The Université catholique de Louvain (UCL: see www.ucl.ac.be ) is a large, complete, international, and renowned institution in higher education teaching and research, with 11 faculties, 200 research units, 20000 students, 5000 members, 600 Equivalent Full Time (EFT) academics, 1600 EFT researchers and 1600 EFT administrative and technical staff. The Faculty of Applied Sciences has about 1800 engineering students, 75 EFT academics and 250 scientific personnel (PhD researchers, etc., of which 50 are staff research assistants).

The TERM Division of the Mechanical Engineering Department has 20 researchers, including 6 academics. It has activities in fluid dynamics, energy systems, thermal engines and instrumentation. The group of Prof. Winckelmans is specialised in the modelling and simulation of high Reynolds number flows, including turbulence, aircraft vortex wakes, aerodynamics, etc. Prof. Winckelmans is one of the developers of the Vortex Forecast System (VFS, an operational wake vortex predictor developed by an international team funded by Transport Canada during 1994-2000: SABIGO of Moscow, W. Jackson, OTI and M. Yaras of Canada, and G. Winckelmans of UCL). UCL-TERM is also partner of various wake vortex FP5 projects: IWake (where the VFS is used to assess system requirements, feed flight simulator tests with realistical wake vortex scenarios and produce realistical wake vortex behaviours (UCL-TELE is also partner, in charge of signal processing)), ATC-Wake (also with VFS, and for participation in system requirements and concepts, integrated system design and evaluation, safety and capacity analysis, and evaluation of operational feasibility), AWIATOR (for wake rollup studies and for studies of instabilities in multiple vortex systems), and WakeNet2-Europe thematic network (and also Working Group Leader for wake characterisation and decay).

Within FLYSAFE, UCL-TERM will be active in WP 2.3.1, in all aspects relating to wake vortex prediction in cruise (using the leader aircraft data and the met data: wind, turbulence, etc.) also in RVSM airspace, and for support to wake vortex detection enhanced by prediction. The Division's participation to the IP FLYSAFE is perceived as a unique opportunity to further put to good use its wake vortex expertise and the operational VFS technology, together with partners having the best expertise in Europe.