The secretary


Dr. Jordi Pons Prats
Associate professor

The functions of the secretary, outlined in the Regulations on the Organisation and Functions of the Doctoral School, are the following:

  • To call the meetings of the collegial bodies on the order of the chairperson.

  • To organise collegial body elections at the Doctoral School.

  • To vouch for the agreements and resolutions of the Doctoral School's governing bodies.

  • To write and keep custody of the minutes and, if necessary, the recordings of corresponding collegial body meetings.

  • To guarantee the dissemination and advertisement of the agreements, resolutions, regulations and other general rules on institutional functioning among members of the Doctoral School community.

  • To issue certificates, reports, rulings and approved agreements.

  • To draw up the Doctoral School's annual report.

  • To fulfil other functions inherent to the post entrusted to him by the Board, the director or the University's regulations.

Dr. Jordi Pons i Prats is an associate professor in the Department of Physics, Aerospace division. He teaches at the Castelldefels School of Telecommunications and Aerospace Engineering (EETAC). Trained as an industrial engineer (Specialization in Mechanical Engineering) from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), he also did his doctorate at the UPC in Aerospace Science and Technology. His main line of research deals with the development and application of numerical optimization methods in aeronautical engineering, with a special interest in genetic algorithms. Before making the leap to an academic career, he worked in the private and industrial sectors. He is currently a member of the UPC ICARUS research group, expanding the scope of applications to all types of air operations and air traffic management. He is also the head of the aerospace engineering group at CIMNE (International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering, a centre affiliated with the UPC).

He has participated in more than 50 R&D projects (Projects). He recently led the Impact Monitor project and currently leads its successor project; Impact Monitor 2 funded by the European Commission.

His research has resulted in multiple publications, with contributions to journals, book and chapter publications and participation in conferences. In 2022, he organised the EASN conference as local chairman, and in 2023 he was part of the local organizing team of the DASC conference.