Pablo Caron received the ISAE-SUPAERO Foundation’s thesis prize for his thesis work!

She was a PhD student in the Complex Systems Engineering Department (DISC)
The subject of his thesis is “vision-based navigation for autonomous rendez-vous with non-cooperative targets.” She is affiliated with the doctoral school, Aeronautics Astronautics (AA). This thesis is called a CIFRE* PhD and is done in collaboration with Thales Aliena Space
ISAE-SUPAERO welcomes its doctoral students in six ISAE-SUPAERO, ONERA teams and Clément Ader Institute, covering a wide spectrum of scientific disciplines related to aeronautics and space: aerodynamics and propulsion, structures and materials, embedded systems, networks and telecommunications, control and management of systems, human factors, electronics, and signal.
ISAE-SUPAERO offers a rich and diversified program of doctoral training, leading to the PhD, the highest degree awarded by the institute, and recognized internationally.
*Since 1981, The Ministry for Research has financed CIFRES with the double objective of placing doctoral students in the conditions for scientific employment and encouraging research partnerships between the academic and business spheres.

Paul Planeix (S2020) has received the Mayoux-Dauriac Award from the ISAE-SUPAERO ENSICA Alumni Association. This prize recognizes engineering students in the final year of the ISAE-SUPAERO engineering course for their practical achievements during their studies and the various internships carried out, in keeping with the wishes of Maurice Mayoux. (S 1924).
The €3,000 Second Prize for 2020 went to Paul Planeix for his drone project, “Search & Rescue”. Development of a flight simulation environment / contributions to de Guidance, Navigation and Control systems at Zipline International.
Paul has worked on many scientific projects in a wide variety of fields during his engineering studies.
A member of the CubeSat association, he contributed to the construction of a 1:1 scale model of the MONA nanosatellite. His studies at ISAE-SUPAERO also enabled him to qualify a drone navigation system and to take his first steps in research through an exoskeleton control project. This research project, based on Machine Learning methods, was carried out with the Enorev’ association, the goal being to help children suffering from cerebral palsy.
While working on his double degree at Stanford University, Paul built an aircraft using a search and rescue scenario that was totally autonomous from takeoff to landing.
Paul then managed to join Zipline, at the time still a young startup in Silicon Valley specialized in robotics. He had an internship there with the Guidance, Navigation and Control (GN&C) team, which only had two members at the time. He contributed to the development of a drone simulation environment and to GN&C systems.
Today, Zipline operates the first and largest drone delivery system in the world in Rwanda, Ghana and the United States, providing a solution to the problem of the last mile in the healthcare field. This solution saves lives by providing maximum availability of essential medical products while reducing waste and maintaining the cold chain.
Paul has continued to contribute to the Zipline mission since 2020 through the skills he acquired at ISAE-SUPAERO and Stanford as an engineer.
Paul Planeix received the award for the variety, the excellence of his educational background and the practical achievements that brought him into the startup ecosystem.
The Mayoux-Dauriac Award is given in recognition of the use of knowledge acquired at the School in the exercise of one of the various facets of the engineering profession, and for the utility of the projects undertaken to industry and services with a positive economic balance.

