UC3M Aerospace Students Earn Top Honors at the National Arquímedes Awards

Two Aerospace Engineering students from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid have achieved outstanding recognition for their final thesis for the Master in Aeronautical Engineering at the 2024 Arquímedes Competition, Spain’s most prestigious national contest for undergraduate and master’s research.

Antonio Montero Barriga: First Prize in the Engineering Category

Antonio Montero Barriga has been awarded the First Prize in the Engineering category for his Master’s Thesis titled “Design, Assembly, and Validation Testing of a Sub-1 Amp LaB6 Hollow Cathode.” The project was jointly supervised by Tatiana Perrotin and Jaume Navarro.

Antonio’s research explores the design, fabrication, integration, and validation of a hollow cathode based on lanthanum hexaboride (LaB6), optimized for emission currents below one ampere. The cathode—developed from scratch—has been engineered to meet the requirements for use as a neutralizer in low-power Hall thrusters (100–400 W) currently under development at UC3M.

The work was presented at the International Electric Propulsion Conference (IEPC) 2024 in Toulouse, France, where it was selected as the best contribution in the Hollow Cathodes session. Among the main outcomes is the full current–voltage characteristic curve in diode configuration using a sacrificial anode. Validation tests demonstrated that the cathode can self-sustain emission currents between 0.8 and 2.5 A using xenon (0.08–0.15 mg/s) as a propellant, without additional heater or keeper power. The device was successfully operated up to 100 W of discharge power, showing no degradation after the first ten hours of operation.

Patricia García Caspueñas: Accésit Plus Recognition

Patricia García Caspueñas received an Accésit Plus for her research supervised by Stefano Discetti. Patricia, currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Washington, developed a project titled “Prediction and Control of the Dynamical Evolution of a Fluid System.”

Her work addresses one of the central challenges in modern engineering: the ability to predict and control fluid dynamics, a crucial factor in reducing the environmental impact of the aeronautical industry. The project introduces a nonlinear plant model for open-loop control based on full flow-field data. The proposed framework integrates autoencoders with recurrent neural networks acting as dynamic predictors, enabling spatio-temporal forecasting of complex flows over future horizons under prescribed control laws.

These achievements highlight the excellence, innovation, and international impact of UC3M’s Aerospace Engineering students and their supervisors. The department congratulates Antonio and Patricia for their exceptional work and well-deserved national recognition.