From the Cockpit to the Courtroom
A pilot’s journey from rotorcraft safety to the future of law: Studying how systems succeed, how people fail, and how law can protect both.
I grew up among rotor blades and research labs, chasing the questions no one wants to ask: Why do systems fail? Who is responsible when they do? From flying helicopters in the German Army to investigating crashes and cognitive decision errors, my journey has led me here — at the intersection of aviation and the law. I am building the kind of career that protects innovation, accountability, and every human life that takes flight.
Where performance meets pressure, systems reveal their design: Exploring what goes right in high-stakes environments, from cognitive performance in rotorcraft to augmented reality in the courtroom. A portfolio of research that asks better questions.
Dissertation research focuses on the development of a system-level classification tool to support accident investigation. Designed for safety boards, analysts, legal teams, and regulators, the program aims to make complex investigations more accessible, structured, and actionable.
In the legal domain, augmented reality reshapes juror memory and perception, shifting how evidence is experienced and verdicts are formed.
Applied through HFACS, patterns of sexual abuse are reframed as systemic failures, offering a broader lens on harm, accountability, and institutional response.
Thinking in Systems
To protect the future, the law must evolve alongside it:
The systems that carry us, whether aircraft, institutions, or ideas, are only as strong as the structures that govern them.
At the intersection of aviation, cognition, and design, law emerges not just as a rulebook, but as a framework for protection, innovation, and accountability. As aerospace technologies advance, and with it autonomous flight, hybrid propulsion, data-driven safety systems, legal structures must keep pace, safeguarding both invention and those who depend on it.
The pursuit of law is, for me, a continuation of systems thinking: a way to prevent failure before it happens, to interrogate complexity with clarity, and to advocate for solutions that are as precise and resilient as the systems they’re meant to regulate.
This is not just a career path, it is the architecture of what I believe in.