Shaun Yen, an experienced lawyer specializing in commercial transactions with over a decade of expertise, is currently pursuing an LLM in International Aviation Law at Université Toulouse Capitole.

Recently joining the Institute for Sustainable Aviation (ISA) as a research intern, Shaun is collaborating under the guidance of Laurent Joly, ISA’s Director, and Laurent Grosclaude, Head of International Aviation Law LL.M at Université Toulouse Capitole. His focus lies on examining the legal landscape surrounding Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), aiming to replace traditional aviation fuel with a low-carbon alternative. Shaun’s work entails delving into EU and U.S. legal frameworks, providing a comprehensive analysis of regulatory evolution and SAF taxonomy.

We are delighted to welcome Shaun to the ISA team and eagerly anticipate his final report.

Yishuo Gu embarks on his internship journey at the Institute for Sustainable Aviation, diving into the realm of « Data analysis & consolidation for airline fleet economics and environment. » Graduating from the Grande Ecole program at Toulouse Business School with a specialization in air transport management from ENAC in 2022, Yishuo brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to his research endeavors.

Under the guidance of finance researcher Sylvain Bourjade (ISA-TBS) and the supervision of Laurent Joly (ISA-ISAE-SUPAERO), Yishuo is set to renew the way we describe airline fleets on a global scale. From consolidating data to categorizing airlines based on fleet characteristics and performance metrics, Yishuo’s work holds the promise of illuminating their strategies for addressing environmental challenges.

As Yishuo collaborates with other young researchers like Paco Viry, he contributes to ISA’s interdisciplinary research efforts, propelling forward the mission of sustainable aviation. Stay tuned as Yishuo’s insights pave the way for more informed decisions and sustainable practices within the aviation industry.

Natalie Gillespie, a Master’s student specializing in International Air Transport and Tourism Management (MITAT) at Université III Paul Sabatier, embarks on a captivating 5-month internship at the Institute for Sustainable Aviation.

Entitled « Mapping the Socio-Economic Dependence of Tourism on Air Transport: A Case Study of the Occitanie Region, » Natalie’s research aims to deepen our understanding of the complex links between tourism and air transport. Under the supervision of Jocelyne Napoli, head of the MITAT program, and Laurent Joly, director of the Institute for Sustainable Aviation, Natalie strives to construct a comprehensive model evaluating regions’ vulnerability and resilience to changes in air transport dynamics. By employing established research methodologies, Natalie explores intricate dynamics to uncover essential insights for sustainable tourism development.

Supported by the Occitanie Region, this study promises to significantly contribute to the challenges of « Destination Management » in a rapidly evolving tourism landscape.

As we move forward, applying these findings can pave the way for more robust strategies in destination management and contribute to a more sustainable and prosperous future for regions reliant on tourism and air travel.

When unforeseen events like new policies or emerging competitors disrupt the airline industry, the race to adapt and secure new market shares intensifies. This scenario sets the stage for the thesis of Qian LIU, titled « Shock Propagation in Air Transport Networks: Stochastic Models and Economic Impacts ». Leveraging advanced signal processing techniques and graph theory, this research delves deep into understanding how shocks reverberate across the entire air transport network, ultimately leading to a new equilibrium.

Under the guidance of Paul Rochet and Chantal Roucolle from ENAC, this groundbreaking study not only sheds light on the intricate dynamics within the aviation sector but also explores innovative applications of signal processing techniques on graphs.

It is worth noting that this promising research is funded by the Occitanie / Pyrénées-Méditerranée Region and ENAC.

Félix will develop Life Cycle Assessment approaches and integrate them with ISA’s modeling tools to enable systemic exploration of the impacts of tomorrow’s air transport. This approach, extended to a range of environmental indicators, is essential to avoid transferring the climate externality to other externalities, such as mineral resource depletion and land-use change.

