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Dipasis Bhadra |
International Economist, Teacher and Author
Dipasis Bhadra
September 2005
"I remember the first time I saw snow," says MITRE economist Dipasis
Bhadra, a smile spreading slowly over his face. "It was 2 o'clock
on a winter morning in 1984, my first semester as a graduate student
at UConn [University of Connecticut]. I heard shouting outside my
window, then looked out and saw students running around in all this
whiteness. I went right out and threw snowballs with them," he adds,
clearly relishing the memory of that day.
This was the first of many new experiences for Bhadra in the years
between leaving India and joining MITRE's Center for Advanced Aviation
System Development (CAASD), where he now works as a principal economist
on demand modeling, analyzing the impact of policies for the FAA
with simulation, forecasting, and analysis tools.
After earning his bachelor's degree from the University of Calcutta,
Bhadra was drawn to the U.S. because of its approach to teaching
postgraduate economics. In Asia, the economic theory is stressed;
in the US, the emphasis is on applications. "In Calcutta, I had
two visiting professors from UConn, and the huge number of applications
they worked with appealed to my imagination."
Hands-on Economics
Since earning his Ph.D. in quantitative economics at UConn, Bhadra
has applied his economics skills and knowledge to various areas
of transportation. His first job was as a consultant to the transportation
infrastructure department of the World Bank in Washington, D.C.,
where he worked on economic feasibility studies and evaluations
of large scale infrastructure.
In 2001, he came to MITRE, where he works on the McLean campus,
combining his training in quantitative economics and financial matrices
with CAASD's operational analyses on special projects for the FAA
and other aviation organizations. Much of Bhadra's work is with
the Modeling, Simulation and Performance Analysis team and their
economic analysis tools, particularly the scenario analyses generator
known as FATE (Future Aviation Timetable Estimator) and other demand
modeling tools.
Designed to help the FAA make infrastructure decisions for the
future, FATE looks at the entire National Airspace System (NAS)
in terms of the originations and destinations of each flight. "We
econometrically model origin and destination flow" says Bhadra,
adding that "As far as I know, CAASD is the only organization doing
this type of bottom-up modeling."
A Team Player
FATE is a system of econometric and allocation models that can
forecast timetables for scheduled and unscheduled flights for 20
years into the future. It can be used in simulation models, such
as CAASD's NAS-wide simulations to determine the impact of different
passenger demand and operations scenarios on the overall performance
of the NAS.
Bhadra has also been involved in a project that focuses on future
airport capacity, the Capacity Needs in the National Airspace System
project, which was designed to help the FAA determine where they
should invest for future growth at the airport level. Focusing on
projected demand and capacity mismatches for air travel, this study
uses analysis and forecasts based on the demographics surrounding
each airport. Currently, he is also providing technical assistance
to numerous other areas of the FAA's Air Traffic Organization's
(ATO) newly created Office of Strategy.
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Bhadra and CAASD economist
Greg Nelson taking a break from their work in Egypt. |
But these are only three of the ongoing economics projects that
CAASD is working on. Bhadra was part of the team developing an ATM
master plan for China and was also involved in Egypt's civil aviation
restructuring program. In the past few years, CAASD's economics
staff and its work areas have expanded significantly, a development
that Bhadra attributes to the outstanding work of CAASD's team of
talented economists and engineers.
"Over the past five years, CAASD has developed significant tools,"
he explains. "They've built the network infrastructure that supports
FATE and numerous other projects, designed a series of models to
show distribution of air traffic throughout any given day, created
a schedule for general aviation flights, and much more. These efforts
support numerous FAA programs, including the Operational Evaluation
Plans (OEP). As a result, CAASD's policy impact analysis capabilities
have become very effective and well known in the community."
A Man of Many Interests
Outside MITRE, Bhadra has contributed his services to professional
associations such as the Aviation, Economics and Forecasting subcommittee
of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Research
Council (NRC), where he serves on the board.
He is also Deputy Chair of the American Institute of Aeronautics
and Astronautics Economics Technical committee, which seeks solutions
to some of the financial challenges facing aviation and space exploration,
and is a member of the American Economic Association.
But Bhadra's extracurricular activities don't stop there. He has
published numerous articles in professional journals and has co-authored
two books. One, entitled Land Utilization in Developing Countries,
was published by the World Bank. A second book, co-authored with
his wife, Laura, is called The Red and the Green. Named
after the colors of the Bangladeshi flag, it is about the economics,
culture, and society of Bangladesh. Bhadra is hoping to write a
third book soon, on aviation economic and policy issues, and plans
to author an economics textbook as well.
Making a Difference
In addition to writing, Bhadra teaches. Currently an adjunct professor
of macro and micro economics at Northern Virginia Community College,
he has also taught economics at the University of Connecticut, University
of Baltimore, American University, and North South University in
Bangladesh.
As might be expected of somebody who will rise at 2 a.m. to join
a snowball fight, Bhadra is a man of great energy who embraces life
with both arms—teaching, writing, advising students and professional
associations, in addition to performing economic analyses to benefit
the FAA. America's airspace system and its travelers are all a little
better off because of it.
—by Faye Elkins
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