Sarasina Tuchen

Sarasina Tuchen
Senior Scientist, HASS COE (Retired Emeritus)

Sarasina Tuchen was a Senior Scientist at the USDOT Highly Automated Systems Safety Center of Excellence (HASS COE) specializing in advanced aviation technologies, integration, and interoperability. With more than 35 years of experience in both private industry and federal government, Sarasina served as the USDOT lead of the automation strategy for the Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) Interagency Working Group. Prior to her federal service, Sarasina served as Group Vice President of Engineering at Digitas. During her federal tenure, she was the technical lead of many of the Federal Aviation Administration’s NexGen Air Transportation system technologies and platforms (including System Wide Information Management [SWIM] and advanced surface surveillance systems) that are modernizing the U.S. National Airspace System. In addition, she was the USDOT’s onsite lead at the NASA Ames Research Center working with NASA researchers to integrate advanced automation technologies to increase the air traffic capacity and efficiency of the National Airspace System. Before the AAM industry working groups were established, Sarasina worked with NASA on highlighting the importance of multimodal integration for the success of integrating these new airspace vehicles that will complement and compete with surface transportation. She has been an expert panelist, national working group member, principal author, and international conference technical chair on emerging multimodal, air transportation technologies and standards. She led a multimodal team to develop a set of tools for stakeholders (such as city and state planners) to start planning for UAM integration in their cities. Sarasina earned an M.S. in Engineering Economic Systems from Stanford University and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University.

Publications:

Tuchen, S., LaFrance-Linden, D., Hanley, B., Lu, J., McGovern, S., and Litvack-Winkler, M. (2022). “Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and Total Mobility Innovation Framework and Analysis Case Study: Boston Area Digital Twin and Economic Analysis.” 2022 IEEE/AIAA 41st Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC), pp. 1-14, Portsmouth, VA, doi: 10.1109/DASC55683.2022.9925865.

Tuchen, S., Nicholas, B., and Boeker, E. (2022). Noise Modeling Methods for Urban Air Mobility Vehicles in the Federal Aviation Administration’s Aviation Environmental Design Tool, Report No. DOT-VNTSC-NASA-22-02, John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, Cambridge, MA.

Tuchen, S., Nicholas, B., and Thrasher, T. (2021). Software Scoping Document for Integration of Urban Air Mobility Vehicles into the Federal Aviation Administration's Aviation Environmental Design Tool, Report No. DOT-VNTSC-NASA-21-01, John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, Cambridge, MA.

Tuchen, S. (2020). "Multimodal Transportation Operational Scenario And Conceptual Data Model For Integration With Uam." 2020 Integrated Communications Navigation and Surveillance Conference (ICNS), pp. 2C1-1-2C1-15, Herndon, VA, doi: 10.1109/ICNS50378.2020.9223002.

Tuchen, S. (2018). "Role of Aviation in Seamless End-to-End Mobility." 2018 IEEE/AIAA 37th Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC), pp. 1-8, London, UK, doi: 10.1109/DASC.2018.8569516.