Speaker Profiles

Prof. Frank (Fuquan) Zhao is a Professor and Director of Automotive Strategy Research Institute at Tsinghua University, China (since May 2013) where he leads a group of strategic research on automotive industry policy, corporate management and technology strategies.

Prof. Zhao got a doctorate degree in Engineering from Hiroshima University in Japan in 1992 and has years of on-the-job experience in Japan, United Kingdom, United States, and China. Prior to joining Tsinghua University, Prof. Zhao had the experience of Vice President of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, President of Zhejiang Geely Automotive R&D Center, President of Zhejiang Automotive Engineering Institute, and Chairman of DSI company of Australia since November 2006; Vice President of Shenyang Brilliance JinBei Automobile Company Limited and General Manager of its R&D Centre since 2004; and Engineering Specialist and Research Executive of Technical Affairs at DaimlerChrysler since 1997.

Chris joined FISITA as Chief Executive Officer in August 2014, continuing a successful career and now bringing over 30 years’ experience working in the automotive industry.

As CEO, Chris has overseen the extensive modernisation of FISITA, transforming the organisation into a leading platform for global knowledge exchange and facilitating co-operation and support amongst FISITA’s membership and the wider automotive and mobility systems industry. In addition to refreshing the FISITA brand and membership structure and offering, Chris has introduced a number of innovations including the one-day conference FISITA PLUS, a regular series of Technical Webinars and the FISITA International Engineering Community. Chris has also successfully established the FISITA Foundation charity with a number of initial high-profile donors, created to provide financial support for the next generation of automotive and mobility systems engineers.

Prior to joining FISITA, Chris spent 14 years working within Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the UK’s premier automotive trade association, was a member of the senior management team and Managing Director of subsidiary, Motor Codes. During this time Chris became recognised as an expert within the UK automotive industry and received recognition and awards from the industry for his work throughout the years.

Chris is a Fellow of the Institute of the Motor Industry and regularly contributes to international discussions and thought leadership pieces on the continued transition of the automotive and mobility industry.

Mike Ma is currently a professor in the College of Automotive Engineering, Jilin University, China. His research interests are on autonomous driving, lightweight and NVH technologies. He has published 8 academic books, more than 100 technical papers and 200 patents in automotive engineering. Prof. Ma has served as Vice President of FISITA, with responsibilities on Technical committee since 2018.

Dr. Ma has co-founded and works as Executive Editor-in-Chief of the international journal of Automotive Innovation (English version), a top academic journal in the field of automotive engineering in China.

Prior to his current position, Dr. Ma had worked for Chrysler North America over 8 years. And as VP and Sr. Chief Engineer in Geely Tech Center from 2008 to 2014, he led several whole new vehicle R&D program, implementation of latest lightweight and NVH technologies.

Mike Ma pursued his PhD study in mechanical engineering in Imperial College London, UK, in 1995.  And he has over 30 years’ experience on vehicle research and development in Europe, North America and China.

Since 2008 Klaus Kompass is VP Vehicle Safety for all products of BMW Group. He is responsible for the development of active safety, passive safety, accident research as well as the safety aspects of automated driving for all vehicles of the brands BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce.

After school and his military service at the German Airforce he studied Safety Engineering at the University of Wuppertal and graduated as Dipl.-Ing. in 1985. After 18 months working in a research project with the German coal industry he moved to Munich and started his automotive career as crash test engineer in the BMW vehicle safety department. During the next years he held several functions in BMWs R&D department to become director of vehicle safety advanced engineering in 1995. In 1999 he left BMW and became responsible for all engineering activities at Autoliv GmbH, market leader in restraint systems and safety electronics and has been in charge of three R&D centers in Germany and the UK. In 2003 he went back to BMW AG to manage different roles in the electric and electronic development and ultimately for ADAS advanced drivers assistance systems. In 2008 he was nominated as VP for vehicle safety.

