15th Workshop and Industry Panel

Dr. Meng Lu (The Netherlands) - ITS Aeolix; Member, Board of Governors, IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA); VP Standards Activities, IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society. Previously, Strategic Innovation Manager at Peek Traffic (NL), Program Manager at the Dutch Institute of Advanced Logistics (NL), and Visiting Professor at the National Laboratory for Automotive Safety and Energy, Tsinghua University (CN). Active involvement in European R&D and innovation projects since 2002. Contribution to standardization activities of ISO/TC 204 (also Head of Delegation (NL) 2021-2023) and IEEE. PhD at Lund University, Sweden; Master's title and degree of Engineering in The Netherlands and P.R. China.

Christian Geller is a Research Associate and PhD Candidate in the Vehicle Intelligence and Automated Driving department at the Institute for Automotive Engineering (ika) at RWTH Aachen University. His research focuses on simulation architectures, aiming to scale the automated testing process for automated driving systems within the DevOps cycle. As a specialist in simulation-driven development and testing, he works to integrate simulation into the vehicle development lifecycle. He also serves as Project Manager in the German-funded research project autotech.agil, exploring connectivity between all relevant entities in future mobility systems. Additionally, he is one of the main organizers of this joint IV workshop.

Tim Leinmueller is heading DENSO's European fundamental technology R&D department. His group is responsible for R&D in the domains of cybersecurity, microcontrollers, in-vehicle networks, and wireless communication. Tim is responsible for DENSO's involvement in the 5G Automotive Association (5GAA), where he is an elected member of the board since 2018, and elected Vice Chair of the board since 2024. He has been serving as chair of WG1 from 2019 to 2024. Furthermore, he is representing DENSO in connectivity and CCAM (cooperative, connected and automated mobility) related activities in ETSI, CLEPA, ERTRAC, VDA, the CCAM Partnership, and ERTICO where he is also a member of the strategy committee. In total, Tim is working in the connected vehicles domain for more than 20 years. He is/has been serving in related organizations in multiple positions, amongst others as member of the technical committee and as chair of the architecture working group in the CAR 2 CAR Communication Consortium (C2C-CC).

Dr. Ignacio Alvarez is a principal engineer in automated driving at Intel Labs and technical assistant to Intel Labs Director. His research focuses on advanced development of automotive system architectures, software, and simulation tools to accelerate the adoption of safe automated driving. Previously, he worked at BMW developing Vehicle Telematics, HMI and ADS solutions. He has lead R&D and product development in Europe, Asia and America, and contributed to IEEE 2446 and ETSI. He is an avid inventor with 50+ patents, and 130+ patents pending. PhD in Computer Science applied to Automotive Engineering (Univ. Basque Country (ES) & Clemson Univ. (USA)).

Sergei Avedisov works as a Principal Researcher at Toyota InfoTech Labs. His research interests include cooperative localization, cooperative perception, cooperative maneuvering, teleoperated driving, and urban air mobility. Sergei has graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor with a PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2019.

For over 30 years, Robert Gee has been a strategy manager and futurist for companies including IBM, Motorola, and now Continental. He currently focuses on standards, government, and intellectual property.

Dr. Javier Ibanez-Guzman received M.S.E.E. (University of Pennsylvania, USA, as a Fulbright Scholar); Ph.D. (University of Reading, on an UK SERC fellowship). He was Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. Currently Corporate Expert on Autonomous Systems at Renault S.A., and co-director of the SIVALab Common Laboratory between the CNRS, UTC Compiegne and Renault working on intelligent vehicle technologies. Representative to ISO groups associated to autonomous vehicles and AI. Formerly, he was a Senior Scientist with SimTech, A-Star research institute, Singapore. He is a C.Eng. and fellow of the Institute of Engineering Technology, U.K.

Tom Lusco (Iteris) is a system architect and developer of the Architecture Reference for Cooperative and Intelligent Transportation (ARC-IT), that serves as reference architecture for North America and is extensively used in planning, deployment and standards development. He has more than 30 years of experience in systems engineering and the application of standards to technical development. He has participated in and led international harmonization and standards development activities. He collaborated with an team of international experts to develop the mechanisms to reference standards in such a way as to provide standards guidance to the users of ITS architecture products and tools. He is heavily involved in the development of reference architectures for ITS and smart cities, and participates regularly in standards developments in ITS, vehicle connectivity, cybersecurity and smart cities.

Prof. Marquez-Barja is a distinguished academic and researcher, currently holding a dual role as a Professor at the University of Antwerp and IMEC, Belgium. He leads the Flexible & Programmable Networks Group at IDLab/imec Antwerp, where he has played a pivotal role in advancing wireless technology and communication networks. He has been involved in numerous European research projects. His research interests encompass cutting-edge areas like 5G/6G architectures, edge computing, and IoT. He is also deeply committed to connected mobility development, and leads the Citylab Smart City testbed and SmartHighway in Antwerp. He has received numerous awards, and authored 250+ publications.

Thomas Monninger is a Staff Machine Learning Engineer at Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America, specializing in novel machine learning technologies for autonomous driving. Over his ten-year tenure at Mercedes-Benz, he has worked on various aspects of this field, including Perception, Sensor Fusion, Prediction, and Mapping. He has published academic papers on these subjects and holds several related patents. Thomas earned his Master's degree in Computer Science from University of Stuttgart, Germany, focusing on Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and Robotics.

Enrico Natalizio (Senior member IEEE) is currently Chief Researcher of the Autonomous Robotics Research Center with the Technology Innovation Institute (UAE) and a Full Professor with the LORIA laboratory at the Universite de Lorraine (France). He obtained his master's degree magna cum laude and his Ph.D in Computer Engineering at the University of Calabria (Italy) in 2000 and 2005 respectively. His research interests include UAV communications and networking, robot and sensor communications with applications in networking technologies for disaster management and infrastructure monitoring, and IoT privacy and security. He has been ranked in the top-2% world-wide scientists of the Stanford-University's bibliometric study for the year 2021 and 2024.

Nicolas Ochoa has bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from Universidad de los Andes, and a PhD in controls from Penn State University. Since 2019 he works at DENSO in the R&D division, investigating the role of simulation in the automotive development process. Currently, he focuses on Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), and scenario-based testing for AD/ADAS. Nicolas also participates in ASAM as a lead contributor to the OpenSCENARIO standards.

Brian Park is a Professor in the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Systems and Information Engineering at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on enhancing surface transportation systems through connected automated vehicle controls, traffic operations, and management strategies. Dr. Park earned his B.S. and M.S. from Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea, and his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University. He has received numerous awards, including the Charley V. Wootan Award and the George N. Saridis Best Paper Award. He is an associate editor of the ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering and the Journal of the Intelligent Transportation Systems.

Dhruv Patel is a Systems Engineer at Zoox (Amazon) and former Diagnostics Lead at General Motors. He is the inventor of 10 U.S. patents that advance Intelligent Transportation Systems, including innovations in EV range optimization, active safety, road hazard detection, autonomous navigation, and smart diagnostics. His work has enabled regulatory compliance, improved vehicle safety, and enhanced real-time decision-making in connected and automated vehicles. Dhruv is an active member of IEEE ITSS, contributing to standards development and peer review for IEEE and SAE journals. He regularly speaks at IEEE events, promoting innovation across industry and research in future mobility systems.