Meet the Team
A multidisciplinary team of researchers, engineers, and domain experts working at the intersection of AI and air traffic management — spanning NATS, The Alan Turing Institute, and the University of Exeter.
Research Theme 1 — Digital Twin
Research Theme 3 — Assurance
Data Team
Previous Collaborators
Team Profile
CloseTeam
Research Theme 2 — Agents
Role
Project Bluebird academic co-lead / Research Fellow
Dr. George De Ath
Project Bluebird academic co-lead / Research Fellow
Biography
George is a Research Fellow at the University of Exeter and a co-investigator on Project Bluebird, an EPSRC-funded prosperity partnership between the University of Exeter, NATS, and The Alan Turing Institute. He is leading the development of novel control algorithms for safe, efficient, and orderly air traffic control. He has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Exeter, where he developed novel algorithms for zero-shot tracking of objects in video. Since then, he has worked on several projects that involve the calibration (optimisation) of digital twins, including road network capacity modelling and building information modelling. His main research interests include the optimisation of expensive-to-evaluate problems using Bayesian optimisation, as well as more general single- and multi-objective optimisation tasks. He also has experience in probabilistic modelling, with a particular focus on Gaussian Processes and Uncertainty Quantification.
Publications
- Graph-based Complexity Forecasts in UK En Route Airspace Using Relevant Aircraft Interactions
US-Europe ATRD Symposium, 2026
- A Future Capabilities Agent for Tactical Air Traffic Control
AIAA SciTech Forum, 2026
- Human-in-the-Loop Testing of AI Agents for Air Traffic Control with a Regulated Assessment Framework
AIAA SciTech Forum, 2026
- Online Action-Stacking Improves Reinforcement Learning Performance for Air Traffic Control
AIAA SciTech Forum, 2026
- A Probabilistic Digital Twin of UK En Route Airspace for Training and Evaluating AI Agents for Air Traffic Control
AIAA SciTech Forum, 2026
- Towards Transparent AI Agents for Air Traffic Control
AIAA SciTech Forum, 2026
- AirTrafficGen: Configurable Air Traffic Scenario Generation with Large Language Models
NeurIPS LAW Workshop, 2025
- A Sector-Specific Probabilistic Approach for 4D Aircraft Trajectory Generation
Transportation Research Part C, 2025
- Air Traffic Controller Task Demand via Graph Neural Networks: An Interpretable Approach to Airspace Complexity
AIAA AVIATION Forum, 2025
- A probabilistic model for aircraft in climb using monotonic functional gaussian process emulators
Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 2023