As one of the world's leading suppliers of gas springs, damping solutions, and electromechanical drives, Stabilus has for eight decades been demonstrating its expertise in the automotive industry and a variety of other sectors. Gas springs, dampers, and electromechanical POWERISE drives from Stabilus optimize opening, closing, lifting, lowering, and adjusting operations and also protect against vibrations. Employing a workforce of more than six thousand worldwide, the company has its operational headquarters in Koblenz. Stabilus reported sales revenues of EUR 822.1 million in the 2020 fiscal year. Stabilus has a global production network encompassing plants in eleven countries. Additionally, the Group maintains regional offices and relations with sales partners in over fifty countries in Europe, North, Central, and South America, and the Asia Pacific. Stabilus is listed in the Prime Standard segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and included in the SDAX index.

Marcelo Lóss is a Mechanical Engineer and Automotive Technical Special­ist graduated from UNICAMP with solid Automotive Design background. Working closely with Automotive Designers, Clay Modelers, Design Re­lease Engineers and Class A Math Modelers introducing perceptual qual­ity standards on new vehicle surfaces since the first sketches until final production parts tooling construction and implementation. Reporting to design centers in North America and Europe he has developed global simultaneous vehicles program with parts and tools launched in Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, China, India, Korea, Russia and Thailand. With more than 12 years’ experience in design centers in OEM´s, focusing in per­ceptual quality execution and emergent market vehicles, since 2011 he leads the Design Quality activities in Ford South America.

Prof. Peter Vink is an author of more than 250 papers in the field of comfort and design. His latest book is titled ‘Vehicle Seat Comfort and Design’. He now works with colleagues, PhD students and master’s students on vehicle interiors and seats on projects for companies like BMW, Grammer, Boeing, Savas Seating, KLM and SNCF. He also develops comfort models and perception models.

Dr. Reiner Nett graduated in automotive engineering and received a doctor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Berlin. He has worked for over 22 years in the field of automotive safety, taking responsibilities in research, numerical simulation, crash testing, regulatory affairs, and product development. In Joyson Safety Systems, he has established the European business unit of child safety seats. He is responsible for engineering, marketing, and sales of this growing business unit. The latest premium-positioned products and applied technologies are implemented and sold by major European automotive manufacturers and by newly added selective retailers throughout Europe.

Gabriella Bisci got her double degree in biomedical engineering at Politecnico di Turino (Italy) and Université de Technologie de Compiègne – UTC (France) in March 2008. Gabriella then got her master’s in business administration at the University of Turin (Italy) in 2016. In May 2008, she worked as an orthopedics prothesis engineer at the Geneva International Surgical Orthopaedics and Traumatology Congress. From June to August 2008, she worked as an information technol­ogy/business intelligence specialist at everis Italia S.p.A., in Milan, Italy. In September 2008, Ga­briella joined Fiat Group Automobiles at their Turin headquarters as an ergonomics performance engineer. From 2013 to early 2016, she held the role of seat comfort system lead and currently she is working as system lead for seat controls and seat belt comfort and controls.

Born in Bursa, in 1971. He graduated from Mechanical Engineering De­partment at Uludag University, in 1991. He received master and doc­torate degrees from the same university with studies regarding finite element simulations of acoustics and composite structures. He worked in Figes Ltd. and Coskunöz A.S. as Finite Element Analysis Engineer. After a while, he started to work in Martur A.S. as Design Manager in order to develop seats and internal trim materials for light commercial vehicles in 1998. Since 2010, he has been managing innovative research and design activities in Martur R&D Center as Director.

After graduation in mechanical engineering in 2008, Claire Heidecker has been working in and for the automotive industry for more than eight years, always with the target of working towards energy efficiency and climate protection. Since April 2015 she is a project manager in the au­tomotive department at Outokumpu EMEA GmbH, providing lightweight material solutions without neglecting security aspects, processability and cost efficiency.

Bartolomeo Bocchino is born in Pinerolo (To), Italy, in 1972. He is Me­chanical Engineering specialized the automotive field, graduating from Polytechnic of Turin. Since the beginning of his career he worked in auto­motive development, starting from simulation analysis he covered differ­ent roles from team to department leader. Working at Italdesign Giugiaro he has the chance to cooperate with different car makers worldwide, amongst others FCA, BMW, VW, AUDI, taking parts at the development of many important models. He took part at different international proj­ects, from 2011 and 2014, after the acquisition of Italdesign Giugiaro from the VW Group, he spent three years in Audi in the passive safety development. Since 2014 he manages the passive safety department at Italdesign Giugiaro.

Caroline Borot studied Material & Mechanical Engineering. Until 2012 she worked in the area of Sheet Metal Forming Simulation. From 2012 – 2015 Caroline was a Business Development and Marketing Manager for ESI’s Virtual Seat Solution. Currently Caroline is managing Worldwide Business Development and Marketing for Industry Solutions in ESI Group.

Günther Battenberg (Dipl.-Ing. (Uni), Dipl.-Ing. (FH)) is the Managing Partner of Battenberg ROBOTIC GmbH & Co. KG. The headquarters are in Marburg/Lahn in Germany with further branches and partners in the USA, China, Mexico and Korea. He is the founder of measurement robot­ics and is considered the leading authority, when it comes to the employ­ing robots in high-precision measurement robotics within quality man­agement. Following his university course in electrical engineering with electronics at Furtwangen Technical College, he led the Microcomputer Development and Advanced Technology Development Departments from 1975 to 1982 at Diehl in Nuremberg. Parallel to this, he studied electrical engineering (again) with telecommunications at the University of Erlan­gen. In 1982, he founded his own company, Battenberg Angewandte Computertechnik in Marburg. In 1988, he invented measurement robot­ics and since then has registered numerous patents for cockpit, seat, and door tests as well as production quality assessments. In 2006, the company was rebranded to Battenberg ROBOTIC GmbH & Co. KG. Bat­tenberg ROBOTIC GmbH & Co. KG is an established partner for automo­bile manufacturers and suppliers worldwide.

Robbert van den Broek, aged 49, graduated in business economics at R.U.G. in Groningen. He has spent the last 24 years working at Snoeks Automotive, a Dutch company developing and supplying concepts for light commercial vehicles. Over the last decade, Snoeks moved from converting vehicles themselves to designing, developing, and producing kits for installation by LCV manufacturers. The concept which is most known in Europe is the crew van, a second seating row in an LCV including all the needed interior parts from B-pillar to C-pillar. Apart from a lightweight, comfortable seat construction, Snoeks also specialize in load shifting protection. Snoeks has extensive experience working with all major European LCV manufacturers, offering them a variety of relatively low volumes.

Eduardo Rivero has got a M. Sc. Degree in Mine Engineering by the University of Vigo. He is currently in charge of the interior systems and mechanisms validation department in the Automotive Technological Cen­tre of Galicia (CTAG). He has been working for the last 10 years as an environmental testing and NVH Lab manager. Previously, he has been working in an energy company in Darmstadt (Germany) involved in the development of solar photovoltaic panels.

Sandro Laiso studied coating chemistry at University of Applied Sciences in Stuttgart. After having some customer facing roles in R&D, Sales & Marketing with Dow Chemical, CIBA and BASF he joined Intertek 2010 as Business Development Manager for Polymer Analytics. Currently Sandro manages the Analytical Services to Renault’s TIER 1 suppliers regarding polymer additive analytics of polypropylene parts.