Andrew Sammut from the Uni­versity’s Department of Electronic Systems Engineering has been awarded the William E. Jackson award by the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) for his research on aircraft safety.

Dr Sammut’s research involved the design of an avionic system capable of detecting conflicts between aircraft on runways.

The technology advises pilots of these conflicts using a novel alerting technique and determines the safest manoeuvre to take to avoid the conflict.

If the system were to be implemented worldwide, it could virtually eliminate the risk of runway collisions.

Currently an average of two runway conflicts incidents occur every month.

Dr Sammut will take up the role of head of the department for the next academic year.

The depart­ment currently has 14 researchers involved in a number of aviation-related activities, including aircraft taxi guidance, flight trajectory management and optimisation, aircraft navigation and novel cockpit displays.

E-mail Dr Sammut at andrew.sammut@um.edu.mt.

For more information regarding the RTCA, view www.rtca.org.

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