Speakers & Chairmen

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.

Already at the turn of the millennium Norman Dix has encountered with the issue of pedestrian protection during the design work of a foam deformation element for the leg impact in the bumper system. The following automotive engineering studies at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences ended in 2006 after a diploma thesis on a crash-active passenger car bonnet. As founder, partner and managing director of KINEMATIXX GmbH in Wolfsburg, he is among other things responsible for the development and integration of active front flap systems from the initial concept to the successful start of series production.

Martin Fritz completed his degree in process engineering at the University of Stuttgart in 2011. He has been working at Bertrandt since 2012, where he focuses on pedestrian protection simulation.

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.

Wen Hu is a Senior Research Transportation Engineer at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. She holds her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. She joined the Institute in 2010 and has been involved in such topics as vulnerable road users and speeding.

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.

Seunghoon Lee studied Mechanical Engineering in Inha University. He joined KATRI (Korea Automobile Testing and Research Institute) in 2016 and has worked mainly as a VRU/Pedestrian safety researcher. His expertise also included SBR (Safety Belt Reminder) and body strength testing. He has been a Korean delegate in the IWG on DPPS.

Sam Monfort is a Senior Statistician at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. He started working at IIHS in 2018 after getting his PhD in Human Factors Psychology at George Mason University. His research interests include crash compatibility, vulnerable road users, and the use and misuse of automation.

Jinseop Park started his career as a design engineer at General Motors Korea in 2003. He received a master's degree in automotive engineering from University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and worked at UMTRI (University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute) as a research assistant. Since 2012, he has worked for KATRI (Korea Automobile Testing and Research Institute). His career activities included crash safety, VRU/pedestrian safety, GRSP delegate, and KNCAP international affairs. He also has been chairing IWG on DPPS for the GTR No.9 amendment under UN/WP.29.    

Volker Sander has been head of the Vehicle Safety Department of ADAC, which includes active safety, passive safety and accident research, since 2010. Before that, from 1999-2007 he was in charge of the construction of ADAC’s crash test lab as a team manager. From 2007-2010 he lead the Passive Safety Department of ADAC. At Euro NCAP he is a member of the Board of Directors and chairman of the frontal impact working group. In addition to that he is member of the side impact working group, the technical working group and the ratings group of Euro NCAP. He is also lecturer for vehicle safety at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich.

Richard Schram started his career as a consultant at TNO Automotive in 2005. From 2010 to 2021 he was Technical Manager and Technical Director at Euro NCAP. He has been back at Euro NCAP as Technical Director since January 2023, after a short period as Director of Product Safety at Arrival.

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.

Johannes Stingl studied physics at the Humboldt University in Berlin and subsequently worked for Siemens in the research department in Munich. After moving to the Max Born Institute in Berlin, he completed his doctorate with a dissertation in the field of ultrafast nonlinear optics. Since 2014, he has been working as a project and team leader for IDIADA Fahrzeugtechnik GmbH in Ingolstadt, focusing on automotive pedestrian protection.

Rafael Tucci graduated from the Universidad de la República (Uruguay) in 2012 and worked in energy and energy efficiency before focusing on road safety. As the Technical Coordinator for Latin NCAP and Global NCAP since 2016, he has worked in all areas related to NCAP, from development and updates of testing protocols to inspections and general program planning. He has also provided technical and safety supervision in events for the promotion of vehicular safety technologies at a global and regional level (Stop The Crash Partnership). 

Thomas Unger studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Dresden from 2000-2006 and graduated with a degree in automotive engineering. As a student, he worked as part of the GIDAS project, where he assisted in the collection and recording of accident data, photogrammetric accident site surveys, and reconstruction of pedestrian accidents. From 2005 to 2018, he managed the ADAC accident research at the Technical Center Landsberg am Lech. Since July 2018, he is head of data analysis and simulation in Verkehrsunfallforschung an der TU Dresden GmbH.

After his mechatronics studies in 1997, Horst Weinkopf started his career at Magna Steyr in the development of doors and closures. In 2011 he went to Astotec Automotive (formerly Hirtenberger), where he worked as director of research and development for pyrotechnic solutions in the field of vehicle safety. Since mid-2023 his current position is director group innovation and predevelopment. 

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.

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.