The Hamburg-based Institute of System Architectures in Aeronautics was founded in 2017 and is part of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The DLR is the largest institution in the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres and Germany's research centre for aeronautics and space. It conducts research and development activities in the fields of aeronautics, space, energy, transport, security and digitalisation. The institute explores the complex overall aeronautical system with all its parameters and interdependencies holistically and digitally, as a system-of-systems.

Together with the other 54 DLR institutes, its partners from industry, medium-sized enterprises and research, it investigates relevant research aspects of the entire aviation system with the necessary breadth and depth through the digital thread in order to make aviation become sustainable and economical fast so that society can stay mobile in the future.

The institute has a strong track record in leading big projects on sustainable aviation projects at national, EU- and international level. ALICIA and EXACT are two Germany funded projects, exploring the most promising new technologies including energy carriers and future aircraft from an ecological and economical viewpoint, assessing the entire lifecycle and their impact by exploring different scenarios. In this way, decision-making in both politics and the industry can become fact-based through this support. At EU-level, the institute leads the project EU Impact Monitor with a similar approach and involving partners form other research and industrial organisations. With the award-winning EU Horizon 2020 digitalisation project, AGILE and its successor AGILE4.0, the institute managed to improve and therefore accelerate the process of commonly designing aircraft. And this is what ODE4HERA is building up on.