Speakers

Praveen Bansode has been head of safety at Mahindra since April 2017, where he heads the vehicle passive safety & restraint design department. In this position he is responsible for the design and development of safer cars for Mahindra. Furthermore, he represents India in GRSP at Geneva and also a member of Society of Indian automobile manufacturers. These positions enable him to define safety strategy and in his leadership Mahindra models has achieved best in class Global NCAP safety ratings in India.

Dr. Alexander Besch studied mathematics in Braunschweig and Brighton. He has been employed at Volkswagen AG since 2000. Initially, he worked in the IT area. Since 2006, he has been working in technical development in the area of pedestrian protection simulation.

Karan Chatrath graduated from Delft University of Technology in 2019. He specializes in automotive engineering, specifically multibody and vehicle dynamics, and control engineering. He currently works in Siemens Digital Industries Software where he initially worked on Simcenter Madymo’s human body models, crash dummy models, and related applications. Since 2022, he is working as a product manager for Simcenter Madymo.

In 1991 Irina Dausse was awarded the Diplôme Ingénieur / Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering (Materials Specialisation) at the Compiègne University of Technology. After 8 years as a plastics & numerical simulation expert at Magneti Marelli working on instrument clusters, she joined Renault, where she was responsible for the production launch of a new vehicle model. Irina Dausse then worked on research and development topics relating to interiors, cockpits, seats and quality. Since 2010 she has been working as an expert in passive safety regulations for Renault in the Technocentre (Paris) and within the Passive Safety unit she is in charge of the current legal issues concerning GTR, Europe and UNECE.

Dr. Michael Hamacher studied mechanical engineering with a specialization in automotive engineering at RWTH Aachen University. He has been working in the Vehicle Concepts, Body & Interior business unit of fka GmbH since 2007. In his position as Lead Expert Vehicle Safety & Vulnerable Road User Protection, his work focuses on passive vehicle safety and the protection of vulnerable road users.

Adrian Hellmann received a Master's Degree in Mechanical and Process Engineering from the Technical University of Darmstadt and a „Diplôme Ingenieur Géneraliste“ from Ecole Centrale de Lyon. In 2015 he joined the German Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) in Bergisch Gladbach where he works for the Section "Active Vehicle Safety" on the development and implementation of test scenarios for active safety within the legal framework as well as for consumer protection organizations such as Euro NCAP.

Stefan Hundertmark studied mechanical engineering at DHBW Mosbach and worked as a simulation engineer at EDAG Engineering GmbH from 2013. Since 2018, he has been a project manager in the field of pedestrian protection and has been in charge of customer projects for established OEMs and startups worldwide. In 2023, Mr. Hundertmark was appointed head of the working group on the topic of "VRU" and is thus a main contact person for EDAG on the topic of vulnerable road protection.

Daniel Huster has studied automotive engineering at the Technical University of Braunschweig. Since 2016 he has been working in the section F2 “Passive safety and biomechanics” at BASt. His research fields are the standardization of wheelchair tiedowns and occupant restraint systems as well as the safety of two wheeler riders. There, especially the personal protective equipment (motorcycle and bicycle helmets) and the transportation of children in cargo bikes are the main topics.

Heiko Johannsen studied automotive engineering at the TU Berlin with a focus on vehicle safety, powertrain and exhaust emissions. He received his doctorate (Dr.-Ing.) at the Department of Automotive Engineering at TU Berlin on the topic of measuring abdominal injury risk in dummy tests. He held various positions in research and teaching in the field of vehicle safety and biomechanics as well as development of alternative vehicle concepts until 2014. Following his work at TU Berlin, he started as deputy head of MHH Accident Research in 2014 and became head of MHH Accident Research in 2016.

Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Markus Oeser studied Civil Engineering at the TU Dresden with a focus on structural engineering. In 2004, he completed his doctorate in Dresden with the topic "Numerical simulation of the non-linear behavior of multi-layered flexible transport pathways". This was followed in 2010 by his habilitation with the topic "Nonlinear numerical simulation models for traffic pathways with regard to mechanical, thermal and hydraulic effects“. In 2006, Markus Oeser was a Research Member of the Technical University of Delft University, the Netherlands, and from 2007 to 2011 he was a University Lecturer at the Institute of Geotechnics, Road Construction and Traffic Engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia. In 2011, he became Head of the Chair of Highway Engineering and Director of the Institute of Highway Engineering, and in 2016, Dean at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen (RWTH). He took up a visiting professorship at the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), in Harbin, Heilongjang, China in 2015, which ended as per contract in 2022. In 2021, he was appointed to the professorship of Pavement Engineering and Construction, TU Dresden. He has been President of the Federal Highway Research Institute since November 2021.

