Rolf Johansson is a safety expert at Autonomous Intelligent Driving GmbH (a subsidiary of Audi AG). He holds a doctoral degree in computer engineering from Chalmers University and has 30 years of industrial experience in the field of embedded safety-critical systems. He has been a Swedish expert in the working group for ISO26262 since its beginning.

David Schie is the CEO of AIStorm, a Silicon Valley based analog AI startup. AIStorm is focused on bringing the advantages of its AI-in-sensor technology to the market, providing standard AI architectures without the requirement for digitizing vast amounts of input data. AIStorm delivers fully integrated solutions including sensors and AFE (e.g., LiDAR SPAD, SiPM, CIS, mirror driver, mirror, biasing, etc., as well as biometric and failure analysis AI solutions), which are provided as semi-custom solutions for its customers. Key investors in AIStorm include Egis Technology, Tower Semiconductor, Meyer Corporation, and Linear Dimensions Semiconductor. David was educated at the University of Toronto in analog IC design and has held several high-level management positions up to Sr. VP with responsibilities including product definition, engineering, and P/L for leading companies including Maxim, Micrel, and Semtech.

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Dexin Chen, a senior technology analyst at IHS Markit, is an expert in semiconductors and sensors for the automotive industry. Mr. Chen conducts market research and analysis on automotive electronics and semiconductor markets with a focus on topics such as vehicle electrification, Lidar sensors and automotive software. Prior to joining IHS Markit, he worked at Denso for five years, where he took different roles in pre-development, client facing, advanced research etc. Mr. Chen graduated from TU Munich with a Master of Science in communication electronics. He speaks Chinese, English and German.

Dr. Aymen Grira joined the Clean Mobility activity of Faurecia Group since June 2018 as Global Innovation Program Manager. In his current role, he is in charge of Sensor Innovation and Digital services. He started his career in 2007 at NASA (Silicon Valley, California) where he worked on the topic of smart sensors and has received the “Outstanding Performance Award”. Between 2011 and 2018, he successively held the positions of Director of Innovation and Development, Business Development Director and Business Unit Director in the EMEA region in cross industries (Mobility, Renewable Energy, Smart city, Green Tech, Smart industry, etc.). He holds a degree in Electronics Engineering from ENSEIRB (France), a Master of Science from University of California, Santa Cruz and a PhD in Nanotechnology from CEA/CNRS (France).

Dieter is a graduate geoscientist with extensive experience in mapping, remote sensing and lidar & navigation industries. For the past 25 years, he has worked in a variety of international corporations, including the Daimler Group or EADS and Trimble, in client-focused leadership positions. In 2015, he joined Velodyne as European Marketing Manager.

Dr. Mike Schwarz received a Dipl. degree from the University of Applied Sciences Giessen-Friedberg (Giessen, Germany), in 2008, and a master’s of science in electrical engineering from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain) in 2009. From 2008-13, he was a research assistant and PhD student in the device modelling research group and the Competence Center for Nanotechnology and Photonics at the Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen in Giessen, Germany. He received his PhD with honours from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in October 2012 on the subject of compact modeling of Schottky barrier multiple-gate FETs. Mike was the recipient of the Friedrich Dessauer Prize for the best diploma thesis about multiclass support vector machines in 2008 and the URV Graduated Student Meeting on Electronic Engineering Award for the best oral presentation for a paper about an analytical model for the electric field in Schottky barrier double-gate MOSFETs in 2010. Since 2013, Mike has been with Robert Bosch GmbH, working in the research and development department on design, modelling and simulation of MEMS sensors and systems. Mike has, at present, 112 publications, 59 conference papers, 18 journal articles and 35 patents. His h-index is 10. Mike is committed to volunteering work within IEEE, as he is a member of the IEEE Young Professionals, vice-chair of the IEEE Young Professionals Germany Section, editor of Western Europe EDS newsletter, IEEE Compact Modeling Committee, TPC MIXDES and TPC QCIT. 

