Speakers' Biographies

Carl-Christian Buhr, Cabinet of Vice-President Kroes at European Commission

Carl-Christian Buhr works in the cabinet of Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda, advising her on standardisation and interoperability policy. Mr Buhr previously dealt with the Microsoft antitrust case as well as the Google/DoubleClick and Oracle/Sun mergers and other IT cases in the Commission's antitrust department. Prior to joining the Commission he was an IT auditor for the European Court of Auditors, and lectured at university.

Andreas Ostendorf, Vice President Sustainability, Environment and Safety Engineering, Ford of Europe

As Vice President for Sustainability, Environment and Safety Engineering, Andreas J.M. Ostendorf plays a key role within Ford of Europe’s leadership team. In his position he’s responsible for engineering and policy matters regarding sustainability, environmental and automotive safety issues. He is also responsible in Ford globally for all homologation, certification and compliance issues. Andreas has held his current position since February 2012 and is based in Cologne, Germany. During a distinguished 25 year career with Ford he has worked extensively within the company’s global Product Development Organisation.

Most recently he was the Global Director for Testing and Prototype Engineering in Dearborn, USA. Prior to that he was responsible for Chassis and Vehicle Engineering in Ford of Europe, including responsibility for Ford’s acclaimed vehicle dynamics.

Born in Cologne in 1961, Andreas graduated from the RWTH Aachen in 1986 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.

Claes Tingvall, Professor and Director of Traffic Safety at Swedish Road Administration, former Chairman of EuroNCAP

Claes Tingvall, Professor, Dr Med Sc, Director of Traffic Safety at the Swedish Transport Administration. Claes Tingvall has held positions related to traffic safety since 1976, and has mainly published in the area of injury epidemiology, vehicle occupant protection and design methods for in-depth analyses of accident data collected in the field. Since 1991 Claes Tingvall has held adjunct professorships at Chalmers (until 1998) and at Monash University (until 2011). Between 1998 and 2001 he was Professor and Director of Monash University Accident Research Centre, Australia.

Since 2001, Claes Tingvall is Director of Traffic Safety in Sweden. Between 2004-2010, Claes Tingvall was also Chairman of EuroNCAP. From 2011 he holds an adjunct professorship at Chalmers.

Aria Etemad, euroFOT Coordinator, Ford Research & Advanced Engineering Europe

Aria Etemad has obtained a degree in Aero Space Engineering from the Technical University of Berlin in 1996, where he has also spent the following three years working as a research and teaching assistant in the fields of navigation and global positioning. Between 1999 and 2001 he has worked for Visteon on integrated navigation systems, subsequently moving to Aachen for joining the Telematics and Navigation team at the Ford Research & Advanced Engineering.

Since joining Ford Research, Aria has been responsible for the coordination and development of safety and comfort applications based on digital maps. Currently, he is coordinating two European projects:

• euroFOT, the first European large-scale field operational test on in-vehicle systems
• interactIVe, dealing with the development of the next generation of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS).

András Csepinszky, ERTICO -  ITS Europe, Belgium

András Csepinszky holds a M.Sc. from University of Strasbourg, France. Between 2000 and 2005, he was IT operation field manager in Hungary. In 2005 he led an IT laboratory for graduate students at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. Between 2006 and 2009, András worked at Connexis Kft. as IT business analyst and later as project manager and worked with BMW’s ConnectedDrive and Wirelesscar to develop NGTP, Next generation Telematics Protocol. Later he was managing projects prototyping various telematics platforms and protocols such as CarWings, ACP, GTP. Since 2009, he is working at ERTICO - ITS Europe as project manager. He leads the FOT operations (SP5) of the euroFOT IP and works as standardization expert within the iCar Support Action, EUTRAIN and of Traveller Information Services Association (TISA). András is Belgian delegate and expert to ISO TC204 and CEN TC278. He is appointed as liaison officer of TISA to ISO TC204 WG10 and CEN TC278 WG4.

