Speakers & Chairmen

Victor Alvarez has a M.Sc. in Solid Mechanics and earned his Ph.D. in 2017 at the Royal Institute of Technology on the topic of human body modelling and vulnerable road users. Since then he has worked as a consultant, providing services within human body modelling, tissue biomechanics and finite element modelling. During his career he has worked with development of human body models, simulation driven product design and research projects. Today, customers range from the vehicle industry, military and to medical applications.

Juan M. Asensio-Gil is an Industrial, Mechanical, and Mobility and Safety Engineer with research background on human modelling, injury biomechanics, optimization, and High-Performance Computing. He has been an intern at Siemens Simcenter Madymo Safety and Comfort Modelling team for almost a year between 2021 and 2022, focusing on biofidelity and HBM modelling. From this experience, a study on the development of a multibody 50th percentile model for Euro NCAP’s Pedestrian Test Protocol was presented at IRCOBI 2022, and the development of the Female 50th percentile Active Human Model is set to be presented at CARHS Human Modelling 2022.

Since 2011, Dr. Barbat has been The Executive Technical Leader for Safety, the highest safety technical position at Ford globally, overseeing overall vehicle safety in research, advanced product development, strategy, and regulatory, company-wide. Dr. Barbat has 34 years of engineering experience: 26 years in Automotive Safety, 2 years in the aircraft engineering, and 6 years in the academia. Dr. Barbat is an internationally recognized safety leader who sustained a record of pioneering contributions to the automotive industry and societal benefits. His past 26 years have been with Ford involved in all aspects of automotive safety, e.g. structural crashworthiness, occupant protection, alternative fuel vehicle, integrated safety and biomechanics. At Ford, he has held several technical and management leadership positions. More than 11 years as the Manager for Passive Safety Research and Advanced Engineering and as a product development Safety Manager of a large group of more than 100 engineers involved in the design, development and safety sign-off for several platforms that meet or exceed Corporate, Regulatory, and Public Domain requirements. Dr. Barbat achieved SAE and ASME Fellow Grades. He served as the Chairman of International ISO WG4 for Virtual Testing for 14 years; alternate Chairman of Crash Safety WG and member of the Safety Technical Leadership Council of the USCAR since 2000; a member of the technical advisory board at various universities; and of the ISO United State Technical Advisory Group. He serves as a co-organizer/sessions chair of various Crashworthiness and Biomechanics Symposiums such as ASME, SAE, STAPP, and Government Industry meetings. Editorial Advisory Board member for various national and international journals. Dr. Barbat hold nearly 100 issued/filed patents and wrote around 65 papers. Some of his work has been recognized with a prestigious Henry Ford Technology Award; the SAE Arch T. Colwell Merit Award, 17 SAE/ASME Recognition Awards and 4 USCAR Awards. In 2017 he was awarded the prestigious ASME Barnett-Uzgiris Product Safety Societal award (the 6th recipient of this award) for his outstanding contributions to the society and vehicle safety. Dr. Barbat holds a Ph.D. degree in Applied Mechanics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, US in 1990; M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from UMIST, Manchester, UK in 1980; and a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Baghdad, Iraq in 1976.

Prof. Dr. Manuela Boin studied physics at Technical University of Chemnitz and received her PhD at University of Hamburg. She joined Takata-Petri AG (now Joyson Safety Systems) in Ulm in 1994 and established the computer simulation department there. For 15 years she took different management positions within Takata-Petri in the area of development and production of occupant restraint systems. Since 2009 Dr. Boin is Professor at University of Applied Sciences in Ulm (Technische Hochschule Ulm). She is educating students of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering and Computational Science and Engineering. Her subjects are Physics, Mathematics, Vehicle Safety and Crash and Occupant Simulation. Her research areas are occupant restraint in the environment of highly automated driving and the optimization of rowing seats with respect to ergonomics.

Ms. Clara Cabutí holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering and is finishing a second degree in Industrial Design and Product Development Engineering. She has been working in automotive engineering at Applus+ IDIADA for the last year and is part of the Human Factors team, working on development, testing and validation projects, as well as research and innovation projects, aimed at optimizing safety associated with human error and improving the user experience.

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.

