On December 1, 2025, at Université Paris-Saclay, our PhD candidate Paul Saves was honored at the Open Science Thesis Award Ceremony – 2025 edition, organized by the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Space (MESRI)
There, he received the Open Science Thesis Prize – Science and Technology Category, a national award that promotes and highlights exemplary open science practices among early-career researchers.
This recognition comes with a trophy as well as a €2,500 grant.
A Major Contribution to the Decarbonization of Aviation
Paul Saves’ PhD, conducted at ISAE-SUPAERO, focuses on high-dimensional multidisciplinary optimization for early-stage aircraft eco-design.
His work is fully aligned with the challenges of aviation decarbonization: better understanding, modeling, and optimizing aeronautical performance to design the low-carbon aircraft of tomorrow.
“This prize is a strong validation of the Open Science approach we adopted from the very beginning of this PhD at ISAE-SUPAERO and ONERA. It demonstrates that sharing code and ensuring transparency in methods are not constraints, but essential accelerators for innovation, especially in the face of the urgent need to decarbonize aviation.
On a personal level, this recognition provides valuable visibility to the open-source library SMT (Surrogate Modeling Toolbox) that we developed. It is a major encouragement to continue pursuing collaborative and accessible research, a philosophy I still apply today in my work on green computing, particularly through supervising the ISAE-SUPAERO PhD of Gaston Plat.”
Open-source tools that have become references
The prize recognizes the open-source development of:
- SMT — Surrogate Modeling Toolbox 2.0
A software toolbox for surrogate modeling, widely used by the scientific and industrial communities for optimization and simulation. - smt-design-space
An innovative extension enabling the management of heterogeneous data in modeling processes. - smt-explainability
A module dedicated to explainable AI (XAI), facilitating the analysis, reproducibility, and understanding of data-driven models.
Published as open-source, these tools promote transparency, sharing, reproducibility, and the dissemination of methods — all essential pillars of modern research. They have become foundational components for numerous academic studies and international collaborations.
Research Guided by a Multidisciplinary Team
This PhD research is the result of a collaboration between ISAE-SUPAERO and ONERA. It was supervised by Dr. Youssef Diouane at ISAE-SUPAERO and by Prof. Nathalie Bartoli at ONERA.
It was also co-supervised by Prof. Joseph Morlier (CNRS, Institut Clément Ader) and Thierry Lefebvre (ONERA).
This collaborative dynamic made it possible to combine scientific expertise, software innovation, and open practices.
We extend our heartfelt congratulations to Paul Saves for this prestigious recognition, which highlights the quality of his research, the impact of his open-source contributions, and our institution’s commitment to an ambitious Open Science approach.
About the Open Science Thesis Prize
Established in 2024 as part of the Second National Plan for Open Science, this prize aims to promote open science practices within doctoral research.
It complements the Open Science Prizes dedicated to research data and open-source research software, which were introduced in 2022.
The goal is to encourage research that is more transparent, collaborative, and accessible, serving both society and innovation.
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