The Autonomous Hybrid Main Event

Reinhard Ploss has been a member of the Management Board of Infineon Technologies AG since 2007 (mandated until 31 December 2022). He has been CEO since October 1, 2012. Reinhard Ploss was born on December 8, 1955, in Bamberg. He studied process engineering at the Technical University of Munich and received his doctorate in 1990. He began his career at Infineon in 1986 (Siemens AG until 1999).

As a leader in automotive technologies, Michelle Avary has been at the forefront of revolutionizing the mobility space and has devoted her career in establishing better infrastructures for automotive, autonomous, IoT, and connectivity platforms. Michelle recently joined Einride, a Swedish transport company based in Stockholm, Sweden, specializing in electric and self-driving vehicles. There she holds the position of VP Product Strategy and Government Affairs, North America.

Since joining Arm as one of its first employees, Simon played a key role in developing industry standards, and his engineering work led to him being granted several embedded-systems patents. He became vice president of engineering in 2001, and before being named as Arm CEO in July 2013, he held several other strategy positions including global head of sales. He was personally responsible for expanding the company’s U.S. business and strengthening its leadership and relationships in California’s Silicon Valley.

At Continental, Andrea Ketzer is responsible for the SW Organization in the ADAS Business Unit, including the entire product portfolio: radar, camera, lidar and central ECUs for automated and assisted driving in any system configuration. She is leading a team of approximately 2500 Software Engineers distributed geographically over more than 10 locations. Before joining Continental in 2013, Andrea Ketzer held leading positions at BMW and Nokia.

Jody Kelman leads the Lyft Autonomous team, where she runs products for self-driving vehicle integration and deployment. Prior to Lyft, Jody worked at McKinsey & Company, focusing on public-private partnerships and technology-driven infrastructure investments. In 2008, she served on President Obama's Technology, Innovation, and Government Reform transition team. Jody graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and holds a master's degree from the University of Sydney, where she was a Fulbright Scholar.

Lars Reger is executive vice president and chief technology officer for NXP Semiconductors. He is responsible for managing new business activities, R&D in automotive, industry 4.0, the internet of things (IoT), mobile and connectivity & infrastructure. Prior to joining NXP as CTO of the automotive division in 2008, he was responsible for business development and product management within Continental’s connectivity business unit. In December 2018, Lars was appointed NXP’s CTO and has since then been responsible for the technology portfolio of NXP.

As CTO at Motional, Laura Major leads hundreds of engineers in the development of revolutionary driverless technology systems. A graduate of the MIT, she has had a long career developing autonomous solutions across robotics, aerial and space applications. Laura is also an accomplished writer and co-author of the book “What to Expect When You’re Expecting Robots: The Future of Human-Robot Collaboration”.

Dr. Trent Victor is Director of Safety Research and Best Practices at Waymo. He oversees safety research to support safety evaluations and strategic initiatives; provides his expertise in the areas of collision data analysis, collision causation, injury severity assessments, and naturalistic driving data research and analysis. He coordinates the development of best practices and external industry standard setting groups. Prior to Waymo, Trent was Senior Technical Leader at Volvo, Adjunct Professor in Driver Behavior at Chalmers and at University of Iowa.

Dr. Sagar Behere is the Director of Systems and Safety Engineering at Aurora Inc. In this role, he leads Aurora's rigorous engineering efforts to deliver a safe and highly performant autonomous driving system. Prior to Aurora, Dr. Behere has engaged in development of highly automated driving technology for Toyota, Zoox, Volvo, and Scania. He holds a PhD in Reference Architectures for Highly Automated Driving from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Shinichi Yoshioka serves as the Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Renesas. He was appointed this role in August 2019, thanks to his experience and in-depth technological expertise of the products and the market of Renesas. Prior to his appointment as the CTO, Mr. Yoshioka was also the Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Automotive Solution Business Unit in 2018, contributing to the growth of the Automotive Business for Renesas Electronics.

