Kathy Abbott Chief Scientific and Technical Advisor, Flight Deck Human Factors Federal Aviation Administration

Dr. Kathy Abbott is the FAA’s Chief Scientific and Technical Advisor (CSTA) for Flight Deck Human Factors, with over 40 years of work on human performance and human error. Dr. Abbott has led the integration of human engineering into FAA/international regulatory material and policies for flight guidance systems, avionics, all-weather operations, Required Navigation Performance, crew qualification, data communication, instrument procedure design criteria, electronic flight bags, electronic displays, organizational culture, design-related pilot error, flight crew alerting, manual flight operations, and other areas. She has been involved extensively in accident, incident, and other safety data analysis.

Dr. Abbott came to the FAA from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), where she was responsible for leading analytical, simulation, and flight studies with the specific objective of improving aviation safety and operational efficiency. She is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a Member of the Livery of the Honourable Company of Air Pilots. She is a certificated private pilot, with familiarization training in several large transport aircraft. Dr. Abbott earned her B.S. in Mathematics and Information Science from Christopher Newport College, an M.S. in Computer Science from George Washington University, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Rutgers University.