Dr. Jim Hileman is the Vice President and Chief Engineer of Sustainability and Future Mobility for Boeing. He oversees a team that’s leveraging rapid advancements in energy, propulsion, materials, and autonomy technologies to help Boeing connect the world with safe and sustainable transport. The team is evaluating how fleet renewal, renewable energy, advanced technology, and operational efficiency could be used to achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions and to mitigate non-CO2 climate impacts. The team also provides leadership of Cascade, a data modeling tool to show the most effective scenarios for reaching net zero by 2050. Dr. Hileman is also providing leadership to a team supporting work in emerging, advanced aerial mobility applications such as Wisk Aero, which produces an electric, self-flying air taxi, and SkyGrid, which is developing tools to manage airspace integration.

 

Prior to joining Boeing, Dr. Hileman served as the Chief Scientific and Technical Advisor for Environment and Energy at the FAA. In this capacity, he served as the agency’s technical expert for research and advanced technology development in the areas of environment and energy. He was responsible for the environment and energy researchportfolio of the FAA, which includes the Continuous Lower Energy, Emissions and Noise (CLEEN) Program; the Aviation Sustainability Center (ASCENT), the FAA Center of Excellence for Alternative Jet Fuels and Environment; the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative (CAAFI), and the Fueling Aviation’s Sustainable Transition with 

Sustainable Aviation Fuels and Technology (FAST-SAF/Tech), among other efforts. 

 

While at FAA, he held leadership roles in the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP), the body responsible for setting international noise and emissions standards for 

aviation as well as overseeing the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA). He served as the Co-Rapporteur of the CAEP Fuels Task Group (FTG) and the Alternative Fuels Task Force (AFTF), wherein he led the development of the life cycle greenhouse gas accounting rules for sustainable aviation fuels that are within CORSIA. He was also the co-rapporteur of the CAEP Impacts Science Group (ISG), which evaluates the state of the science regarding the impacts of aviation on noise, air quality and global climate change.

 

Prior to joining the FAA, Dr. Hileman was a Principal Research Engineer within the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. His work focused on alternative jet fuels and innovative aircraft concepts that could reduce the 

impacts of aviation on noise, air quality and global climate change. While at MIT, he served as the Associate Director of the Partnership for Air Transportation Noise and Emissions Reduction (PARTNER), the FAA Center of Excellence that preceded ASCENT. He was also the Chief Engineer on the Silent Aircraft Initiative, a joint undertaking of MIT and Cambridge University. During this time, he received a Royal Society grant to be a visiting scholar at the Cambridge University Engineering Department. He is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He holds a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Ohio State University.