Caroline Deck obtained her Ph.D Thesis in biomechanics in 2004 and a research manager habilitation in 2014. Since 2004 she has a permanent research position in Biomechanics at Strasbourg University. She is specialized in finite element modeling of the human head, head trauma numerical accident reconstruction and head injury criteria development as well as head protective system evaluation and optimization.

Andre Eggers is a researcher at BASt (German Federal Highway Research Institute) since 2006 working in the area of biomechanics, evaluation of dummies, human models and virtual testing. He studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Hamburg and Biomedical Engineering at Wayne State University. 2013 he completed his doctorate at the Technical University of Berlin. He contributed to several European research projects like IMVITER, THORAX, ASSESS, SENIORS and OSCCAR. He is representing BASt in Euro NCAP working groups related to injury criteria and virtual testing.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jörg Fehr studied Mechatronics in Stuttgart and Mechanical Engineering in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. From 2006 till 2011 he was a research assistant and doctoral student at the University of Stuttgart. Afterwards, as a simulation engineer at TRW Automotive GmbH, he was in charge of the development of new mechatronic vehicle safety systems. From 2014 to 2020 Jörg Fehr was a Junior Professor at the Institute for Engineering and Computational Mechanics and Cluster of Excellence Simulation Technology (SRC SimTech) of the University of Stuttgart. Since March 2020 he has a permanent position as a deputy head of the Institute for Engineering and Computational Mechanics. One goal of his current research is the development of validation and simulation strategies for active human body models for the simulation of new mobility solutions and the speedup of the simulations using linear and nonlinear model reduction methods.

Throughout his career, Prof. Dr. Ir. Riender Happee studied the human interaction with technology and captured knowledge in biomechanical, perceptual, and behavioral models. The biomechanical human body models which he developed at TNO Automotive (1992-2007) are used by the automotive R&D community worldwide to investigate and prevent injuries in road accidents. Riender Happee re-joined TU Delft in 2007 to address fundamental challenges in postural stabilization, using biomechanical models to investigate and predict motion comfort. He investigates the integration of visual, vestibular, and muscle feedback in stabilization of the neck, lumbar spine, and arms, as well as full-body stabilization of seated vehicle occupants, linking models of sensory integration to postural stabilization and motion sickness, based on theories of sensory conflict and postural instability. At TU Delft (2007-now), Riender Happee connects researchers across faculties and departments in biomechanics, human factors, vehicle dynamics, and machine perception, leveraging the international position of TU Delft in the field of automated driving. Riender Happee obtained an MSc in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD (1992) on ‘The control of shoulder muscles during goal directed movements’, both at TU Delft.

Jörg Hofmann is responsible at Wölfel Engineering for the development and implementation of seating comfort solutions. He has more than 20 years of experience in the field of seating comfort. He studied at TU Darmstadt, Germany and subsequently conducted research at the Chair of Machine Dynamics, where his research was about the prevention of vibration-induced back pain. In this context, he was involved in the development of ISO 2631-5 for the evaluation of human exposure to whole-body vibration and shocks. Since joining Wölfel in 2004, he has worked on virtual and experimental solutions for seating comfort assessment for customers worldwide.

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.

Luděk Hynčík is an associate professor and a senior researcher in the field of biomechanics with over 20 years of experience. He is the founder of biomechanical human body modelling at the University of West Bohemia, where he currently serves as a vice-rector for research and development. He is the Visiting Professor at the Tianjin University of Science and Technology in China, Education Advisor in FISITA, vice president of the Czech Automotive Society, vice president of the Czech Society of Biomechanics and member of SAE.

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.

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".

Christoph Leo is a research assistant at the Vehicle Safety Institute of Graz University of Technology in Austria since 2018. He received his Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2017 and is currently working on industry research projects as well as the EU-Project VIRTUAL. Within this EU-Project he is doing his PhD Thesis. His research is focused on vulnerable road user safety.

Joachim Linn studied Theoretical Physics at TU Kaiserslautern (1985 – 1992). After finishing his diploma degree he continued with his PhD work (1992 - 1997) in the area of Computational Photonics. In 1996 he joined the newly founded “Fraunhofer-Institut für Techno- und Wirtschaftsmathematik” (ITWM). Currently he is a senior researcher and head of the department “Mathematics for the Digital Factory” (MDF) in the division “Mathematics for Vehicle Engineering” (MF). Most R&D work at the department MDF is in Computational Mechanics, with a topical focus on nonlinear structural dynamics and biomechanical multibody system simulation.

