Since
1985, Joe has been Senior Principal Software Engineer with RAYTHEON's System
Engineering Center at the Network Centric Systems Division in Marlborough,
Massachusetts. He is on assignment to the Division’s International Air
Traffic Control Systems Directorate to develop European ATC systems. Since
1994, he has served as lead system engineer on several incremental development
programs for new enroute and approach air traffic control centers for the
Deutsche Flugsicherung (DFS), the German civil aviation authority. The
current on-going development is the VAFORIT Project, the Very Advanced
Flight Data Processing Operational system, which will be deployed in 2006.
Prior to joining Raytheon, Joe served for 22 years first as Airman and electronic technician in the United States Air Force and later, as Regular Officer and Electrical Engineer. His career in aviation and space electronics includes assignments with the Strategic Air Command’s B-47 and B-52 bombers, the Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, and later with the Air Force Systems Command at Hanscom AFB, Massachusetts and Vandenberg AFB, California. At Hanscom, he was involved in fine-tuning the performance of large-scale scientific computers throughout the Air Force, and later, developed computer-based communications, surveillance and intelligence systems. His final assignment was at Vandenberg where he was Air Force member of the NASA team at Cape Kennedy which launched STS-1 on 12 April 1981, the first Space Shuttle mission.
He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wyoming at Laramie and Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from the Resident School of Engineering of the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. He is a Distinguished Graduate of the US Air Force Officer Training School in Texas.
He is married to the former Miss Rosemary Ann Vicino of Wethersfield, Connecticut. They live in Massachusetts and have two daughters and two grandsons. Joe was born and raised in the Upper St-John River Valley in northern Maine in the Acadian parish of Ste-Luce, in present-day Upper Frenchville, Maine. There, he was fortunate to have been educated in his native French language by the Sisters of the Holy Rosary in Ste-Luce.
Joe teaches at local universities and colleges in his spare time and has life-time teaching credentials with the State of California. He is member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), Past President of the Harvard Historical Society, an appointed member of the Harvard Board of Assessors and a member of St-Theresa's Catholic Parish.