Gökçin Çınar Recognized for Work Towards Sustainable Aviation Technologies

The International Sustainable Aviation and Energy Research Society (SARES) has awarded Professor Gökçin Çınar the Young Scientist Award at today’s closing session of the 2024 Internal Symposium on Sustainable Aviation (ISSA’24). This award recognizes Professor Çınar’s dedication towards sustainable aviation technologies, specifically around system-level assessments on advanced aircraft concepts and novel propulsion architectures.

SARES is an international society that works to conduct research, organize symposiums and publish journals and books on sustainable aviation. Within SARES, the ISSA is an international, multi-disciplinary symposium which addresses current issues in the field of sustainable aviation such as improving aircraft fuel efficiency, fostering use of biofuels, minimizing environmental impact, mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and reducing engine and airframe noise. 

The SARES Young Scientist Award is awarded to scientists who have made a difference to sustainable aviation at the international level or who have made important contributions to issues related to sustainable aviation and who have proven that they have high research qualities.

At the University of Michigan, Professor Çınar leads the Integrated Design of Environmentally-friendly Aerospace Systems (IDEAS) Laboratory, a lab space dedicated to pioneering sustainable aviation solutions through a holistic approach that accounts for the systems-level and life-cycle impact of the design and operation of novel aircraft on the environment. Within the IDEAS Lab, Professor Çınar focuses her research on systems design, integration and optimization of aerospace technologies, with an emphasis on future aircraft concepts for sustainable aviation and electrified aircraft propulsion. 

Recently, the IDEAS Lab, under Çınar’s leadership, launched the Future Aircraft Sizing Tool (FAST), an innovative, open-source MATLAB-based software which facilitates the design and analysis of both conventional and electrified aircraft concepts. The FAST software, developed as part of a research project funded by the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate’s Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration (EPFD) project, is designed to support any propulsion architecture and requires minimal knowledge and inputs from the user, making it a versatile tool for aerospace engineers, researchers, students and enthusiasts.

Additionally, Professor Çınar has been one of the key members of the Michigan Initiative for Sustainable Aviation (MISA) at the University of Michigan. This initiative has been successfully leveraging interdisciplinary partnerships and empowering government, researchers and industry leaders to work towards solving environmental challenges related to sustainability in aviation.