“Pursue your career. Pursue your passion. It’s your journey. Make the most of it. This is for you.”

Women continue to lead transportation research at Federal agencies around the Nation and that includes senior leadership at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Paula Nouragas is the chief scientist and technical advisor for the FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center for Advanced Aerospace, the Nation’s premier Federal aviation laboratory for advancing the U.S. National Airspace System and sustaining its continued safe and efficient operations. She manages the center’s Science and Technology Integration Office, which advises, guides, and integrates applied research, development, test, and evaluation activities.
 

Initially, she dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, but the field of computer science was growing and her passion for science and math was undeniable. Somehow, the stars began to align; a conversation with her brother-in-law over 39 years ago led to the first step in her career path. Given Nouragas’ pursuit of a bachelor’s degree in information systems and sciences, he informed her about an open house at the FAA Technical Center. She decided to attend, was interviewed, and was hired as an intern assigned to the aircraft hangar working in the communication, navigation, and surveillance area. The internship also involved flight testing.

Back then, everything was done by hand as artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots, and other similar tools weren’t around to build, for instance, an algorithm; the staff created and used flowcharts. At any rate, Nouragas’ managers allowed her to work on multiple projects and develop software, which fed her curiosity and appetite for learning and led her to be creative.

As a result of such curiosity, throughout her nearly 40 years of Federal service, Nouragas has managed, led, and conducted aviation research, development, and test and evaluation activities in surveillance, navigation, avionics, weather, emerging operations, and air traffic management. Because of her appetite for learning, she continued her education, earning a master’s degree in aeronautical science with a human factors specialization. As a result of her creativity—her love of sharing ideas and insights with peers to create solutions—she became a member of several professional organizations, including the Air Traffic Control Association, International Test and Evaluation Association, and South Jersey Human Factors Society.

Nouragas wholeheartedly believes in partnerships and collaborations—whether organizational-wide, interagency, international, or interpersonal. For her and her staff, it’s in their DNA to work together, as many of them grew up together, went to school together, worked in the community together, and shared in watching their children play sports together.

Rick Breitenfeldt, an FAA public affairs specialist, recently interviewed Nouragas; what follows are excerpts from their discussion.

What is the biggest difference in transportation you have seen from the time you began your career until now?

The evolution of technology and its application in transportation is the biggest change I’ve seen since I started my FAA career as a computer science intern in 1985; then, reliance on the hardware platform for computing power was key. That continuum has changed over time, including the pace at which technology is deployed. I think the complexity of the transportation system has grown over time, especially with interconnected systems of systems architecture, the wealth and abundance of data exchanged digitally, and the sharing of information across the transportation ecosystem. With all that comes a stronger emphasis on securing the enterprise, what we call cybersecurity resiliency.

Today, we have a whole new paradigm of software engineering and development—between agile development practices and dev-sec ops (development, security, and operations) roles—as well as more automated tools and computing capabilities that allow us to scale accordingly. In addition to that, we are able to support rapid development and deployment of new capabilities. We also have some great algorithms with AI. It goes on and on in terms of where we’re at today and in terms of computer science. It’s our job to keep pace with emerging technology and to see how best we can safely adopt it and apply it within our transportation system.

What technology do you think holds the greatest impact and promise for the future of transportation?

I don’t think it’s one technology that holds the greatest impact and promise. It’s more a portfolio of emerging technologies in a “fit-for-purpose” construct that will be necessary for the modernization and transformation of transportation. For example, it’s the application of data science; AI and machine learning (ML) and the adherence to an assurance framework; secure digital communications, cloud computing, Internet of Things and sensor fusion; immersive technology [i.e., virtual reality, extended reality, and mixed reality]; and more. These are the “building blocks” that, when combined properly, will provide the greatest impact on transportation.

What I am encouraged about is the sharing of technology solutions and applications across transportation modes. I look at the prospects and opportunities of a portfolio of emerging technologies and how they can work, interact, and integrate together. I always use the term, “fit-for-purpose.” That’s important in terms of the mindset of how you look at the emerging technology and the various use cases: Make sure it fits the purpose or the intended function. There’s a lot of technology around, but there’s also a disciplined approach to really understand it and use it effectively in our environment.

