Jaume Navarro

Jaume Navarro Cavallé holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering by Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (2017). He got the FPU scholarship grant from the Ministry of Education, being invited as a predoctoral researcher at MIT and Princeton University. He is currently Associate Professor in Aerospace Engineering at UC3M. Jaume is Deputy Director of the Aerospace Department and member of the ‘Plasmas and Space Propulsion’ (EP2) research group.

Jaume has been leading the Space Propulsion Laboratory since 2016. Settling the bases for the design/manufacturing and validation tests of different plasma thruster technologies and plasma diagnostics. His main research line has progressed mostly around the development of the Helicon Plasma Thruster (HPT) in collaboration with Sener Aeroespacial, under the frame of several international projects, funded by EC-H2020, HIPATIA project and the European Space agency, TRP/GSTP programmes. Currently, he is principal researcher of SUPERLEO project, granted by the AEI, aiming to validate the use of electrodeless plasma thrusters for air-breathing electric propulsion. Overall, he has participated 7 National Research Programs, 6 from the European Commission (H2020), 6 projects/contracts granted by the European Space Agency (ESA), with a funding of about 1.2 MEur as PI.

Since 2020, he has expanded his research lines to a wide suite of plasma thrusters, mostly from an experimental perspective, including low-power cylindrical Hall Thrusters, low-current hollow cathodes, electron cyclotron resonance Thrusters, non-conventional electrodeless thrusters, and ablative pulsed plasma thrusters. He has supervised 2 PhD Thesis (6 on-going).