Speakers & Chairmen

Ms. Leyre Benito Cia studied Industrial Engineering at the "Universidad Pública de Navarra – UpNA" (Spain) from 2005 to 2011. Her thesis was on "Investigation of mass transport through membranes using the CFD method" as part of a research project in cooperation with Volkswagen AG at the TU Braunschweig. Since 2011 she works at GNS mbH first in crash simulation and since 2016 in the Generator4 management team.

John Creamer is the Managing Partner at GlobalAutoRegs, a services group providing expertise on global regulatory and government affairs in the automotive sector. Mr. Creamer has spent nearly 40 years in the global automotive industry, based at various times in Washington, DC, Tokyo, Brussels, Paris, and Moscow. He has held positions with TRW (a global chassis and safety systems supplier now part of ZF), the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association (representing the US supplier industry), and the US International Trade Commission (a quasi-judicial independent agency of the US Government). At GlobalAutoRegs, Mr. Creamer specializes in the development of international regulations through the UN World Forum for the Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (WP.29). He supports clients in the motor vehicle, automotive component supplier, and recreation-vehicle industries. In this work, he has become especially involved and knowledgeable on issues related to driving automation. In 2019, Mr. Creamer was elected to serve as secretary of the UN expert group on Functional Requirements for Automated Vehicles (FRAV) and in 2024, he was elected to serve as the drafting secretary for the UN expert group developing global safety requirements for Automated Driving Systems.

Pierre Culiere graduated from Ecole Centrale in Paris, France, with a final year specialty in mechanical modeling of structures. He joined ESI Group in 1989, engaged in projects with French customers for two years, and then took charge of product management for ESI’s crash and virtual prototyping solutions. In 2005, Pierre moved to Shanghai, established a Center of Excellence in Crash and Occupant Safety, and the local Representative Office of ESI Group. Since 2021, he has been based in France, coordinating product management activities for ESI’s Product Performance business line.  Pierre has supported the automotive industry through numerous projects, mostly in the domain of passive safety. His contributions include:  - Development of barrier and dummy models  - Conversion of Toyota’s THUMS models to ESI’s VPS  - Prediction of weld rupture 

Rainer Hoffmann has been involved in automotive safety throughout his career. After graduating from Wayne State University, he joined Porsche as a research associate in passive safety. Mr. Hoffmann advanced safety simulation during his subsequent tenure at ESI Group where he introduced new techniques like airbag simulation, numerical airbag folding and FE dummy modeling. As the head of the simulation department of PARS (now Continental Safety Engineering), Mr. Hoffmann led the R&D efforts for some of the first series production side airbag developments. In 1994 Mr. Hoffmann founded EASi Engineering GmbH, which in 2006 was renamed to carhs GmbH. He has authored numerous technical papers and has been granted German and international patents in the automotive safety field.

Over 3 years of application and development experience in ANSA/META, and has completed the development of many automation projects, involving automatic pre- and post-processing research on vehicle structural collisions, restraint systems and pedestrian protection. He has worked with a lot of large OEMs on projects to develop tools for pre- and post-collision safety. 3+ years of research in the field of collision safety, and in-depth research on META post-processing. In terms of VTC, he is responsible for supervising changes in VTC-related regulations, ensuring the compliance of VTC tools, and participating in the R&D and improvement of VTC tools.

Stefan Kirschbichler has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and Economics of Graz University of Technology since 2008. Since January 2017 he is the teamleader of Occupant and VRU Safety group. He is working in the field of biomechanics, accident research and integrated safety. He has experience in project management of several funded projects with international and national projects.

Paul first joined Humanetics in 2007 and has over 20 years of experience in dummy development. He participated in various collaborative research projects related to Q and THOR dummies. In his role as Global Business Development Manager Paul represents Humanetics in various international working groups including the Euro NCAP Biogroup.

Liu Peng is currently responsible for the test management and result release of C-NCAP, as well as organizing experts inside and outside CATARC to carry out research on the 2027 edition of the new protocol.

