Unite the excellence of TBS Education to inspire the world of tomorrow
Firmly rooted in its aerospace territory of Toulouse, this Center of Excellence covers all management themes related to this rapidly changing sector.
The Aeronautics & Space Excellence Center of TBS Education, deeply rooted in its aerospace region of Toulouse, addresses management themes linked to this transforming sector.
Its multidisciplinary expertise fuels innovative research and partnerships with key industry players.
Through academic and collaborative work, the Center trains future decision-makers capable of meeting the challenges of aerospace and space, contributing to the school’s prominence.
“The Aeronautics & Space Excellence Center at TBS Education aims to unify research and innovation on the economic, social, organizational, and environmental transformations in the aerospace sector, closely linked with the industrial and academic ecosystems of the region and internationally.
Our mission is twofold: to understand and support the major transformations in the sector, and to actively contribute to the training of future talents capable of thinking, managing, and transforming the aeronautics and space industry of tomorrow.
Multidisciplinary and committed, the Center relies on expertise in management, human resources, ethics, innovation, ecological transition, and geopolitics to explore key issues such as technological sovereignty, sustainability, and the new forms of cooperation in space.
Through collaborative research projects, conferences, scientific publications, and strong ties with industry players (large corporations, SMEs, institutions), we help make TBS Education a recognized player at the heart of Europe’s leading aerospace hub.
Join us to co-create the knowledge and skills necessary for the transitions in the aeronautics and space sector.”
— Dr. Cordula BARZANTNYHead of the Aeronautics & Space Excellence Center
The Center of Excellence in Aeronautics & Space at TBS Education explores the economic, human, environmental, and geopolitical transformations in the aeronautics and space sector.
Its mission is to produce impactful knowledge, fuel academic and public debates, and train managers capable of supporting the major transitions in this strategic sector.
Based in the heart of Europe’s leading aeronautics ecosystem, the Center acts as a catalyst between research, education, and action, closely collaborating with companies, institutions, and national and international academic partners.
• Use management science to understand changes in the sector (energy transition, organizational transformation, sovereignty, innovation, etc.).
• Produce academic publications and studies with high societal value.
• Participate in funded research projects (e.g., Horizon Europe, ANR, European projects).
• Develop partnerships for research, expertise, and training.
• Organize conferences, symposiums, and scientific days related to current events in the sector.
• Build a bridge between the needs on the ground and the contributions of research.
• Integrate aerospace issues into TBS Education programs.
• Encourage teaching through research (student projects, real-life cases).
• Raise students’ awareness of the geopolitical, environmental, and human complexity of the sector.
The Aeronautics & Space Excellence Center implements concrete actions at the interface of research, training, and community engagement. Its achievements are part of a collaborative dynamic, serving innovation, sustainability, and the understanding of the profound transformations within the aeronautics and space sector.
on the challenges of space, aerospace, and ecological transition in the industry.
which aims to provide the European Union with a leading university in the space sector.
in intercultural management, HR, leadership, sustainability, and aerospace strategy.
regional and European on the changes in the sector (Occitanie Region, Aeronautics Vocational Campus…).
with other centers and chairs of TBS Education to address systemic issues (e.g., sustainability, AI, HR).
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The Center works closely with key players in the sector at the local, national, and international levels:
Akram Al Ariss is a professor of human resource management at TBS Education, specializing in talent management, international mobility, and diversity in multinational enterprises.
His research addresses HQ-subsidiary relations, gender social norms, and HR strategies in multicultural contexts.
His work highlights the interplay between institutions, individuals, and organizations in a globalized world.
Aurore Archimbaud is an Assistant Professor in Statistics at TBS Education.
Following her doctoral studies in collaboration with a company, she worked as a data scientist in Artificial Intelligence in France and Canada, and as a researcher in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on multivariate data analysis, outlier detection, dimension reduction, robust analysis of scale data, and forecasting.
Her work finds applications in predictive maintenance, quality control, and psychometrics, for high-dimensional and functional data.
Cordula Barzantny is Professor of Human Resource Management with a particular focus on International and Intercultural Management.
