Speakers & Chairmen

Christophe Bastien worked for Matra Datavision, MSX and Corus Automotive as a CAE technical specialist for 13 years, contributing to the development of the Jaguar X-Type interior head impact protection (FMVSS201), including the design of the Jaguar XK for pedestrian legislation. When he joined Corus Automotive, he continued to focus on pedestrian safety and developed new skills in highway engineering design and analysis. During his career, he filed 21 patents in the area of safety engineering. In 2007, he joined Coventry University and is now an Associate Professor leading the Transport Safety and Simulations Group. In 2014 he was awarded a PhD in biomechanics and safety. His current work, with the collaboration of local hospitals and the Police forces, is focused in predicting trauma severity.

Ms. Leyre Benito Cia studied Industrial Engineering at the "Universidad Pública de Navarra – UpNA" (Spain) from 2005 to 2011. Her thesis was on "Investigation of mass transport through membranes using the CFD method" as part of a research project in cooperation with Volkswagen AG at the TU Braunschweig. Since 2011 she works at GNS mbH first in crash simulation and since 2016 in the Generator4 management team.

Karin Brolin has worked in the field of impact biomechanics throughout her career. Brolin earned her Ph.D. in 2002 at the Royal Institute of Technology, and since then she has worked in both academia and industry on the topic of human body injury mechanisms and tolerances. For ten years she led a research group focusing on human body simulations for traffic safety and injury prevention, as Professor in Computational Impact Biomechanics at Chalmers University of Technology. Since, 2019 Dr. Brolin works as an independent consultant and researcher.

Özgür Cebeci has a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. He received a master’s degree in Computational Mechanics of Materials and Structures at the University of Stuttgart. Since 2015, he has been employed as a Project Engineer by IAT Ingenieurgesellschaft für Automobiltechnik mbH, where he worked on active and passive safety concepts using human models. Since 2020 he has been focusing on periprosthetic femur fractures within his Ph.D. project in cooperation with IAT mbH, Julius Wolf Institute, University of Waterloo. He is also actively supporting the development of models and tools used in biomechanics and human modeling.

Vincent Dampuré graduated from the French engineering college ENSMA in 2006 with a degree in aerospace engineering. He then worked for 6 years as a crash engineer at Imperia GmbH in Aachen. He has currently been with Altair Engineering for 12 years. Initially 4 years as a crash specialist and customer support in the field of crash simulation and for 8 years as "Product Manager Crash" in the HyperWorks Core development team for "explicit Solvers and Crash & Safety" solutions.

Zach Hostetler earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering from the Baylor University in 2017. He earned his MS (2019) and PhD (2022) in Biomedical Engineering from the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering. His Master's work focused on CT image analysis to develop population specific finite element models of thorax to investigate cortical thickness changes with age and sex. Zach's PhD work focused on computational human body modeling and injury risk curve development. His primary work included validation and injury risk curve development for lower extremity injuries using a human body model in the underbody blast environment. He also supported validation work for a finite element ATD model for military safety applications and automotive work for human body modeling and injury risk curve development in the far-side crash environment.

Dr. Johan Iraeus is a researcher at Chalmers University of Technology. Dr Iraeus joined Chalmers in 2016 as a post-doc and his research focus in on impact biomechanics and human body models, with a focus on variability in the population. Prior to his PhD Dr Iraeus worked as a CAE engineer for more than 10 years in the Swedish automotive industry, focusing mainly on crashworthiness.

Stefan Kirschbichler has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and Economics of Graz University of Technology since 2008. Since January 2017 he is the teamleader of Occupant and VRU Safety group. He is working in the field of biomechanics, accident research and integrated safety. He has experience in project management of several funded projects with international and national projects.

Dr. Christoph Klein is a researcher at the Virtual Vehicle Research GmbH in Graz, Austria. He is working in the group of occupant and VRU safety and his research focus are Human Body Models. He obtained his PhD at the Vehicle Safety Institute at Graz University of Technology in 2017.

Corina Klug is assistant professor at the Vehicle Safety Institute of Graz University of Technology in Austria, where she teaches students in the field of Vehicle Safety and Trauma Biomechanics and performs research on accident and injury prevention with a special focus on the usage of Human Body Models for safety assessments. Since 2015, she has led the CoHerent project in which the first certification procedure for human body models was developed for Euro NCAP. In 2019 she became the secretary of the newly founded Euro NCAP working group for Virtual Testing Crashworthiness. She is one of the two pilots of the new initiative HBM4VT, a framework of international experts to develop a roadmap for Human Body Models usage in Virtual Testing. In 2016 she has won the Young Scientist Award for the best research work in digital Human Modelling presented at the 2016 International Symposium "Human Modelling and Simulation in Automotive Engineering".

Pablo Lozano is an Industrial, Mechanical, Mobility, and Safety engineer with a research background in human modeling and injury biomechanics. He worked on his master’s thesis during his internship at Volvo Cars in Sweden, where he studied the influence of active musculature in human body model (HBM) response during the crash phase. Afterward, he joined IDIADA in Spain as a human body model research engineer where he has been able to continue working with finite element and multibody HBMs. IDIADA has been investigating pre- and in-crash phases with HBM where Pablo was able to work on a comparison of HBMs with volunteers and with currently existing dummies.

