Jan Christopher Kolb studied fahrzeug-system-engineering and mechanical engineering and international sales management before he started his career in 2003 in the department of pedestrian protection at Bertrandt GmbH in Ingolstadt as a testing engineer. After being a project engineer and project manager, he was team manager of the department passive safety. Since 2017, he was head of testing at the research centre CARISSMA, which is integrated into the University of Applied Science of Ingolstadt (THI). There he took care of the diverse laboratories and research on VRU-protection, automatic driving, and test tool development.

In the middle of 2020, Jan moved into the central position of the CARISSMA network manager to affiliate different cooperation partners to induce the vision zero.

Since 2022, he has worked at Kistler Instrumente GmbH as business driver ADAS/AD with the responsibility to set up a product portfolio for developing driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles.

Jan-Erik Källhammer has 20 years’ experience with automotive active safety development. He was responsible for the inception and development of a Night Vision, Driver’s Vision Enhancement based on an uncooled long-wave infrared camera, which is now on the market in Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Mercedes, Peugeot and some luxury cars. His current works focus on visual enhancement in darkness and inclement weather (Night Vision, LiDAR, gated imaging). Jan-Erik has a PhD in cognitive systems from Linköping University, Sweden, a master’s in electrical engineering from Duke University, NC, USA, and a master’s in mechanical engineering from Luleå Technical University, Sweden. Jan-Erik has co-authored 26 articles and conference papers and has 22 patent applications or granted patents.

Kai Golowko started his career at ACTS GmbH & Co. KG (Magna) in Sailauf as a vehicle test engineer. Since 2005, he has been working at Bertrandt Ingenieurbüro GmbH in Gaimersheim (close to Ingolstadt) as a team leader of vehicle safety. In 2002, he moved to the position of department manager in vehicle safety in the field of active and passive safety. He became the head of CoC (Center of Competence) vehicle safety at Bertrandt Group. In 2017 he became head of vehicle safety in the field of active and passive safety within the Bertrandt Group, where he is responsible for sales, strategy, technology and training. He has done voluntary work for ADAC in the program called “Sicherim Auto” and in a project called “Mobile Retter e.V.”, an initiative against sudden cardiac death.

Dr. Christophe Bastien is an associate professor at Coventry University with over 25 years of industrial and academic experience in the field of vehicle safety, evidenced by 21 patents, 23 publications and 82 citations. With an overall aim of developing forensic techniques for accurate accident reconstructions, his current research fo­cusses on modelling of (automotive) human traumatology in collaboration with the British Police, the University Hospital of Coventry and Warwickshire and the Road Safety Trust charity. A recent research output is an innovative FEA method, based on Peak Virtual Power (PVP) proven to precisely predict head trauma injuries when compared to post-mortem examinations. This is a first step in a numerical method to design safer automotive vehicles considering a human population.

Peter Schimmelpfennig is managing partner of Crashtest-Service GmbH in Münster. He studied automotive engineering at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences until 2007. He then worked as project manager on development of a new rear underrun system at the Bernhard Krone GmbH before taking over CTS as managing partner in 2010. He is also the managing partner of Accidenta GmbH, which works for insurance companies in the field of accident reconstruction across Germany.

Dinos Visvikis has worked in the injury prevention field for over 20 years, leading complex vehicle safety research projects to inform changes to policy, regulation and test procedures. He spent 16 years with TRL, using real-world collision data and experiments with crash test dummies to determine occupant injury mechanisms and the effectiveness of vehicle design and safety features. Dinos led TRL’s child safety centre before joining CYBEX, the juvenile products brand, in 2015. He represents CYBEX at international regulatory and standardisation groups for child restraint systems and leads research that provides the evidence base for CYBEX’s contribution to these groups. He applies his vehicle safety expertise across the company to improve product safety development and ensure the latest regulatory and scientific trends are factored into product design.

Dr. Austin Richards is a Senior Research Scientist at FLIR, a manufacturer of thermal infrared imaging systems. He specializes in systems engineering, test and measurement of IR cameras and simulations, and modeling of system performance.  His current role at FLIR is as a systems engineer for AI systems that use convolutional neural networks to detect and classify objects in image data from various FLIR sensor systems, particularly thermal infrared. He is a Fellow of SPIE and holds a Ph.D. in astrophysics from UC Berkeley (Berkeley, California)

Suray is a certified functional safety expert and semiconductor certified functional safety professional. He is also a SOTIF expert. He has largely spent his expertise on the development of safety concepts (either FuSa or SOTIF) on AV autonomous development topics.

