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).

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.

Daniel Tyrkas is the director of automotive solutions at the regional headquarter EMEA of Mitsubishi Chemical. He drives collaboration, innovation, and solutions across all business units of Mitsubishi Chemical EMEA to meet customers’ needs across multiple automotive segments and material classes. Daniel received his master’s in mechanical engineering/Dipl.-Ing. from the Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg. His studies focused on plastics, composites, processing, manufacturing, and design engineering. Previously, Daniel worked as business development manager automotive at the carbon fiber and composites division of Mitsubishi Chemical, focussing on materials and processes that enable high volume manufacturing of CFRP-composite parts. Before joining Mitsubishi Chemical, Daniel has held various technical and commercial positions within the plastics/composites/automotive industry ranging from technology consulting to sales and marketing director, engineering, application, and business development, contributing to the success of companies like Altran, General Electric Plastics and SABIC. Daniel has gathered more than 19 years of experience in composites and other high-performance materials and components, mainly in the automotive industry.