Dipl. Ing. Jörg Schrepfer graduated from Friedrich Alexander University with a degree in electrical engineering. From 1998-12 he held various positions in the pre-development and development of product areas such as automotive DVD players, displays, gateways and new bus systems. From 2012-14 he was the ASL vision director for business development in Germany at Image Processing Solutions. From 2014-16 he worked at Continental as a senior manager of technical sales and R&D Kronach, specialising in surround-view camera systems for vehicles. Since 2017, Jörg has been the head of driver assistance research Germany at Valeo. He works on algorithms and functions for laser scanners, cameras and ultrasound, as well as algorithms for autonomous driving using deep learning.

As CTO of NNG, Martin Pfeifle is leading NNG’s innovation activities around Connected Navigation, Cloud, and ADAS applications. Before, Martin was leading Visteon’s environmental perception activities with a focus on sensor fusion. Martin and his team delivered the environment model that will be the basis for the decision-making of Visteon’s autonomous driving approach. Martin is also responsible for digital maps, localization, and positioning, working on all matters concerned with how the vehicle understands where it is and what is going on around it. With more than 40 patents to his name, Martin is an expert in NDS and ADAS databases and applications, as well as data mining and sensor fusion. He is based in Karlsruhe, Germany. Before joining Visteon, Martin worked at the universities of Munich and Heidelberg as a researcher and temporary professor in the area of data mining on spatial, temporal, and uncertain data. For more than 10 years, he has worked in the area of infotainment and ADAS for Continental and for HERE, the leading digital map provider.

Michael Kiehn studied electrical and electronics engineering at the University of Portsmouth, UK, which he finished with a bachelor’s of engineering. He also holds a diploma in electrical and electronics engineering from the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg, Germany. Michael began his career at Ibeo in 1998 as a design engineer for the development of LiDAR hardware and firmware. Subsequently, he was promoted to head of sensor development and became a shareholder and member of the Ibeo management. Today, Michael is VP of advance engineering at Ibeo, overlooking all activities in hardware and software aiming for a start of production within 5-10 years.

Stan Hristov received a B.Sc. degree in Physics with Particle Physics in 2009 from the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, U.K., where he also completed a PhD degree in 2018 in Electronic Engineering, centered around research in bistatic radar technology. Since 2017 he has worked in AID GmbH, focusing in electronic hardware, specifically sensor technology applied to autonomous driving.

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)

Manuel Gärtner joined STMicroelectronics Munich in 1999 and is working as a senior team leader and marketing manager for ASSP/ASIC and power discrete devices. Additionally, he is leading the strategic program Wide Bandgap materials for automotive applications in the EMEA region. Before joining STMicroelectronics he worked in Infineon Technologies as development engineer for smart power products and as a research engineer in the Fraunhofer Institut für Siliziumtechnologie and at the University of Berlin. He has published more than 15 articles on power electronics and holds more than five different patents.

Dr. Marc Schillgalies is currently vice president of development at the German detector company First Sensor in Berlin. At First Sensor he has worked in different development and product management roles since 2010. Prior to First Sensor, he was developing semiconductor laser diodes at Osram Opto Semiconductors in Regensburg, Germany. He received a doctorate degree and an MSc degree in physics from the University of Leipzig (Germany) and an MSc degree in optical sciences from the University of Arizona in Tucson (USA). In Tucson and Leipzig, his academic work focussed on the field of optical semiconductor devices. Furthermore, he received an MBA degree in general management from Steinbeis University in Berlin with attention to innovation management.

Bernhard Rill is a Senior Segment Marketing Manager at Arm, in the Automotive Line of Business. Within this role he looks after OEM, Tier 1s and the wider Arm automotive ecosystem in the EMEA region. Bernhard has almost 15 years job experience in the automotive and semiconductor industry, before joining Arm he worked at Texas Instruments as an Application and Systems-engineer and at OpenSynergy as an Key Account Manager.

Mauro Zorzetto has been working as R&D Manager for Eltek Group in Automotive Business Unit since 2010. He has over 20 years of experience in developing sensors and mechatronic systems, encompassing 10 years mostly dedicated to SCR technology and its applications. Under his leadership, Eltek has filed over 10 patented solutions for pressure, level and quality sensors. Prior to his current role, Mauro worked as Eltek Group’s Program Manager for automotive products. He holds a Master’s degree in Electronics Engineering from Politecnico of Turin, with a specialisation in telecommunications.