Another successful EREA Annual Event

The traditional EREA Annual Event was organized this year on the 29^th of November, at “The Hotel” in Brussels. The EREA Board members welcomed more than 100 participants representing various stakeholders from the European aviation research community.

EREA Chairman, Mr. Bruno Sainjon (President and CEO of ONERA) opened the evening by addressing a very warm welcome to the participants and recalling his two-year chairmanship of EREA. During this time, EREA improved its relationships with the stakeholders, supported and implemented actions related to long-term research, submitted a number of common position papers, continued its work in the frame of Future Sky Initiative, and increased its visibility by participating in different conferences all over Europe and organizing round tables with representatives of different stakeholders.

The keynote speech of the evening was addressed by Mr. Kurt Vandenberghe, Director for Policy Development and Coordination at the European Commission’s DG Research and Innovation. Mr. Vandenberghe elaborated on the important function missions will have in FP9, the next Framework Programme. Even though the programme will remain unchanged in many ways, some important changes and new ideas will be introduced. Besides a mission-approach, Mr. Vandenberghe announced that the Commission will pay special attention to industrial research facilities in FP9; a proposal welcomed by the EREA Board members.

This year for the first time, the main authors of the top three papers participating in the EREA Best Paper Award 2017 had the opportunity to present very briefly their work before the announcement of the winner. They all have received certificates in recognition of their excellent achievements and the first-place recipient and winner also received the EREA Best Paper Award 2017 plaque, all handed over by Mr. Kurt Vandenberghe and Mr. Bruno Sainjon.

Picture 1: EREA Board with keynote speaker Kurt Vandenberghe (from left: Kurt Vandenberghe – European Commission; Josef Kaspar – VZLU, EREA ViceChair; Fernando Lau – CEIIA; Bruno Sainjon – ONERA, EREA Chair; Anders Blom – FOI; Catalin Nae – INCAS, incoming EREA Chair; Richard Szczepanik – AFIT; Pawel Stezycki – ILOT; Herman Deconninck – VKI; Pierluigi Pirrelli – CIRA).

Picture 2: Handover of the EREA Best Paper 2017 award to the winner team (Pierluigi Iannelli – CIRA, Frédéric Moens – ONERA, Mauro Minervino – Piaggio Aero Industries, Rita Ponza and Ernesto Benini – University of Padua) for their paper “Comparison of Optimization Strategies for High-Lift Design”.