Donald B Sanderson

Professor Department of Computer and Information Sciences

Dan and Tammy Eldridge Faculty Fellow College of Business and Technology

East Tennessee State University

Design Studio 2004-2005 The AXE Project

ETSU, Johnson City, Tennessee - April 2004

                                                                                     Jane Harris Woodside

David Caldwell makes it all look easy. The 24-year-old East Tennessee State University (ETSU) graduate student leans over a silver laptop, taps the mouse pad a few times—and there, in a matter of seconds, appears detailed information about aviation regulations for Bahrain, a Persian Gulf state.

It only looks easy. In reality, it took a team of 10 ETSU graduate students working under the direction of computer and information science professor Donald Sanderson the better part of a year to design, develop, and test the Aeronautical XML Exchange (AXE 2.0) that made it possible for Caldwell to call up Bahrain’s information with such ease. The final product of a Design Studio project, AXE 2.0 is a prototype of a computer model that has the potential to allow pilots throughout the world to access quickly and easily all the up-to-date information they need before setting out on international flights. ETSU’s Design Studio is a series of three courses during which second year computer science graduate students work on a real-world problem for an actual client.

The client in this case was the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the Montreal-based U.N. agency that promotes the safe, orderly development of international commercial aviation. Alexsandar Pavlovic, chief of aeronautical information and charts for ICAO’s air navigation bureau, looked on as Caldwell and his fellow students made their presentation. “Your work has created some interest, ,” Pavlovic said, nodding in the direction of U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) contractor Brett Brunk and Randy Bigler, a data architect with Jeppesen, a Boeing subsidiary headquartered in Denver that provides integrated aviation information. They made the trip to ETSU’s Johnson City campus for the presentation because they knew what an enormous improvement this computer model represents over the way aeronautical information is currently disseminated.

 

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The 2004_2005 Design Studio AXE Team

The AXE Project at ETSU

Date: April 30 2005

Modified 5-Aug-09