Angelos Amditis, Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, Greece

Angelos J. Amditis is Research Director in the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, member of its Board of Directors. He is the founder and the Head of the I-SENSE Group. His current research interests are in the fields of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ADAS, Human Machine Interfaces, Information Fusion...), Virtual Reality, Sensors for monitoring purposes, Telematics, Driver monitoring. He has participated in a large number of Research projects being the scientific responsible of more than fifty projects in the last 10 years (e.g. PREVENT, AIDE, INTUITION, SAFESPOT, INTERACTIVE, HAVE IT, EUROFOT, TELEFOT, SENSATION etc.). He has been following FOT activities in national, European and international level through a number of projects and activities (e.g. HERMES, national project in FOTs, TELEFOT, EUROFOT, FOTNET etc.) and he had an active role in building methodologies, tools and test sites for FOTs.

Christoph Kessler: Ford Research & Advanced Engineering Europe, Germany

Clément Val, CEESAR, European centre of studies on safety and risk analysis, France

Clément Val graduated (engineering master‘s degree) from École Centrale de Lyon in 2002. He worked as a consultant for the French carmaker‘s LAB and for PSA Peugeot Citroën from 2002 to 2006, after which he took the lead of CEESAR’s Experiments and Human Behaviour Science Department. He has led participation of CEESAR on a number of driver behaviour studies. In euroFOT, he organised the French experiment, led the integration of the data acquisition systems, designed and implemented data management and analysis tools, and supported data analysis.

Freek Faber, TNO Mobility and Logistics, the Netherlands

Ir. F. Faber (Freek) received his MSc in System Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management from Delft University of Technology. Since 2008 he worked with TNO (organisation for applied research) as a researcher and project manager in the business unit Mobility and Logistics. He has been involved in projects for the Dutch government, EU-funded projects (SAFESPOT, euroFOT) and projects for private companies in which he gained experience in ITS deployment, impact assessment and policy consulting.

Gianfranco Burzio, CRF, Fiat Research Centre, Italy

Project Manager in the Electronic and Telematics Project Management Research Area. Graduated in Electrical Engineering  at Turin Polytechnic in 1980, has worked in CRF as technical specialist and group/department leader in the fields of robotics, artificial vision, preventive safety, advanced driver assistance,  telematics and electronic/electric systems. He is the leader of the EUCAR Mobility working group and of the ERTRAC Road Transport Safety and Security working group. He is the coordinator of the CityMove project, City Multi-role Vehicle for freight delivery.

Guillaume Saint Pierre, IFSTTAR, French institute of science and technology for transport, development and networks, France

Guillaume Saint Pierre holds a PhD in applied mathematics of the Toulouse III University. He is working at the vehicle-infrastructure-driver interactions research unit since 2007 as a statistician researcher. His work interests there are in understanding driver behaviour related to the driver usage of systems of assistances, with the help of statistical analysis, road risk study, and fuel consumption analysis. He is involved in euroFOT project as a WP leader for the pilot tests, and as the IFSTTAR scientific responsible. He gained experience in ND studies through the French large scale evaluation of ISA systems: the LAVIA project.

Johann Gwehenberger, AZT Automotive GmbH Allianz Center for Technology,  Germany

Johann Gwehenberger, Dr. rer.nat., studied physics at Munich University of Applied Science. From 1994 to 1999 he was responsible for risk management at DBV-Winterthur Insurance. Doctor degree (1998) at Freiburg University. From 1999 to 2004, he was head of department vehicle safety and accidents at the Institute for Vehicle Safety, Munich. Since 2004 head of department “accident research and loss prevention” at Allianz Center for Technology. WP-Leader in several national and European Projects, like AKTIV, ECBOS, APROSYS, TRACE, APSN, euroFOT. Since 1998 lectures at the University of Applied Science Munich and Technical Universitiy in Graz.

