On Thursday, October 30, 2021 at 2:00 pm (Dubai time), the Italian Industry and Commerce Office in Dubai participated in the meeting “Aerospace Focus: Aerospace research in the United Arab Emirates”. The digital meeting was held by Lazio Innova, an in-house company of the Lazio region promoting innovation, start-ups, and research in the Lazio Region. IICUAE contributed to the organization of the event by putting Lazio Innova in contact with the relevant UAE counterparts.
The webinar was held as part of the cycle of Information & Training meetings, organized with a view to the participation of Lazio Region in Expo 2020 Dubai. The same rationale was behind Lazio Innova’s decision to establish the Hub for Business, a support tool for Lazio businesses willing to take part in Expo 2020. The Hub for Business is physically located at the IICUAE offices in Dubai.
Roughly 50 representatives of Lazio-based businesses, start-ups, research centers, academic spin-off firms working on technological innovation in the aerospace field took part in the webinar. The latter was introduced by Eng. Laura Tassinari, Zugni Tauro and Riccardo Panuzio – respectively Director of Internationalisation, Clusters and Studies and Cluster Manager at Lazio Innova. They highlighted the Lazio’s excellence in the field of aerospace innovation and research.
The digital meeting represented an unmissable opportunity to build bridges between these actors and the NYU Abu Dhabi Center for Space Science, one of the most important players in the field of aerospace research in the UAE. Laurent Gizon, researcher at Center, spoke about the favorable environment for aerospace research that the UAE government has induced over the past years through financing and forward-looking investment.
Moreover, Dr. Gizon presented the key aspects of the research activity pursued by the NYUAD Center for Space Science. The Center focuses on the study of the internal structure of the Sun through modeling and stellar seismology – i.e., the science that studies the oscillation of stars. Thanks to these techniques, the Center’s researchers are able to understand the activity of the hemisphere of the Earth that is not facing Sun. This type of activity is crucial for the preparation of two future ESA missions, namely PLATO and Solar Orbiter.