---
id: people/mike-shafto
about:
  label: Mike Shafto
  description: >-
    NASA Ames researcher on human and automation interaction who chaired the
    2010 NASA modelling and simulation roadmap that defined a digital twin.
  tags:
    - digital twin
    - human factors
    - NASA
    - history
person:
  affiliation: NASA Ames Research Center
  role: human factors researcher
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: >-
        DRAFT Modeling, Simulation, Information Technology & Processing Roadmap,
        Technology Area 11 (NASA, November 2010; Internet Archive copy of
        nasa.gov)
      url: >-
        https://web.archive.org/web/20101208235448/http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/501321main_TA11-MSITP-DRAFT-Nov2010-A1.pdf
    - title: >-
        Work Practice Simulation of Complex Human-Automation Systems in Safety
        Critical Situations: The Brahms Generalized Überlingen Model (NASA
        Technical Reports Server)
      url: 'https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20140005548'
    - title: >-
        Aviation Safety: Modeling and Analyzing Complex Interactions between
        Humans and Automated Systems (NASA Technical Reports Server)
      url: 'https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20140011547'
    - title: >-
        NASA's OCA Mirroring System: An Application of Multiagent Systems in
        Mission Control (NASA Technical Reports Server)
      url: 'https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20090035868'
  created: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
Michael G. Shafto, known as Mike, is a researcher at NASA Ames Research Center whose papers deal with how people and automated systems work together.[^2,3,4] He chaired the team that wrote NASA's November 2010 draft roadmap for modelling, simulation, information technology and processing, Technology Area 11, whose members included Ed Glaessgen.[^1]

His later work at Ames includes a 2013 report, with William Clancey and others, on simulating the work practices of pilots and air traffic controllers to test aviation safety, using the 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision as its case.[^2] A companion paper argued for adding automated techniques such as model checking to simulation when judging how people and automation interact in the next generation of US air traffic control.[^3] He was also an author of a 2009 paper on a multiagent software system running in NASA's mission control for the International Space Station.[^4]

The wiki's [history of the digital twin](/articles/history-of-the-digital-twin/) quotes the roadmap's definition of a NASA digital twin.