Cordula is the head of the Aeronautics & Space Excellence Center
Passionate about aerospace, she is strongly involved in AeroSpace business and management education development since 1999.Now she is contributing to build the European Space University for Earth and Humanity for research cooperations (Beyond UNIVERSEH) with an alliance of 7 universities across Europe: www.UNIVERSEH.eu. Since September 2024 she has also been appointed as Head of the Centre of Excellence in Aeronautics & Space, promoting joint research collaborations with TBS Education researchers and companies.Prior to completing the PhD, her international professional career was in finance, accounting and management control with Siemens.
Her research interests include strategic marketing, business ethics, and brand activism.
She explores topics such as distributive justice, brand engagement with social causes, and the resilience of emerging-market firms in the international business landscape.
Her work also examines responsible practices within the creative and aerospace industries.
Secil Bayraktar is a professor of Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior at TBS Education.
Her research interests include leadership, organizational change, human resources and AI, cross cultural management and international dynamics.
She investigates people-related matters in organizations with the aim of enhancing well-being of employees in today’s business context characterized by complexity, digitalization, change, and global focus.
To do that she focuses on the employee and the leader perspectives, as well as the organizational and international factors that constrain or enable positive organizational and individual outcomes.
Simon Belieres is a professor of decision sciences at TBS Education.
His research primarily focuses on operations research, combinatorial optimization, and optimization under uncertainty.
The goal of his work is to improve logistics and freight transportation operations, specifically for freight carriers like less-than-truckload and air cargo services.
To achieve this, he develops innovative solution methods that combine decomposition approaches with heuristics.
Christophe Bénaroya is a B2B marketing professor at TBS Education and Head of the MSc Aerospace Management program.
With fifteen years of industry experience across diverse marketing roles, he is a recognized specialist in the aerospace sector.
He led the Aerospace MBA from 2015 to 2021 (France & India) and has co-authored several reference works, notably the books Aerospace Marketing Management and Business to Business Marketing.
His recent research focuses on the transformations of New Space and their managerial implications. He also serves as Honorary Consul of Latvia in Occitanie.
Soumyadeb Chowdhury is Professor of Information Systems at TBS Education.
His research focuses on disruptive technologies such as generative AI, especially ChatGPT, and their implications for organizations, talent management, and ethical decision-making.
He is an active voice in global discussions on the societal impact of AI.
Sophie d’Armagnac is a professor of human resource management at TBS Education.
Her research focuses on talent management, and she explores work transformation, collective learning dynamics and tensions linked to temporality in organizations.
She conducts qualitative research in the aerospace, industrial, and nonprofit sectors.
His research interests include disruptions, technology strategies, and sustainability, with a recognized expertise in complex products and systems industries, particularly in the space economy.
Since 2013, he has served as Co-Director of the SIRIUS Chair, which focuses on conducting business research applied to the space economy.
Christophe Favoreu is a Professor of Strategy at TBS Education.
His research focuses on public innovation, strategic public management, and more broadly, the management of performance and paradoxes within public organizations.
His work also explores performance management within teams, particularly through the lens of emotions and conflict.
He is Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg. He holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering (Polytechnic School of Montreal) and MSc degrees in Mathematics (University of Sherbrooke) and Electronic Commerce (HEC Montreal).
His award-winning research, published in top journals, focuses on the business value and societal impacts of technologies such as AI, big data, blockchain, and the metaverse. He is a CompTIA RFID+ Certified Professional and was named a Leading Academic Data Leader by CDO Magazine in 2021.
After examining the impact of price endings on brand image in the luxury sector and in IPOs, her current research focuses on emerging themes such as the metaverse, NFTs, and virtual influencers.
She also investigates topics related to mobility and customer experience, with a particular focus on airport environments (lounge occupancy, passenger journey), multimodal transport, and broader marketing challenges in the aviation and aerospace sectors.
Christian Gnekpe is Professor of Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation at TBS Education.
His research focuses on sustainable innovation dynamics in the circular economy and energy efficiency, technological trajectories, and technology acquisition strategies in sectors such as construction, space, and biopharma.
He uses interdisciplinary approaches and quantitative methodologies (including machine learning) to shed light on innovation and sustainability governance.
