"Israel must secure its place at the forefront of research and development in the aerospace industry"

So said the Chairman of the Innovation Authority, Dr. Ami Appelbaum, who opened the 59th Israeli Conference on Aviation and Space Sciences held in Tel Aviv and Haifa

The 59th Israeli Conference on Aerospace Sciences (IACAS) was recently held in Tel Aviv and the Technion, under the leadership of Prof. Emeritus Moti Karpel from the Faculty of Aeronautics and Space Engineering at the Technion. This is the most important event in Israel in the field of aviation and space and was attended by about 600 engineers, scientists and other experts from Israel and the world. The conference was led by the Technion, the only academic institution in Israel with a faculty of aeronautics and space engineering. The faculty, founded in 1954, trained and trained the engineers who led, and still lead, the aerospace industries in Israel.

The main lectures at the conference were given by the Chairman of the Innovation Authority and a graduate of the Technion, Dr. Ami Applebaum (topic of the lecture: innovation beyond the horizon), Prof. Elaine Oren from the University of Maryland (innovative means for flow calculations), Prof. Juan Alonzo from Stanford University (optimization of the shape of a vessel flying using supercomputers), Ofer Doron, CEO of Mabet Halal in the Aerospace Industry (the role of the institutionalized space industry in the New Space environment), Prof. Panina Axelrod from the University of Colorado Boulder (scientific applications of global satellite navigation systems), Prof. Carlos Sesnik from the University of Michigan (aeroelastic challenges in highly flexible aircraft) and Dr. Susan Ying.

Dr. Appleboom presented the dizzying pace of innovation in recent decades and said: "We are in a place similar to that of the beginning of the industrial revolution. The innovations that await us in the coming years will completely change our lives, including in the social and cultural aspects. There is no doubt that one of the areas where a revolution is expected is space exploration, and the State of Israel must secure its place at the forefront of this industry in order to preserve its economic and security strength."
The chairman of the conference's organizing committee, Prof. Emeritus Moti Karpel from the Faculty of Aeronautics and Space Engineering, said, "Aeronautics is rapidly developing in new directions such as unmanned vehicles, in which Israel is definitely a leader, and there are many challenges of execution, coordination and security here."

The second day of the conference was opened by the senior deputy to the president of the Technion, Prof. Adam Shortz, who said: "The field of aviation engineering is an excellent example of cooperation between academia and industry. Industry is a source of interesting practical questions and academia has the resources to develop solutions to these questions." The Dean of the Faculty of Aeronautics and Space Engineering, Prof. Yitzhak Frankel, said that "this conference is a demonstration of the power of the world of aviation and space, and this conference is an expression of that essential cooperation."

Dr. Susan Ying, President of the International Council for Aeronautical Sciences (ICAS), spoke about "The Third Revolution in Aviation: Challenges and Opportunities". Dr. Ying was born in Taiwan and grew up in Indonesia. After high school, she immigrated to the United States, and on one of her bike trips, she ended up at a flight school. She signed up for flying lessons which she financed by working there. At the same time, she completed a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering at Cornell and a Ph.D. at Stanford. In the following years, she worked in several bodies in the field, including NASA, and was even accepted into the astronaut training course. From NASA she went on to Boeing, where she worked for 20 years. A few years ago she left Boeing and in 2016 joined the start-up company Ampaire, where she serves as vice president for technology strategies. The company employs 15 people and develops electric aircraft that will reduce operating costs and the environmental damage of pollution and noise.

In her lecture, Dr. Ying said that "We are at the threshold of the third revolution in aviation, a revolution that invites countless developments and opportunities. The first phase began with the Wright brothers and ended with the invention of the jet, and now we are in the transition to the next generation - electric airplanes. After 70 years of jets, we are going to the next stage, because the conventional planes produce unimaginable pollution, and in the middle of this century it will be the most polluting industry if it does not change."

"The technological acceleration in the world of aviation, as in other fields, creates a space of unlimited possibilities - Wide open space - in a market estimated at 260 billion dollars for the next decade." According to her, the revolution will begin in the short flights, since that is where the advantage of the electric plane is particularly evident. "We are talking about a decrease of about 80% in energy expenses and about 50% in maintenance expenses. In a normal plane there are many moving parts and in the plane we developed only one moving part - the rotor."

As part of the conference, a student project competition was held in which two awards of excellence were awarded to Dr. Shlomit Galia: an award for a design project for the aerodynamics team in the Formula Technion project, under the guidance of Mr. Michael Kotsenko, and an award for a research project for Kadmiel Crescenti for his research on the subject of "an improved diesel circuit of a vehicle A small plane flew at a high altitude", directed by Prof. Eran Sher.
The late Dr. Shlomit Galia, born in Haifa (1945), studied at B.S.M.T. and later completed three degrees at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technion. In her undergraduate studies, she was the only female student in all four cohorts that studied at that time in the faculty. In 1964, at the Technion, she met Dov, her future husband, who was then a student at the Faculty of Architecture. After a post-doctorate at Imperial College in London, she worked in the US Air Force laboratories until she was called to the "Lion" project, and then gradually advanced in the aerospace industry. From there she moved to work at the Ministry of Defense as head of department