Jonas Bärgman, Chalmers University of Technology / SAFER, Sweden

Jonas Bärgman is a researcher and group leader at Chalmers University of Technology in the group Accident Prevention, at the division of Traffic Safety. He joined Chalmers in 2009, prior to which he worked in the Active Safety group at Autoliv Research. Current research focus is on Naturalistic Field Operational Tests and crash causation. For example this has included work package leadership in FESTA and SeMiFOT, related to data acquisition and data management. Recently Jonas has been involved in pre-analysis preparations in euroFOT, and in also contributes in the DriveC2X project. In the field of accident causation Jonas is the project leader for the two Swedish projects DREAMi and ANNEXT, focusing on the understanding of factors contributing to crashes – research based on naturalistic driving data with video.    

Karsten Heinig, Volvo Technology Corporation,  Sweden

Graduated in Civil Engineering at University of Hannover, Germany (2001) and holds a PhD in Engineering from Technical University of Braunschweig (2008). Before joining Volvo in 2007, Karsten has worked at University of Hannover in several automotive related research projects, e. g. PReVENT. Since joining Volvo, Karsten has worked in and been responsible for FOT related activities, e. g. FESTA, SeMiFOT, euroFOT. He currently coordinates all FOT activities at Volvo and is the leader of Volvo Trucks Accident Research Team.

Lucas Malta, Volvo Technology Corporation, Sweden

Lucas Malta received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 2004 and the M.S. and PhD degrees in engineering from Nagoya University, Japan, in 2007 and 2010, respectively.  He is now a systems engineer/project manager at Volvo Group Trucks Technology, Sweden. His work focuses on driver behaviour, human-centered driver assistance, and impact assessment.

Marco Dozza,  Chalmers University of Technology / SAFER,  Sweden

Marco Dozza received his PhD from the University of Bologna, Italy in collaboration with Oregon Health & Science University, Portland OR in 2007. After graduation, he worked as System Developer for over 2 years at Volvo Technology, a research and innovation company inside the Volvo group. From 2009, he is a Senior Researcher at Chalmers University of Technology. He is examiner for the courses Vehicle and Traffic Safety and Advanced Active Safety in the Master for Automotive Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology. He has been involved in several European funded projects such as PReVENT, AIDE, SafeSpot, FESTA, and he is currently involved in SHRP2, DriveC2X, SeMiFOT2. Further, he is project leader for the MASCOT and preBikeSAFE projects for VRU safety. His research interests include active safety and analysis of naturalistic data. He is author of over 30 scientific articles and peer-reviewed contributions to conferences.

Mikael Ljung Aust, Volvo Car Corporation, Sweden

Mikael Ljung Aust holds a Master of Science in Philosophy from Umeå University (2001), a Master of Science in Cognitive Science from Linköping University (2002) and a PhD in Traffic Safety from Chalmers University of Technology (2012). Prior to joining Volvo Cars, he worked with on-scene accident investigations and methodology development at Chalmers University of Technology. In 2007 he joined Volvo Cars as Driver Behaviour Specialist at Volvo Cars Safety Centre. He has participated in several previous EC–funded projects including SafetyNet and PReVAL. Currently he participates in euroFOT and DaCoTa.

Mohamed Benmimoun, ika - Institute for Automotive Engineering RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Dipl.-Ing. Mohamed Benmimoun studied mechanical engineering at the RWTH Aachen University with focus on automotive engineering. Since 2007 he is employed at the Institute for automotive engineering (ika) of the RWTH Aachen University as scientific assistant in the driver assistance department. Here his area of work is the development, testing as well as assessment of driver assistance systems. Since May 2009 he is involved in the euroFOT project and leading the subproject (SP6) for data analysis and impact assessment.

Reakka Krishnakumar, CEESAR, European centre of studies on safety and risk analysis, France

Reakka Krishnakumar is bachelor of Economics and graduated (Master’s Degree) in Transport Safety in 2005. She has worked for CEESAR since then. She has worked on a number of projects, including accident causation research, driver sociology and driver behaviour studies. In euroFOT, she was in charge of recruitment, drivers’ briefing, and day to day operation of the French VMC, managing all relations with participants. She also took charge of the online questionnaires.