Georges Massing is the Vice President Digital Vehicle & Mobility at Daimler AG. He joined Daimler as Director User Interaction & Software for the Mercedes-Benz vehicle portfolio in 2016. Previously, he was responsible for Driver Experience, mechatronic controls and interior light for BMW in Munich and held various management positions in areas such as gesture and eye control, driver assistance systems, EV / hybrid vehicles and lighting systems at Magna. Georges Massing holds a graduate degree in aerospace engineering from Technical University of Berlin.

CEO and Co-Founder of Virgin Hyperloop, Josh Giegel is leading a world-class team of engineers making hyperloop a reality. In November 2020, Josh made history becoming one of the first passengers in the world to ride on a hyperloop. He is leading the development of paradigm shifting electromagnetic, high power, autonomous technology, bridging the engineering work with unparalleled passenger experience and working at the highest levels of government to develop a regulatory framework for hyperloop technology.

Edzard Overbeek is CEO of leading location services provider, HERE Technologies. With decades of sales technology experience, Overbeek’s career maps the globe, holding leadership positions at Fujitsu, Siemens and Cisco Systems. Before taking HERE’s helm, Overbeek led Cisco’s Global Services organization, responsible for over $12 billion in revenues. In 2016, Overbeek became CEO of HERE Maps, which has since transformed into HERE Technologies. The company helps democratize global mobility, envisioning to enable an autonomous world for everyone.

Lucilla Sioli is the Director for "Artificial Intelligence and Digital Industry" within Directorate-General CONNECT at the European Commission. She is responsible for the coordination of the European digitisation of industry strategy and for policy development in the area of artificial intelligence (AI). The directorate also supports R&D&I in key digital industrial technologies including microelectronics, photonics, robotics and AI. Lucilla holds a PhD in economics from the University of Southampton and one from the Catholic University of Milan.

Richard Damm is an internationally recognised expert in the field of the worldwide harmonisation of regulations for the approval and monitoring of motor vehicles. Under his leadership, the globally applicable vehicle regulations were further developed to reduce trade barriers. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of the European New Car Assessment Programme, a consumer information programme on the safety level and environmental behaviour of new vehicles. His area of expertise includes automation and digitisation issues at EU and UNECE level.

Georg Kopetz is co-founder, CEO and member of the executive board at TTTech. As the company’s Chief Executive Officer, he is responsible for the overall strategy of the corporation, marketing, sales, finance and human resources. He also serves as the President of TTTech’s joint-venture company TTControl in Brixen/Bressanone, Italy. After attending school in Germany, Austria and the US, he studied law at the University of Vienna in Austria and at the Université Paris II (Panthéon-Assas) in France.

Candice Plotkin is the Director of Legal and Regulatory Policy at Cruise. In that role, she establishes and advances Cruise's policy priorities on existing and proposed laws affecting autonomous vehicles, ride-hailing, product cybersecurity, and data privacy. Prior to Cruise, Candice served as the Director of Legal and Regulatory Affairs at Lyft, where she managed legal regulatory guidance on product lines and initiatives, including autonomous vehicle technology. She received both her undergraduate and Juris Doctorate degrees from Harvard University

Gary Hicok is senior vice president of engineering at NVIDIA, where he is responsible for developing multiple computing platforms including Shield, Jetson, and DRIVE.  Prior to this role, Hicok served as senior vice president of NVIDIA’s Mobile Business Unit. This vertical focused on NVIDIA’s Tegra mobile processor, which was used to power next-generation mobile devices as well as in-car safety and infotainment systems. Before that, Hicok was senior vice president of NVIDIA’s Core Logic (MCP) Business Unit. 

Pascal Traverse is General Manager for the Autonomy “fast track” at Airbus. Autonomy is a top technical focus area for Airbus. Before his nomination, Pascal was coordinating Airbus Commercial R&T activities related to the cockpit and flight operations. Earlier in his career, he participated in the A320/A330/A340/A380 Fly-by-Wire developments, certification harmonization with FAA and EASA, management of Airbus safety activities and quality activities in the A380 Final Assembly Line. He has Master and Doctorate’s degrees in embedded systems from N7.

