From Meager Beginnings

Summary: Vernol Battiste will present a chronology of his career choices after leaving high school, through his time in the UASF, the FAA, managing his own business, and his career at NASA as a research scientist. It was an internship which led to being hired in an early career development program at NASA Ames Research Center while completing a master’s in psychology from SJSU that evolved into his research career. Vern’s career journey has been rich with opportunities and accomplishments — fighter jet technician, air traffic controller – USAF and FAA, business owner, research intern, NASA-TLX development team member, NASA’s first cockpit digital map display, advancing social justice at NASA, forging the future of distributed air/ground traffic management, single pilot commercial flight operations, and unmanned and manned aerial vehicles flight research.

BIO: Mr. Battiste earned his MA in Psychology from the SJSU Department of Psychology in 1987. Prior to that, Mr. Battiste served nine years as a fighter jet mechanic and air traffic controller in the US Air Force, including service during the Vietnam War. Following his military service, he worked for four years as a civil servant air traffic controller for the Federal Aviation Administration and then 22 years as a civil servant scientist for NASA, where he was PI of the Flight Deck Display Research Laboratory at NASA ARC. Upon retiring from NASA, Mr. Battiste became a Senior Research Associate with the San José State University Research Foundation (SJSURF) working at NASA ARC under a series of cooperative agreements between the SJSU Department of Psychology and NASA, from 2006 to present.

Mr. Battiste has published over 100 scientific papers (many with student co-authors) and has won 16 NASA awards, including Ames Honor Awards, Software Release Awards, Ames Technology Awards, and NASA Group Achievement Awards. For his efforts to promote diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) activities at ARC to enhance the success of students, NASA civil servants, and NASA contractors, in 2020 he was selected for the NASA Honor Award – Equal Employment Opportunity Medal. In addition to these prestigious NASA awards, Mr. Battiste received the Black Engineer of the Year Award (2001), was named one of the 50 Most Important Blacks in Research Science for 2004, and received the National Aeronautic Association’s Robert J. Collier Award (2007) as a member of the NASA Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) team. The annual Collier Award is one of the most important awards in aviation and recognizes “the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or space vehicles, the value of which has been thoroughly demonstrated by actual use during the preceding year.” Most recently, Mr. Battiste was inducted into Black Legends Silicon Valley Class of 2023, which honors “African American Pioneers who have made an immense contribution to Silicon Valley.” As an inductee, Mr. Battiste received the Black Legends Dean-Greene S.T.E.M Award, which recognizes “individuals who helped produce and enhance today’s field of engineering and science…[and] who help create landmark changes in technology to improve the lives of the general public and improve the lives of people in the Black Community.”