Felix’s work will cover different levels of granularity, from the evaluation of new aircraft concepts to their deployment in a global fleet. It will contribute to integrating the concept of absolute sustainability, for the evaluation of aviation transition trajectories, within the AeroMAPS platform supported by ISAE-SUPAERO and the Institute for Sustainable Aviation. Finally, Félix will be undertaking methodological work on the integration of socio-economic indicators into the sector’s life-cycle analysis approaches.

The aim is to examine the role that the aeroscopia museum can play in the dialogue between those involved in Toulouse’s aeronautical industry, the general public and local authorities, in order to promote the city’s aeronautical heritage. 

The results of this research will be used to formulate ways of rethinking the museum’s scenographic spaces, and also to model the role of mediator played by the museum in taking account of expectations and building dialogue between the various groups of stakeholders. 

The thesis is supervised by Mylène Costes (LERASS-UT2J) and Nathalie Spanghero-Gaillard (LERASS-UT2J). It is financed under a Convention Industrielle de Formation par la Recherche (Cifre) involving the Manatour company and the ANRT, in partnership with the Laboratoire d’Études et des Recherches Appliquées en Sciences Sociales (LERASS) and the Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile (ENAC). 

He has developed and integrated cost models to assess the economic impact of certain decarbonization measures, such as the use of sustainable aviation fuels or modified-performance aircraft.

Following a research stay at TU Delft, he also set up an open-source database with researcher Junzi Sun, estimating the geographical distribution of air traffic and associated emissions (https://journals.open.tudelft.nl/joas/article/view/7201). A specific tool, AeroSCOPE, has been developed to explore and visualise this database. The ultimate aim of this work is to optimise the technical and economic performance of different regional or global scenarios on the AeroMAPS platform.

Antoine is supervised by Gilles Lafforgue from Toulouse Business School and Scott Delbecq and Thomas Planès from ISAE-SUPAERO. The thesis is funded by ISAE-SUPAERO and the Occitanie Region

Her research focuses on developing methodology and tools to assist designers and decision-makers in comprehensively considering the environmental and societal repercussions of their products, services, and decisions. This collaborative methodology entails qualitatively representing both direct and indirect effects, along with dynamically modeling certain effects quantitatively to enable the simulation of mitigation scenarios.

To this end, Laetitia, alongside researchers from her laboratory, has developed Magnitude, a prototype modelling tool. An illustrative case study within her thesis involves a hypothetical airport project powered by locally generated energy.

Supervised by Rob Vingerhoeds (ISAE-SUPAERO) and Catherine Letondal (ENAC), this thesis is funded by the ONERA – ISAE-SUPAERO – ENAC Federation.

To shed light on these issues, Ian Costa-Alvès’s thesis, one of eight to carry out an ISA-labelled PhD label in 2023, aims to improve Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) through the use of multidisciplinary optimization techniques. 

In particular, Ian proposes to integrate environmental objectives – mitigation and adaptation, resource allocation – right from the aircraft design specification stage. From a methodological point of view, he uses high-performance matrix computing to accelerate the calculation of temporal scenarios. Computation time savings of a factor of 100 to 1000 pave the way for temporal simulations of complex, regionalized dynamics, integrating a very large number of disciplines and variables.

The thesis is directed by Nicolas Gourdain (ISAE-SUPAERO) and supervised by François Gallard (IRT-Saint Exupery) and Anne Gazaix (IRT-Saint Exupery / Airbus Operations), and is co-financed by the Occitanie Region.

Under the supervision of Catherine Azzaro-Pantel (LGC-INPT) and Sylvain Bourjade (TBS), Vincent is conducting research into optimizing the green hydrogen supply chain for the mobility sector (air, land and sea).

This is a dynamic and integrated systemic approach to the green hydrogen supply chain, combining engineering and economics, with a dual scientific objective: 

– take economic aspects into account in the design phase of the supply chain, model the various technological building blocks (production, storage, distribution) and integrate the specific territory constraints; 

– produce new knowledge on the conditions for deploying these energy systems (policies, governance, markets) to fully exploit hydrogen’s decarbonization potential.

Vincent presented intermediate results at the 1st ISA workshop in July 2023. We look forward to sharing the progress of his research with you over the coming year.