Onsite E-Newsletter No. 3: We hate to see you go

May 17 -19, 2016 Resorts Hotel

Tech Symposium Info Agenda Sponsors Exhibitors

NASA, PBN, and UAS...Oh My!

Today may be the last day of the ATCA Tech Symposium 2016, but it's still jam packed full of interesting, inspiring information (is it too early for alliteration?). Today we'll explore the fascinating role NASA plays in enhancing and modernizing the NAS, the ways in which PBN is transforming how controllers do their jobs, and the current state of UAS implementation.

But before we start the show, you know there are some reminders:

Registration is open from 8 a.m. until 12 p.m. in the Ocean Ballroom today.
Lunch will be served from 12:15 - 1:15 p.m. in Ocean Ballroom and Capriccio Restaurant. Sorry, no more ice cream. Guess you'll just have to come back next year.
The Exhibit Hall closes at 1:15 p.m. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here!
How did we do? Please take a minute and answer a few questions to help make our event even better!

Just one more thing...

M ark your calendars and come back to Resorts for ATCA Tech Symposium 2017:

May 16-18, 2017!

He said...

She said...

Our industry is a technology-based industry that has brought significant change to our country and the world. But our industry is also a safety-based industry with a solid safety record. It's a challenge to be both safety focused and technology focused - changes rooted in making something safer and changes rooted in making something more technologically advanced can sometimes have incompatible timelines and objectives.

-ATCA President and CEO Pete Dumont

We can't do it alone, so our partnerships with academia, industry, and other government agencies are key to success. And that partnership also extends internally to the campus - many of the projects, systems, and focus area initiatives are supported by cross- organizational teams.

- FAA Tech Center Director Shelley Yak

As we look ahead, we see a dynamic and emerging future with rapid changes and with market entrants that are unfamiliar and perhaps impatient with the rigors of aviation development timeframes.

- Dr. John Cavolowski, NASA

I'm on the data side, so paranoia is an attribute.

- FAA Chief Scientist Natesh Manikoth

I went to a conference a few years ago and got a t-shirt that says, 'We have lots of data but no information.' The question is how do we package data into useful information?

- Steve Bradford, FAA

We need to continue looking for enterprise solutions. And that's not a popular conversation with program managers ... We need to stop investing in duplicative capabilities.

- Michele Merkle, FAA

Modern[ized] Thinking

Modernization is a moving target. Current NextGen infrastructure and capabilities will be the legacy systems of 2025. What can we do as an industry to make sure our successors won't face a similar dilemma?

Whatever your qualms about the FAA's levels of bureaucracy and their tenuous bonds to Congress, our panelists have heard it all before. Loud and clear. They feel it too sometimes. At the top of their list (and yours) of challenges? Modernizing air traffic, of course.

READ MORE.

Kristen Burnham

FAA

Fran Hill

Lockheed Martin

Jeff McCoy
FAA

Tom Kelly

FAA

Michele Merkle

FAA

Peter Challan

Harris Corporation

Exhibitor Spotlight

We asked two long-time exhibitors what keeps them coming back to ATCA's Tech Symposium:

Thinklogical

"It helps get our name out to the FAA market. It enables us to reach a lot of people in a single shot."

- Richard Cooper, Thinklogical

"The event's location being in the vicinity of the Tech Center gives it a lot of validity."

- Bob Ventresca, Thinklogical

JMA Solutions

"We have an office up here so it's an opportunity to meet up with the FAA and other teams and make connections."

- Ashley Spencer, JMA Solutions

"It helps make sure our presence is known up here."

- Marcy Bettis, JMA Solutions

Mixing and Mingling

Attendees chat over breakfast, sponsored by Harris Corp.

Participants soak up a little Vitamin D between panels.

ATCA President and CEO Pete Dumont greets registrants.

Floor visitors stop and speak with an exhibitor.

Throwback Thursday:

A Look Back at #TechTuesday

There was so much to see and learn that we'd need a bunch more Tuesdays to cover it all! This is just the tip of the iceberg of what's happening at the FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center.

View from Above: Tech Center Tuesday participants take in 40+ exhibits.

TECH TALKS RECAP

Biology Inspired Genetic Algorithm Implementation for Time-shifted Air Traffic Scenario Generation

According to James Ritchie III, recent Rowan University graduate, Tech Center intern, and soon-to- be full-time FAA employee, biology and aviation have a lot in common. He believes scientists can draw on the study of biology to assist in automation in air traffic, and that selection (think "survival of the fittest") of time-shifted modules can be built with scenarios to avoid conflict, in both horizontal and vertical separation, in all phases of flight and encounter angle.

READ MORE.

TECH TRACK RECAP

Cybersecurity Test Facility

(CyTF)

$2.5 billion a day. That's what it will cost the US if a cyber attack shuts down aircraft operations. The threats are coming from all sides. In today's cyber climate, it's not a matter of if but when. It's the price of increasing connectivity. In fact, each point-to-point connection is a vulnerability, explains the FAA's Jim Daum, who led the tour of the Cybersecurity Test Facility (CyTF) at Tech Center Tuesday.