Within the ZF Group, Dr. Michael Buechsner is responsible for the occupant safety systems (OSS) business unit with around 30,000 employees and sales of approximately €4 billion. Holding a doctorate in engineering economics and business administration, he is particularly interested in finding technical solutions to complex matters and successfully commercialising them.

Occupant safety represents the main thread in his career path. With worldwide work experi­ence in the areas of production, quality and development, Michael has significantly contrib­uted to the ascent of the OSS business unit, one of the leading providers of occupant protec­tion systems worldwide.

Dr. Ralf Drauz has been a part of the management of Faurecia in the business group seating since 2015. Before that, he was active in two consulting companies with projects in the manufacturing industry. He received a PhD at RWTH Aachen University in the subject area of manufacturing strat­egy. Ralf’s current position is director for programs in Faurecia Seating, currently supporting the development of our electronics systems daughter company Parrot Faurecia Automotive in sales and business development with focus as key account for German customers.

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.

Pasquale de Luca has been in the automotive seating business for nine years, first as project manager at Isringhausen in the LCVs market and then at Alfa Romeo for the development and launch of the new Giorgio platform. He currently leads seat engineering in Maserati. He holds a master’s in mechanical engineering from Politecnico di Bari (2003) and a doctorate in motorcycle engineering from University of Padua (2006).

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.

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.

Laurent Bauvineau graduated from the ENSMA mechanical and aeronautical engineering school and earned a PhD in materials engineering and sciences at the Ecole des Mines de Paris engineering school.

Laurent has been working at Peugeot-Citroën since 1997. He has been part of the different development for the C5, 407 and C6 projects. Since 2008, he has been responsible of all in­novation projects interior car. Now, he focusses on global vehicle comfort seat.

Dr. Reiner Nett is a managing director at Kegelmann Technik GmbH, with a specialisation in 3D-printing technologies, automated manufacturing, tooling, and injection-molding. Reiner has gained extensive automotive passive safety knowledge through study, research, and on-job work (structure, occupant, biomechanics). He has conducted various safety-related projects (research and industry), and he's skilled at planning, preparation, conduction, and analysis of full-scale crash tests and component sled testing. He also has very good knowledge of test-dummy, sensor, and measurement technology. Throughout the years, Reiner has had various patents granted and authored multiple publications.

Dr. José S. Solaz has been the head of innovation of automobile and mass transport area at Instituto de Biomecánica de Valencia (IBV) since 2007. An expert in comfort, biomechanical instrumentation and data analysis, he is a member of national and international platforms related to electric and au­tonomous vehicles. From 2001-06 he worked at IBV as a researcher and prior to that he filled many technical and managerial roles at several Tier 1 companies.

Currently, José is in charge of several projects related to autonomous vehicles from the human fac­tors perspective and how advances in materials and technologies can improve comfort in the new scenarios of transport.

Raquel Ledo is a telecommunication engineer with a degree from the University of Vigo, a postgraduate master’s degree in management of automotive enterprises, and a degree of research proficiency and advanced studies. From 2003-06, she worked in the automotive industry (PSA Peugeot Citroën group). She joined Automotive Technology Centre of Galicia (CTAG) in 2007 as a senior project manager and was promoted to head of the materials innovation area from 2016. Besides her extensive experience in the automotive business (both in automotive suppliers and in OEMs), she was directly involved in more than 15 EU projects and she is currently coordinating two projects. From 2015, Raquel has collaborated with the European Commission on a regular basis as expert evaluator in several research programmes (SME Instrument, FETOpen, EIC Pathfinder, and MSCA ITN).

Georges Lovato has been working in ArcelorMittal’s automotive advanced engineering global R&D for almost 10 years. As a technical support and client relationship manager, he is in charge of co-engineering/co-designing modules/components with automotive components/modules sub-contractors supporting the use of advanced high strength steel lightweight solutions.

Leman Ozen has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. She has more than 14 years of automotive engineering experience, especially for interiors. She has been working as a project leader responsible for interiors in Tofas/FCA for three years. Before that she had many different roles in Tofas (e.g. IP, panel and console project chief, senior designer) on several projects (Egea, Doblo, Promaster City, Grande Punto, Linea, Fiorino, Albea). Before Tofaş she worked as a plastic injection mould de­sign engineer for three years. She has strong communication skills and has experiences in developing interiors parts, knowledge of manufacturing and processing of plastic parts and project management.

Graham is a qualified mechanical engineer that has worked in the automotive industry since 1993. Graham has held several positions in production and process engineering management, after which Graham took several roles in quality management ending up as quality manager for a major UK Tier 1 structural plastics supplier. Since then, Graham has held various commercial roles in both local and global 1st and 2nd tier suppliers. In his current role, Graham has a global overview of the development of the interior segment of Saint-Gobain Bearings and tolerance ring business.