Breaking Gender Barriers in Aviation: The Experience of Xiaoqing Deng

Xiaoqing Deng is a PhD student at the Aircraft Operations Lab UC3M who has built her career in aviation and aerospace engineering —fields still largely dominated by men. Having studied and worked in China, the U.S., the U.K., and now Spain, she has navigated the varied cultural and structural barriers that women in aviation face worldwide. Continue reading “Breaking Gender Barriers in Aviation: The Experience of Xiaoqing Deng”

Network-level aircraft trajectory planning via multi-agent deep reinforcement learning: Balancing climate considerations and operational manageability

Our latest study “Network-level aircraft trajectory planning via multi-agent deep reinforcement learning: Balancing climate considerations and operational manageability,” has been published in the Journal of Expert Systems with Applications. The study introduces a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning framework to plan climate-friendly flight routes while ensuring air traffic manageability. The findings show an 80% reduction in climate impact while maintainingContinue reading “Network-level aircraft trajectory planning via multi-agent deep reinforcement learning: Balancing climate considerations and operational manageability”

UC3M spin-off AI METHODS at S4i 2025

On January 29-30, 2025, the Science for Industry (S4i) Global Summit took place at La Nave, Madrid. Organized by Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) and BeAble Capital, this event connected universities, research centers, businesses, and investors to showcase disruptive research projects across key industrial sectors. Among the participating startups, AI METHODS, our UC3M spin-off andContinue reading “UC3M spin-off AI METHODS at S4i 2025”

Towards Sustainable Aviation Summit: Climate-Optimized Flight Planning & SAF

Last January 28-30, 2025 two of our researchers recently participated in the Towards Sustainable Aviation Summit in Toulouse, France. This prestigious conference brought together experts from around the world to discuss how the aviation industry can achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 through innovative aircraft design and operational improvements. Abolfazl Simorgh and Oumarou M. Bola contributed to thisContinue reading “Towards Sustainable Aviation Summit: Climate-Optimized Flight Planning & SAF”

Climate-optimized flight planning can effectively reduce the environmental footprint of aviation in Europe at low operational costs

We are excited to announce our latest research findings on climate-friendly flight planning, now available as a pre-print on Nature Portfolio journal communications earth & environment. This study, authored by Abolfazl Simorgh and Manuel Soler from the Aircraft Operations Lab, and in the framework of the RefMap project, reveals that implementing climate-optimal flight paths—those thatContinue reading “Climate-optimized flight planning can effectively reduce the environmental footprint of aviation in Europe at low operational costs”