Maria has a master degree in Aerospace Engineering graduated in ETSIA (Madrid) Madrid and in ENSICA (Toulouse). Post-graduated Master degree in fluid dynamics at the Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Belgium. Started professional carrier in ITP (ES) working in the EUROFIGHTER’s EJ200 engines. Then she worked as project engineer in CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research, Geneva) in Geneva. Employed by Airbus as propulsion systems specialist at the Airbus Customer Support Engineering. Seconded by Airbus to JAA (Joint Aviation Authorities) as technical assistant to the Operations Director. Joined EASA in 2006 as Rulemaking Officer for aircraft operation and CNS aspects. In 2008 she joined the ATM/ANS department. She has had several positions in the department including EASA SESAR Coordinator and lately acting Section Manager of the ATM/ANS Regulations Section within the Flight Standards Directorate and UTM-SESAR coordinator at EASA’s Innovation Cell within the Executive Directorate. Since the beginning of 2019, she is the EASA Drone Programme Manager and Senior Air Traffic Management Advisor within the Executive Directorate and reporting directly to EASA’s Executive Director. 

Erica Caluwaerts (1978) is a politician for Open Vld and started working at the Antwerp Bar in 2002 as a criminal law lawyer. On October 13, 2018, she was elected as a member of the Antwerp city council, where she will sit from January 7, 2019 and on December 20, 2021 she took her oath as Vice Mayor of the Antwerp city council to succeed the liberal alderman Claude Marinower from January 1, 2022. She is responsible for economics, work, innovation, industry, digitalisation, marketing and communication, public domain and legal affairs. 

Kris Clarysse is currently Head of the BSA-ANS, the Belgian National Supervisory Authority. 

Among his responsibilities are the management of the BSA-ANS and project management for strategic projects, e.g. implementation of U-space. 

He joined the Belgian Civil Aviation Authority in 2001 as an Engineer and Project manager for the certification of Belgian airports. Since then he has held various positions including head of the Airports department and Deputy director-general. 

He holds a master degree in electronics engineering and is a former private pilot. 

He has represented the Belgian Civil Aviation Authority in various international fora and is chairman of the Belgian Civil Drone Council. 

Giancarlo Crivellaro is a Policy Officer working in the Aviation Safety Unit of the Directorate General for Mobility and Transport of the European Commission. He was involved in the regulatory process, which led to the adoption of Commission implementing rules on technical and operational requirements for drones and U-space in 2019 and 2021. After graduation in political sciences and transport economy and more than 15 years of experience in the aviation and maritime field, he joined the European Commission in 2006, in the field of Trade Defence Instruments, before returning to the world of air transport in 2014. He was then involved in the preparation of guidelines for the implementation of Air Passenger Right before joining the Aviation Safety Unit in 2017. He is currently involved in the preparation of a “Drone Strategy 2.0 for a smart and sustainable unmanned aircraft eco-system in Europe”.

Alexander De Croo is a Belgian politician and businessman who has served as Prime Minister of Belgium since October 2020. De Croo was born in Vilvoorde, Flemish Brabant, and studied business engineering at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel before attaining an MBA at Northwestern University in the United States. He worked for Boston Consulting Group before starting his own company, Darts-ip, in 2006.

De Croo became involved with the Belgian political party Open Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten (Open VLD), of which he was chairman from 2009 to 2012. From 2012 to 2020, De Croo served in the governments of Elio Di Rupo, Charles Michel, and Sophie Wilmès as a deputy prime minister of Belgium.

Johan Decuyper is CEO of skeyes since October 2013.  If his top priority as CEO of skeyes is to ensure the safety of air traffic, he has also made innovation one of the pillars of the company.  This includes:  

• the safe integration of drones into airspace; 

• the introduction of digital towers by 2025-2026; 

• the joint development of one air traffic management system for all civil and military air traffic controllers by 2027 (this development will make air traffic control in Belgium even safer and more efficient). 

Besides skeyes, Johan Decuyper is also chairman of the board of Entry Point North Belgium
(joint venture between skeyes and EPN) and of SkeyDrone. 

Internationally, he is active in the functional airspace block FABEC which groups Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France and Switzerland in the framework of the Single European Sky, as CEO Champions for Operations for 2022. 

Peggy Devestel is COO of skeyes since 2018 and has recently been reappointed in that role until 2028. 

As a COO, she manages Air Traffic Services (en-route, approach, Brussels Towers and business Units at the regional airports of Liège, Charleroi, Antwerp, Ostend and Kortrijk). She is also responsible for the Meteorological services, Technical Support (Navigation, Communication, Voice, Surveillance, Network, ATM data processing & voice) and Support Services (training centre for Air Traffic Controllers and technicians). 

