On March 20, 2024, the CU Innovation Day “Advanced Air Mobility – Opportunities for Composite Materials” took place in the CU MixUp World.  The field of Advanced Air Mobility is a fast-progressing industry with a multitude of players, business cases and opportunities. Topics like Aerial Commuting Traffic, Urban Air Mobility and transportation services through Drones are in focus with many innovative ideas and interesting developments and use cases. With this CU-Innovation Day, we want to look at opportunities for Composite Materials in this interesting developing field. The event was organized by the CU clusters CU Nord and MAI Carbon and strongly supported by the two hosts CTC GmbH & Hufschmied Zerspanungssysteme GmbH.

Over 50 national and international participants joined the event and followed the interesting presentations of, among others, VÆRIDION, Volocopter, Mubea Aviation and KTM Technologies. As virtual exhibitors, the hosts CTC & Hufschmied as well as the Fraunhofer IGCV and Radiate presented themselves.

The unique application of the MixUp-World allowed to test a new feature: In a Speed dating, the participants were randomly allocated to other participants in one-to-one calls and then able to introduce themselves in 2-minute slots. In this way, exchange and networking were promoted and interested participants could get in touch with others. The lunch break and coffee breaks then allowed to follow up on interesting “dates” and intensify the conversation. This new feature was very well received and promoted the exchange significantly.

Sven Blanck, Managing Director of MAI Carbon, summarizes: “The field of Advanced Air mobility is vastly growing area with lots of potential for composite materials as illustrated by the great presentations of the event”. Dr. Bastian Brenken, Managing Director CU Nord, adds: “We are really happy with the event and the degree of networking that was made possible with the new speed dating. In the future, we will continue to utilize and further advance this feature to make our online events as valuable as possible”.