Dr Branka Subotić, CEng

Keynote presentation

Branka has over 15 years’ experience in the aviation industry. She has worked for NATS for 12+ years starting as the Senior/Principle Human Factors Specialist at the Directorate of Safety working mostly on the implementation of the new enroute electronic system for air traffic control (iFACTS) into live operation at Swanwick Area Control (the UK’s largest air traffic control centre). Then moving into commercial/consultancy area as a Senior Consultant at NSL. Seconded out of NATS for three years, Branka was the Executive Director of the Borealis Alliance, an Alliance on nine Air Navigation Service Providers (responsible for controlling c. 39% of European air traffic), where she led the implementation of the Borealis Free Route Airspace (FRA) Programme connecting the FRA volumes of airspace of the Borealis Members. Following this secondment, Branka returned to Swanwick as the Head of Swanwick and then Head of Centres integration, helping delivery of the One Operation programme and supporting integration and alignment of processes and ways of working between two NATS’s air traffic control centres (Swanwick and Prestwick). In November 2018 Branka joined the CIO team to lead the development and implementation of the enterprise-wide Data Strategy for NATS; working with a range of colleagues from across the business. This led to Branka becoming Director, Analytics, leading a team of (at the time) 80+ analysts including a Data Science team focused on implementation of advanced analytics and AI/ML. Branka’s analytics team is responsible for enhanced data-driven customer insights, tools, and services. The team brings together our data analytics functions and services to deliver insight and data driven solutions to NATS operation, corporate functions, and our customers around the world.
Branka holds a PhD in air traffic management from Imperial College London (UK), MSc in aeronautical science from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University (USA) and MEng in air transport engineering from University of Belgrade (Serbia). She is also a Chartered Engineer.
Branka is from Belgrade (Serbia) and has been living in few countries (Bosnia, France, USA, Germany, UK). She enjoys travelling and exploring different cultures and is always keen to talk about potential travel destinations. She is also keen practitioner of Krav Maga, an Israeli martial art and Mixed martial Arts (MMA).