Within FABEC (Functional Airspace Block Europe Central), Peggy is chairwoman of the SC OPS (Standing Committee Operations). 

Peggy Devestel started her career as an Air Traffic Controller, and over the past 30 years worked her way up to Supervisor Traffic Controller, Manager Regional Airports, Head of Customer Affairs and Director General Operations before taking up her current role as COO. 

Peggy is closely involved in the safe integration of manned and unmanned traffic within the future UTM/ATM environment and the different roles of skeyes in that context. 

Willeke Dijkhoffz is managing director of GZA Hospitals (3 sites), GZA Elderly Care Facilities (12 sites) and president of the hospital network ZNA-GZA. She was trained as a nurse in the Sint-Vincentius institute in Antwerp and did her master’s degrees in Law at the University of Antwerp. Before she started working as a staff member for the Director Nursing in the Sint-Vincentius hospital in Antwerp, she worked as a nurse at a geriatric department in the same hospital. Hereafter she became Federal Mediator/ombudsvrouw patient rights in Brussels. After this experience, she started as Chief Legal Officer, became (Adj.)General Director and finally Managing Director GZA . Next to her function in GZA, she is also active as a board member of the White-Yellow Cross in Antwerp, board member of Mercy Ships, Vice-President of the Antwerp Health Law and Ethics Chair at the University of Antwerp, and member of several federal commissions. 

Dr. Johanna Holsten is the managing director of flyXdrive GmbH, an engineering company providing 3D mobility solutions with fully integrated unmanned aerial systems. Before her current position she worked as a research expert at the Institute of Flight System Dynamics of RWTH Aachen University in the fields of automation of UAS and the design of safety systems.  

Richard Frizon took up the position of interim Executive Director of the SESAR Joint Undertaking (SESAR JU) in July 2021. As interim Executive Director, Mr Frizon is tasked with managing the operations of the SESAR JU in accordance with its work plan, as well as ensuring the preparation of the future SESAR 3 JU, which is due to be established before the end of 2021. Mr Frizon has over 20 years of expertise in finance and public administration both at national and European levels. Prior to joining the SESAR JU in 2020 as Chief Financial Officer, Mr Frizon spent 10 years at the European Research Council Executive Agency, leading the sector responsible for the agency’s budget (2.2 billion EUR).  

Thibauld Jongen is CEO of the SABCA Group since June 2016 and director of Blueberry since June 2020. Born in 1971, Thibauld Jongen has earned an Engineering degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of Louvain (UCL), followed by a Masters in Fluid Dynamics at the Von Karman Institute in Brussels, and a Ph.D. in Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He starts his industrial career in 1998 as a Research Scientist at Unilever Research in Rotterdam and is then appointed Program Director for Unilever Corporate Research in 2000. He joins Techspace Aero (Safran Group) in 2003 as Sales & Strategy Director within its test facilities engineering Business Unit Cenco International. In 2010, he is appointed Senior Vice President of Techspace Aero, Managing Director of Cenco International, and President of the Board of Directors of the Minneapolis-based subsidiary Cenco Inc. He is also appointed President of the Safran Group Testing Committee in 2014. 

Munish is a customer focused, strategic thinker with entrepreneurial passion who has delivered mission critical technology solutions globally.  He currently works for EUROCONTROL as a Senior Manager - Business Development in the Directorate European Civil-Military Aviation.  In this role, he is responsible for developing U-space/UAM capabilities with partners of EUROCONTROL.  He represents EUROCONTROL in the European Network of U-space Stakeholders, in partnership with the DG Move, EASA and SESAR Joint Undertaking.   

In his previous role, Munish defined and implemented customer centric strategy for an ANSP to enhance capacity, efficiency and safety of its operations. For project managing delivery of 360-degree flight simulator at Dubai Air Navigation Services, Munish was awarded the best “Technology implementation of the year” at Business Awards 2013 in the Dubai.  

He has published ten papers on Technology management in international conferences and journals. Munish holds a research degree (MPhil) in Software Engineering from Nottingham Trent University (UK) and Global Executive MBA from Rotterdam School of Management (NL). 

Pieter Lantermans started HyFly (formally incorporated in 2018) to develop a hydrogen powered VTOL drone.  HyFly’s mission is to provide sustainable transportation of (medical) goods over longer distances. Before starting HyFly Pieter had a twelve year career within GKN Fokker as a Stress engineer, managing different technology development projects. Currently flying the 4th prototype, HyFly works towards development of the hydrogen powered version to become available soon. HyFly is a.o. a technology member of HAI (since 2019), which leads to an integrated BVLOS Command & Control as well as modular payloads and automated hydrogen refuelling with Drone Cargo Port.  The SAFIR-Med project is one of the HAI collaborations providing opportunities to further mature and demonstrate integrated solutions. 

