This award recognizes academic excellence and research in General Aviation. Throughout her doctoral work, Nicoletta has made it her goal to improve General Aviation safety. Working with the FAA’s PEGASAS Center of Excellence, she has investigated how we can use various types of flight data to help pilots operate more safely. Her specific focus is on the recreational GA pilot, who typically does not have the organizational, support of say, a charter pilot. For her doctoral work, Nicoletta is focusing on how best to represent risk to pilots, so that they are motivated to change their behavior for the better. As most GA pilots will readily attest, GA pilots can be stubborn, which makes changing their behavior challenging. Nicoletta has also contributed to several other efforts, including algorithms to identify phase of flight, machine learning code that automatically classifies and labels flight, and developing a low-cost AHRS device. Nicoletta’s work has already resulted in three conference papers and one journal paper.

You can find more information about Nicoletta and her award here.