Some 175 Participants Gathered In Stockholm For Workshops And Exhibitions

The SESAR (Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research) Joint Undertaking (SESAR JU), held its annual SESAR Innovation Days event at the KTH Royal Institute for technology in Stockholm, Sweden November 26-28. The three day event celebrated scientific excellence through a series of workshops and research exhibitions and provided the backdrop for the award ceremony of the 2013 SESAR Young Scientist Award.

The event welcomed 175 participants who joined three productive days of discussing scientific research progress and results through presentations, information exchange, workshops and self-discovery. The SESAR JU and its guests were kindly hosted by the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH Sweden, represented by Eva Malmstrom-Jonsson, Deputy President, and Professor Lena Mårtensson, Department of Industrial Economics and Management, who is also Chair of the SESAR JU Scientific Committee. “The Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, is delighted to support the SESAR Innovation Days. The event provides a unique platform whereby young ATM academics can connect and ensures that their knowledge, complementary work and positions can best support fellow academics in a very practical way” said Lena Mårtensson on opening the conference.

“I am encouraged to see that more and more young people are responding positively to Europe’s ATM challenge," said Peter Hotham, Deputy Director Operations & Program and Chief of Technology and Innovation at SESAR JU. "It’s never been more important to convince people that ATM modernization is possible, attractive and essential. It is therefore vital that we recognize and celebrate their achievements through events like the SESAR Innovation Days.”
 
The event was launched by Professor Jacco Hoekstra, from TU Delft, with a future-looking keynote speech entitled ‘Change is in the Air’, speculating on the future of ATM Research. The event built on this opening, with sessions presenting research work on Enabling Change, Complex Systems, Airports, Resilience, Trajectory Management, Network Management, Human Factors and Safety, as well as special focus sessions on Remotely Piloted Air Systems (RPAS) and on delivering innovation from a Remote Tower perspective.
 
The annual SESAR Innovation Days is the occasion for many young scientists to present their research work and also for one Young Scientist to receive the SESAR Young Scientist Award. This annual award includes a check for 5,000€ ($6,778) and aims to recognize and support young scientific excellence contributing to the modernization of ATM. This year, a wide variety of applications were received across a very broad range of topics. From these, five candidates were short-listed covering subjects of:

• Deterministic and stochastic optimization for heterogeneous decision phases in the air traffic domain
• Integration of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems into non-segregated airspace
• Commercial aircraft trajectory optimization based on multiphase mixed integer optimal control
• A framework to assess the ability of automation to deliver capacity targets in European airspace
• Complex Networks and Data Mining: Toward a new perspective for the understanding of Complex Systems

 
Highlighting the work of the five short-listed candidates and then announcing and presenting the prize, Claude Chêne, Executive Director of SESAR JU said “The quality from all the applicants of this year’s SESAR Young Scientist Award was simply remarkable. The ATM community can look forward to a bright future if this is the level of talent that Europe is producing."
 
The SESAR Young Scientist 2013 was awarded to Manuel Soler, for his work on ‘Commercial Aircraft Trajectory Optimization based on Multiphase Mixed Integer Optimal Control’; his work being recognized for its innovative modelling and interdisciplinary solution approach to the trajectory modelling problem, as well as strong engagement with European Research Centers and with the United states.

FMI: www.sesarinnovationdays.eu