Pathways to Sustainable Aviation: An Interdisciplinary Research School

17 mai 2026, 18:00 → 22 mai 2026, 17:00 Europe/Paris

ISAE-SUPAERO

Laurent JOLY (ISAE-SUPAERO - ISA)

Welcome on the website of the 1st edition of the ISA Research School on Sustainable Aviation, taking place 18–22 May on the ISAE-SUPAERO campus in Toulouse.

This immersive programme offers a unique opportunity to dive into the latest scientific advances and the most innovative research shaping the future of zero-emission aviation. Designed for PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers and research engineers from both engineering disciplines and the humanities and social sciences, the Research School provides a truly interdisciplinary learning environment where multiple perspectives meet and enrich one another.

Over five days in Toulouse, participants will engage in a stimulating, high-level exploration of aviation’s transition towards sustainability, combining the latest disciplinary insights with integrative, systemic approaches.

The programme features:

• Plenary lectures,

• Two parallel course tracks, one dedicated to Exact sciences / Engineering and the other to humanities and social sciences,

• Collaborative projects carried out in small, mixed-discipline teams,

• The collective development of an aviation Gigamap, a systemic visual representation capturing the interactions and causalities within the aviation sector.

Hosted in the inspiring and peaceful environment of Toulouse, the aerospace capital at the heart of Europe, the programme also offers exclusive visits to Airbus and the Aeroscopia Museum, immersing participants in the rich past, present, and future of aviation and offering the ideal backdrop for deep reflection, meaningful conversations, and new professional connections.

The ISA Research School seeks to provide a unique intellectual environment that:

• Brings together young researchers from diverse fields to confront and enrich their methods;

• Encourages cross-fertilization between technical, environmental, economic, and societal perspectives;

• Promotes a holistic understanding of aviation’s transformation in the face of sustainability challenges.

We warmly invite PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and research engineers willing to shape the future of sustainable aviation to join us for this unique learning experience.

Come learn from leading experts, collaborate across disciplines, and become part of a new generation of researchers committed to building the future of aviation.

 

REGISTRATION FEES (incl. VAT)*:

Early-bird registration until 12th March, 2026 at midnight (Paris time):

• €700 (without accommodation)
• €995 with the accommodation option: 5 nights in the ISAE-SUPAERO residence (Altéal)

Standard registration from 13th March, 2026 to 19th April 2026 at midnight (Paris time):

• €900 (without accommodation)
• €1,195 with the accommodation option: 5 nights in the ISAE-SUPAERO residence (Altéal)

Applications received after the deadline or submitted or transmitted in ways other than those listed above will not be considered.

*Young researchers affiliated to ISA will benefit from a grant allocated by the Occitanie Region.

 

ISA_Research_School_Pre-registration_Form.docx

dim. 17 mai

Accomodation Registration: Welcome

lun. 18 mai

08:30 Welcome coffee

1 Welcome address

Orateur: Henry LEFEBVRE DE PLINVAL SALGUES (ISAE-SUPAERO)

2 Introduction

Orateur: Laurent JOLY (Institute for Sustainable Aviation)

3 Presentation of the week's programme

Orateur: Laurence CALMELS-LAVERGNE (Institute for Sustainable Aviation)

4 Systemic approach to the transition of air travel

Orateur: Laurent JOLY (Institute for Sustainable Aviation)

5 Air transport and societies

Most stakeholders agree that air transport must respond to the growing challenge of climate change. The real question is not whether change is needed, but how it should happen and what kind of air transport we want for the future. These debates highlight the complex and sometimes contradictory role of air transport in our societies. In this presentation, we will explore how air transport both influences and is influenced by society, across social, cultural, territorial, economic, political, and geopolitical dimensions.

Orateur: Isabelle LAPLACE (ENAC)

10:40 Break

6 Aviation environmental impacts and mitigation / adaptation levers

Aviation contributes to climate change through its CO2 emissions and other effects known as non-CO2 effects. This course will quickly describe these effects, as well as other environmental impacts such as land use or energy resources consumptions. A classification of mitigation levers to reduce these impacts will then be proposed. Finally, the concepts of physical and transition risks will be introduced to discuss adaptation levers.

Orateur: Thomas PLANES

7 Introduction to governance and legal levers

Orateur: Laurent GROSCLAUDE (Université Toulouse Capitole)

12:00 Lunch break - Sit-down meal

8 Workshop - Modelling aviation transition scenarios

Modelling transition scenarios is a major challenge in evaluating decarbonisation strategies and proposing sectoral roadmaps. The aim of this workshop will be to use the AeroMAPS framework, a dedicated open-source research code, to simulate and evaluate illustrative scenarios. General results will be obtained concerning the most effective mitigation strategies, achievable environmental objectives or the effect of policies on demand.

Orateur: Thomas PLANES and Scott DELBECQ (ISAE-SUPAERO)

Icebreaker

16:00 Coffee Break

9 Projects: introduction to projects

The group projects are conceived as focused interdisciplinary explorations of aviation sustainability challenges. Given the limited time frame, each group will address one specific nexus of the systemic map, building on preparatory material synthesizing relevant state-of-the-art research. Participants will engage in cross-disciplinary dialogue, including preliminary runs of disciplinary or coupled models, to uncover both the challenges and potential of interdisciplinary research. The outcome will be concise systemic insights, formalized in a two-pager and a targeted contribution to the collective gigamap.

Social programme: Welcome cocktail

mar. 19 mai

08:30 Welcome coffee

10 Plenary Session - LCA and its application to aviation

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a scientific method to evaluate the total environmental impact of a product, process, or service. The approach includes resource use and emissions from raw material extraction, through manufacturing, use, and final disposal/recycling. It is an essential methodology to assess the full environmental impact of current and future technologies in aviation. This session provides an introduction to LCA, fundamentals of the theory and approaches behind it, and its relationship with other life cycle engineering methodologies. Then, applications of LCA to aviation use-cases are detailed. Last, an overview of challenges and opportunities for LCA in aviation are presented.

