Speakers & Chairmen

Josef Ecker is project manager for high potential R&D Projects. In his role he is responsible for the development of new business fields in the area of e-mobility and future energy transformation. Besides his education in polymer technology and technical chemistry, he deals with battery topics since the early 2011. With his innovativ special machine producer company Fill in the background, he is leading several high-potential Battery Projects with focus on circular economy and sustainability of Battery Systems. In the project Biolib, the aim is to develop a bio-ressource based battery housing (steel-wood-composite) to reach lowest carbon footprint of future battey housings. In the national FFG funded project „BattBox“ Josef Ecker acts as consortial leader and leads the development of most applicable and technically best operations for dissassembling and recycling of BEV – High Voltage Systems. The aim is close the gap in the circular loop of battery systems and straighten the future european way for sustainable battery industry.

Siegfried Hartwig joined AVL List GmbH in 2012 after studying mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Graz. He started during his study time as an intern at AVL and supported electric vehicle development. Later he joined the CAE-team and started investing powertrain components including BEV battery integration and their safety. Later approached the field of full vehicle CAE and worked also as a project manager specialized in this area. Today he is working as Lead Engineer for Vehicle Crash Simulation and Battery Safety. Apart from vehicle development a strong focus is virtual validation processes, material and component characterization.

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".

Patrick Kolm studied automotive engineering at the HTBLA Steyr from 2004 to 2009. Thereafter he studied mechanical engineering with a specialization in engine and drive technology, vehicle technology and safety at the TU Graz from 2010 to 2016. In 2016 he joined AVL List GmbH as a Development engineer in the field of powertrain development. Since 2018 he has been researcher in the field of battery crash safety with VIRTUAL VEHICLE Research GmbH. He is currently working on his PhD thesis titled “Simulation-based short-circuit prediction of Li-ion cells due to mechanical crash loads”. His research experience covers battery finite element modeling, battery crash analyses, optimization, mechanical abuse tests, battery component characterization and post-mortem analyses of batteries.

Natalia Lebedeva holds a PhD degree in chemistry from the Technical University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Thereafter she joined Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands to do research on fuel cells and led projects on corrosion and corrosion protection at the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research. For the last 10 years she works at the batteries group of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, where she currently leads a research team focusing on battery safety.

Christoph Leo holds a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Graz University of Technology (Austria). Since 2018 he is a research assistant at the Vehicle Safety Institute at TU Graz. His research is focussed on injury analyses and prevention of vulnerable road users.

Emanuele Michelini holds a Master’s and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechatronic Engineering from Politecnico di Torino (Italy). Since 2021 he has been working as a researcher at the Vehicle Safety Institute of the Graz University of Technology. His work focusses on second-life of lithium-ion batteries, battery safety and battery testing.

Jörg Moser studied industrial engineering and subsequently completed his doctorate at Graz University of Technology, where he is currently employed as a Project Senior Scientist at the Institute for Vehicle Safety. Since 2020, he has been heading the Battery Safety Center Graz, a research laboratory specifically designed for electrical, thermal and mechanical testing of electrical energy storage systems, such as Li-ion battery cells, and in which batteries are purposefully brought to their load limits under high safety precautions. He is also a member of the BSCG steering committee, leads research projects on battery safety, including the SafeLIB subproject SEQUEL to develop a method for safety qualification of 2nd-life batteries, and is part of the leadership of the team "Thermal and Electrical Behavior of Energy Storage Systems".

Sven Nitsche studied Automotive Engineering at Berlin University of Technology and holds a Ph.D. in Automotive Engineering. After working for EASi Engineering GmbH he worked from 1998 to 2012 for Autoliv in various positions in development of passive and active safety systems and safety electronics. Since 2012 Sven works for BMW in various positions within the field of vehicle safety and is currently responsible for BMW’s Integrated Safety activities.

Ralf Reuter studied mechanical engineering and business administration at the technical universities of Darmstadt and Eindhoven. Since 1997 he has worked for carhs in various management positions. He deals with vehicle safety issues intensively, in particular with the latest developments in rules and regulations as well as consumer testing. As he is in charge of the SafetyWissen which has been published by carhs for many years, he keeps his knowledge up-to-date and profits from the inputs of carhs' trainer and expert network.

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.

Dr. Martin Schwab is an expert in the field of material modelling and characterization, as well as battery technology. He obtained his PhD in mechanical engineering at the Vienna University of Technology and is actively contributing to various international research consortia. Dr. Schwab has a strong background in the fields of Finite Element Analysis and constitutive modelling and published more than 22 scientific papers and presentations up to now.

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.

Marcel Strub studied automotive engineering at the Bern University of Applied Sciences, specializing in vehicle technology. Since 1995, he has worked as a test engineer for DTC AG with the main tasks of operational stability and vehicle dynamics. From 2012, he was able to take over the divisional management of Active Safety and expand the services of the ISO 17025 recognized testing laboratory. This included in particular the development of the internal DTC test track and the accreditation according to ECE-R 100 for the testing of traction batteries. After completing his EMBA studies at the BFH Economy Bern, he took over the management of DTC AG. In addition, he is active in the working group of the test centers of FEDRO (Switzerland).

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.

Oliver Zehbe studied Transportation Engineering with a specialization in Automotive Engineering at the Technical University of Berlin. From 2013 - 2019 he was a project engineer for numerical simulation with IATmbH in Berlin. Since 2020 he is Senior Researcher Occupant and Road Safety at the Virtual Vehicle Research GmbH in Graz. There, he conducts research on the topics of human body modeling and validation, occupant protection simulation, integral vehicle safety, and conducts concept investigations for restraint systems.