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 2024: Managed the Outer Space Heritage Summit in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

• April 2024: Invited to present plenary remarks at the Spring meetings of the International Aerospace Environmental Group and organized Workshop session on “Accelerating Aerospace Technology Deployment” at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) Sustainable Aviation conference.

• 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.

• 2019-2020: Created and curated the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Paperless Media series for the Annual Meeting. Composed of scientific podcasts and documentary films, the series ran in person as well as digitally via Twitter in Spring 2020. The Paperless Media programs 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.