Dr. James Cistone has had a passion for aviation since he was a young boy.
His goal in life is to leave a long-lasting legacy in aviation. Dr. Cistone began his educational career with a B.S. degree in Physics from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA in 1970. Subsequently, studying physics and atmospheric science at Drexel University with a focus on mesoscale meteorological modeling systems. During his tenure at Drexel, he focused on objective analysis and numerical weather prediction; specifically, the sensitivity of numerical prediction models to initial and boundary conditions.

Dr. Cistone’s initial employment was in the environmental engineering field, where he was responsible for developing environmental impact assessments related to transportation and industrial projects, for both air and noise impacts. Impacts were determined through the use of computer-based environmental models. During this time he was working on becoming licensed as a private pilot.

In 1977, he was hired by Lockheed Electronics Company, a subsidiary of the Lockheed Corporation, and began his career in computer system development as a software engineer developing real-time, life-critical software-based systems. Dr. Cistone, held several engineering positions of increasing significance culminating as the Chief Engineer for Air Traffic Control Systems.

In 1990, Dr. Cistone, relocated to GE Aerospace in Valley Forge, PA as a Senior Staff Systems Engineer and the Technical Director for Aviation Information Systems, where he provided technical leadership for GE Aerospace in their pursuit of the emerging aviation information market. While at GE, Dr. Cistone led a group of technical leadership students on a project to engineer and develop an airport safety and alerting system that would track aircraft on the airport surface and detect potential ground collisions, in
which case, the system would alert controllers and pilots. The system
prototype, developed in 1993, utilized differential GPS positions computed by receivers in several aircraft and transmitted these positions to a ground station over an air to ground data link. The ground station performed aircraft tracking and analysis of potential collisions, and relayed alerts of impending collisions to the aircraft and controller workstations.

In 1993, GE Aerospace was merged with Martin Marietta and in 1995, Martin Marietta was merged with Lockheed to form Lockheed Martin. Dr. Cistone continued his technical leadership role in the new company and ultimately transferred to Lockheed Martin Transportation and Security Systems (TSS).
During his residence at Lockheed Martin TSS, he was assigned to assist the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) in writing the National Plan for the Next Generation Air Transportation System, where he led the development of weather section as well as acting as a key contributor to the air traffic management section. Dr. Cistone enjoyed working on the future of technology to the extent that he decided to take early retirement from Lockheed Martin and to work directly for the JPDO in December 2004. The United States Congress established the Joint Planning and Development Office in 2003 to plan and coordinate the development of the Next Generation Air Transportation System. The JPDO is a multi-agency public/private initiative to include:
United States Department of Transportation, United States Department of Defense, Department of Commerce, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Aviation Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Dr. Cistone completed his Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) and CFI-Instrument (CFII) training in 2009 and 2010, respectively. These FAA certifications allow Dr. Cistone to teach basic, advanced, and instrument flight to students as well as to provide basic, advanced, and instrument ground school instruction to students.

In 2010, Embry-Riddle announced their new Ph.D. in Aviation program. Dr.
Cistone applied for admission, was accepted, and began the program in July 2010. He completed his Qualifying Exam in August 2012, and on June 26, 2014, he successfully defended his dissertation entitled: “Analysis of Airport Surface Deviations using the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System
(HFACS)”. On December 15, 2014, Dr. Cistone became the sixth recipient of
the Ph.D. in Aviation and one of only ten such recipients in the world today.

Dr. Cistone is currently working as an Aviation Coordinator at Eastern Mennonite University in Lancaster, PA and is employed by Leidos