Work
Andy Warhol, Moonwalk (1), 1987 - National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington DC, 2023.
Remarks at the Spring 2024 meeting of the International Aerospace Environmental Group - Dallas, TX
U.S. 13 cent stamp commemorating the history of Commercial Aviation, designed in 1976 by Robert E. Cunningham in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first contract airmail flights. (Personal collection)
Ashira creates opportunities to consider the nuances of innovation.
At the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), I focus on expanding educational products and programs related to advanced air mobility, sustainable aerospace, certification of novel aircraft technologies, high-speed flight, and space sustainability. I moved to AIAA after expanding interdisciplinary media programming and symposia for the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Selected programs:
June 2025: Organized a webinar on “Advanced Air Mobility’s Contributions to Multimodal Solutions” in partnership with the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America). With 250 registrations, the webinar ranks among AIAA’s most popular programs, and was one of ITS America’s first virtual programs on this topic.
March-May 2025: Organized Hill Briefings and developed White Papers on AAM Workforce Development and Novel Aircraft Integration into the National Airspace System
June 2024: Managed the Outer Space Heritage Summit in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
July 2023: Organized and moderated a webinar on “Sustainable Electrification of Transportation Systems,” in partnership with the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR) at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. With over 660 registrations, this webinar ranks among GUIRR’s most popular programs.
April 2023: Invited to organize and moderate a panel on “Implementing a Sustainable Future for Aviation: An Ecosystem Approach” for the the 10th anniversary of IEEE’s Sustainable Technology conference.
2018-2022: Content lead and curator of scientific media for the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Annual Meeting. Composed of scientific podcasts and documentary films, the Paperless Media series ran in person in 2019 and 2020 as well as digitally via Twitter in Spring 2020. The series received sponsorship from Wiley’s This Study Shows podcast and the University of Washington. In additional, the virtual program received external coverage on the Improbable Research and American Geophysical Union’s blogs.