December 8th, 2014
During the last decades Prof. Dieter Schmitt has been recognized as one of the key personalities of the European aeronautics community. His career includes both an impressive industrial part as well as a high quality academic aspect.
Head of the Future Projects Department of Airbus in Toulouse, Vice President for Research and Future Projects in Airbus and Interim Technical Director of Bauhans Luftfahrt are some significant milestones of an industrial career which has been a high altitude flight. On the other side Dieter Schmitt has been the holder of the Chair for Aeronautical Engineering at the Institute of Aerospace at the Technical University of Munich / Germany, taught a series of lectures including Air Transport System, Aircraft Design and International Aerospace Management, has supervised about 20 PhD Theses and carried out with his students a series of highly innovative academic projects aiming mostly to develop new aircraft configurations. Dieter Schmitt has combined in an excellent way industrial and academic activities and demonstrated, on the paradigm of his own career, the need for a permanent communication and close cooperation between academia and industry. In this context, it is not surprising that Dieter Schmitt is one of the initiators of the EASN concept and offered generously his services during all these years to EASN, either as Vice President at Airbus, Professor in Munich or Technical Director at Bauhans Luftfahrt. TU Munich, represented by Prof. D. Schmitt, has participated in the Support Action ?European Aeronautics Science Network? which was funded by the European Commission in the frame of FP5 from 2002 to 2005. This project gave birth to the EASN Network. This was followed by a second CSA from 2006 to 2008 which led to the establishment of the EASN Association in its current form as a non-for profit, Belgium based, international association. Prof. D. Schmitt is one of the 20 founding members of the EASN Association.
To honor his services to EASN the General Assembly of EASN has unanimously decided to grant to Prof. Dieter Schmitt the title of Honorary EASN member.
The honoring event took place on October 28th in the frame of the 4th EASN Workshop which was held in RWTH Aachen from October 27th until 29th. The tribute was attended by more than 100 participants including distinguished representatives of aeronautics stakeholders like EREA, JTI Clean Sky, Airbus, the European Commission, etc. In the frame of the event, at first the EASN Chairman, Prof. Spiros Pantelakis, presented highlights of the reach career as well as some biographical information of the honored personality and extended to Prof. Dieter Schmitt a plaque referring to the event. Then the floor was passed to Prof. Dieter Schmitt, who gave an excellent key note lecture on ?The Air Transport System as a Basis for Aircraft Design?. The talk gave rise for a fruitful discussion and a series of useful conclusions. The tribute to Prof. Dieter Schmitt has been recorded as a part of the living history of the EASN Association.
