Paper entitled «Robust Flight Planning Impact Assessment Considering Convective Phenomena» recently published #Transportation #Research Part C Elsevier in co-authorship with Javier García-Heras et al. Here is a personalized URL providing 50 days’ free access to the article: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1cXIa,M0mRJibz Enjoy the...

Call for attracting talent to the Madrid Region Universities on air! If you are doing #research on areas related to #AirTrafficManagement, #Airports, #AirTransport and you are interested, contact me at masolera@ing.uc3m.es asap with CV. Requirements: Ph.D. holder; 1 Year (of the last 2 Years) working at international research entities; very good CV and publications Track; Conditions: 4 Years contract; 40k€ per year; options to stabilize as a faculty member thereafter. See the complete call @ https://mcyt.educa.madrid.org/convocatorias/convocatorias-2021 Here you have a summary:...

Special Issue Information Dear Colleagues, Flying the ideal, optimal trajectory and vertical profile has been the holy grail of ATM research for decades. For this purpose, a lot of this research has been oriented towards a concept called Trajectory-Based Operations (TBO). In TBO, the trajectory becomes the fundamental element of the ATM system. The current ATM system is based on more tactical clearances. TBO should provide the capabilities, decision support tools, and automation to manage aircraft movement by trajectory. This shift from clearance-based to trajectory-based ATC should enable aircraft to plan and fly negotiated so-called business trajectories. At the planning level, TBO aims at more efficient and environmentally friendly flight planning concepts, reducing airlines operating costs, allowing a climatic-friendly ATM system, while at the same time increasing the capacity of the system without jeopardizing its safety. Specific research domains within aircraft trajectory optimization with open questions include (but it is not limited to): the consideration of uncertainties in trajectory optimization, the assessment and minimization of climatic impact in aircraft operations, the modelling and resolution of multi-aircraft problems leading to system-wide solutions that are stable and resilient. At the execution level, the question remains whether the extra investment, effort and communication are worth the yet unknown benefits. What if it becomes merely a more verbose clearance-based system, in which trajectory updates are as frequent as waypoint passing? Therefore, the key issue for solving conflicts or sequencing problems is a very high predictability. For research, one of the questions to address thus is: is this high predictability feasible and which methods are available to improve it. The mismatch between planned and actual trajectories caused, among others, by inherent uncertainties arising in aircraft operations, including airports, air traffic control interventions, and unavailable information, e.g., the cost index, and the take-off weight, constitute significant gaps that the scientific community need to tackle. The exploitation of data by means of artificial intelligence and causal models can lead to novel trajectory prediction approaches, which could facilitate the transition towards the TBO paradigm. Open research domains include novel approaches to propagate aircraft trajectory uncertainties, the deepen into artificial intelligence techniques for enhancing the prediction of aircraft trajectories, and the aggregation of different sources of uncertainties in trajectory predictions, notably weather via Ensemble Probabilistic Forecasts. This special issue intends to bring recognition to the contribution of aircraft trajectory optimization and aircraft trajectory prediction techniques and will provide a forum to disseminate the latest research work with the aim of further stimulating interest in this area of great potential. Potential topics include but are not limited to the following: Robust aircraft trajectory optimization. Aircraft trajectory optimization and climate change. Uncertainty propagation in trajectory prediction. Artificial Intelligence techniques applied...

Launched in 2012, the SESAR Young Scientist Award recognised young scientists who have demonstrated excellence in ATM and aviation-related research fields. On 29 June, the SESAR JU organised a webinar to touch base with some of the previous winners of the award, learn how their careers have developed since winning, and hear their views on how our industry can nurture, attract and retain young talent. The webinar heard from three former winners of the award: Gianluca Di Flumeri won the award in 2018 for a ground-breaking method for evaluating controllers’ mental workload using brain activity measurements. Read more about Gianluca’s research. 2015 winner, Floris Herrema, whose work helps to enhance the understanding of the behaviour of aircraft on final approach. It has a direct impact on the safety of time-based separation (TBS), as deployed at Heathrow Airport, as well as the RECAT 2 reduction in wake vortex separation between pairs of aircraft on final approach. Read more about Floris’ research. Manuel Soler, winner of the 2013 award for his work on ‘Commercial Aircraft Trajectory Optimization based on Multiphase Mixed Integer Optimal Control’, who will explain how his career has evolved since winning the award. Today, Manuel has become more actively engaged with SESAR. Read more about Manuel’s current research within the SESAR programme. Watch the webinar playback...