Steffen Maier is working as a research associate and doctoral student in the field of driving safety at the Institute of Engineering and Computational Mechanics (ITM) of the University of Stuttgart since 2018. He strives to improve computational modeling of powered two-wheelers and their riders as well as scientific methods to assess a rider's protection. Before, he completed master's studies at the University of Stuttgart in Mechanical Engineering and at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in Engineering Science and Mechanics.

Matthew Millard has been working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Stuttgart since 2021 and working on whiplash simulation and injury prediction. Before the University of Stuttgart, Dr Millard completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Heidelberg, the University of Duisburg, and Stanford University focusing on a range of topics such as the optimal control of musculoskeletal systems, muscle modelling, foot-ground contact modelling, and balance modelling. He received his doctorate in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Dr. Galal Mohamed has over 15 years’ experience in using and supporting LS-DYNA in the aerospace and automotive industry. He has a doctorate in aerospace engineering in the field of FRP composite lightweight structures. Galal is the technical support engineer at Arup for LS-DYNA and Oasys Suite – the advanced pre- and post-processing software for LS-DYNA. He currently supports automotive clients in the UK and helps support the development of many tools and features including those for occupant positioning and human body modelling.

Steffen Peldschus graduated in Mechanical Engineering from Aachen Technical University and obtained his PhD in Biomechanics from the University of Munich LMU. In 2011 he was appointed Professor of Applied Mechanics, and since 2017 he is Professor of Forensic Biomechanics and leading the Biomechanics and Accident Analysis group at LMU.

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.

Matthias Schießler studied mechanical engineering at the University of Stuttgart (2011-2018). In addition, he obtained a second master’s degree from George Mason University in applied and engineering physics (2015-2016). In 2018 Mr. Schießler joined the German Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) as a researcher on simulation-based topics; he is currently involved in the EU-funded project OSCCAR.

Ms. Ann-Malin Schmidt has completed her B.Sc. degree in mechnical engineering (specialization in textile technology) and her M.Sc. degree in Textile Technology at RWTH Aachen University in 2019. Since the beginning of 2020 she started working with the structure and process simulation group of the Institute of Textile Machinery and High Performance Material Technology (ITM) of the TU Dresden. Since Oct. 2021 she is doing her PhD studies in the fields of 3D and 4D scanning, textile simulation and 3D-printing on textiles at the chair of “Development and assembly of textile products” (ITM, TU Dresden).

Dr. Anurag Soni has 14 years of experience in the automotive crash safety. Since 2015, he has been working with Autoliv, North Germany in the domain of virtual development of seatbelt restraint systems. He is currently working as Expert System Simulation Engineer, focusing on new restraint function development for seatbelts using simulations.

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.

Michiel Unger currently works for Siemens Industry Software as Business Development Manager. He is responsible to develop engineering solutions in the field of integrated safety for customers in the aviation, automotive and other industries. After his engineering degree in biomechanics at Technical University of Eindhoven, he started a simulation team for a safety restraints system supplier. Then he moved to TASS International, the developer of the occupant safety simulation software MADYMO, which was acquired by Siemens a few years ago. His main drive is to develop further the digital solutions to reach higher level of real live safety.

Jac Wismans is since 2008 owner of the company SAFETEQ in Son, The Netherlands, working as an independent consultant in the field of road safety. From 2007-2018 he was visiting Professor at Chalmers University, working in the field of computational human body models, safety of future vehicles and global road safety. From 1978-2008 he worked at TNO in the Netherlands in different positions and was part-time professor in vehicle safety at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. At TNO he was amongst others responsible for the development of the crash analyses software package MADYMO and crash dummy research.

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.

Prof. Dr. Yang earned his doctorate in Mechanical Engineering with special emphasis in spine and impact biomechanics from Wayne State in 1985. He was appointed assistant professor in 1988. In January 2004 he has been appointed director of the Wayne State University Bioengineering Center. Prof. Yang is recognized worldwide for his work on human models used in conjunction with crash injury research. He and his graduate students have developed many computer models simulating impact responses for various regions of the human body. Their brain model, for instance, gives doctors and auto designers critical information about the area and extent of closed-head injuries.