Manu Lubrano is the CEO and Co-Founder of INVOLI, the leading provider of air traffic detection and tracking solutions for drones. Manu is a drone regulation expert and has been in the drone industry since 2012. He currently co-leads the ASTM Standard WK69690 on Surveillance data for UTM.
Before INVOLI, he was Head of Industrialization for the drone manufacturer senseFly and co-founded the humanitarian drone association Drones for Earth (former Drone Adventures). He was also President of the Swiss Drone Industry Association and a member of the Board of the GUTMA. Manu has a Ph.D. in Manufacturing Systems and Robotics, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL). 

Herwig Mannaert graduated as an electronics engineer in 1988 from the K.U.Leuven. He obtained his PhD at the K.U.Leuven in 1993, specializing in the design of object recognition algorithms for computer vision. In 1993, he joined the University of Antwerp as an Associate Professor, where he has served as Chair of the Management Information Systems Department from 2006 to 2011, and as Vice Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics from 2011 to 2018. Currently, he is a Full Professor at the University of Antwerp and serves as program director of the digital business engineering degree programme. During his career, he has taught courses and published textbooks in the fields of systems theory and signal processing, information and telecommunication technologies, and software architectures. While he has been involved in research on e-learning technologies and the use and adoption of open source software, his main research focus is on evolvable modular structures in general, and evolvable software architectures in particular. This led to the ‘Normalized Systems Theory’ which he co-authored with his colleague Jan Verelst. Throughout his career, Herwig has been involved in various initiatives. From 1998 to 2000, he served as the lead-developer for the secure communication software for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. In 2000, he co-founded Cast4All, a company that develops management and monitoring systems for sustainable energy systems. To apply Normalized Systems Theory on an industrial scale, he co-founded in 2011 NSX as a spin-off company of the University of Antwerp. NSX offers software development tools and develops information systems and data platforms, in a wide range of application areas including administrative business processes, sustainable energy, healthcare, avionics, and security and privacy management. 

Tomé Najdovksi has a Master in Chemistry and PhD in Biochemistry from Université Libre de Bruxelles. He worked several years as a researcher at Université de Mons in Biochemistry Department. After this experience in applied research, he took a position as Head of Quality Control in a Human Plasma Fractionation plant for about 10 years. Between 2003 and 2010 he was active in different senior management positions for SGS Lab Simon, UCB Pharma and Helvoet Pharma. Since 2010, he works as Production Director in the Blood Establishment of Croix-Rouge de Belgique – Service du Sang – Suarlée (Namur) where he is responsible to ensure supply in Labile Blood Component for 40 hospitals in Wallonia and Brussels. Next to this position, he is also a member of different working groups from European Blood Alliance (EBA) that focus on Innovation and introduction of new products. 

Mikael Shamim has a healthcare general management background that he combined with his aviation passion. Having spent his youth sailing (navigating) the world, Mikael realized an old dream and obtained his Private Pilot Licence (PPL-A). He flies Piper Warrior III and Robin DR400 at the Royal Antwerp Aviation Club.  Joining the age of (aerial) robotisation, he obtained his class 1 drone pilot license (RPL-R / EASA A2). Evolutionary requirements of the medical sector make it increasingly challenging to ensure democratic access to high quality care.  As medical practices evolve, cost levels tend to rise, requiring logistical optimization to remain affordable. As part of a first generation of drone aviation pioneers, Mikael advocates EU level collaboration to develop effective and affordable drone-based transport solutions.  This is reflected through the open HAI ecosystem (“Helicus Aero Initiative”) that creates and drives projects like SAFIR-MED towards enabling safe and societal beneficial aerial solutions.  

Ralph Schepp is co-founder and COO of Droniq GmbH, a joint venture of DFS the German Air Navigation Service Provider and Deutsche Telekom. 

The 45-year-old is driven to create the future by bridging upcoming next generation technology to the market. Prior to Droniq, Ralph led the units Spectrum and Technology Strategy for the Deutsche Telekom Group as Vice President for technology innovations. 2016 Ralph initiated the project “Connected Drones“ which was the origin of today‘s Droniq. 

As COO of Droniq Ralph continues to pursue his passion for identifying, developing and bringing disruptive ideas to market. At Droniq he leads technology, IT and product development. In this role Ralph benefits from over 15 years of professional experience in information and communication technology (ICT). 

