Dr Dominique Estival is a researcher at the MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University (Australia). She holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania (USA) and her career has always been at the frontier between academia and industry. As a linguist, her research spans the computational modelling of language change, machine translation, linguistic engineering, spoken dialogue systems and aviation communication.

At MARCS, she has led, or been involved with, projects to collect and analyse language data. As a pilot and a flight instructor, she has first-hand experience of student pilots’ difficulties with radio communication and she studies how pilot training, language background and contextual factors affect pilots’ ability to communicate while flying. Her first book “Aviation English: A lingua franca for pilots and air traffic controllers” (Estival, Farris & Molesworth, 2016) has become a classic for research in aviation communication. Her second book "Native English Speakers and Aviation Communication", on the role and responsibilities of native speakers of English in aviation communication, will be published in 2025.