Terry von Thaden (PhD ’04), GSLIS assistant professor, has been elected to the Flight Safety Foundation's first Maintenance Advisory Committee which plays a key role in advancing aviation safety. The mission of the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) is to pursue the continuous improvement of global aviation safety.
According to the Committee’s charge letter, the Maintenance Advisory Committee has been formed to assist the Flight Safety Foundation in its efforts “to deliver credible safety information to the aviation community. The committee's responsibilities include both general and specific assistance on present and future safety related activities, identification and solution of aviation maintenance and engineering safety issues, and advice on special study requirements and seminar programs.”
“I’m proud to be part of this independent and impartial committee. The collective members of the committee share a wealth of knowledge from industry, regulation, and academic research. There are numerous global, cultural aspects to maintenance safety to be explored, and I look forward to working on the committee to advise on future directions for safety and information sharing in aviation maintenance operations,” said von Thaden.
Dr. von Thaden’s research involves methodologies for measuring the culture of safety and information behavior in high-risk, safety critical sociotechnical systems including transportation systems, security, and medicine. In 2010 she founded Illumia, home to the SCISMS, the Safety Culture Indicator assessment tool she developed under multi-year research awards from the Federal Aviation Administration and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.