Our Profession

Science and Technology, Knowledge and Innovation

An organization like Onera spans a wide variety of professions, from office and line workers to technicians, engineers, scientists and managers. The tasks we are assigned imply an even greater diversity, since staff have to adapt to a variety of disciplines and challenges, addressing them with an array of skills that range from numerical modeling to the design of demonstrators to experimental setups. Of course, this all has to take place within a strict project management framework, so that we can meet the quality and cost-effectiveness requirements of an industry operating in extremely competitive markets.

This apparent diversity is actually integrated within a concept that combines science and technology, knowledge and innovation. In short, Onera is in the research-engineering business.

Onera’s Engineers are Researchers

The job of an engineer is to find technological solutions to problems set by aerospace companies and organizations. Engineers draw on available scientific knowledge to create, develop and apply innovative methods and tools that will help them find answers to these questions – even those that have never been asked before! When this basic knowledge is lacking, engineers must seek it out, by activating cross-disciplinary networks at their disposal. Good engineers know how to see what is invisible, measure the inaccessible, and imagine new models of reality. Their goal is to understand these “mysteries”, and push back the frontiers of knowledge to blaze a path to innovation.

The challenges facing today’s engineers are often at the extreme limits of the boundaries between physics and technology. To meet these challenges, they have to grasp the full complexity of reality, and master the unknown.

While their mission is to develop knowledge, in today’s world, they are above all the gateways, transforming this knowledge into practical technologies and solutions for industry.

They have an ancillary mission, perhaps equally as important: to pass on their knowledge and skills to a new generation, whether in university classrooms, or in our own laboratories through hands-on research training.

Onera’s Researchers are Engineers

Researchers help expand our scientific knowledge. They understand the scientific aspects of the problems faced by industry. They foster the development of knowledge by colleagues in university labs, synthesize this knowledge and use it to underpin technological development.

They are in fact at the crossroads between physics and technology, and are indispensable because they combine the understanding of complex phenomena, a system-wide vision, an in-depth view of each discipline and a multidisciplinary approach. Using computation, they simulate reality to turn the invisible, visible. Using experimentation, they seize reality and validate their models.

Last Update: 17 March 2006 - © ONERA 2009 - Terms of use