ALICANTO Signing Ceremony at the 2nd ICAO Next Generation of Aviation Professionals (NGAP) Summit in Shenzhen, China on December 13, 2018.
HISTORY
ICAO’s NGAP Summit in 2017 advocated the creation of a consortium of universities to bring in a coordinated voice of academia on subjects relevant to ICAO and other stakeholders, such as the aerospace industry and governments. The network of education institutions would aim to collaboratively develop initiatives to attract and prepare the next generation, as well as play a leading role to create, publish, distribute, and promote educational programs that serve the needs of the aviation industry and support the education and training of the next generation of aviation professionals.
Such an initiative was started in 2018 through the collaboration of six respected international aerospace universities: Beihang University in China, Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civil in France, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the United States, McGill University in Canada, Moscow State Technical University of Civil Aviation in Russia, and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.
Encouraged by ICAO to create a framework for a new international association of aviation and aerospace universities, representatives from each of these universities met regularly. We were strongly committed to ensure that ALICANTO bylaws were flexible and inclusive with the objective to find ways to bring in not only the more well-known aerospace universities, but to ensure that we weren’t unconsciously putting barriers in place that would keep out universities with smaller programs.
Once the group had established the basic framework for our cooperation, we registered ALICANTO as a non-governmental, non-sectarian, non-partisan and nonprofit organization in Montréal, Québec. McGill University’s Institute of Air and Space Law was chosen as the association’s domicile. The creation of ALICANTO was officially announced at the 2nd ICAO Next Generation of Aviation Professionals (NGAP) Summit in Shenzhen, China on December 13, 2018.
Current ALICANTO Board Members:
- Angela C. Albritton, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the United States
- Tomasz Balcerzak, Lazarski University in Poland
- Graham Braithwaite, Cranfield University in the United Kingdom
- Vincent Correia, McGill Institute of Air & Space Law in Canada
- Marwin Dela Cruz, Philippine State College of Aeronautics in the Philippines
- Matt Dreher, The Ohio State University in the United States
- Jakub Kraus, Czech Technical University in the Czech Republic
- Robert Reid, University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa
- Volodymyr Shulha, National Aviation University in Ukraine