In April 2025, the Chair for Swedish Aeronautical Professor Program in Brazil, inaugurated in 2015, celebrated its 10th anniversary, enabling, since then, the regular arrival of 4 prominent and entrepreneurial professors from renowned universities in Sweden: Petter Krus from Linköping University, Ragnar Larsson and Tomas Grönstedt from Chalmers University of Technology and Dan Henningson from Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). Initially, the Program considered ITA as counterpart as the hub and focal point.
The experience of being Professor Chair, for Dan Henningson, could be defined by “immensely rewarding”. He mentions the immersion he had in the Brazilian culture and the friendliness of the individuals he has met. He also highlights the collaborations stem. “The scientific work carried out within my research group has greatly benefited from the complementary expertise of the Brazilian research teams, particularly the group led by Prof. André Cavalieri at ITA”, affirms. Petter Krus, in the same way, sees it as both enriching and personally rewarding. He affirms it enabled him to stablish a tangible presence in Brazil, such as opportunities to collaborate with exceptionally talented researchers, who also became close friends.
The Professor Chair Ragnar Larsson affirms that his main expectation when assuming the Chair under the framework of the Swedish Aeronautical Professor Program was to “develop further research related to the mechanics of composite materials”, which he affirms he has achieved. He shares that he also wanted to know a little about the Brazilian culture and to extend relevant network with the ITA and UFABC. The Professor Chair Tomas Grönsted, likewise, affirms he knew Brazil’s strong aerospace history, and saw in that an opportunity to “get things done”.
When asked about the main outcomes he had since assuming the Chair, Tomas Grönsted mentioned being able to boost capability, skill and knowledge across a large number of individuals. “We now have Brazilian engineers working in Swedish aerospace industry, and we have Brazilians that spent years in Sweden now working in the Brazilian aerospace community”, affirms. The Professor Petter Krus also considers that as a great outcome: “The Chair has contributed significantly to the expansion and consolidation of research collaborations, particularly for my group at Linköping University”. He highlights, as a tangible outcome, the numerous participations on workshops and conferences, such as his co-organization at the biannual Workshops on innovation in Fluid Power (WIEFP) since 2012, in collaboration with Professor Victor De Negri.
“Since the outset of my guest professorship, a total of 10 senior Principal Investigators (PIs) from Brazil and Sweden have been involved, along with 20 postdoctoral and graduate students”, states Dan Henningson. He declares that some spillover effects he had were: a Life Science AI Workshop organized at USP in 2023, in conjunction with the Karolinska Institutet (KI); an international conference held in Paraty in 2018, focused on aerodynamics and the transition to turbulent flow and enhanced international collaboration with researchers from TU Berlin, the University of Poitiers, and DTU (Technical University of Denmark). As an outcome, Ragnar Larsson highlights the opportunity he had to host a CISB scholarship (MSc Matheus Mendes) for one year at the Division for Material and Computational Mechanics at Chalmers. “We are now continuing to work on several new ideas related to modelling and experiments of polymeric nanocomposites”, completes.
For the next three years, Tomas hope there will be great collaboration with the new ITA post-doctoral researcher Daniel da Silva Tonon and Emil Ellenius, their recently launched PhD candidate in the NFFP program. Peter Krus’s expectations, at the same way, are to deepen and diversify collaborations in Brazil, having a particular area of interest in the application of artificial intelligence in engineering design.
