Comment on Provisional Committee Appointments

Viewers may communicate with the National Academies at any time over the project's duration. In addition, formal comments on the provisional appointments to a committee of the National Academies are solicited during the 20-calendar day period following the posting of the membership and, as described below, these comments will be considered before committee membership is finalized. We welcome your comments (Use the Feedback link below). Please note that the appointments made to this committee are provisional, and changes may be made. No appointment shall be considered final until we have evaluated relevant information bearing on the committee's composition and balance. This information will include the confidential written disclosures to The National Academies by each member-designate concerning potential sources of bias and conflict of interest pertaining to his or her service on the committee; information from discussion of the committee's composition and balance that is conducted in closed session at its first event and again whenever its membership changes; and any public comments that we have received on the membership during the 20-calendar day formal public comment period. If additional members are appointed to this committee, an additional 20-calendar day formal public comment period will be allowed. It is through this process that we determine whether the committee contains the requisite expertise to address its task and whether the points of views of individual members are adequately balanced such that the committee as a whole can address its charge objectively.

Conflict of Interest Disclosure

Disclosure of Unavoidable Conflict of Interest: Wesley A. Olson

The conflict-of-interest policy of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (https://www.nationalacademies.org/conflicts-of-interest-policy) prohibits the appointment of an individual to a committee authoring a Consensus Study Report if the individual has a conflict of interest that is relevant to the task to be performed. An exception to this prohibition is permitted if the National Academies determines that the conflict is unavoidable and the conflict is publicly disclosed. A determination of a conflict of interest for an individual is not an assessment of that individual's actual behavior or character or ability to act objectively despite the conflicting interest.

Wesley A. Olson has a conflict of interest in relation to his service on the Committee for a Study of the Airspace Design, Civil-Military Coordination, and Operational Safety of the National Capital Region because his employer, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, receives non-competitive funding from the Federal Aviation Administration in support of the development of new technology for air traffic control, aircraft surveillance, and collision avoidance.
The National Academies has concluded that in order for the committee to accomplish the tasks for which it was established, its membership must include at least one person who has current experience and expertise in airborne collision avoidance systems. As described in his biographical summary, Dr. Olson, as Lead of the Transportation Safety and Resilience Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, oversees and manages research programs involving detect and avoid systems, airspace risk assessment and encounter modeling, airspace integration, and advanced air traffic radar and surveillance development.
The National Academies has determined that the experience and expertise of Dr. Olson is needed for the committee to accomplish the task for which it has been established. The National Academies could not find another available individual with the equivalent current experience and expertise who does not have a conflict of interest. Therefore, the National Academies has concluded that the conflict is unavoidable.
The National Academies believes that Dr. Olson can serve effectively as a member of the committee, and the committee can produce an objective report, taking into account the composition of the committee, the work to be performed, and the procedures to be followed in completing the study.