After studying Electrical Engineering Jürgen Böck worked in different several sales positions at Siemens AG Jürgen Böck started working in the area of testing and certification in 2003 at Siemens AG. Since 2008 he worked for SGS Germany GmbH where he soon focussed on the testing of batteries in different positions like Business Development Manager or Team Leader Customer Service. Since 2020 Jürgen works for TÜV SÜD Battery Testing GmbH as Technical Sales Manager.

Christoph Breitfuss received his doctorate in mechanical engineering from University of Technology Graz. Since 2017 he works as a lead researcher in the field of battery crash safety at VIRTUAL VEHICLE. He has more than ten years of experience in macro-, meso-mechanical battery simulation, testing and virtual short circuit prediction. Actual research topics include AI methods for mechanical model reduction and multiphysics coupling.

Marco Raffler studied Mechanical Engineering at the Graz University of Technology. Since 2016 he works as a researcher at the Vehicle Safety Institute at TU-Graz in the field of crash safety of electric vehicles. His research focuses on mechanical characterisation by experimental methods and on multiphysical simulation of lithium-ion batteries under crash loads.

Elham Sahraei joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Temple University in Fall 2018. Dr. Sahraei has been a Research Scientist at the Impact and Crashworthiness Lab of Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2014. She is the co-director of the MIT Battery Consortium, a multi-sponsor industrial program supported by major automotive and battery manufacturers such as Daimler, Jaguar Land-Rover, LG Chem, and Boston Power. She has also been a co-investigator of multiple Ford-MIT Alliance projects, and a DOE project with National Renewable Energy Lab on safety of Li-Ion batteries. Her current research is focused on characterization and computational modeling of advanced energy storage systems (Li-Ion batteries) for electric vehicles. She earned her PhD degree from the George Washington University in 2011, and completed two years of post-doctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2013, where she became a Research Scientist afterwards. Besides characterization and modeling of Li-Ion batteries, her expertise includes full-scale vehicle crash analysis, occupant protection, and analysis of roadside safety structures.

Prof. Dr. H.J. Seifert is a Director of Institute for Applied Materials (IAM-AWP) at Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT). In this context, he is mainly active in the frame of the program Materials and Technologies for the Energy Transition of Helmholtz-Association. He is author / co-author of more than 250 publications in this research area. He is a member of the advisory board of “Batterieforschung Deutschland” serving the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Main fields of research of Prof. Seifert involve advanced batteries, their engineering materials and related electrochemical, thermal and safety behaviors. Both lithium and beyond lithium batteries for mobility and stationary applications are investigated. Multitudes of experimental methods are combined to quantitatively analyze the ageing and thermal runaway behavior of batteries. Gas and fume formation processes as well as physico-chemical and mechanical characteristics are in the focus of research.

Dr. Xia Yong is Associate Professor at Tsinghua University. With a Ph.D. degree of Solid Mechanics from University of Science and Technology of China, he joined the group of Vehicle Safety and Lightweighting at Tsinghua in 2004. He once worked as a visiting scholar at MIT in 2013-2014. Now Dr. Xia is also a co-chair of Vehicle Safety and Cyber Security Technical Committee of SAE International, an associate editor of SAE International Journal of Materials and Manufacturing, a member of Expert Committee of Automotive Lightweighting Technology Innovation Alliance in China, and a deputy secretary of Safety Technology Committee of SAE-China. His research focuses on “battery crash safety” and “mechanical characterization and failure analysis of materials and joints”.