Luc Antoon was an active French military Officer ATCO from 1988 to 2006, from working positions to head of ATC Unit (TWR and APP), in several Airbases, different types of traffic including military drones. He worked implementing the safety management system within French Ministry of Defence’s ATC units and was Deputy of the International Affairs Office within the State Aviation Safety Directorate. He worked on international air regulation evolution in Europe within FABEC and EUROCONTROL. Appointed in 2011 within the Joint military staff, Luc was Deputy of joint crisis cell acting on the national territory in an inter-ministerial context. From 2015 to 2018, he was Sub-Director Airspace within the French military ATM Directorate dealing with regulation, usage and management of airspaces and integration of military drones within French airspace in coordination with civil authorities. Coming from NATO Headquarter, he is now UTM Manager, working for skeyes since October 2019.

Anastasia Bafouni-Kotta holds a diploma in Mechanical and Aeronautics Engineering from University of Patras and is currently finishing her master’s in Business Administration. She got involved with urban air mobility and logistics during her master studies and she has been researching consumer’s attitudes towards drone delivery services in the city of Lisbon as part of her master thesis. She joined Future Needs as a researcher in transport and she is currently working as a project manager and researcher in UAM-related projects.

Tristan DAVID is the Business development manager of INVOLI, the Swiss based expert in low level air traffic detection. Graduated with a Business school master diploma, Tristan oriented his career toward the development of the business aspects of international technological projects involving a great variety of stakeholders. Among others, he supported the development of environmental solutions derived from marine technologies at Naval Group and led projects to expand the military aircraft training service portfolio provided by Airbus Defense & Space to European Air forces. Tristan is now supporting INVOLI in providing to U-Space service providers the means to unlock the full potential of their U-space airspace. Thanks to its air traffic receivers, drone trackers and data, INVOLI provides the still missing low level air traffic to ensure the safety of both open and specific categories drone operations.

​Greet Ilegems is the program manager of the Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) business unit of Sabca, where she is leading several research and demonstrator projects on integrated UAS solutions. As a spin off from the aerospace group Sabca, Sabca-UAS is specialised in designing, integrating and operating unmanned aerial systems. They step in when aviation grade drone solutions are required, and missions have to be performed in safety critical conditions. From 2009 to 2018 she worked for Siemens, as key account manager of one of its biggest clients. She holds a MSc in mechanical engineering, accomplished with distinction at KU Leuven.

Julian Maßau is a project manager for Urban Air Mobility at the City of Aachen. He coordinates several projects regarding the development of air taxis and medical applications of drones, focussing on the acceptance Urban Air Mobility technologies among the citizens of Aachen by means of participation. In this work, he draws upon his university degree in Digital Media Communication, where he focussed on knowledge transfer between experts and laymen. During his work for the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, he was able to further develop his skills in this area before now supporting the City of Aachen.

Akash Mishra is Chef de Projet at Ehang, responsible for Flight Permits and Drone operations.He has
completed his Masters in Unmanned Aircraft Systems Services and Management from ENAC, Toulouse.
As an Information Science and Engineer, he has established a ondemand logistics company in the past and was one of the initial employees for Uber Bangalore.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dieter Moormann is heading the Institute of Flight System Dynamics at RWTH Aachen University since 2010. His research is focussed on Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and Aerial Taxis, including automated parcel delivery (e.g. DHL Parcelcopter), support of rescue forces (e.g. Larus, Flying Eye for Rescue Forces), aerial and ground vehicle interaction (e.g. Realize, Gabriel) and Aerial Taxis (Silent Air Taxi, Dubai AATS). He serves as advisor on UAS safety to the Federal German Ministry of Transport BMDV. From 2001 to 2009 he worked at AIRBUS in Flight Dynamics and Controls of Eurofighter and as team leader Autopilot Design and later as Chief Engineer of the unmanned technology systems demonstrator Barracuda. From 1994 to 2001 he did research at the German Aerospace Research Center DLR on Robust Flight Control and Rapid Control Prototyping.

Afrodite Sakellaropoulou has amassed extensive experience in researching and producing material, project development and workshop delivery; both as part of a team and in managerial positions. Throughout her career, she has approached and excelled in various sectors, namely legal work, project management and delivery, social care, education and hospitality. Since these projects at times ran simultaneously, in addition to becoming skilled in building strong relationships with clients and colleagues, she is an expert in managing a heavy workload and producing deliverables in excellent time. Additionally, she holds a first-class degree in Human Rights and History, as well as an LLM in Law and Legal Practice, through which she has become accomplished in research. She is able to quickly and easily adapt to new environments and widen my knowledge of any field; ensuring that her clients and colleagues receive the best possible assistance when she is involved.

Mikael Shamim has a healthcare general management background that he combined with his aviation passion. Having spent his youth sailing (navigating) the world, Mikael realized an old dream and obtained his Private Pilot Licence (PPL-A). He flies Piper Warrior III and Robin DR400 at the Royal Antwerp Aviation Club.  Joining the age of (aerial) robotisation, he obtained his class 1 drone pilot license (RPL-R / EASA A2). Evolutionary requirements of the medical sector make it increasingly challenging to ensure democratic access to high quality care.  As medical practices evolve, cost levels tend to rise, requiring logistical optimization to remain affordable. As part of a first generation of drone aviation pioneers, Mikael advocates EU level collaboration to develop effective and affordable drone-based transport solutions.  This is reflected trough the open HAI ecosystem (“Helicus Aero Initiative”) that creates and drives projects like SAFIR-MED towards enabling safe and societal beneficial aerial solutions.

Tom Snyers has a masters degree in software engineering and artificial intelligence. He started his career in 2003 at skeyes, the Belgian ANSP, where he worked on several Air Traffic Management solutions. Since 2014 he shifted his attention towards European projects related to innovative concepts such as Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) systems. In 2020 Tom joined SkeyDrone in the role of UTM Product Manager. Since then he has been responsible for the realisation of several innovative UAS related applications in Belgium such as the Drone Service Application (DSA) used by skeyes and Belgian Defence to manage their Geo Zones. As UTM Product Manager he is shaping SkeyDrone's solution suite, that will enable SkeyDrone to fulfill its role as USSP in the near future.

Geert Vanhandenhove is Helicus Flight Operation Manager, and is at the source of company and flight procedures, documentation and training material, for complex multi-crew BVLOS medical UA operations in populated environment in line with EU UA regulations. Before co-founding Helicus, Geert built a strong career in Medical IT management positions. As member of the board of Royal Antwerp Aviation Club, Geert is the representative of its Declared Training Organisation and is a Ground Instructor for Private Pilots. Geert holds a BSc in Applied Communications and is a licensed Private Pilot for manned aviation as well as for unmanned aircraft.

Dennis van Wijngaarden is a researcher working at the Micro Air Vehicle laboratory (MAVLab) of the Delft University of Technology. He has a bachelor and master’s degree in aerospace engineering and started his career as researcher after graduating in 2019. For his master thesis, Dennis developed a state-of-the-art Conflict Detection and Resolution method that could be applied on drones. The method ensures that a conflict resolution for a drone can be found within an airspace that is restricted horizontally. As a student and researcher, Dennis was involved in muliple projects and competitions in which he gained pratical experience with drones.

Steven Weekx graduated as Doctor in Medical Sciences in 1999. Since then, he has been working as a clinical biologist, specialized in haematology, flow cytometry and quality, in the clinical lab of the Antwerp hospital group GasthuisZusters Antwerpen, where he is also co-chairman of the Transfusion Comitée. Since 2022 he took up the function of department head. Next to his role in the clinical lab, he is a visiting professor at the department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Antwerp and a jury member of the examination board of the department Healthcare of the AP Hogeschool Antwerpen. Dr. Weekx is an active member of international and national associations for clinical biology, haematology, and flow cytometry. He participated in over 60 publications and cooperated with Helicus to perform a medical validation study investigating the impact of drone transport on sample quality.