Orateur: Joana ALBANO and Daniel KAN (NLR - DLR)

10:25 Break

11 Lecture HSS 1 - Impacts of sustainability oriented regulatory measures on air-rail modal shifts: the case of a kerosene tax

In today's context of increasing environmental consciousness, stricter regulations but also capacity constraints across different transport modes, and demand for smoother passenger experiences, optimizing and coordinating multimodal transport in Europe is vital for the overall effectiveness of the transport system, both now and in the future. Understanding the factors influencing passengers' transport choices is crucial. We examine the substitution patterns between air and rail travel for French city pairs where both options are available. We analyze the market share of various travel alternatives based on their service provider, quality, and pricing on the routes under study. Moreover, we assume price competition between service providers, given their ex-ante choice of quality and their marginal cost of production. The Bertrand-Nash equilibrium is derived from a structural model allowing to measure inter and intra-modal competition as well as marginal cost per service and operator. We closely examine the features of air and rail transport to gauge their impact on passengers' mode preferences. We can therefore conclude on the main efficient regulatory measures enabling the steering of passengers’ choices, increasing quality of services, or implementing taxes on kerosene for instance.

Orateur: Chantal ROUCOLLE (ENAC)

12 Lecture STS 1 - Propulsion Systems - from physical basics to actual developments

This presentation covers the basics from fundamentals of thrust generation in propeller drives and gas turbines to current development trends and challenges.

Based on fundamental design principles, the specific advantages and disadvantages of technologies, as well as the limits of what is feasible, will be highlighted and discussed. In addition to the propulsor as a thrust-generating component, the presentation also addresses new energy sources (SAF and LH2) and fuel cell systems. At the same time, important aspects of integrating the propulsion system into the aircraft are addressed. Examples from current research results on the respective topics will be presented and discussed.

Orateur: Jens FRIEDRICHS (TU Braunschweig)

12:00 Lunch break - Sit-down meal

Projects: Project work

16:00 Coffee break

Social programme: Guided tour: Airbus - A321 assembly line and Aeroscopia museum

mer. 20 mai

08:30 Welcome coffee

13 Plenary Session - Modelling airline behaviour

Competition between airlines affects their choices of networks and fleet, the itineraries and prices they offer, and how these respond to policy. Consequently, modelling airline behaviour can give insights into the effectiveness of different policy options and the potential markets for new aircraft technologies. This talk discusses factors that affect airline competition and how they can be simulated, using UCL’s Airline Behaviour Model as an example, before giving recent examples of how such modelling can be used to assess policy outcomes.

Orateur: Lynnette DRAY (University College London)

10:25 Break

14 Lecture HSS 2 - Understanding consumer acceptance of green innovations

Research examines how psychological and behavioral variables influence the acceptance of green innovations in contexts where environmental responsibility conflicts with established consumption practices. It highlights the role of values and air travel behavior in shaping individuals’ willingness to support sustainable technologies, extending existing research beyond purely economic or technological determinants.

Orateur: Sara LAURENT (Montpellier Business School)

15 Lecture STS 2 - Leveraging open data and models to reduce aviation's climate footprint

This presentation explores how open data and open-source tools can help evaluate and reduce aviation climate impact. We introduce OpenSky data for flight tracking, aircraft performance models for emission estimation, and methods for predicting contrail formation using meteorological data. Finally, we demonstrate how these resources enable trajectory optimization for flight planning that minimizes both emissions and contrail-induced warming.

Orateur: Junzi SUN (Delft University)

12:00 Lunch break - Sit-down Meal

Projects: Project work

16:00 Coffee break

Gigamap: Preliminary work

jeu. 21 mai

08:30 Welcome coffee

16 Plenary Session - Why do we travel - and do we travel too much?

The presentation covers why humans travel, and which implications in particular social media and travel influencers have for transport demand. Turning to a global climate justice perspective, the lecture then discusses distributions of global air travel, before turning to the question as to whether air transport demand is genuine or induced, and whether there are options to reduce emissions through behavioural change.

Orateur: Stefan GOSSLING (Linnaeus University)

10:25 Break

17 Lecture HSS 3

Orateur: Camila GONZALEZ MARIN (AIRBUS)

18 Lecture STS 3 - The climate impact of aviation and its mitigation

Aviation contributes to climate change by changing the composition of the atmosphere. Current aircraft engines emit carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas, and also emit several non-CO2 compounds that impact climate. The perturbation of atmospheric chemistry by aviation emissions of nitrogen oxides and the formation of contrails are two examples of non-CO2 effects, which are currently much discussed among the aviation industry and European policymaking. This lecture will present the physical and chemical mechanisms by which aviation impacts climate, and review proposed solutions to reduce those impacts.

Orateur: Nicolas BELLOUIN (University of Reading)

12:00 Lunch break - Sit-down Meal

Projects: Project work

16:00 Coffee break

Free time

Participants have some free time. The next meeting point is directly in the city centre in front of the town hall for the start of the guided tour of Toulouse. Everyone will make their own way there (city bus, underground).

Social programme: Toulouse guided tour

Social programme: Dinner

ven. 22 mai

08:30 Welcome coffee

Gigamap: Implementation during the project work

Projects: Project work

10:25 Break

Gigamap: Implementation during the project work

Projects: Project work

12:00 Lunch break - Sit-down Meal

Projects: Restitution

Projects: Restitution

Gigamap: Restitution

Debriefing and conclusion