Dr. Trung T. Pham is the FAA’s Chief Scientific and Technical Advisor (CSTA) for Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Machine Learning (ML), with more than 35 years of software and AI experience. In his role, Pham advances research and knowledge related to the use of AI and ML in aviation systems and the evaluation of their integration with aircraft software.

Pham has held academic and research leadership roles at multiple institutions, including serving as a professor at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), where he conducted applied AI and ML research through Air Force initiatives such as CyberWorx; as a professor at the University of Houston; and as a visiting professor and director of the Center of Research in Information Technology at the University of Talca in Chile, where he directed nationally sponsored research on secure product authentication using RFID and IoT technologies and led a U.S. State Department-funded project using swarm intelligence to coordinate drone fleets for forest fire detection.

His professional background also includes roles as a technical specialist and staff engineer at the NASA Johnson Space Center in the Space Station Program, as well as process engineering positions at Seiscom Delta United and AMF GeoSpace, where he worked on seismic signal processing for oil exploration.

Pham is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) and a Senior Member of the International Society of Automation (ISA). He is also an active member of the Technical Committee on Measurement in Robotics and a Distinguished Speaker in the International Measurement Confederation (IMEKO). Throughout his career, Pham has produced more than 50 publications, two technical books, and many technical presentations. In 2018, he was the recipient of the Best Paper Award at the ENEFA Conference in Valparaíso, Chile.

Pham obtained his B.S.E.E., M.S., and Ph.D. from the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and his M.B.A. from the University of Houston – Clear Lake in Houston, Texas., including fellowships from the Office of Naval Research and NASA.