Ralph holds a Master in business administration of Lüneburg university. He has three kids. 

Hendrik-Jan is an experienced aviation professional and management executive who has occupied positions both within civil and military ATM organizations.  Driven by the potential of technological progress, he gets his energy from leading complex change and innovation projects. His academic background: MSc in Engineering Sciences (ir.) at the Royal Military Academy (Brussels) and Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) and Executive MBA (EMBA) at the Vlerick Business School. 

He is currently wearing the hat of Managing Director at SkeyDrone, a U-space technology start-up and joint venture of skeyes, the Belgian Air Navigation Service Provider, and Brussels Airport Company. 

Jacques Vandermeiren is the current CEO of Port of Antwerp-Bruges (from January 2017). Before joining the Port Authority he was active at Elia, the network operator and listed company, where he held various management positions since joining it in 2001 and became CEO in 2012.  

Vandermeiren has occupied various directorships with among others Febeg (Federation of Belgian Energy Companies) and the Federation of Belgian Enterprises. He is currently an active board member of the dataplatform NxtPort, Kunsthuis Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Royal Antwerp Football Club and the Belgian coffee brand Vascobelo. He is also co-founder, and since May 2018 Chairman, of the Belgian sustainability platform The Shift, as well as co-investor in Qpinch, which generates energy from waste heat.  

Vandermeiren graduated as Master of Laws, a qualification which he later supplemented with a master's in European Studies, a middle management course with Vlerick Business School and an “advanced management Program INSEAD”. He is married to Barbara Baeckelmans, with whom he has three children. He lives in Antwerp. 

Geert Vanhandenhove is Helicus Flight Operation Manager and is at the source of company and flight procedures, documentation and training material, for complex multi-crew BVLOS medical UA operations in populated environment in line with EU UA regulations. Before co-founding Helicus, Geert built a strong career in Medical IT management positions. As member of the board of Royal Antwerp Aviation Club, Geert is the representative of its Declared Training Organisation and is a Ground Instructor for Private Pilots. Geert holds a BSc in Applied Communications and is a licensed Private Pilot for manned aviation as well as for unmanned aircraft. 

Evelyn Vass is the Chief Operations Officer of Europe Hospitals. She graduated as a nurse in 1997. After a brief nursing career on a paediatric ward, she became active in hospital pharmacy: first in Sint Jan hospital as an administrative coordinator, later as a pharmacy manager in the Sint Maria Halle hospital. In 2016 she started working in Europe Hospital, where she started working as a Support Manager for Pharmacy and became COO in 2017. 

Anna von Groote has joined the EUROCAE Secretariat in 2011.

Before joining EUROCAE, she worked at the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) since 2006, where she assumed responsibilities for the organization’s work programme in different sectors. In her role as Programme Manager at CEN, she was responsible amongst others for the aerospace and air traffic management sector.

Anna holds a Master’s degree in European Studies from the Centre for European Integration Studies / University of Bonn (Germany) and a Master of Laws LLM in Technology and Intellectual Property Law from the University of Liverpool (UK).

Přemysl Volf is the CEO of AgentFly Technologies and the chief architect of the AgentFly ATM and UTM simulation framework. His research focuses on distributed large-scale high-fidelity simulation in the air traffic domain, simulation, and modeling of human cognitive behavior, especially of air traffic controllers and distributed cooperative detect and avoid algorithms. He has been the principal investigator of multiple research and commercial projects funded by industrial partners, US government organizations (Federal Aviation Administration, US Air Force Research Laboratory), EU (SESAR), and national research programs. He is an author or co-author of more than 35 scientific papers. 

Weina Wang graduated from Auvergne - France and Dublin city - Ireland Universities.
She worked in the machinery industry and French aircraft companies during several years.
After becoming manager of Asian Investment at Lyon Metropole - France for 8 years, she
then joined Ehang Europe as their Director and recently she has been promoted as Vice
President of sales department.
In charge of Ehang’s team in France, Weina Wang is expanding drones’ future market.

Adriaan Wiese is a Compliance Specialist, coming from a legal background with studies in South Africa and the Netherlands, where he pursued his interest in law and technology. He has a lifelong passion for aviation and, at the same time, a thorough understanding and experience in market research and business development, both at a local and at an international level. 

He has worked as the intermediary in developing business between the Netherlands and South(ern) Africa, including airport development, and he has completed research for major companies and bodies, such as Schiphol Airport and the Dutch Council of the Judiciary. 

He is co-founder of the company Mercury Systems B.V. which provides digital and compliance solutions to the unmanned aviation industry and is part of the METIP Innovation Platform in the Netherlands and an external partner of the Hellenic U-space Institute.