Speakers

Advancements and Challenges in Hybrid-Electric Aircraft Powertrains: Insights from the NEWBORN Project

This presentation will deliver an overview of recent advancements in hybrid-electric aircraft powertrain development. It will address various approaches to electrification, with particular attention to hierarchical system control methods, integration among multiple subsystems, and strategies for managing aircraft power, energy, and system efficiency. The discussion will identify critical challenges facing aircraft electrification, including weight limitations, thermal management concerns, battery technology constraints, differing approaches to ensure reliability between mechanical and electric systems, and high-voltage system resilience against partial discharge. Furthermore, the presentation will outline challenges associated with adopting hydrogen as the primary fuel source. Preliminary findings and insights gained from the NEWBORN project will be presented. A summary will provide recommendations for future research and identify remaining fundamental scientific gaps.

Short Bio:
Ondrej Kotaba is the Fellow at Honeywell Aerospace, responsible for sustainable aircraft propulsion technology. With over 20 years of industrial experience, he currently provides technical leadership to the Clean Aviation project NEWBORN. Ondrej has previously coordinated various research projects on aerospace high voltage systems, high reliability controls, and high power density electronics. His past contributions include work in signal processing, real-time multicore processing, and others. Ondrej’s alma mater is the Brno University of Technology. He is an author or multiple patents and a holder of private pilot license.

The presentation title and abstract will be updated soon.

Short Bio:
Dr. Andrew Woodworth is a lead technical advisor for NASA’s electrified aircraft technology development efforts and has specialized in closing technology gaps for megawatt and multi-megawatt powertrain systems. Currently, Andrew is in the Subsonic Vehicle Technologies and Tools (SVTT) project supporting transformational propulsion concepts. He has spent 16 years as a researcher in the Materials and Structures Division at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, leading efforts to develop new electric machine material approaches for electrified aircraft as well as researching and developing radiation-hardened silicon carbide-based power devices.  Dr. Woodworth earned a Ph.D. in Physics from West Virginia University.

Performing, Scalable and Certifiable Fuel Cells in Aviation Today! 

Short Bio:

Dr. Johanna K. Dombrovskis is Fuel Cell Stack Technology Manager at Swedish fuel cell manufacturer PowerCell Group, where she leads development, validation and integration of fuel cell stacks and components. With more than 15 years of experience in fuel cell stack and component development, she currently provides technical leadership to PowerCell’s contributions to the Clean Aviation project NEWBORN and other European and national research and innovation programs.

Prior to joining PowerCell over nine years ago, Johanna worked across academia and industry on fuel cell catalyst, electrode and stack R&D, building strong expertise in taking concepts from laboratory scale to robust products. She holds a PhD in Materials Science from Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden) and a Diplom Ingenieur degree from Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany).