PECI 2023 Keynote Presenter:

Dr. Gokcin Cinar is an assistant professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan. She leads the Integrated Design of Environmentally-friendly Aerospace Systems (IDEAS) Lab. Her research focuses on the design, integration, and optimization of aerospace systems, particularly in the areas of electrified aircraft propulsion and sustainable aviation. Utilizing model-based engineering and probabilistic and statistical methods, Dr. Cinar's work aims to bring a holistic and systems-level perspective to the environmental impact of aircraft design and operation. Dr. Cinar is one of the core team members of the newly launched Michigan Initiative for Sustainable Aviation (MISA), which aims to build a collaborative community of experts to explore multi-disciplinary solutions to the challenges in aviation's impact on the environment. Dr. Cinar is a senior member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). At AIAA, she currently serves in AIAA's Emissions and Sustainability Task Force and is also the Vice Chair of the Electrified Aircraft Technology Technical Committee. She is the General Co-chair of the 2023 Electrified Aircraft Technologies Symposium that is organized jointly by AIAA and IEEE.

The global aviation industry was responsible for 915 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2019. About 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from aviation today, and with more passengers and flights expected as the population expands, aviation could be producing three to five times more carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 than it did before the COVID-19 pandemic. To reduce the dependence on fossil fuels, the aviation industry needs a mix of radical and disruptive technologies. One of the most promising solutions is the electrification of aircraft propulsion and power systems. Electrification enables diverse propulsion architectures and fundamentally changes the relationship between the propulsion system and the airframe, creating a very rich and complex aircraft design space with many exciting opportunities. However, it also poses significant challenges due to technological bottlenecks, lack of historical data, and high levels of uncertainty. Thus, potential environmental and performance benefits can be easily diminished by suboptimal propulsion solutions. As the Integrated Design of Environmentally-friendly Aerospace Systems Laboratory (IDEAS Lab) at the University of Michigan, our goal is to answer these questions through quantitative, system-level, and life-cycle assessments for future aircraft concepts. In this talk, I will give an overview of the most promising technologies to meet aviation's net-zero emission goals. I will emphasize the importance of systems thinking in integrating novel technologies in the aircraft design process, and provide examples for the design space exploration and multi-disciplinary analysis and optimization of electrified aircraft.