Rino Brouwer,  Dept. Traffic Behaviour, TNO, the Netherlands

Dr. Rino Brouwer is a senior research scientist at TNO, with extensive experience in EU-funded projects (TELSCAN, AWAKE, HASTE, SAFESPOT, AIDE), projects for the Dutch government and for private companies. Since 1998 he works for the Traffic Behaviour group of TNO in Soesterberg after he received his PhD in Social Sciences with his thesis on visual information processing and selection. The Traffic Behaviour group is part of the Perceptual and Cognitive Systems department in which a multi-disciplinary team of scientists work around the user-centered design approach to specify, develop, and evaluate systems that support people to effectively, efficiently and safely interact with these systems. Rino is currently the coordinator of his group. At TNO he has been involved in wide range of projects and topics giving him a wide view on driver behaviour under different conditions. The projects cover research instruments as the driving simulator and the instrumented vehicle of TNO providing research experience both in laboratory settings as with ‘real world conditions’. The topics of research varied from the effects of infrastructure and in-vehicle systems on driving behaviour to the development and testing of in-vehicle systems and HMI. He has a strong interest in qualifying and quantifying individual driving behaviour and applying that knowledge to adapt in-vehicle systems to individual needs. In euroFOT Rino is the leader of SP4 ‘Methodology and Experimental Procedures’.

Roberto Tadei, Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy

Roberto Tadei is Full Professor of Operations Research (OR) at Politecnico di Torino, Torino (Italy), where since 1990 he has been responsible for the classes of OR and Optimization. His main research areas are in Combinatorial Optimization and in particular: Transport and Logistics; Network Design and Production Scheduling. He is member of well-known international scientific societies and referee of international journals. He is author of more than 130 papers in international journals, conference proceedings and monographs and co-inventor of two International Patents.

Samantha Jamson, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, UK

Dr. Jamson is a Chartered Psychologist at the Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds. She has been principal investigator on a range of projects, including evaluations of driver support systems, road design and driver impairment.  She is a member of the British Standards group on Human Machine Interface issues and chaired a European Working Group on motorcycle safety, delivering high-priority research needs to the European Commission. Her research involves collaboration with national and international policymakers (Department for Transport, Highways Agency, European Commission) as well as industrial collaboration. Dr. Jamson has published widely in the field of traffic safety and is a member of the Editorial Board for Transportation Research Part F. She is currently supervising PhD students working in the areas of driver workload, fatigue and medical impairment.

Stefanie Schoch, Center for Traffic Sciences (IZVW), University of Würzburg, Germany

Graduated in Psychology at Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg, Germany (2006). She is experienced in the preparation, implementation and statistical analysis of experimental studies in different settings of traffic sciences. In 2006 she joined the IZVW (Interdisciplinary Center for Traffic Sciences) at the University of Würzburg as graduate research assistant and worked in several projects concerning ergonomics and driver assistance systems. Currently she participates in the large scale field operational test euroFOT, in which she contributed to the development of the methodology and experimental procedures, to the execution of the FOT and to the statistical analysis.

Torsten Geissler, Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt), Germany

Torsten Geißler holds a degree and a doctorate in economics from University of Cologne (1996, 2001). He has worked for more than 10 years as researcher and senior researcher at the Institute for Transport Economics (University of Cologne). His main fields of expertise are Intelligent Transport Systems, road safety and socio-economic impact assessment. He has carried out methodological and application-specific work on socio-economic impact assessment in research projects such as CHAUFFEUR I and II, eIMPACT, SAFESPOT, FESTA and provided his expertise to Thematic Networks such as iCars and ROSEBUD. Since 2010 Torsten works as scientific officer for BASt, the German Federal Highway Research Institute, in the section of Cooperative Traffic and Driver Assistance Systems. Within the EasyWay program Torsten leads the European Study Group 5 on DATEX. Besides that he is the German member of CEDR Task 14 (the role of National Road Authorities in ITS, eSafety, EasyWay) and is involved in a number of deployment related working groups within TISA, Car2Car Communication Consortium and iMobilityForum.