Frank Meyer obtained his Ph.D in biomechanics in 2004. Since 2004 he has a permanent research position in Biomechanics at Strasbourg University. He is specialized in finite element modeling of the human neck for adult and child: i.e. development of model as well as neck injury criteria elaboration for whiplash injury but also in multidirectional configuration.

Dr Philippe Petit studied engineering and obtained his PhD in 1998 from ENSAM Paris.
He started his career in 1998 as a researcher in Biomechanics at Laboratory of Accidentology Biomechanics and human behavior which is a joint venture between Renault and Stellantis.
The research projects he was a part of include PMHS, Dummy testing as well as numerical simulations.
He became the manager of the LAB Biomechanics Department in 2011 and Expert in Biomechanics for Renault in 2022.
He is a member of the ACEA Working Group dealing with Dummy Technology, Biomechanics, Injury prediction and Virtual Testing using Human Body Models. He is also a member of the Euro NCAP working group BIO.
Since the initial phase of GHBMC, he has represented Renault.

Bengt Pipkorn is director of simulation and active structure at Autoliv Research where he is globally responsible for the Autoliv human body modelling activities. Since 2016 he is adjunct professor at Chalmers University of Technology. He earned his PhD in injury prevention at Chalmers University of Technology in 1996. He has a solid experience in impact biomechanics and in developing systems to protect people both inside and outside the vehicle in crashes. His main research interests are human body modelling, injury mechanisms and tolerances.

Marius Rees is working as a PhD Candidate at BMW AG and the LMU Munich. He studied Biomechanics at Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences and at the Biomechanical Engineering Institute at KTH Stockholm, mainly focusing on finite element simulations with Human Body Models (HBMs). After his thesis at Daimler AG, he joined at his current PhD position at the Passive Safety Department of BMW two years ago.

Lambros Rorris received his Diploma of Civil Engineering from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1993 and worked in the Dept. of Civil Eng. as a researcher till 1999. In 1999 he joined BETA CAE Systems as a developer for Crash pre-processing. During the last twenty years he developed along with his team many safety related tools for the ANSA pre-processor. He is currently the Manager of Crash and Safety applications.

Alessandro Scattina is an Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of the Politecnico di Torino. He took Ph.D. in Mechanics in 2009 then he covered research fellow and assistant professor positions. Starting from the Ph.D. period he is working in the research group “Vehicle structure and safety: design, simulation, optimization” on lightweight vehicle structures, passive and pedestrian safety, impact biomechanics.

Dr. Abbas Talimian is a postdoctoral research fellow at the department of Biomechanical human body models, New Technology Research Center, University of West Bohemia. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Since 2019 his research has been focused on occupants' safety and developing passive safety tools for autonomous vehicles with non-standard seating configurations.

Niclas Trube studied Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg and worked in the Plant Biomechanics Group Freiburg alongside his studies to receive advanced training in biomechanics and biomimetics. In April 2017, Niclas Trube joined the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics as an intern in the field of material and human modeling. He finished his master thesis in May 2018 within the same work group about possible aspects to improve the biofidelity of the muscle model implemented in THUMS Version 5.

Dr.-Ing. Dirk Ulrich studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt and stayed at the TUD to work on a government research project in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) on which subject he also received his doctorate. After that he joined Audi R&D to work in the department for computational methods and was responsible for the introduction of nonlinear FEM applications. Thereafter he worked for several international providers of simulation software for automotive applications (ESI, SOFY, TNO). Since 01.04.2007 Dr. Ulrich has been managing the CAE-training activities of carhs.training gmbh.

Michiel van Ratingen, PhD, PDEng, Msc (1966) studied at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Eindhoven and the Medical University of Maastricht. Michiel joined TNO Netherlands and completed his PhD at Eindhoven and the Medical University of Maastricht. Michiel joined TNO Automotive in 1995 where he first got involved in vehicle crash safety research and development. In 2005 he joined First Technology Safety Systems (now Humanetics Innovative Solutions) as Technical Director. At FTSS he was responsible for global engineering activities, including design and validation of crash test dummies, dummy sensors and computer models. Since 2007 Michiel is acting Secretary General of the European New Car Assessment Program Euro NCAP in Leuven, Belgium. He implemented the organisation’s recent rating scheme updates, including the introduction of crash avoidance technology testing. He is a technical advisor to the Global NCAP and Latin NCAP programmes.

Christoph Vieler is currently Head of Functional Development FMVSS201, ECE-R21 & Airbag Deployment for Vehicle Safety at Volkswagen. He completed his diploma in aerospace engineering at the TU Braunschweig in 1998. Subsequently, he worked for 7 years at IAV GmbH in Gifhorn as an analysis engineer for various development topics. He moved to Volkswagen in 2005 and has since held management positions and tasks in simulation and testing. He is driven by strengthening digital product development in vehicle safety in order to ensure a very high level of protection for Volkswagen's customers.

Wade von Kleeck is a research engineer at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. His research focuses on injury biomechanics using computational modeling as well as anthropometry studies. He earned his M.S. from the University of Kansas in Bioengineering in 2018 with a thesis focusing on preventing sports concussions through experimentation and simulation.

Ms. Akira Yamaoka has been working for Toyota Motor Corporation as passive safety engineer since 2009. She was responsible for passenger safety during side impact in accident research, performance planning, passive safety tests, and simulations. She has been working as assistant manager and responsible for development of human CAE model THUMS.