Denis Lacoste is a full Professor of Strategy at TBS Education, where he has held various leadership positions.
He has also worked as a consultant and has been a visiting professor at numerous foreign universities, including San Diego State University and Universidad de los Andes.
His research focuses mainly on strategic management and international business.
His work has been published in leading academic journals such as International Business Review, m@n@gement, European Journal of International Management, and Journal of Travel Research.He has also authored and co-authored several books and book chapters on strategy and international management.
Gilles Lafforgue is a researcher specialising in economic modelling, with a particular interest in climate policies.
His research focuses on assessing economic and regulatory instruments that facilitate energy transition and carbon emissions reduction.
He also conducts research on natural resource economics and recycling.
Finally, he is involved in research projects on the decarbonization of the aviation industry, in collaboration with Institute for Sustainable Aviation and ISAE-Supaero.
Éric Michaël Laviolette is a professor of strategy, entrepreneurship, and innovation at TBS Education.
His research focuses on collective identity dynamics, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and the structuring of competitiveness clusters.
He also investigates preincubation practices and the intermediary role of meta-organizations.
His research explores collaborative innovation spaces and organizational paradoxes within firms.
He is also interested in the local embeddedness of multinational R&D subsidiaries.
He has notably worked with Thales Alenia Space as part of a research-consulting mission to improve innovation processes within the organization.
Silvia Padrón is a Professor of Operations Management at TBS Education.
Her research focuses on optimizing combinatorial problems in transportation, aviation, and supply chain management, with a particular interest in robust planning under uncertainty combining simulation and heuristic approaches.
She specializes in airport operations and develops novel methods to enhance turnaround efficiency and resource utilization.
Quentin Plantec is an Professor of Strategy and Innovation Management at TBS Education.
His research focuses on the interplay between science and innovation, from academic entrepreneurship to university-industry collaboration.
He developed the “double impact” concept, leading to multiple publications and the book Science & Industry in the Lens of Double Impact. His work has earned several awards.
A regular contributor to Xerfi Canal, The Conversation, Les Échos, and L’Usine Nouvelle, he also studies how double impact applies to space research and the New Space sector.
Alexandra Polyakova is a marketing professor at TBS Education, specializing in consumer behavior and service marketing.
Her research focuses on consumer entitlement and preferential treatment, as well as the role of emotions in services marketing.
She is also interested in the implications of digital transformation and artificial intelligence for retail and service industries.
Additionally, she contributes to projects exploring consumer preferences in the context of transportation services.
Mélanie Roux is an Assistant Professor of Strategy at TBS Education.
Her work focuses on intrapreneurship and explores the role of SMEs and startups in driving sustainable transformation within business ecosystems—particularly through the adoption of circular economy principles, resilience strategies, and artificial intelligence.
She also leads the Mixed Reality Design Sprint in collaboration with AIRBUS, an initiative that tackles societal challenges in the aerospace sector through intrapreneurial projects leveraging emerging technologies such as AI and mixed reality.This initiative was recognized with the “Innovations That Inspire 2025” award by AACSB.
His work explores participatory mechanisms that improve collective decision-making, particularly in public policy and sustainability contexts.
By integrating interdisciplinary approaches, he seeks to develop innovative frameworks that foster stakeholder collaboration and enhance governance models in complex and politically contentious environments.
Magdalena Teissandier is a researcher in strategy and international business, with a particular interest in sustainability — encompassing economic, environmental, and social dimensions — within the global value chains (GVCs) of the space industry.
Her work focuses on understanding power dynamics among various actors (governmental organizations, large corporations, and small and medium-sized enterprises), as well as the implementation of innovation and internationalization processes within these GVCs.
Miguel Urdanoz Erviti is a professor of management at TBS Education, specializing in empirical industrial economics applied to the air transportation.
His research focuses on airline network structures, carrier cooperation (alliances, codesharing), and scheduling.
He applies econometric and graph theory methods to shed light on airline strategy.
A recognized expert in data protection law, he investigates the extraterritorial reach of the GDPR, cross-border data flows, and digital governance in an international context.
His work highlights tensions between digital sovereignty, innovation, and global regulation of personal data and artificial intelligence.