Professor Laurent Dala previously held positions as Chief Scientist for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (South Africa) and the Chair in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Pretoria. He was also the President of the Aeronautical Society of South Africa (AeSSA). He is also a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (FRAeS), a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and a European Engineer (Eur-Ing). He has a research experience of more than 25 years, in which he has led various research projects around the world. His research interests lie primarily in the fields of system design, multidisciplinary optimization methods, and real time modelling. He is a member of the UK EPSRC’s College of Peer Reviewers, the European Research Counci