Klaus Kompass is Professor for vehicle safety and driver assistance at the Technical University of Berlin and the University of Applied Sciences Konstanz. He is a member of the scientific boards of CARISSMA (Center of Automotive Research on Integrated Safety Systems and Measurement Area, University of Applied Sciences Ingolstadt), of DIU, Dresden International University for the M.S. program on Vehicle Safety and Accident Research and is the Corporate Member representative for the BMW Group in FISITA. He received several international awards like the “US Government Award for Safety Engineering Excellence” from the US DOT, the “Fraunhofer Airbag Award” from Fraunhofer ICT, the “Pathfinder Award” of the Automotive Safety Council, the “Josef-Stroebl-Preis” from the Bavarian Ministry for Internal Affairs and was promoted for the “FISITA Academy for Technical Leadership” in 2019. Together with his wife Heike he has three adult kids at the age of 22, 27 and 32. He is a passionate sportsmen, carries a black belt in Taekwondo and whenever there is time he likes to work on his vintage cars, ride motorcycles or bicycles or goes kayaking or rock climbing with his kids or friends.

Prof. Jun Li is currently an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, professor at School of Vehicle and Mobility with Tsinghua University, president of the China Society of Automotive Engineers, director of the Expert Committee of China Industry Innovation Alliance for the Intelligent and Connected Vehicles. He has been chief engineer and director of technology center in China FAW Group. His research interests include internal combustion engine, electric drive systems, electric vehicles, and intelligent connected vehicles.

Research experience：
Prof. Jun Li has long presided over the product R&D and technological innovation for major automobile companies in China. He established a leading independent research system and completed a number of major product replacement projects, major national projects, and major equipment model development projects. In the field of automotive powertrain, he presided over the development of heavy-duty series diesel engines, series products of direct injection supercharged gasoline engines, heavy-duty equipped trucks, military vehicles, and HongQi luxury cars. He also presided over the R&D and mass produce of the diesel automated electronic control system products. Further, he invented dual-track electronically controlled variable fuel injection regular high-pressure systems and gas-driven urea injection system. For new energy vehicle, he invented a strong hybrid configuration with dual coupling of motor, engine, and gearbox, and presided over the development of the first full hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles as well as hybrid bus products. In the area of intelligent connected vehicles, he proposed a technology strategy, "Zhitu", and technical route for China FAW’s intelligent connected vehicles. In addition, he designed the HongQi L3 prototype vehicle and the forward-looking R&D of smart city intelligent automobiles.

Prof. Philip Koopman is an internationally recognized expert on Autonomous Vehicle (AV) safety who has worked in that area at Carnegie Mellon University for 25 years. He is also actively involved with AV safety policy, regulation, implementation, and standards. His pioneering research work includes software robustness testing and run time monitoring of autonomous systems to identify how they break and how to fix them. He has extensive experience in software safety and software quality across numerous transportation, industrial, and defense application domains including conventional automotive software and hardware systems. He served as the lead author of the UL 4600 standard for autonomous system safety.

About Edge Case Research
Founded by Michael Wagner and Philip Koopman, Ph.D., recognized world leaders in autonomous system safety as a trusted, independent third-party source to assess and develop safe autonomous systems. Established in 2014 with a renowned team of leaders in self-driving car projects with successes dating back to where it all began - Carnegie Mellon in the 1990s. Edge Case offers products and services built on best practices to reduce time to market and the cost of validation while still achieving a robust safety goal. Our intelligent safety assessment platform, Hologram, automates Edge Case’s safety expertise to support fast-paced, data centered, deep learning development for mission critical applications. Hologram increases the speed and accuracy of finding edge cases in perception systems; the leading product in helping clients mitigate the safety risks. Edge Case is headquartered in Pittsburgh with an office in Munich, Germany. See more information at https://www.ecr.ai

Zu Sijie, Professor of Engineering, born in Oct. 1968, obtained a Masters degree in Automotive Engineering in Tsinghua University. He is acting as the Vice President and Chief Engineer of SAIC Motor.  He was the Senior Manager of Program Management Division of Planning Department in SGM, and General Manager of Strategy and Business Planning Department in SAIC Motor, and then the Vice Chief Engineer of SAIC Motor.  He is full of experience in the automotive industry.

In 1991 Jochen Feese joined the Mercedes-Benz AG. 1994 he received his diploma in electrical engineering at the Cooperative State University in Stuttgart and began his career in the Mercedes-Benz passenger car development.

Until October 2000 he worked in the cockpit development in various vehicle projects for the E and S Class. He then moved to the Group Research & Advanced Engineering division and worked as executive assistant for the research directorates Electronics and Mechatronics and Corporate Quality Management, Under his leadership, in October 2004, the Tech Center Japan of the Mercedes-Benz Cars Development division was established. The department is active in the topics driver assistance systems, telematics and hybrid. In 2009 he returned to Germany and took the lead in Group Research &  Advanced Engineering for the department Technology Transfer Driver Assistance Systems/Active Safety until March 2010. From April 2010 until October 2014 he was responsible for Technology Management and Research Policy.

Today he is head of Accident Research, Concepts, Child Safety, Sensor Functions & Systems Integral Safety in the R&D division of Mercedes-Benz Cars.

About Mercedes-Benz AG

Mercedes-Benz AG is responsible for the global business of Mercedes-Benz Cars and Mercedes-Benz Vans with over 173,000 employeesworldwide. Ola Källenius is Chairman of the Board of Management of Mercedes-Benz AG. The company focuses on the development, production and sales of passenger cars, vans and services. Furthermore, the company aspires to be leading in the fields of connectivity, automated driving and alternative drives with its forward-looking innovations. The product portfolio comprises the Mercedes-Benz brand with the sub-brands Mercedes-AMG, Mercedes-Maybach and Mercedes me - as well as the smart brand, and the EQ product and technology brand for electric mobility.

Mercedes-Benz AG is one of the largest manufacturers of premium passenger cars. In 2019 it sold nearly 2.4 million cars and more than 438,000 vans. In its two business divisions, Mercedes-Benz AG is continually expanding its worldwide production network with over 40 production sites on four continents, while aligning itself to meet the requirements of electric mobility. At the same time, the company is developing its global battery production network on three continents. Sustainable actions play a decisive role in both business divisions.

To the company, sustainability means creating value for all stakeholders on a lasting basis: customers, employees, investors, business partners and the society as a whole. The basis for this is the sustainable business strategy of Daimler in which the company takes responsibility for the economic, ecological and social effects of its business activities and looks at the entire value chain.    

Hong Cheng is currently a full professor at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC). He is an IEEE senior member, and a Leading Talent in Science and Technology Innovation of National Ten Thousand Plan. He received the Ph.D degree from Xi'an Jiaotong University in 2003, and held a postdoctoral position at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States from 2006 to 2009. His research fields include computer vision, machine learning, robotics and intelligent vehicles. He has published 120 papers in top international conferences and journals such as IEEE TCSVT / TITS / PR /AAAI / IJCAI / IROS / ICRA / ICCV / CVPR. He is the only author of “Autonomous Intelligent Vehicles: Theory, Algorithms, and Implementation” (Springer, Dec.2011) and “Sparse Representation, Modeling and Learning in Visual Recognition” (Springer, June. 2015). He was awarded the "First Prize of Wu Wenjun Artificial Intelligence Technology Progress" by the Chinese Artificial Intelligence Society in 2017.
In 2018, he was rated as " National ten-thousand leading talent in scientific and technological innovation" of China. And his team was awarded the "Technology Innovation Research Team of Exoskeleton Robot" in Sichuan Province in 2015. Professor Hong Cheng was selected in the New Century Outstanding Talents Program of the Ministry of Education in 2010, the hundred Talents Program of UESTC in 2012, and the Thousand Talents Program of Sichuan Province in 2013.
Professor Cheng Hong was committed to the theory and application of artificial intelligence and robotics. He presided over 7 national key projects, and received several creative achievements on exoskeleton systems and intelligent vehicles. His team develop an exoskeleton system named AIDER in 2015 and helped paraplegic patient Lin Han finish the torch relay on the opening ceremony of the 9th Paralympics games. The AIDER system has already obtained China Food and Drug Administration in 2018 and has been industrialized.

Hong Wang is currently a Research Associate Professor at Tsinghua University. Now, she is the deputy director of Smart Mobility Research Institute at Tsinghua University, and deputy executive director of CAICV-SOTIF technical alliance. From the year 2015 to 2019, she was working as a Research Associate of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering with the University of Waterloo. She received her Ph.D. degree in Beijing Institute of Technology in China in the year 2015. Her research focuses on the Safety of The Intended Functionality (SOTIF) related research, especially risk assessment and crash mitigation-based decision making during critical driving scenarios, ethical decision making for autonomous vehicles and so on. She has published over 50papers on top international journals, and served as youth corresponding expert in Engineering, guest editor of special issue in IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine and Automotive Innovation.

Li Dan, professor of engineer, Deputy Dean of FAW General R&D Institute and Dean of FAW ICV department, has been engaged in automobile development for a long time, responsible the whole vehicle development of Pola, Jetta and Tayron, and achieved great success.

He has rich experience in technical research, product development, manufacturing, quality control, project management and related fields.

He has hosted and organized 10 national, provincial and FAW projects, he and his team won many awards in related fields.

Work experience:

1991.02-2009.07: FAW-Volkswagen Product Engineering Department, as engineer, team leader and section chief

2009.07-2012.05: FAW-Volkswagen Technology Development Department, as department leader of Body development department

2012.05-2015.08: FAW-Volkswagen Technology Development Department, as department leader of Project Control department

2015.08-2020.05: FAW-Volkswagen Technology Development Department, as chief technology leader

2020.05-present: Deputy Dean of FAW General R&D Institute and Dean of FAW ICV department

Bo Wang got a doctorate degree in Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2009, and is currently General Manager Assistant and Head of Frontier Generic Technology Division/Engineering Application Division, China Intelligent and Connected Vehicles(Beijing) Research Institute Co.,Ltd.

Dr. Wang researches mainly on Cyber-Physical System Architecture of Intelligent and Connected Vehicles, Scenario Technology for Intelligent and Connected Vehicles, and Safety of the Intended Functionality, and has organized and completed a number of national and local momentous projects.

Dr. Wang works actively to improve the development of Intelligent and Connected Vehicles, and also is head of the technical class for the construction of Beijing Netlink Cloud-controlled High-level autonomous Driving demonstration Zone, consultant expert of Research Institute of Highway Ministry of Transport on national development and planning, and special expert of I-Vista International Joint Research Center for Test & Evaluation of Intelligent and Connected Vehicles.

Xinjie Zhang is a professor of the State Key Laboratory of Automotive Simulation and Control (ASCL) at Jilin University, China, where he also holds the position of Deputy Director of the ASCL.      

Dr. Zhang got his PhD from Jilin University in 2011 and had been a visiting scholar at the Center for Vehicle Systems and Safety of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University from 2009 to 2011, and also took one-year research sabbatical at the Center for Automotive Research of the Ohio State University from 2017 to 2018.  His research focuses on Vehicle System Dynamics and Control, Smart Mobility Testing and Evaluation, and serves as Associate Editor for Journal of Vibration and Control, Automotive Innovation, SAE International Journal of Vehicle Dynamics, Stability, and NVH. He was awarded FISITA Manuel Junoy Award (2012), SAE Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award (2019), and Outstanding Young Scientists of Chinese Automotive Industry Technology (2019).

Prof. Dongpu Cao is the Canada Research Chair in Driver Cognition and Automated Driving, and currently an Associate Professor and Director of Waterloo Cognitive Autonomous Driving (CogDrive) Lab at University of Waterloo, Canada. His current research focuses on driver cognition, automated driving, cognitive autonomous driving, and connected autonomous driving. He has contributed more than 120 journal papers. He received the SAE Arch T. Colwell Merit Award in 2012, IEEE VTS 2020 Best Vehicular Electronics Paper Award and three Best Paper Awards from the ASME and IEEE conferences. Prof. Cao serves as Deputy Editor-in-Chief for IET ITS Journal, and an Associate Editor for IEEE TVT, IEEE/ASEM TMECH, IEEE TIE, IEEE T-TIS, IEEE TCSS, IEEE/CAA JAS, ASME JDSMC, and IJVD. Prof. Cao is an IEEE VTS Distinguished Lecturer.

