry. He holds an Airline Transport Pilot certificate for multi-engine aircraft and is type-rated in the Boeing 737NG. He also holds an FAA Remote Pilot certificate. Dr. Woo is an active flight instructor training general aviation pilots to fly technically advanced aircraft with advanced automation and flight management systems. He also serves as a member of the Unmanned Aircraft Safety Team (UAST) supporting the uncontrolled flight risk identification and mitigation workgroup.
Woo holds a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Yale University, a master’s degree in organizational management and development from Fielding Graduate University, and a doctorate from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University with a focus on aviation safety, human factors, and the operation of unmanned aircraft systems.
Plenary Program Chairs
Dr. Nikos Fistas
Dr. Nikos Fistas is a senior communications expert at EUROCONTROL. He has more than 20 years of experience in the investigation, definition, development and standardization of data links for communication, such as VHF Digital Links (VDL2/3/4), SATCOM, Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communication System (AeroMACS) and L-Band Digital Aviation Communication System (LDACS), as well as for surveillance purposes, such as Extended Squitter (ES) and Universal Access Transceiver (UAT).
At EUROCONTROL, he oversees the activities relating to the future aeronautical communication infrastructure (FCI). In the context of SESAR, he is responsible for supporting the various COM solutions in the SESAR2020 PJ14 project, as well as overseeing the relevant international coordination aspects with ICAO and the US FAA under Coordination Plan 4.4. Since 2018, he has also been supporting the ongoing datalink deployment activities in Europe and the SESAR Deployment Manager, leading EUROCONTROL’s technical contribution to the relevant European-funded projects.
He has been representing EUROCONTROL in various international standardization groups, such as ICAO, EUROCAE, RTCA, AEEC and ETSI, covering data link aspects. He currently leads the ICAO Communication Panel Project Team SATCOM, which is tasked to update the ICAO SATCOM provisions (SARPs and Manual).
He holds a Master of Science in electrical engineering from the University of Thessaloniki and a Master of Science in communications and signal processing and a doctorate in digital communications and array signal processing, both from Imperial College, London.
Brent Phillips
Brent Phillips is a senior systems engineer with the Federal Aviation Administration’s NextGen Organization and the U.S. panel member to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Communications Panel. Mr. Phillips is also the program co-lead for the joint FAA/SESAR Future Communications Infrastructure Study including the development of the Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communications System (AeroMACS) and the Next Generation SATCOM Systems.
He is currently leading the Internet Protocol Suite (IPS) standards development for aviation use in the FAA. He is also serving as the communications lead on the NAS Enterprise Architecture Roadmap Team. Mr. Phillips holds a Bachelor of Science in engineering from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a Master of Science in engineering management from George Washington University.
Technical Program Chairs
Michael Olive
Michael Olive is technology fellow within Honeywell’s Aerospace Advanced Technology organization, with nearly 39 years of hardware and systems engineering experience. Mr. Olive leads Honeywell’s Aeronautical Communications/Datalink Technology Council providing technology oversight and strategic planning; serves as the principal investigator for Honeywell internal advanced datalink technology R&D projects; and provides subject matter expertise to global engineering teams in Europe and China. Mr. Olive participates actively on several aviation industry standards committees, including the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Communications Panel (CP) Working Group-I and the AEEC Internet Protocol Suite (IPS) Subcommittee.
Mr. Olive received a Master of Science in computer science from the Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Cornell University. He holds several patents in communications and information security, and he is the recipient of the Airline Avionics Institute (AAI) Volare Award.
Sherry Yang
Sherry Yang is the manager of airspace operation efficiency (AOE) at Boeing Research & Technology (BR&T) in Chantilly, Virginia. She is responsible for executing AOE’s missions and collaborating with government agencies and industry partners for more intelligent technology development in the areas of trajectory-based Operations (TBO), autonomous operations (AO), artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), air traffic management (ATM), and urban air mobility (UAM). Working across technologies and business modes, Yang is a facilitator for the public and private partnership to develop and evaluate new concepts for the aviation ecosystem. Previously, Yang led numerous Boeing proprietary programs and U.S. government contracts. Yang is an aviation practitioner with focuses on connected aircraft and airspace operations for manned and unmanned aircraft. She serves as secretary of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Digital Avionics Technical Committee (DATC) and is a Boeing member of Airspace Industries Association (AIA) Airspace Working Group.
Workshop Chairs
Denise Ponchak
Ms. Denise S. Ponchak is the deputy branch chief of the Communications Architectures, Networks and Systems Branch at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in Cleveland, Ohio. The branch is responsible for designing advanced networking concepts, architectures, technologies and system integration for aeronautics and space applications.
Prior to becoming a supervisor, Ms. Ponchak was an aeronautical communications project manager focusing on increasing the National Airspace System (NAS) telecommunications capability, and a communications research engineer supporting future satellite-based communications. She holds both a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering from Cleveland State University in 1983 and 1988 respectively.
Lance Sherry
Lance Sherry is associate professor of systems engineering and operations research at George Mason University. Dr. Sherry also serves as the director of the Center for Air Transportation Systems Research at George Mason University. Dr. Sherry has over 30 years’ experience in the aviation industry serving as a flight-test engineer, flight control engineer, system engineer, lead system architect, program manager, strategic planning and business development.
Dr. Sherry served as a fellow at RAND Corporation 1999-2001. He has published over 100 papers and journal articles, holds several patents, and has received awards for his work. Dr. Sherry is a graduate of Brown University with a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering, and he holds both a Master of Science and a doctorate in industrial and system engineering from Arizona State University.