BC NA December 2020

USAF-MIT AI ACCELERATOR
32
CAPT. RONISHA CARTER, U.S.
AIR FORCE: C-17 SCHEDULING
Having enlisted in the Air Force directly
out of high school, Capt. Ronisha Carter
started off in the field of server maintenance
and boundary protection, before
becoming an officer and receiving a
Master’s in Computer Engineering. “I
was selected for an Education with
Industry fellowship at VMware, where
I was able to work within an Artificial
Intelligence Machine Learning development
team,” she says. “It was at this time
when I developed a foundation in artificial
intelligence and machine learning.”
Her current role is as a Cyberspace
Warfare Operations officer. “My career
field covers the entire communications
spectrum,” says Carter. “Everything
from network defense to base communications
structures, to tactical
communications. This background along
with my AI foundation led me to be one
of 11 selected to collaborate with MIT
on the integration of artificial intelligence
technology into Air Force platforms.”
Under Carter’s remit falls the C-17
scheduling project, with the intention
of bettering the lives of pilots and
airmen using AI to make the process
of scheduling less time consuming
while increasing efficiency and minimizing
errors. “Creating an Air Force
flight schedule today, the scheduler
has to account for a multitude of
variables we identify as constraints.
This includes qualifications or the
training a pilot requires for that seat
and crew rest – the time they must
take off in between each flight. Also
the amount of flights that need to
be scheduled, and the time intervals
between those flights. This process
is currently being accomplished through
various manual channels. Separate
data systems, phone calls, and even
whiteboards, which causes scheduling
to be immensely complex and
time consuming.”
The remedy to that involves using AI
to take up the burden. “What we hope
to achieve is to create a data driven
DECEMBER 2020