Chuck has 30 years of technology experience in exec management, marketing, engineering. A serial entrepreneur, Chuck has been on the exec team of 5 startups, 3 of which he co-founded. He has successful exits with sales to Intel and PMCSierra. While CEO of Bay Microsystems, the GSA voted Bay a “Most Respected Private Semiconductor Company.” Chuck was a finalist for CMP’s ACE award as High Tech Exec of the Year and has been inducted into the Drexel Univ Engineering Circle of Distinction. He holds three patents in Processor Arch.

Modar is an artificial intelligence (AI) expert technologist and leading figure in computer vision AI for human behavior understanding, modeling and prediction. He is currently the founder and CEO of Eyeris, the worldwide pioneer and leader of In-vehicle Scene Understanding (ISU) AI inside autonomous and Highly Automated Vehicles (HAVs).

Modar combines over a decade of experience in computer vision and applied human-centric AI for a wide range of enterprise applications. His work focuses on bridging human-machine interaction with predictive invisible interfaces through body, face, object and surface understanding AI. He is a frequent speaker and keynoter on “human-centric ambient intelligence” as the next frontier in AI. Modar graduated from Concordia University Montréal, with a concentration on Human Behavior Understanding (HBU) using artificial intelligence technologies. He is a winner of several international technology and innovation awards and has been featured on Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Time magazine, CNBC, Reuters, Fast Company and many major international media publications spanning over 12 different languages for his work.

Puneet Sinha is the Director of New Mobility for Mechanical Analysis Division of Siemens Digital Industries Software. In this role, Puneet is responsible for his division’s business strategy and product development for micro-mobility, transport electrification, and autonomous driving thrusts. He is also leading a vehicle electrification program for Siemens Digital Industries Software division.

Puneet has almost 15 years of experience working on various aspects of electrification and new mobility technologies. Prior to joining Mentor, he has worked at General Motors, where he led global R&D teams to solve a wide range of issues with fuel cells and battery electric vehicles, and at Saft, a Li-ion battery manufacturer. He has served as VP of Business Development for EC Power, a Li-ion battery software and technology development startup. Puneet has done his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University, has authored more than 20 highly-cited journal articles, and has been awarded 7 patents on fuel cells and battery system design and operational strategies.

Dr. Arturo Tejada Ruiz holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia (2006), where he specialized in hybrid system theory. He is the author of over 44 scientific publications in top peer-reviewed conferences and journals. Currently, he is a Senior Scientist at the Integrated Vehicle Safety Department of TNO in The Netherlands. From this position, Dr. Tejada Ruiz continues to pursue interdisciplinary research in projects combining system and control theory, fault-tolerant control, modeling and simulation, and embedded systems. His current focus is the development of behavioral safety rules for automated driving vehicles and their associated monitoring technologies, with the goal of allowing users, OEMs, and regulators to certify and monitor the safety and correct behavior of such vehicles in traffic.

Stewart A. Skomra is the CEO of OmniQuest™, the leading Design Exploration, Analysis and Optimization software provider to Automotive OEMs.

Stewart is a New Product and New Market Development expert with over 35 years’ experience in Computer-Aided Design & Computer-Aided Manufacturing, Machine-to-Machine/IoT – Internet-of-Things, Supply-Chain Management, Auto-ID, and Wireless Technologies. He has led market and product development initiatives serving industries from manufacturing, construction, distribution, transportation & logistics, wholesale & retail, consumer packaged goods, along with finance, insurance, healthcare, and multiple energy fields.

A veteran of Blue Chips IBM, Intel, Qualcomm, and Trimble Navigation, Stewart is also a founder and leader of multiple startups ranging from IT professional services, IEEE 802.11 “Wi-Fi”, to Apacheta Corporation and TEMEDA, an IoT – Telematics company.

Awarded multiple patents in secure identity and secure mobile information processing technologies, Stewart is a member of IEEE, SAE, ISO, APICS, and involved directly with AEMP and IANA, earned his BS Mechanical Engineering with Honors in 1984 from The Ohio State University and his MBA in 1989 from The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business.

Ken Munro is Partner and Founder of Pen Test Partners LLP, a firm of experienced penetration testers, otherwise known as ethical hackers. He regularly blogs on everything from hacking cars, vehicles, and car alarms to the Internet of Things. He also writes for various news agencies and industry outlets in an effort to get beyond the unhelpful scaremongering put about by many security vendors. Ken has become a voice for reform and legislative change in the largely unregulated IoT, briefing UK, and US government departments as well as being involved with various EU consumer councils.