Aircraft systems comprise of functional aspects as well as the aspect of fault tolerant realization. ILS activities focus on the latter in both research and lecture. Advanced platform technologies enable clear segregation of the functional aspect from the aspect of fault tolerant realization. The redundant platform provides to the system function a virtual simplex system environment. Fault tolerance, redundancy etc. are transparent to the system function. Key research terms at ILS are Integrated Modular Avionics IMA, middleware for platform- and redundancy-management, methods for automatic design of distributed avionics, self-adaptive platforms, safety analysis, development processes.