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.

Aaron Rosekind is an experienced engineering leader specializing in robotics, embedded systems, and firmware development. He has led teams in developing high-reliability, safety-critical software for autonomous vehicles, tactical robotics, and unmanned aerial systems.

Currently at Zoox, Aaron leads firmware teams and drives fail-operational initiatives end-to-end, including system architecture, firmware and software development, and deployment on product software tools. He holds an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a B.S. in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University.

Fernando Garcia is a Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, leader of the Autonomous Mobility and Perception Lab in Spain. He served as a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society from 2017 to 2025.

Prof. Garcia has also promoted successful companies such as Ates Tech and Seevia, and served as CTO of the latter for two years. He has actively contributed to many IEEE ITSS conferences, including IEEE IV 2020, IEEE ITSC 2023, IEEE ICVES 2025 (as Program Chair), and IEEE ICVEs 2018 (as General Chair).

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Rajan Chaudhary, SMIEEE, is a researcher in Intelligent Transportation Systems and Reinforcement Learning at ABV-IIITM Gwalior, India. His work focuses on eco-safe longitudinal control, energy management, and evaluation metrics for connected and automated electric vehicles. He serves as a WG Chair-designate of IEEE SA P3943 and a Voting Member of IEEE SA P3439. Rajan is a verified reviewer for IEEE T-ITS, T-VT, T-PAMI, and Nature Scientific Reports, and was a Top-10 Finalist in the EdgeAI Innovation Challenge 2024.

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.

Jim Misener is Senior Vice President, Digital Infrastructure and Mobility Innovation at WSP in the U.S. As part of WSP's advisory and planning practice and executive leadership team, he develops and delivers strategies to harness innovation in digitizing transportation deployments, with focus on the synergies of radio communications, private sector and government to provide technical and enterprise transformation to enhance mobility and safety.

Previously, he was Senior Director, Product Management and the Global V2X Ecosystem Lead for Qualcomm. He developed and executed V2X deployment strategy across all global regions, working with automotive, road owner-operator and telecommunications partners. He also develops IoT solutions for transportation markets. Misener established and led the automotive standards team at Qualcomm.

Misener served as an ITS America Board member, ITS California senior advisor, 5GAA Board member and serves on the IEEE ITS Society Board of Governors. He is an Advisory Council member to Mobility 21-Traffic 21 led by Carnegie Mellon University and on the Technical Advisory Board to the Center for Connected and Automated Transportation at the University of Michigan. Misener was a pioneer in vehicle-highway automation and vehicle safety communication at the California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH) at UC Berkeley. He has served as PATH Executive Director, Executive Advisor to Booz Allen Hamilton, and as an independent consultant. He holds BS and MS degrees from UCLA and USC, respectively. He is an IEEE Fellow.

Thomas Monninger is a Staff Machine Learning Engineer at Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America, where he specializes in advancing novel machine learning technologies for autonomous driving. Over his ten-year tenure with Mercedes-Benz, he has developed deep technical expertise across Perception, Sensor Fusion, Prediction, and Mapping. An active contributor to the autonomous vehicle research community, Thomas has authored multiple academic papers and holds several related patents. He successfully defended his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, focusing on Scene Understanding for Autonomous Driving.

Brian Park is a Professor in the Civil & Environmental Engineering and Systems & Information Engineering Departments at the University of Virginia and a member of Link Lab. He earned his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 1998. A prolific researcher, Dr. Park has published over 190 papers and amassed more than 9,500 citations. His awards include the 2014 George N. Saridis Best Transactions Paper Award and the 2024 Governor?s Environmental Excellence Award. He holds editorial roles with several leading transportation journals. His work focuses on connected and automated vehicles, traffic operations, and cyber-physical transportation systems. Through UVA?s Link Lab, he develops technology solutions?particularly cooperative vehicle control algorithms to enhance the efficiency and safety of surface transportation. He also contributes his expertise to the Transportation Research Board and ASCE technical committees, helping to shape the future of intelligent transportation.

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.