Yesterday, on the annual Thanksgiving dinner of USAIRE in Paris, I was awarded the second place in the student award competition of 2009! The aim of this year’s contest was to study how the aerospace world of 2050 will look like, and write a 10-page paper about this. The official title was ‘What will the civil and military space look like in 2050? What consequences will this have on our industry’s competitiveness and innovation ambitions?’

USAIRE is a 50-year old association of American and European companies focused on aerospace and advanced technologies. Members include Airbus, Boeing, Dassault, EADS, Eurocopter, Lockheed Martin, Northtrop Grumman, Raytheon, Rolls-Royce, Thales and many more. The Thanksgiving dinner took place at the Cercle d’Union Interalliée, in the very centre of Paris, close to Place de la Concorde. After the dessert, it was time for the announcement of the results.

And second place it was. Prizes include two tickets Paris – New York on Air France, a Panasonic Toughbook, a cheque from USAIRE (and a very generous one at that), and a year long subscription to both Air & Cosmos and Aviation Week and Space Technology. Yes, I’m very happy You can find the full text here (pdf, 10mb), or enjoy the summary: (more…)

Welcome to the new version of simonvdb.be! A lot has changed when compared to version 2. The blog has become the starting page, the portfolio section has been expanded, but most of all: this whole site is powered by Wordpress now. This allows me to easily change and add the content of the site anywhere, anytime.

Furthermore, this version offers more flexibility for me, more features for you (search function, archives and categories in the side bar, for example), complete bilingual design Dutch-English thanks to the qTranslate plugin, easy picture and gallery managing with the NEXTGEN gallery plugin and some more updates about what I’m reading on the internet with the Delicious Cached plugin.

Don’t hesitate to let me know what you think of it. Probably you will have to change RSS feeds etc. The site is still a work in progress, and I think there still are some quirks in it, but most of them are being worked upon. Have fun reading!

Well, that’s over with. I finished my summer job project at ESAT today. It was a really nice experience, I’ve learned a lot of things and I’ve earned some money, all at the same time. This afternoon, I presented the result of my work of the past four weeks and the end result, this website, to part of the SISTA research team and the professors Bart De Moor and Joos Vandewalle. I’m quite happy with the results actually, and I got a nice compliment of prof. De Moor (for more details, you’ll have to e-mail me ).

Well, that’s over with. I finished my summer job project at ESAT today. It was a really nice experience, I’ve learned a lot of things and I’ve earned some money, all at the same time. This afternoon, I presented the result of my work of the past four weeks and the end result, this website, to part of the SISTA research team and the professors Bart De Moor and Joos Vandewalle. I’m quite happy with the results actually, and I got a nice compliment of prof. De Moor (for more details, you’ll have to e-mail me ).

Perhaps you’re wondering if I liked staring at a computer screen for four weeks and two days. Well, I have to say, I coped far better than I had exspected. It really motivates that you’re busy working on your own project and can really go for it, to make it as good as possible. Like I said, I’m really glad I learned a lot of things: what research at ESAT or research in general is all about and software like Matlab, Java and Linux. Of course, sometimes you get frustrated when everything just seems to go wrong, but probably that’s just a normal part of research too…

A lot of thanks to the department of electrical engineering, to my ‘mentors’ Leon-Charles Tranchevent and Shi Yu. I hope I helped you somewhat with your research. Anyway, thanks for being there when I needed you. Also a big thank you to my collegues Evelien, Nele, Pierre, Dries, Dieter and Jeroen. Without you guys it wouldn’t have been as much fun as it was.