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), Spain (www.uc3m.es) invites applications to fill: 2 positions at Post-Doctoral level 3 PhD positions The successful candidates will join the Dynamics and Control in Aerospace Systems Lab, within the Aero Research Group (http://aero.uc3m.es/research.html). In particular, they will work in the Air Navigation and Control research line with Prof. Manuel Soler (http://www.aerospaceengineering.es/) The duties of the new group members include: To develop different tasks in recently granted European projects. Information of these projects can be found at http://www.aerospaceengineering.es/projects. The topics include: Aircraft Trajectory Optimization and Climate Change (1 PhD) Artificial Intelligence and data-driven algorithms applied to Air Traffic Management and Meteo (1PhD and 1 PostDoc) Parallel and GPU optimization applied to Air Traffic Management (1 PhD and 1 PostDoc) To teach courses and supervise student projects within UC3M Bachelor and master’s degrees in Aeronautical and Space Engineering. Teaching workload (if any) would be in any case low. Information on these two degrees, exclusively taught in English, is available at uc3m.es. To contribute establishing a vigorous, internationally-competitive scientific research program. In the case of the 2 PostDocs, to write competitive proposals for extramural research funding. The desired skills are: PostDocs: Young PhD holder (or last year PhD student) in Artificial Intelligence/Data-Driven methods (1PostDoc) and Parallel/GPU optimization (1 PostDoc) with high research potential. Also, candidates with tracks in other disciplines but with applications to aviation and/or SESAR activities will be strongly considered. Good publications record; team-working and communications skills. International (mobilities, PhD in different country) and independent working (publications without PhD supervisor; projects as PI, etc.) Ability to deal independently with scientific and engineering challenges, mainly in innovative, interdisciplinary technologies. PhD students: Outstanding academic record. Young MSc holder (or MSc student with 60 ECTS passed at contract’s signature) with background in Aerospace Engineering, Transportation Engineering, Control Engineering, Applied Mathematics & Statistics, Applied Physics & Meteorology, Environmental Sciences and Climate Change, Artificial Intelligence/Data Science. Also, candidates with tracks in other disciplines but outstanding academic record are invited to apply. International experience; team-working and communications skills. Ability to deal independently with scientific and engineering challenges, mainly in innovative, interdisciplinary technologies The contractual conditions are: PostDocs: 2-year contract; PhD students: 4-year contract. Annual gross salary: PostDocs: 30000€-36000€ range; PhD students: 22000-24000€ range Become part of a young, dynamic, highly qualified, collaborative team; Flexible working environment and schedule; Opportunity to travel to international conferences (Europe and oversees) and present research activities; publication in top quality journals; laptop; health coverage under the National Health System. Those interested in applying to this position please send to masolera@ing.uc3m.es: a CV (max. 4 pages). a motivation letter of experience, interests and future goals (max. 1 page) the contact information for two professional Submission of...

  Luis Azcárraga Award’19 by Fundación En-Aire to Daniel González-Arribas, Manuel Soler, and Manuel Sanjurjo for the following publication: Robust Aircraft Trajectory Planning under Wind Uncertainty using Optimal Control. D. González-Arribas, Manuel Soler, and Manuel Sanjrujo. Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics.  Vol. 41, No. 3 (2018), pp. 673-688. http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/1.G002928 Accepted version In words of the Jury (In Spanish, read the NP premio Fundación ENAIRE XXIV EdiciOn here): El trabajo ha sido premiado en base al planteamiento técnico realizado por los autores para resolver un problema de actualidad como es la predicción de las trayectorias de aeronaves. La solución propuesta utiliza técnicas de control óptimo en el desarrollo de un vuelo considerando las variaciones del vector viento que, sin duda, se presentarán a lo largo del mismo. El planteamiento y resolución del problema puede significar un avance tecnológico para la planificación estratégica de los vuelos, de forma que la predicción de la trayectoria conseguida pueda ser utilizada por subsiguientes herramientas del control de tráfico aéreo para, por ejemplo, detección de conflictos entre aeronaves o estimación de hora de llegada precisa a puntos significativos.    ...