The "Aero.Next Portugal" Agenda comprises four vertical programs and two transversal programs (Workpackages or WPs) that synergize to address strategic aeronautical sector priorities. This agenda empowers the national value chain by expanding its role in designing, developing, manufacturing, and marketing both manned and unmanned aircraft from Portugal, enhancing the country's decision-making capabilities. It aims to consolidate engineering expertise and develop critical mass for operating unmanned aircraft and offering data intelligence services.

The four vertical WPs focus on strengthening engineering capabilities for manned (ARL) and unmanned (ARX) aircraft, certifiable systems, and marketable aero-structure engineering. They also target product development and maintenance services for large aircraft using UAS (ILAN VR) and advancing UAS flying platforms, safety components, and integrated digital solutions for advanced air mobility.

Furthermore, the agenda includes two transversal WPs—one for enhancing additive manufacturing (AM) competences in the aeronautical sector and another for managing and disseminating Aero.Next Portugal's results, including new knowledge, products, processes, and services, to ensure smooth execution.

In the "Aero.Next Portugal" agenda, ISEP/CISTER and GMV will collaborate in WP ARX to customize a secure real-time embedded operating system. Additionally, in WP ARL, they will work together on developing the aircraft mission system. The focus will be on specifying a secure real-time on-board operating system based on ARM architecture to meet the demanding information processing needs essential for RPAS mission success.

Enio Prates Vasconcelos Filho successfully defended his PhD thesis, supervised by Eduardo Tovar, and co-supervised by Anis Koubaa and Luis Almeida, at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal.

His thesis entitled "An Evaluation Framework for Safe Cooperative Vehicle Platooning" presents a framework named CopaDrive, aimed at vehicular applications capable of realistically simulating control and communication models. Based on ROS, this framework allows solutions to be developed and validated faster and more efficiently than current models. Its design is composed of the simulation tool, Hardware in the Loop, and the Robotica testbed. Starting from the use case of a Cooperative Vehicle Platooning (Co-VP) system, using this tool, it was possible to present a control solution capable of increasing the size of the platooning, increasing the safety of the maneuvers performed. Furthermore, it was possible to show the efficiency of modifying the message-sending triggers based on the ETSI ITS-G5 communication model.

The PhD examination committee was composed of Prof. Rahul Mangharam, from University of Pennsylvania, USA; Prof. António Casimiro Ferreira da Costa, Departamento de Informática da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Prof. Joaquim José de Castro Ferreira, Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão de Águeda da Universidade de Aveiro and Prof. Paulo José Lopes Machado Portugal, Departamento de Engenharia Eletrotécnica e de Computadores da Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto. It was chaired by Prof. José Nuno Moura Marques Fidalgo, Full Professor of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto.

The extended abstract entitled "Shared Resource Contention Aware Schedulability Analysis for Multiprocessor Real-Time Systems" presented by CISTER PhD student Jatin Arora got the "Best Poster Prize" at the PhD Forum of Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference (DATE) 2023 that took place in Antwerp, Belgium from 17 to 19 April 2023. DATE is a premiere European conference for design, automation & test and this year's edition of DATE attracted more than 900 participants from across the world.

The PhD forum of DATE is a well-known platform for recent PhD graduates/final year PhD students to present their PhD research work to a broader audience.  The PhD forum of DATE 2023 featured 46 researchers/final-year PhD students from prestigious organizations across the world. The PhD forum best poster prize is supported by EDAA, ACM SIGDA, and IEEE CEDA. Besides the best poster prize, Jatin is a recipient of the PhD forum travel grant and full registration sponsorship for DATE 2023 under the Young People Programme (YPP).

The extended abstract co-authored by Jatin Arora, Eduardo Tovar, and Cláudio Maia summarizes the major research challenges addressed during Jatin's PhD studies. This recognition sets a relevant milestone in Jatin's PhD studies.