Christian Salm is Chief Product Officer at MESSRING GmbH. In his role, he is responsible for global product sales and product manufacturing in the areas of passive and active safety. Since graduating with a degree in business administration, Mr. Salm has worked in the field of innovation and organizational development in high-tech industries. Initially as a partner in a strategy consultancy and in recent years as founder and CEO of a medical technology start-up.

Perfecte Sanchis (1961) has a master degree in Mechanical Engineering (EUETIB), also in Industrial Engineering (ETSEIB) and PDG (IESE Business School). After having worked in companies like PEGASO (now part of IVECO) and SEAT (now part of the VW Group) and having taught during some years, Mr. Sanchis decided to found ENCOPIM in 1995 together with another partner. Today, he has been leading the company as Managing Director for over 20 years.

Since 2012 at DSD as COO for the Testing Division (Passive safety engineering, active safety engineering and sled testing service) 2018 Acquisition of this business from Humanetics and thus Managing Director of DSD Testing GmbH since 2018

Director and Professor Andre Seeck has been Vice President of the Federal Highway and Transport Research Institute (BASt) since April 2022, where he heads the Vehicle Technology division. In this position he is responsible for the preparation of European Safety Regulations. Furthermore he represents the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport in the Board of Directors of Euro NCAP and he is the chairman of the strategy group on automated driving and of the rating system. These positions enable him to gain deep insight into current and future developments in vehicle safety. In 2017 NHTSA awarded him the U. S. Government Special Award of Appreciation.

Hao Sun received the B.E. degree in mechatronics engineering in Nanyang Technological University in 2014, the Ph.D. degree in robotics in National University of Singapore in 2019, and post-doctoral study in Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology in 2019. His research interests include perception and robotics.

Philipp Toelke is general manager of the Seattle Safety Germany GmbH which is a 100% daughter company of Seattle Safety LLC in Seattle. Philipp is responsible for the European market and works very close with the engineering in Seattle at the development and market introduction of new Seattle Safety products. Philipp has a diploma degree in Engineering from Braunschweig University (Germany) and he worked in the field of vehicle safety for the last 17 years.

Wang Hong is Research Associate Professor at Tsinghua University. She received the Ph.D. degree in Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, in 2015. From the year 2015 to 2019, she was working as a Research Associate of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering with the University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on the safety of the on-board AI algorithm, the safe decision-making for intelligent vehicles, and the test and evaluation of SOTIF. She has published over 60 papers on top international journals. Her domestic and foreign academic part-time includes the associate editor for IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology and IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, Young Communication Expert of Engineering.

Joey Wu, male, 36 years old, who is the senior application engineer at Instron (Shanghai) Ltd. 14 years of experience in automation control related work, with rich experience in the application of crash simulation system (CSA). Able to provide professional technical support for CSA applications to customers in accordance with relevant regulations, enterprise regulations, and R&D requirements. He independently completed the commission work of 15 CSA systems and provided technical support for CSA commission at Technische Überwachungsvereine (TÜV) in the Czech Republic and the National Aeronautical Research Institute (NIAR) in the United States in 2016 and 2019 respectively.

Xu Hailan holds a Ph.D. in Engineering and Applied Science and is a senior engineer. He is currently a technical expert in the Safety and Reliability Testing Research Division of China Merchants Inspection Vehicle Technology Research Institute Co., Ltd. He also serves as an off-campus tutor at Hunan University, Beijing Institute of Technology and Chongqing University of Technology. He is mainly engaged in research on the development of advanced evaluation methods, smart car collision safety, new energy vehicle collision safety, and standard formulation and revision.

Nicholas Young López earned his engineering degree from the Department of Engineering Mathematics and an MSc from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Bristol. After working in the aerospace industry, he joined Nissan as a Senior Engineer, focusing on Safety Performance and Restraint System Design. He is currently the Senior Performance Engineering Consultant at CSI, specializing in passive safety. Nicholas is a member of the HGV and LCV Euro NCAP Working Groups and serves on the Advisory Board for the EU M0/N0 Electric Vehicle Study.