Nov. 30, 2017

Against the background of the SESAR Innovation Days 2017, the SESAR Joint Undertaking hosted the 2017 SESAR Young Scientist Award Ceremony.

The SESAR Young Scientist Award, aims to recognise young scientists with high potential contributing to any SESAR activity by supporting the scientific development of “Air Traffic Management and Enabling Technologies”. The award also provides a mechanism for further personal development through a financial contribution, as well as opportunities to further profile and disseminate their research.

This year, a wide variety of applications were received across a very broad range of topics. The European Commissioner for Transport, Violeta Bulc, announced the Award via video message and revealed that of the eighteen applications received, three candidates were short-listed.

3rd place

Seddik Belkoura

Seddik is carrying out a PhD funded by the WP-E ComplexWorld network, focused on the management of delay propagation and mitigation strategies in free-route. The research is a cross domain work between Complex Systems and Data Science, applying data mining techniques in aviation. His PhD was shown to have a positive impact on the scientific research in the field.

2nd place

Daniel Gonzales Arribas

Daniel is carrying out a PhD promoted within the SESAR’s Exploratory Research Project TBO-Met and the HALA! Network. The field of research is Trajectory Optimization and Meteorological Uncertainty and the candidate has developed an optimal control methodology for the resolution of the trajectory optimization problem under uncertainty.

The methodology has been applied to the optimization of flight plans at the pre-tactical stage.

The research approach is sound and innovative, and the scientific outcomes have been published in a good variety of peer-reviewed publications.

1st place

Ramon Dalmau Codina

Ramon is a PhD candidate who is developing his thesis on the development and testing on new planning real-time algorithms for the optimal planning during continuous descent operations.

This research can be linked to the thematic area ‘Information Management, Uncertainty & Optimisation’. His work is outstanding and the topic of his thesis very relevant to SESAR.

Mr. Dalmau Codina demonstrated a wide engagement through the participation in several CleanSky and SESAR projects, reinforced by internships at NLR (Netherlands Aerospace Centre).

He also has an impressive track record of peer-reviewed publications, with altogether 17 papers in less than 4 years.

The cumulated impact of these publications can be regarded as excellent.

The thesis is very well structured and articulated and includes a comprehensive state of the art and a clearly framed problem statement.

Overall his work is highly innovative and scientifically excellent.

 

On presenting the award, Violeta Bulc, European Commissioner for transport said “The quality from all the applicants of this year’s SESAR Young Scientist Award was extremely high. The ATM community can look forward to a promising future if this is the level of talent that Europe is producing. We encourage SESAR to continue to nurture the Europe’s brightest minds and see an opportunity to create a ‘SESAR academy’ preparing for the digital future of aviation.”

 

For further information about the SESAR Young Scientist Award: