Univ. Bassam Alrifaee

Dr. Bassam Alrifaee is a Professor at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich, where he leads the Professorship for Adaptive Behavior of Autonomous Vehicles. Formerly with RWTH Aachen University, he founded the Cyber-Physical Mobility (CPM) group and the CPM Lab from 2017 to 2024. In 2023, he served as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Delaware. His research encompasses distributed control, service-oriented architectures, and connected autonomous vehicles. Prof. Alrifaee has secured numerous grants and received awards for his advisory and editorial work. He is a Senior Member of IEEE.

Ignacio Alvarez

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

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.

Prof. Francesco Belotti

Francesco Bellotti is Associate Professor at DITEN, University of Genova, teaching Cyberphysical systems, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning for Automated Driving at the Master and PhD level. He received his MSc in Electronic Engineering (cum laude) and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Genoa, in 1997 and 2001, respectively. Bellotti co-authored 270+ peer-reviewed scientific publications. He has been the responsible of the design and implementation WPs of several European industrial research projects particularly in the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems. Among them: Hi-Drive and L3Pilot (H2020), Fabric and Team (FP7), EMC2 and Crystal (Artemis). He co-founded the Wondertech SME.

Angelo Corsaro

Angelo Corsaro, Ph.D., is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and co-founder of ZettaScale Technology. At ZettaScale, he leads a world-class team dedicated to revolutionizing distributed computing, ensuring that every connected human and machine can communicate, compute, and store data anywhere, at any scale, efficiently, and securely.

A globally recognized expert in Cloud-to-Thing Continuum, high-performance distributed systems, and real-time computing, Angelo is the inventor of the Zenoh protocol and the lead of the Eclipse Zenoh project. His work is reshaping the future of data-centric and event-driven architectures, bridging the gap between cloud, edge, and embedded systems.

With a prolific research background, Angelo has authored over 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals, conferences, workshops, and industry magazines. He has also contributed to over ten international standards, shaping the evolution of real-time and large-scale distributed computing.

Angelo was a founding Co-Chair of the OMG DDS standard, playing a key role in its development and adoption. His leadership in DDS continued until 2015, when he stepped away due to technical divergences and committed himself to designing and implementing the first Zenoh protocol, paving the way for the next generation of data-centric middleware.

Frank Diermeyer

Frank Diermeyer received his Diploma in Mechanical Engineering and his Ph.D. in Automotive Engineering, all from the Technical University of Munich.He led the research group "Driver Assistance System" and also took over the leadership of the group "Driver Information Systems". Currently, he is a board member of the Institute of Automotive Technology in the "School of Engineering and Design" at TUM and heads the team "AV Safe Operation".Since 2010, he has been working with his team in the field of teleoperation of vehicles on public roads.His research area comprises safety assessment, function development, and human factors evaluation of teleoperated and teleassisted systems.His contributions have been documented in more than 70 papers in journals and conferences.

Robert Gee

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.

His projects encompass military and commercial communications technologies, including space, aerial, and terrestrial, for dozens of countries across five continents. He has degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and over 20 issued patents.

Robert received a television Emmy Award for his work as a producer for CNN, pioneering the modern contracting approach for citizen photojournalists. At one point, he had a CNN-estimated syndication audience of over 1 billion viewers.

Su Hao

Hao Su is a PhD student at Osaka University and is participated in the Cross-disciplinary Innovation Fellowship.
His research interests are in autonomous driving and applications of Cellular vehicle-to-everything.
Currently, he is conducting research on the implementation and optimization of cooperative path planning system for connected autonmous vehicles.

Rares Horju

Rareș Horju is a dedicated software engineer at Elektrobit Automotive Romania specializing in containerization and orchestration in the scope of embedded automotive HPCs. Previously, he honed his expertise through work on Adaptive AUTOSAR platforms and exploring artificial intelligence applications. His collaboration with the RovisLab group at Transilvania University of Brasov deepened his understanding of emerging trends, by committing to the development of artificial vision algorithms for autonomous vehicles and robots.

Prof. Ehsan Javanmardi

Ehsan Javanmardi is currently a specially appointed assistant professor at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Japan, and a visiting faculty member at Nagoya University's Graduate School of Informatics. He earned his Ph.D. in information and communication engineering from the University of Tokyo in 2018. During his Ph.D., he conducted research as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. After obtaining his Ph.D., he remained at the University of Tokyo, where he conducted post-doctoral research at the Institute of Industrial Science until 2021. His research interests include AI in autonomous driving, connected and collaborative automated driving, AV simulation, autonomous vehicles' perception, self-localization, mapping, and decision-making. He is currently involved in several AI and autonomous driving projects, including COOL4 (funded by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry), CRONOS and ASPIRE (supported by Japan’s National Institute of Science and Technology Agency), and Suzuki.

Javier Ibanez-Guzman

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

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. Johann Marquez-Barja

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

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

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 Université 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

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.

Prof. Brian Park

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

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.

Simon Sagmeister

Simon Sagmeister received the B.Sc. degree from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), in 2019, and the M.Sc. degree, in 2021, where he is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the Institute of Automotive Technology. His research interests include vehicle simulation as well as the development and evaluation of control algorithms in autonomous driving applications.

Fabio Tango

Graduated in Physics in 1995 from University of Turin and received his PhD in Computer Science (AI and ML) in 2008 from University of Turin. His main research interests are focused on decision-making process for autonomous vehicles, intelligent support system for the interaction with humans, user’s monitoring and arbitration & sharing control strategies. He has worked in several EU funded projects, where he has been Technical Manager or internal project leader. Currently, he is working on “Hi-Drive”, “Podium” and “Events” projects.

Lars Ullrich

Lars Ullrich is a Ph.D. student at the Chair of Automatic Control at Friedrich–Alexander–Universität Erlangen–Nürnberg, where he also earned his M.Sc. in Mechatronics in 2022. For his Master’s thesis, he received the Baumüller and Hanns-Voith-Foundation Award. He holds a B.Eng. in Mechatronics from the Cooperative State University (DHBW). His research focuses on probabilistic trajectory planning for safe and reliable autonomous driving in uncertain dynamic environments, with a particular emphasis on addressing challenges associated with AI systems in automated driving. Since early 2025, he serves as Vice-Chair of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS) German Chapter.

Meng Lu

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

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 Leinmüller

Tim Leinmüller 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).