Eloa Guillotin and Hugo Tarlé (S2020) have received the Mayoux-Dauriac Award from the ISAE-SUPAERO ENSICA Alumni Association. This prize recognizes engineering students in the final year of the ISAE-SUPAERO engineering course for their practical achievements during their studies and the various internships carried out, in keeping with the wishes of Maurice Mayoux (S 1924).
In his will, Maurice Mayoux – SUPAERO 1924 (ARTS & MÉTIERS Cluny 1920), who died on September 4th, 1997, expressed his desire that, with the income from his assets left to the Société des Ingénieurs Arts et Métiers (Arts et Métiers Engineers Society), French language prizes be awarded to Arts et Métiers students and mechanics prizes to SUPAERO students, joining the name of his wife, Jeanne Dauriac, to the award.
“The annual allocation of an Award reserved to students in their last year of studies, whatever their specialty, but chosen for their overall understanding of General Mathematics and their application in “practical” constructions, constructions that should be considered for all of their qualities: principle, simplicity, efficacy, probable feasibility, and as low a cost price possible.”
The SUPAERO Association, now called ISAE SUPAERO ENSICA Alumni, therefore decided to create the Mayoux-Dauriac Aeronautic Award recognizing the use of the knowledge acquired at the School in the exercise of one of the various facets of the engineering profession, their achievements (projects) being judged for their utility to industry (or services) and presenting a positive economic balance. Two prizes were awarded in 2020!
The €9,000 First Prize for 2020 went to Eloa Guillotin and Hugo Tarlé for their Beyond Aerospace Project – Survey of light delivery for space: prospective analysis of small launchers.
Eloa and Hugo form a real partnership. They are both ISAE-SUPAERO Engineers (S2020) and followed the same educational career at École Polytechnique, HEC Paris and the University of California, Berkeley (USA). They have a passion for space and more particularly for launchers. They have also been motivated by entrepreneurship ever since they met in their first year. At the head of the school’s entrepreneurship association, they organized the first European startup week-end on space in partnership with Airbus Defence and Space, CNES and ESA.
During their engineering studies they created Attom together, a company that develops instant recharging products for Smartphones. Their project was awarded two notable entrepreneurial distinctions in Toulouse. Their studies then taught them the basics of creating a technology company. After earning their X-HEC Entrepreneurs Masters from HEC Paris, and after spending a semester at the University of California, Berkeley, they founded Beyond Aerospace, a responsive launch service dedicated to small satellites.
Eloa has a long-term vision of the goals to be met and her natural organization enables her to set precise, realistic milestones for the next steps to be taken. Her ambition and her good managerial cheer naturally made her the CEO of Beyond Aerospace. Hugo has fabulous technical skills, notably in fluid mechanics and data science. A real do-it-yourselfer, he built a H2O2/Ethanol bi-liquid engine, solid-propulsion boosters and experimental rockets in his back yard. His precision and his thoroughness have made him the CTO of Beyond Aerospace.
Their company fits into an economic system that they learned about during their Master’s thesis supervised by Sandy Tirtey, Director of Launches at Rocket Lab – the first and only operational commercial micro-launcher in the world to date. Their real industrial and economic interest in the micro-launcher market is the product of their curiosity and their passion for space and technological entrepreneurship based on their technical experimentation. They have put this into practice with Beyond Aerospace and all of their achievements have earned them this award, the result of their excellence.

The ISAE-SUPAERO Foundation’s entrepreneurship prize has been awarded to Paul Lascombes, a graduate of ISAE-SUPAERO (S2017) and École Polytechnique (X2013), co-founder and Scientific Director of EXOTRAIL, founded in 2017. Exotrail is a start-up that designs and supplies transport solutions for the space sector. It markets electric propulsion systems to small satellite manufacturers.
For Paul, everything started during his studies at École Polytechnique (X2013) where he carried out a scientific project to develop an instrument to measure the thrust of an electric microthruster. Thanks to this project, which he worked on in 2014/2015, he became interested in space and in the opportunities for marketing this new kind of thruster adapted to nanosatellites. This project planted the seeds for the Exotrail adventure launched in 2015. During his studies, first at École Polytechnique and then at ISAE-SUPAERO (S2017), Paul Lascombes developed his scientific culture and his entrepreneurial culture while starting to work more and more intensely for Exotrail.
In 2017, after his end-of-studies internship at Airbus Defence and Space, he joined Exotrail full time to prepare two projects: setting up the company from a strategic and technical point of view in order to raise the initial funds, but also technical coordination that would enable him to capitalize on the knowledge acquired during development with SATT Paris-Saclay, (Société d’Accélération du Transfert de Technologies (SATT) facilitates and develops the transfer of innovations from public academic research). This was done to launch the technology foundations necessary for the demonstration mission, all with a small team of 6 people.
After raising this initial capital and a substantial increase in the team, Paul’s work turned to three main aspects connected to his title of Scientific Director:
Operational management of the software development team based in Toulouse.
Technical organization of the entire team and coordination of R&D.
His role is to constructively question the technical choices made by the development teams. He ensures the coherency of all the activities and technical interactions for the various development aspects and coordinates R&D actions.
Definition of Exotrail’s long-term strategy. He oversees discussions on the SpaceVan (orbital transport vehicle housing nanosatellites to transport them from their launch orbit to their final operational orbit) and keeps up with launch problems and in-orbit services.
The entrepreneurship prize launched by the ISAE-SUPAERO Foundation in 2019 aims at encouraging entrepreneurship; the prize is a way to provide support for start-uppers in their promising, innovative projects, notably in the aviation, space and defense fields.