The Department of Transportation today announced the appointment of Dr. Karlin Toner to serve as the senior DOT staff advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Transportation concerning the transformation of the air transportation system. Dr. Toner will also be senior DOT staff liaison between Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) partnering departments and agencies and the Office of the Secretary.

Dr. Toner comes to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) on detail from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Her appointment follows an executive order signed by President Bush on Nov. 18, 2008 to advance the transformation of the national air transportation system. The executive order directed DOT to establish within the Office of the Secretary of Transportation a staff to support the Secretary as chairman of the interagency Senior Policy Committee that is overseeing the development of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen).

She will work directly under the Secretary of Transportation and coordinate inter-agency development of the NextGen program that also involves the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Commerce, as well as NASA, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the FAA.

Dr. Toner brings to her new position 15 years of experience at NASA, where she served from August 2006 to December 2008 as director of airspace systems programs. She previously held a number of key positions at NASA in aerospace and aeronautical planning and research. She has doctoral and master's degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Florida and a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Toner manages the NextGen Human Factors group at the FAA.