Yuanjin Pei holds a Master Degree from Wuhan University of Technology in China. He took part in an exchanged programme in Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. He has been working at CATARC in Pedestrian Protection field for 8 years, first as a CAE engineer and currently as the Technical Expert for Testing methodology and standard Research. He is a leader of the domestic working group for the investigation of testing feasibility of aPLI, the clearance of protection cable and windscreen evaluation method, continuously supporting ISO, C-NCAP and homologation by extensive experience and huge amount of data.

Markus Riese studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt. In 1993, together with Heiko Müller, he founded the e-bike manufacturer Riese & Müller, which also pioneered some safety technology. The focus of his work is still technical product development. In parallel, however, he is also involved in standards committees for e-bikes and cargo bikes.

Director and Professor Andre Seeck has been Vice President of the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) since April 2022, where he heads the Vehicle Technology division. In this position he is responsible for the preparation of European Safety Regulations. Furthermore he represents the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport in the Board of Directors of Euro NCAP and he is the chairman of the strategy group on automated driving and of the rating system. These positions enable him to gain deep insight into current and future developments in vehicle safety. In 2017 NHTSA awarded him the U. S. Government Special Award of Appreciation.

Patrick Smith studied mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois and has worked in the field of crash safety and impact testing since 2010. Prior to joining NHTSA in 2015, he worked at MGA Research leading an accelerator sled test team conducting crash tests for automotive, aviation, and military applications. Since joining NHTSA he has worked in the rulemaking, New Car Assessment Program, and vehicle safety research offices.

Holger Staack studied mechanical engineering with a focus on lightweight construction and plastics technology at the Technical University of Munich. He then obtained his doctorate in engineering from the Chair of Lightweight Design at the Technical University of Munich. His dissertation, entitled "Experimental characterization and parametric simulation of plastic components in partner protection," dealt with the simulative failure modeling of plastics in pedestrian protection development. Since 2016, he has been working in pedestrian protection development at AUDI AG in Ingolstadt.

Boris Terfurth graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wuppertal in 2019. Subsequently, he performed one year of military service at the Center for Operational Communication of the German Armed Forces in Mayen. Since 09.2021 he has been employed as a test engineer at BGS Böhme & Gehring GmbH in the area of active vehicle safety. The focus here is on supporting the Federal Highway Research Institute in tests for the consumer protection organization EURO NCAP.

Jan Wilsmann graduated from the TU Braunschweig as a mechanical engineer. Within the scope of his final thesis in 2008 he already dealt with the subject of pedestrian protection and worked directly afterwards as a test engineer in this field. He has been working for BMW AG since 2012 and has been working there in the department "Concepts Integral Safety" since 2015. In his current function, Mr. Wilsmann is responsible for the conceptual design of pedestrian protection in several projects. Since mid-2016, he has also been responsible for pedestrian and cyclist protection. In this capacity, he also took over the technical representation in various working groups on these topics at VDA, ACEA, and ISO for BMW AG.

Marcus Wisch studied mechatronics at the TU Dresden. Since 2010, he has been employed at the BASt in Unit F2 "Passive Vehicle Safety, Biomechanics". His main activities include participation in the UNECE IWG EDR/DSSAD and in numerous EU projects, including the coordination of the H2020 project SENIORS 2015-2018. He is BASt expert supervisor and evaluator of the German In-Depth Accident Study (GIDAS), deals with the safety of electric vehicles and prepares benefit analyses of passive and active safety systems.

Oliver Zander studied Safety Engineering at the University of Wuppertal and started his career as Safety Engineer at the JCI European Headquarters in Burscheid. Since 2002 he has worked as a scientist at the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt), where since 2009 he has been Deputy Head of the Section Passive Vehicle Safety, Biomechanics. His main responsibilities are pedestrian protection (amongst others german representative of the GRSP Informal Group DPPS, EEVC Working Group 17 “Pedestrian Safety”, and the Euro NCAP Technical Working Groups “Passive Safety” and “Pedestrian Protection”), the Euro NCAP crash and pedestrian testing and European Research Projects w.r.t. passive vehicle safety.