Junmin Wang is the Accenture Endowed Professor in Mechanical Engineering at University of Texas at Austin. In 2008, he started his academic career at Ohio State University, where he founded the Vehicle Systems and Control Laboratory, was early promoted to Associate Professor in September 2013 and then very early promoted to Full Professor in June 2016. He also gained five years of full-time industrial research experience at Southwest Research Institute (San Antonio Texas) from 2003 to 2008. Prof. Wang has a wide range of research interests covering control, modeling, estimation, optimization, and diagnosis of dynamical systems, especially for automotive, smart and sustainable mobility, human-machine, and cyber-physical applications. Dr. Wang is the author or coauthor of more than 330 peer-reviewed publications including 168 journal articles and 13 U.S. patents. Prof. Wang is a recipient of numerous international and national honors and awards including 2019 IEEE Best Vehicular Electronics Paper Award, 2018 IEEE Andrew P. Sage Best Transactions Paper Award, 2017 IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems Outstanding Paper Award, and 2011 SAE International Vincent Bendix Automotive Electronics Engineering Award. He is an IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Distinguished Lecturer and Speaker, SAE Fellow, and ASME Fellow.

Dr. Wang received the B.E. in Automotive Engineering and his first M.S. in Power Machinery and Engineering from the Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 1997 and 2000, respectively, his second and third M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in 2003, and the Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2007.

• ISO/TC22/SC32/WG8 China Delegation
• UN/WP.29/GRVA/VMAD International Regulation Supporting Expert
• SAC/TC114 China Road Vehicle Functional Safety Expert Group Member

Standard Drafter of:

• ISO PAS 21448 SOTIF
• ISO 21448 SOTIF
• GB/T 34590 Road Vehicle Functional Safety
• GB/T Functional safety requirements and testing methods for battery management system of electric vehicles
• GB/T Functional Safety Requirement and Test Method for Passenger Car Steering Systems
• GB/T Performance requirements and test methods for advanced emergency braking system (AEBS) of passenger cars

Liu Jiaxi graduated from Tsinghua University with master and bachelor degree. Joined UAES in 2010, and was responsible for functional safety, system and function development of new energy vehicle. Currently acts as senior manager of domain controller system and software development, and is responsible for E/E architecture, software platform of domain controller and project management.

Passion for embedded systems and automation has lead Luc Bourgeois to  work 13 years for aircraft industry at different position in Thales company , developing  avionics systems such as Flight Management System and Flight Guidance system. Then in  2000 Luc Bourgeois  joined the Renault Group as manager of embedded software and Systems control. Since 2010 Luc Bourgeois act as “Expert Leader” for Systems control and ADAS and Autonomous Driving Systems.

Fang Chen received her B.Sc. in Biology in Peking University, China in year 1983. And received her Ph.D. in Linkoping University, Sweden in year 1997. In her occupational curia, the research areas covered ergonomics, Human Factors and Interaction design, from theorical research to application design. After received Ph.D., she spent 6 years doing research on cockpit interaction design for fight aircraft, mainly focusing on speech interaction and 3D audio presentation. From year 2005, her research area shifted from aviation to automobile application. For over 30 years of academy life, her research work covered  cognitive science, Human factors and human-machine interaction, with theoretical background involving physiology, behavioral psychology, visual and auditory interaction. Research results are widely applied in multimedia system usability, automatic control, aviation and automobile driving control, public safety and crisis management. As the expert in interaction design, serving as a member and consultant to several international academic research institutions and large companies like Huawei and FAW, she published hundreds of papers in international journals and conferences. In regarding the vehicle interaction design, she focused more on human behavior related safety issues and user experiences. Now she is leading the research work on establishing different Chinese standards for HMI in vehicles.

