Launched in 2012, the SESAR Young Scientist Award aims to recognise young scientists, who have demonstrated excellence in ATM and aviation-related research fields. The award also provides researchers starting out in their career with an opportunity for further professional development. A further objective of the award is to showcase the potential of young talent to formulate fresh ideas and solutions to the challenges facing ATM and aviation. 

The award contest is open to any scientist (Batchelor, Master or PhD) working in the abovementioned fields and who are citizens or residents in an EU Member State or an Associated Country to the Horizon2020 Research and Development Framework Programme (H2020).

Find out more about past winners:

In 2O20 Verdonk Gallego was awarded the SESAR Young Scientist Award for his work on data-driven trajectory prediction. Read more
In 2019, Junzi Sun was awarded the SESAR Young Scientist Award for his research on open aircraft performance modelling Read more about Junzi
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
Ramon Dalmau, a PhD student from the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), likes to get to the bottom of. It is Dalmau’s passion for solving air traffic management (ATM) conundrums that won him the 2017 Young Scientist Award. Read more about Ramon
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