Jan Becker is President, CEO, acting CFO and Co-Founder of Apex.AI. He is also the Managing Director of the Apex.AI GmbH, the company’s subsidiary in Germany. Prior to founding Apex.AI, he was Senior Director at Faraday Future responsible for Autonomous Driving and Director at Robert Bosch LLC responsible for Automated Driving in North America. He also served as a Senior Manager and Principal Engineer at the Bosch Research and Technology Center in Palo Alto, CA, USA, and as a senior research engineer for Corporate Research at Robert Bosch GmbH, Germany.

Dr. Stefan Poledna is the co‐founder of TTTech Group and CTO at TTTech Auto. He is responsible for the technology roadmap, all scientific topics and quality management in both companies. Dr. Stefan Poledna has over 30 years of international industry experience in innovative embedded systems development. He has authored several patents with a focus on safety, communication, and automated driving. He received his Ph.D. degree in computer science with distinction from Vienna University of Technology, where he also lectures on Dependable Computer Systems.

Bernhard Augustin has started his career in the semiconductor industry at Infineon in ASIC design and product marketing. After several years in start-ups he joined AUDI in the development of body electronics. His current focus is on ADAS architecture and compute platforms. His team brought zFAS into series and is now working as part of CARIAD on the future ADAS compute platform up to level 4.

Stan Boland is the co-founder and CEO of Five, a self-driving technology company. Five’s cloud-based development and assurance platform helps automotive companies to speed up the development and testing of self-driving systems, whilst also reducing the immense cost to do so. In 2019, the company developed, tested, and demonstrated a safe and highly-functional AD system on the streets of London. Stan has founded and sold three startups to Broadcom, Huawei and Nvidia for over $1bn. He has also served as a board member at Arm and as CEO of Acorn Computers.

Brad Stertz is co-founder and Chairman of Partners for Automated Vehicle Education (PAVE), a coalition of diverse innovators and mobility stakeholders uniting to better equip the public and policymakers about the transportation revolution. Stertz is also Director of Audi Government Affairs in the Washington D.C. office where he works on a range of evolving topics, including automated vehicle testing and deployment, electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, connected vehicle technologies, safety, cybersecurity, emissions regulations and trade

Gail Gottehrer's practice focuses on technology-related litigation and counseling, including autonomous vehicle regulation, connected vehicle regulation, data privacy, biometrics, cybersecurity, facial recognition, and IoT. Gail is a frequent speaker on the implications of technology for the law and business operations. She teaches Law for Knowledge Innovation at Columbia University, is a member of the Advisory Board for Rutgers University’s Leading Disruptive Innovation Program and is a Fellow at the Center for Legal Innovation at Vermont Law School.

Young Sohn serves as President and Chief Strategy Officer for Samsung Electronics, and Chairman of the board of HARMAN. He leads Samsung’s strategy for global innovation, investment and new business creation. Young led the $8 billion acquisition of HARMAN. Before joining Samsung, Young served on the boards of Arm, Cymer, and others. Under his leadership, he took PLX Technologies, Synnex Technologies and Inphi public. Mr. Sohn also co-founded the Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC), the world’s largest startup competition addressing global challenges.

Benedikt Wolfers is a founding partner of POSSER SPIETH WOLFERS & PARTNERS (pswp), a law firm specialized in national and international regulation for different industries, notably automotive, energy, finance and infrastructure. He has been engaged for many years in the design and approval process for SAE L3 and 4 systems and the development of homologation and road traffic law. He is advising OEMs, semiconductors, tier 1 companies in Europe and the US and has long-standing experience with national and international regulatory bodies and governments.

Christoph Hartung took over as chairman of the Board of Management of ETAS GmbH on January 1, 2021. Hartung has been with Bosch since January 2020 and held the role of Executive Vice President of the Connected Mobility Solutions division. He holds an academic degree in Industrial Engineering and Management Science and a Master of Science in Computer and Information Science from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. He started his career with various automakers, including Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz.