Speakers & Chairmen

Dierk Arp is Executive Director and shareholder of MESSRING since 2001. After getting his diploma in electrical and communications engineering from the Technische Universität München Dierk Arp founded his own company focused on medical imaging and software development. With this company and later as shareholder of MESSRING he was involved in the design of data acquisition hardware and control software for passive safety systems since 1989.

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.

David Blauth studied physics at the Humboldt University in Berlin and received his doctorate at the same university in 2010. Since 2011 he is responsible for model development at ATD-MODELS GmbH. In this function he has been in charge of the development of the FE model of the new leg impactor aPLI since 2018.

John Creamer is the founder of GlobalAutoRegs.com and a partner in The Potomac Alliance, a Washington-based international regulatory affairs consultancy. In his client advisory role, Mr. Creamer is regularly involved with meetings of the UN World Forum for the Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (WP.29). Previously, he has held positions with the US International Trade Commission and the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association (representing the US automotive supplier industry), as the representative of the US auto parts industry in Japan, and with TRW Inc. (a leading global automotive safety systems supplier).

Pierre Culiere graduated from Ecole Centrale in Paris, France, with a final year specialty in mechanical modeling of structures. He joined ESI Group in 1989, engaged in projects with French customers for two years, and then took charge of product management for ESI’s crash and virtual prototyping solutions. In 2005, Pierre moved to Shanghai, established a Center of Excellence in Crash and Occupant Safety, and the local Representative Office of ESI Group. Since 2021, he has been based in France, coordinating product management activities for ESI’s Product Performance business line.  Pierre has supported the automotive industry through numerous projects, mostly in the domain of passive safety. His contributions include:  - Development of barrier and dummy models  - Conversion of Toyota’s THUMS models to ESI’s VPS  - Prediction of weld rupture 

Over 12 years of experience in the simulation field, as well as 8 years of experience in ANSA/META application and development. Led the team to complete the development of multiple projects, involving the structural design and modification of multiple vehicles. In the development of automated pre and post processing processes for vehicle structural collisions, restraint systems, and pedestrian protection, has extensive experience.

Rainer Hoffmann has been involved in automotive safety throughout his career. After graduating from Wayne State University, he joined Porsche as a research associate in passive safety. Mr. Hoffmann advanced safety simulation during his subsequent tenure at ESI Group where he introduced new techniques like airbag simulation, numerical airbag folding and FE dummy modeling. As the head of the simulation department of PARS (now Continental Safety Engineering), Mr. Hoffmann led the R&D efforts for some of the first series production side airbag developments. In 1994 Mr. Hoffmann founded EASi Engineering GmbH, which in 2006 was renamed to carhs GmbH. He has authored numerous technical papers and has been granted German and international patents in the automotive safety field.

James Jackson is a specialist in automotive human factors and ergonomics. Following from studying human factors design at Loughborough University, he spent the first part of his career working in OEM product development focussing on vehicle usability and cabin design. He joined IDIADA in 2018 and now leads human factors activities, managing user centred design and testing. This involves responsibilities for work alongside industry partners concerning safety and mobility of transportation users, with driver behaviour and condition being of central focus. For Euro NCAP James is a member of the working groups for Occupant Status Monitoring and Human Factors / Human Machine Interaction.

2022-Present Leader of the product performance group in Customer experience Asia 2004-2021 Technical director, ESI Korea 1997-2003 Technical leader, Virtual performance team, ESI Korea 1991-1996 Engineer, Vehicle research and development Dept. Ssangyong motors 1998-2004 Ph. D, Mechanical design and production engineering, Seoul national university Research Develop the H-model, full human body FE model for the injury prediction, together with Prof. Hyunyun Choi in Hongik University Develop the human body model for the seat comfort analysis together with Prof. Choi, part of the Virtual seat solution package in ESI Support the GHBMC human body model conversions to VPS Lead and perform hundreds of vehicle crash and safety studies with various vehicle companies in Asia and Europe

Dr. Francisco J. Lopez-Valdes is Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Universidad Pontificia Comillas (Spain). He is the director of MOBIOS, the laboratory of Mobility, Biomechanics and Health Studies of Comillas. Dr. Lopez-Valdes’ research focuses on occupant protection and biomechanics. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Virginia (Center for Applied Biomechanics) and is a former Marie Curie International Incoming Fellow. Dr. Lopez-Valdes is the secretary of the IRCOBI Council and currently serves as President of the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM).

Dr. Jiming Lv is graduated from Jilin University under the supervision of Professor Guo Konghui, the academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He is proficient in vehicle dynamic performance development, testing and regulation, and has years of experiences in vehicle development, turning and test equipment research and development before Digauto. Currently, as the CTO of Digauto, Dr. Lv focuses on intelligent vehicle testing method, simulated test environment construction and key technologies of vehicle-and-traffic-in-the-loop test platform. He keeps contributing innovative solutions and schemes in China intelligent vehicle testing scenario database development, automated scenario based simulation and road tests and safety performance evaluation system.

Jean-Baptiste Mouillet is the multiphysics solutions Director at Altair Engineering. He has been working for 20 years on RADIOSS as multiphysics, defense applications, FSI and composites expert in collaboration with clients from defense, aeronautic and automotive industries. As such, he is very familiar in projects involving the coupling of multiple physical solutions and developing methods to properly and efficiently take into account simultaneously several physical phenomena. Since 2017, he is in charge of the multiphysics solver solutions in Altair. As such, he has been working on Electric Motor multiphysics optimization involving Thermal, NVH, structural and electromagnetic phenomenon, fluid structure interactions, high frequency electromagnetism – thermal coupling, and batteries thermal calculation at all moments of their life cycles. He is also involved in the specification and development of software solutions which, while still physically accurate, provide a user friendly and easy to use environment.

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.

Since 2012 at DSD as COO for the Testing Division (Passive safety engineering, active safety engineering and sled testing service) 2018 Acquisition of this business from Humanetics and thus Managing Director of DSD Testing GmbH since 2018

She got her bachelor’s degree in Tongji University, and later got the Dipl.-Ing. degree in Karlsruher Institut fuer Technologie (KIT) in Germany. In 2003, she worked in Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning &Design Institute Co., Ltd., engaged in comprehensive traffic planning and traffic modelling. Since 2006, She works for PTV China，with rich experiences in product application, training and business development. Because of long term effort, now all provinces of China have used PTV software. Now she is Managing Director of PTV China. She has accumulated more than 15 years of project experiences and abundant market experiences in macro and micro traffic simulation. With the expansion of the company's new strategy, she will focus also on autonomous vehicle co-simulation and simulation software application in active safety test.

Kewal’s career spans over 25 years in Product Management, Product Marketing, and the Product Life Cycle roles in companies such as Siemens, TomTom, HERE, KPN and Dow Jones. He is a graduate of the UK’s Royal Air Force Technical College where he studied Electro-Mechanical Engineering. Prior to his business career, he served 15 years on various military assignments and locations.

Philipp Toelke is general manager of the Seattle Safety Germany GmbH which is a 100% daughter company of Seattle Safety LLC in Seattle. Philipp is responsible for the European market and works very close with the engineering in Seattle at the development and market introduction of new Seattle Safety products. Philipp has a diploma degree in Engineering from Braunschweig University (Germany) and he worked in the field of vehicle safety for the last 17 years.

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.

Roderick leads Business Development for Safety, Digital, and Sensors in Asia. He studied Industrial Automation and has during his career focused on a continual approach to transformation and innovation of physical and virtual solutions within the vehicle safety field. During the last 30 years, he has lived and worked in China, Japan, and now Europe and has a passion for sports cars and hiking.

Wang Hong is Research Associate Professor at Tsinghua University. She received the Ph.D. degree in Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, in 2015. From the year 2015 to 2019, she was working as a Research Associate of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering with the University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on the safety of the on-board AI algorithm, the safe decision-making for intelligent vehicles, and the test and evaluation of SOTIF. She has published over 60 papers on top international journals. Her domestic and foreign academic part-time includes the associate editor for IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology and IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, Young Communication Expert of Engineering.

Wang Dayong, Male, graduated from Jilin University of Technology in 1995, 18 years working in Saic Motor R & D Innovation Headquarters (SRIH), senior staff engineer, experienced working in vehicle BIW design, safety integration and testing as well.

Graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University with a degree in engineering mechanics, he joined Altair in 2004 as a technical support engineer, project engineer and project manager. He is now the Director of Engineering, responsible for the promotion and implementation of engineering consulting and data analysis business in China.

Joey Wu, male, 36 years old, who is the senior application engineer at Instron (Shanghai) Ltd. 14 years of experience in automation control related work, with rich experience in the application of crash simulation system (CSA). Able to provide professional technical support for CSA applications to customers in accordance with relevant regulations, enterprise regulations, and R&D requirements. He independently completed the commission work of 15 CSA systems and provided technical support for CSA commission at Technische Überwachungsvereine (TÜV) in the Czech Republic and the National Aeronautical Research Institute (NIAR) in the United States in 2016 and 2019 respectively.

ZHOU Qing is a professor at the School of Vehicle and Mobility, Tsinghua University. Prof. Zhou serves as the Director of Vehicle Safety Committee of the Chinese Society of Automotive Engineers, Associate Editor of International Journal of Impact Engineering, and Council Member of International Research Council on Biomechanics of Injury (IRCOBI). Qing Zhou received his BS degree from Peking University and PhD degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively. During the period from 1994 to 2003, Dr. Zhou worked at the General Motors R&D Center and the Volpe Center of the US Department of Transportation, respectively. His research interests include vehicle safety, human body impact protection, material and structural failures under impact loads, and crash safety of battery and electric vehicle.

Mr.Guang Zhu is General Manager of Chongqing MESSRING Technology Co., Ltd, the sudsidary company of MESSRING GmbG in China. Between 2004 and 2013, he was team leader of Crash test Departement in Chongqing Changan Automobile Co., Ltd. He received engineering master degree in Vehicle engineering from Chongqing Univerisity and a bachalor Diploma in Engineering mechanics from Hua Zhong University of Science and Technology . he is also the MBA from Chongqing University.

Mr. Hangbin Zhu is the senior technical consultant of Siemens Industrial Software (Shanghai) Co., LTD. He has solid experiences in engineering and technology development of automotive impact, such as occupant safety, active and passive integrated safety, child restraint system, pedestrian protection, traffic accident analysis, etc.

Xiangrong Li joined CATARC In 1998, he served as director of the real vehicle collision department of CATARC Automotive Test Center, minister of the collision department of CATARC Automotive Test Center, test management department minister of the CATARC Automotive Test & Assessment Management Center. In December 2020, he served as deputy director of CATARC Automotive Test & Assessment Management Center, and in May 2022, he presided over the overall work of CATARC Automotive Test & Assessment Management Center.

Dr. Bu Xiaobing, who works at CATARC and is the director of the Impact Test Analysis Department，he is engaged in the research of passive safety development and virtual testing, has published 8 SCI papers and more than 20 EI papers, and has rich theoretical knowledge and engineering development experience. At present, he is mainly engaged in the technical research and protocols revision of passive safety virtual testing, active and passive safety integration virtual testing.