For example, our research portfolio shows that we’re doing a lot with cybersecurity data science and AI/ML. In a lab environment, we use immersive technology to set up an enabling environment for research and testing; our technical staff have shown other viable use cases of immersive technology for a wide range of functions. When you look at the multi-missions that are performed across the FAA Tech Center, you can see how developments in one mission and domain can be directly analogous to other domains and by just bringing the building blocks together in a different fashion you can achieve results.

Additionally, we’re starting to look at secure command and control communication and how devices communicate with each other. Along with secure digital communications, technological devices are going to help better connect aircraft and pilots and support the evolution of levels of automation toward autonomous flight operations.

Are there any particular partnerships that have proven highly impactful and have led to great change at FAA?

They all bring a unique perspective, a level of expertise and experience. I can’t pick just one. The academic community brings a wealth of knowledge and cutting-edge, boundary-pushing research. Along with industry, these partnerships positively impact and shape the future of aviation.

The coming together of different perspectives and expertise to solve problems is the power and strength and the reason behind having partnerships. It’s about working together to solve problems, share our experience, and share our expertise. FAA, and especially the Tech Center, has good, working relationships with our partners at NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration), the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Homeland Security, and others.

Throughout my 39-year career at the Tech Center, I’ve worked very closely with the DOD. I value that partnership. DOD has provided lots of understanding about how they’ve incorporated some of the dev-sec ops, software engineering, and new principals, and even using the cloud. What they’ve done has shaped FAA’s understanding of where we’re going with our automation evolution strategy.

The work that the DOT HASS COE (U.S. Department of Transportation’s Highly Automated Systems Safety Center of Excellence) team is doing to connect the operational architecture and DOT (Department of Transportation) modals, and especially to integrate the Federal labs to examine multi-modal concepts and the various emerging technology use cases can really impact FAA. They have an initiative called Connect-X that’s working hard to bring the department’s modals together in an effort to collaborate, to integrate our labs, like our robust LVCE (live, virtual, constructive environment)—a distributed research testbed we created—to connect and explore some multi-modal concepts and various use cases.

Given the complexity and pace of change, we realize we can’t do it alone. The coming together of different perspectives and expertise to solve problems and identify the realm of possibilities is the core strength of partnerships. So, FAA values partnerships and collaboration with other government, industry, academia, and our international aviation partners.

Working together, seeing how the technological advancements can be infused across these various modals is going to be important for the future of transportation.

What is your top advice to a young woman thinking about a degree or career in STEM?

First and foremost, pursue your passion and explore the wide range of careers in the STEM field, including aviation (the field of transportation). I don’t think anyone can go into a STEM field without a passion for science, technology, engineering, or math.

Another bit of important advice: Find a mentor. Honestly, if it weren’t for the mentors I had, and the guidance they provided in the aircraft hangar where I first started working, I would not have stayed in computer science. The mentors allowed me as an intern to really excel, to do hands-on work. That drove my passion for writing software, which I found intriguing and creative. Therefore, find a mentor who is willing to invest in you. Today, at the FAA Tech Center, we mentor our interns that way. We match the next generation workforce with someone who will challenge them, guide them, and make sure their work assignments contribute to the organization’s goals and, most importantly, are a good fit for them to develop and learn.

Thirdly, there’s a wide range of careers in STEM; explore your options. The Tech Center’s AvSTEM program promotes careers in aviation like air traffic control as well as pilots, engineers, scientists, researchers, and all types of specialties. We even hire psychologists, especially in the human systems integration area, to maximize human performance and study how the human operates and interacts with technology. The AvSTEM team also holds career panels. They do outreach to promote careers in aviation in classrooms and at community events. In my career, I’ve worked just about every aspect of the system development acquisition life cycle–from research to testing, from concept development to deployment—the whole spectrum of it. It’s important for you to expand your career and continue to learn and grow. It will challenge you as a person and at the same time, you’re able to give back. I also tell those coming in, make sure you have a good work-life balance.

So, my best advice to women going into STEM is to diversify yourself. Be comfortable being a little uncomfortable. Know yourself. Have confidence. You’ll be handed opportunities you never thought you could handle, but you will be able to do it.

For more information, visit https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ang/offices/tc.

For more on HASS COE, see the What’s New article in this issue of Public Roads.