Sajin Gopi is working as an Application Engineer in Smart Calibration and Virtual Testing department in AVL List GmbH Graz, Austria from 2017 onwards. His responsibility mainly includes methodology development in ADAS validation. Before joining AVL, Sajin worked as ADAS simulation engineer in Hardware-in-Loop systems for a European OEM. He completed his Master's Degree in Control system from National Institute of Technology Calicut in 2013, mainly focusing on Advanced Control strategies and its Calibration.

Member of the National Technical Committee for road traffic management standardization, member of the National Technical Committee for standardization of product defects and safety management, expert group expert for in-depth investigation of road traffic accidents of the Ministry of public security, senior inspector of motor vehicles of the Ministry of public security, etc. From October 2012 to now, he has successively served as deputy director and director of the vehicle safety research office of the road traffic safety research center of the Ministry of public security, and participated in the formulation and revision of a number of national and ministerial vehicle safety related policies, regulations and standards. For a long time, he has been engaged in policy, regulation and technology research on vehicle operation safety, vehicle safety management system, road traffic accident investigation, road traffic safety, autonomous vehicle, etc.

Work experience
Alexandre started his career as Vehicle Dynamics engineer at Nissan Technical Centre Europe.
He moved to become Corporate Head of Vehicle Dynamics and NVH at Applus+ IDIADA in 2010 before moving with IDIADA to their Chinese operation as Engineering director of IDIADA China
He has been Business Unit Director of IDIADA China since 2019. Currently managing a team of 250 people offering in China complete services of test, engineering, homologation, consultancy and proving ground for the automotive industry.

Additional Information
Alexandre is a Professor at the University of Barcelona for automotive engineering, and Master on Vehicle Chassis development and Safety.
He has several technical papers published, and has made contributions to several congresses with key notes.
He has an International Patent of a portable Wheel position sensor.
He is a former member of Active Safety working group of Euro NCAP for the development of assessment protocols.
Alexandre studied Mechanical engineering at the Polytechnic University of Barcelona (Spain) and the University of Aberdeen (Scotland).

Mr. Jinsuo MA is in charge of System (Optics, System, Functional Safety), Platform (SPDM, PIDO, Granta) industrial solution sales and business development work in APAC region, has deep understanding on Autonomy, Digital twin and MBSE/MBSwE, and familiar with Safety standards like IEC 61508, ISO 26262 and DO-178C etc.
Within 17 years working experience in ANSYS, Jinsuo MA has been working as Senior Consultant, Senior Account manager, regional sales manager, regional sales director Position, he has bachelor degree of Information engineering from Nanjing University of Astronautics and Aeronautics and Master degree of Electrical engineering from Shanghai Jiaotong University.

Prof. Philip Koopman is an internationally recognized expert on Autonomous Vehicle (AV) safety who has worked in that area at Carnegie Mellon University for 25 years. He is also actively involved with AV safety policy, regulation, implementation, and standards. His pioneering research work includes software robustness testing and run time monitoring of autonomous systems to identify how they break and how to fix them. He has extensive experience in software safety and software quality across numerous transportation, industrial, and defense application domains including conventional automotive software and hardware systems. He served as the lead author of the UL 4600 standard for autonomous system safety.

About Edge Case Research
Founded by Michael Wagner and Philip Koopman, Ph.D., recognized world leaders in autonomous system safety as a trusted, independent third-party source to assess and develop safe autonomous systems. Established in 2014 with a renowned team of leaders in self-driving car projects with successes dating back to where it all began - Carnegie Mellon in the 1990s. Edge Case offers products and services built on best practices to reduce time to market and the cost of validation while still achieving a robust safety goal. Our intelligent safety assessment platform, Hologram, automates Edge Case’s safety expertise to support fast-paced, data centered, deep learning development for mission critical applications. Hologram increases the speed and accuracy of finding edge cases in perception systems; the leading product in helping clients mitigate the safety risks. Edge Case is headquartered in Pittsburgh with an office in Munich, Germany. See more information at https://www.ecr.ai