NASA Joins European Partners to Imagine the Future of Aviation
More than 150 researchers, engineers, and industry professionals from across the globe gathered in Toulouse, France, in early June to work on a blueprint for the future of aviation.
NASA joined Office National d’Études et de Recherches Aérospatiales (ONERA), The Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace (ISAE-SUPAERO), Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), and Institut de Recherche Technologique (IRT) Saint Exupéry to co-organize the 4th European Workshop on Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) for Industrial Applications in Aeronautics.
The event, held from June 3-5, 2025, at ISAE-SUPAERO, was a unique opportunity for experts to share transatlantic perspectives on creating a more collaborative and enduring aviation industry.
“A future where more people can fly where they need to go — and do it faster and safer — is going to be a reality much sooner,” said Dr. Ben Phillips, an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center and the Multidisciplinary Design Analysis and Optimization (MDAO) technical lead for the agency’s Transformational Tools and Technologies Project, “provided we can get these advanced modeling capabilities out of the research labs and into the hands of the people who build aircraft.”
At the heart of the workshop was the complex discipline of MDAO as it applies to aeronautics.
“It’s the ability to design all of an aircraft’s individual components—the engine, the control system, the structure, and its aerodynamics—simultaneously,” explained Phillips. “This holistic approach helps engineers exploit the interactions between different systems to arrive at a more optimal and efficient design far more quickly than with traditional methods.”
Workshop attendees on the host campus of ISAE-SUPAERO (Photo credit: ISAE-SUPAERO)
A Keynote for Collaboration
As a new organizing partner, NASA’s presence was a highlight of the event. In addition to a technical talk on uncertainty quantification, Phillips delivered a keynote address titled, “Transforming MDAO: How We Can Bridge the Gap Between Academic Development and Industry Adoption,” which the DLR lauded as “inspiring,” because it “emphasized the global aspirations of the MDO community.”
Phillips’ presentation tackled a core challenge facing the entire field: a persistent disconnect between innovative tools developed in academia and the robust demands of industrial manufacturers. “It was easy for me to talk about because it was something we are actively involved in,” Phillips said, referencing NASA’s ongoing efforts to address the issue. ISAE-SUPAERO’s Professor Joseph Morlier noted that NASA’s OpenMDAO software — a free, public platform for building analysis tools — was a “main catalyzer” for European open-source tool development.
From Complex Equations to a Better Flight
While the workshop focused on highly technical topics like artificial intelligence and multi-fidelity modeling, the goal was to envision the future of better air travel for everyone. According to Phillips, using MDAO to design new planes can make nonstop flights (a.k.a. point-to-point travel) more common, more available, and more efficient.
“If a company wants to design a new supersonic business jet, they are going to need some advanced modeling capability that our new tools are going to provide, enabling the next generation of vehicles, including hypersonic and urban air mobility (UAM) concepts,” Phillips said.
Also during the workshop, Eliot Aretskin-Hariton with NASA’s Glenn Research Center (GRC) presented on Aviary, the agency’s open-source aircraft-design software. GRC’s Robert Falck delivered a virtual talk on recent advancements in OpenMDAO.
Overall, the meeting reinforced both how far the community has come and how much work remains in bridging the academia-industry gap for MDAO implementation. For Phillips, it was also a reminder that despite challenges, there is one, unifying commonality.
“We all have different first languages, but you put an equation up on the slide and everybody understands it,” Phillips reflected. “Math and physics are universal. It’s cool to see the different perspectives on how to try to solve those problems.”
With new partnerships and a consensus on the path forward, the group plans to reconvene in 2027 in Germany.
Author: Sondra Woodward
Published: June 2025