The next generation of aircraft will need to be lighter, more sustainable and capable of meeting the demands of industrial-scale production. The first joint ATLAS Cluster workshop in Zaragoza on 17 September 2026 looked at how European research and innovation are addressing this challenge. From circular composites and advanced manufacturing to AI, digital engineering and certification, it also examined what still needs to happen before promising technologies can reach real aircraft applications.
Organized by the ATLAS Cluster (Advanced Technologies for Lightweight Aerostructures and Sustainability), the event united five Horizon Europe projects: CompSTLar, TOSCA, PLEIADES, pAIramid and HyperMorpH, for a full day of expert presentations, interactive discussions and networking around a shared mission: cleaner, lighter and smarter European aviation.
A workshop with a clear purpose
The workshop was designed to answer one central question: how do promising research results move beyond the project environment to create e real industrial impact in the aerospace sector? Across four themed sessions, 19 speakers and three external industry keynotes, the day explored the full pathway from advanced composite materials and automated manufacturing, through digital twins, AI and virtual certification, to the roadmaps needed to bring these technologies to real aircraft.
Take Off – setting the course
Anna Brékine (IoT Lab / CompSTLar), workshop organiser and opening speaker, framed the day around four verbs that would echo throughout the sessions: CONNECT – ALIGN – AMPLIFY – ACCELERATE. Her opening line captured the mission: “The challenge is connected. So is the innovation.”
She was followed by Inés Villa Martínez, Managing Director of the AERA Cluster, whose keynote “From Innovation to Industrial Impact: Priorities, Challenges and Pathways for the Future of Aerospace Structures” laid out the perspective of one of Spain’s most influential aerospace clusters and set out the strategic priorities where research and industry need to converge.
Session 1 – Cruising Towards Circularity
The journey towards more sustainable aerostructures starts with the materials themselves. Session 1 showed how researchers and technology developers are looking at new ways to make composite materials more circular without compromising their performance. Nerea Markaide (CIDETEC / TOSCA) presented vitrimer-based materials that can be reused, while Belén Redondo (GAIKER / pAIramid) explored bio-based conductive composites as an alternative to conventional metallic lightning-protection mesh. Rafał Kozera (NOMA Resins / TOSCA) demonstrated approaches for recycling prepreg scraps through multiple cycles, and Marc Wilms (Fraunhofer IPT / PLEIADES) presented a Digital Product Passport designed to support the traceability of recycled composite tape.
The session closed with a keynote from Berta Gonzalvo, Research Director at AITIIP Technology Centre, who looked at another promising route towards circular composites: enzymatic recycling. Her presentation, “From Waste to Wings: Can Enzymatic Recycling Unlock Truly Circular Composite Materials?”, highlighted a key challenge for scaling the approach – access to the material, rather than simply developing a better enzyme.
Session 2 – Autopilot Assembly
The following session focused on automated manufacturing, opening with a keynote from Mª Dolores Vázquez Navarro, Senior Manufacturing Technologies Specialist at Boeing Aerospace Spain, on the evolution of composite part manufacturing. Other topics that were presented included automated fibre placement enabling fibre steering down to 300 mm radius (Pablo Romero-Rodríguez, AIMEN / CompSTLar), inline machine vision at 1.2 m/s scan speed (Christian Eitzinger, Profactor / TOSCA), photonic sensors surviving temperatures up to 400 °C (Harry Zervos, ICCS-NTUA / PLEIADES) and continuous carbon-fibre 3D printing for aerospace applications (Daniel Gomes, INEGI / HyperMorpH).
Session 3 – Navigating the Digital Sky
Digital twins, physics-informed AI and virtual certification were at the heart of Session 3, with some of the most memorable insights of the day.
Carlos González (IMDEA Materials Institute / CompSTLar) opened with the observation that “AI needs data, and composites rarely give us enough”. He presented a four-tool digital-twin recipe that simulates to generate data, learns fast surrogates and closes the loop with real sensors. Manfredi Pistone (Engineering / PLEIADES) reframed the Digital Thread as “not another tool, but a digital backbone”, connecting, preserving and tracing the information flow across the composite value chain. Andrea Calvo-Echenique (ITA / TOSCA) presented a predictive maintenance workflow enabling repairs “at the right time, at the right location”. Last but not least, Julen Manterola (IKERLAN / pAIramid) offered a certification perspective that stayed with the room, “Stop paying twice for the same confidence.”
Session 4 – Landing Innovations
The closing session opened with a keynote from Tamara Blanco Varela, AIRBUS eXpert in Multifunctional Composites and President of SAMPE Europe, on the challenges facing next-generation aeronautical composites. Her numbers set the scale of the industrial challenge ahead: a projected demand of 34,250 new aircraft between 2025 and 2044, with production targets rising towards 80–100 aircraft per month by 2040. Composite content is climbing too: from 25% on the A320 to 53% on the A350 and higher on the next generation. “Let’s make composites greater again!” she concluded.
Cinzia Rubattino (Engineering) and Cláudio Santos (Coordinator of Technology & Innovation Management at INEGI / HyperMorpH) then presented the ATLAS Cluster roadmap – a synthesis of common priorities, challenges and exploitation pathways across the five projects. Their central message may be the quote of the day, “The gap is not simply between low and high TRL. It is between promising technology and trusted, certifiable and industrially viable solutions.”
Final Approach: an honest conversation
The day closed with the panel discussion “Final Approach: Integrating Innovations for Europe’s Future Aircraft”, moderated by Stanislava Druskova and Simona Baldovska, Project Managers at PEDAL Consulting on behalf of HyperMorpH.
The panel featured four remarkable women whose expertise spans industry, research, cluster leadership and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs): Inés Villa Martínez (AERA Cluster), Berta Gonzalvo (AITIIP), Mª Dolores Vázquez Navarro (Boeing Aerospace Spain) and Tamara Blanco Varela (Airbus Operations).
The conversation covered the industrial-adoption criteria of aerospace OEMs, the pragmatic pathway to shared certification frameworks, the underestimated workforce and skills challenge, cross-sector transfer opportunities, and what structures should carry the momentum forward once the Horizon Europe projects end.
HyperMorpH’s contribution
HyperMorpH co-led the closing session of the day. Cláudio Santos contributed his cross-cluster roadmapping expertise to the joint keynote, positioning HyperMorpH’s approach within Europe’s wider aviation policy frameworks, including ICAO LTAG, the Clean Aviation SRIA, Flightpath 2050 and Destination 2050. Daniel Gomes also contributed to Session 2 with a presentation on continuous carbon-fibre 3D printing for aerospace applications. PEDAL Consulting moderated the fourth session including the closing panel that brought industry and research voices together.
Looking ahead
Wings of Change closed with a shared commitment across all five ATLAS Cluster projects to continue the conversation. The workshop confirmed that Europe has the research capability, the industrial base and the policy framework to lead the transition to sustainable aviation. But that the future will be built through collaboration, not by any single project or organisation alone.
The HyperMorpH consortium warmly thanks the Aragon Institute of Technology (ITA) for hosting the event, and all speakers, panellists and participants (in Zaragoza and online) who made this landmark day possible.
The conversation continues. See you in the sky.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101192711.