Fernando de Caralt
President
Welcome to CTAE, a non-profit R&D centre specialised in aerospace technologies. Our mission is to apply the knowledge and results of university research to promising technology developments for private businesses in any sector of the economy.
I am pleased to see how in only a few years, CTAE has become a reference in our region: it has attracted talented people, developed R&D capabilities in a number of promising areas, established strategic alliances with the university and the corporate worlds as it nurtures a strong network of international partnerships. This did not seem an easy task back in 2004, when the idea of creating an R&D centre in aerospace was launched by the Government of the Generalitat of Catalonia, in collaboration with Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), the BAIE Aerospace Cluster and a number of local and national aerospace companies.
I strongly believe that aerospace projects need multidisciplinary teams combining different technical fields and market knowledge, and this team work is what makes our profession so exciting. Many of these projects are in the R&D and innovation area, where the average aerospace company invests 14% of its turnover, significantly more than in most other sectors of the economy.
Another key factor in the development of our region is its aviation infrastructure. The regional authorities have recently set up a plan for the development of airports and airfields, which society at large must now take advantage of. Here again, CTAE can play an important role in providing the public and private sectors with technology watch and applied research services.
I hope that you will find our website interesting and wish you a fruitful cooperation with CTAE.
Jordi Angusto Zambrano
General Director
From 1st September I’ve started my new position as CTAE General Director with the responsibility to continue the heritage of Joan de Dalmau, who will still be close to CTAE through our Scientific Advisory Board, and who has nurtured CTAE from its beginning until the current reality: a strong R+D multinational team with skill in Global Navigation Systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Software, Control, Robotics and Remote Sensing; business areas covered by CTAE researchers with expertise in electronics, software, mechanics and telecommunications.
Taking Joan’s work further means taking investigation further in terms of soundness and in terms of its economic impact. We must be able to convert research results into sustainable economic activity, something which is more related to coordination and assembly of third parties’ needs and capacities, than to start from scratch our own investigations.
I’ll try as much as I can to federate universities’ departments and industries in order to ensure that we will not replicate existing research, and that the research we do will be exploited. That’s why you, the reader, are warmly welcomed to contact us if you have a solution to bring to the market or a technology need to be solved.
