Advisory Board

Bill Russo is the Shanghai-based Founder and CEO of Automobility Limited, a strategy and investment advisory firm helping its clients to create the future of mobility.  His over 35 years of experience includes 15 years as an automotive executive, including 14 years of experience in China and Asia.  He has also worked nearly 12 years in the electronics and information technology industries.  He has worked as an advisor and consultant for numerous multinational and local Chinese firms in the formulation and implementation of their global market and product strategies. Bill is also currently serving as the Chair of the Automotive Committee at the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

In his current role, Bill advises start-ups, corporations and investors on how to maximize their participation in China’s Automobility Revolution.  In order to achieve success, he believes they must expand their focus from the product (the automobile) to the utility derived from the product (“automobility”), and create a business model and digital ecosystem optimized to provide digitally enabled solutions for both car owners and mobility services users.

Bill was previously the regional head of Chrysler in North East Asia, where he successfully negotiated agreements with partners and obtained required approvals from the China government to bring six new vehicle programs to the market in a three-year period, while concurrently establishing an infrastructure for local sourcing and sales distribution.

Mr. Russo has a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University in New York, and a Master of Science in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Mr. Russo is a highly sought after opinion leader on the development of the China market and the automotive industry.

Bio to follow.

Prof. Patrick Denny is a Senior Research Engineer at Valeo Vision Systems and Adjunct Professor of Automotive Electronics at NUI Galway, Ireland. He has worked as Engineering Lead on automotive vision system projects since Europe’s first with Landrover in 2004, from low level sensor design to system design and has in excess of 19 years’ experience in scientific and technological development internationally, designing, developing, innovating and consulting on new technologies with the world’s leading automotive marques.

Maher is a Graduate of the University of Michigan in Electrical Engineering. He has worked on camera vision systems at Ford Motor Company for over 12 years and currently he is the Senior Lead Engineer for all Ford camera products globally. He also led the global quality documentation for all camera systems and successfully launched several camera systems such as: standalone smart cameras, 2 camera systems, 360’ camera system, and is now working on few more exciting features that are going in production soon. He also leads the advanced features team and helps to generate new innovative ideas that were patented and rewarded. Quality is Maher’s main interest; his mission is to achieve the best camera systems quality as well making Ford products best in class.

Dr. Hadj Hamma Tadjine received his engineer degree, D.E.A, and the Third cycle degree, in Electrical engineering from the technical university of Blida in 1994, 1995 and respectively 1998. In 2004, he received his PhD in Computer science from the technical university of Clausthal Zellerfeld. From 2000-2004, he was professor assistant at the technical university of Clausthal. From 2004-2006, he was professor assistant at CUTEC institute GmbH. From 2006-2008, he was responsible by Hella Aglaia (Germany) for advanced driver assistance systems. From 2008-2010, he was responsible by IAV GmbH (Germany) for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and Park assistance systems. Currently, he is responsible by IAV GmbH for business and technical strategy in the area of highly connected autonomous driving systems. He has a record of accomplishment of fundamental research on these topics documented by numerous publications by IEEE, VDI and SAE. He is the editor and editor in chief of different international journals. He is fellow Member of IACSIT, and SCIEI. He is advisory board member by SDIWC, WSEA, SAI and AICIT. He is Chair, Technical co-chair and Publication chair of different international conferences on computer engineering and computer vision.

Dr. Wende Zhang is currently the Technical Fellow on Sensing Systems at General Motors (GM). Wende has led GM’s Next Generation Perception Systems team, guiding a cross-functional global Engineering and R&D team focused on identifying next generation perception systems for automated driving and active safety since 2010. He was BFO of Lidar Systems (2017) and BFO of Viewing Systems (2014-16) at GM.
Wende’s research interests include Perception and Sensing for Automated Driving, Pattern Recognition, Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Security, and Robotics. He established GM’s development, execution and sourcing strategy on Lidar systems and components and transferred his research innovation into multiple industry-first applications such as Rear Camera Mirror, Redundant Lane Sensing on MY17 Cadillac Super Cruise, Video Trigger Recording on MY16 Cadillac CT6 and Front Curb Camera System on MY 16 Chevrolet Corvette. Wende was the technical lead on computer vision and the embedded researcher in the GM-CMU autonomous driving team that won the DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007. He has 75+ US patents, 35+ publications in sensing and viewing systems and received the GM highest technical awards (Boss Kettering Award) 3 times in 2015, 2016, 2017. Wende has a doctoral degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from Indiana University.

Dr Kevin Lu is Global Optics Engineering Manager and Camera Product Architect of Magna Electronics.  His career involving R&D and industrialization of optical imaging systems and machine visions started from late 1980s. Since joining Magna in 2006 as an optics technical specialist, his responsibility gradually expanded to the areas of engineering, supplier development, product management and technical sales. Kevin has been involved in development of all Magna’s automotive rear view, surround view and front facing camera systems. Currently, he is responsible for leading a global optics team in all camera optics related design, test and manufacturing.  He is also responsible for defining architectures for rear view and surround view cameras. Dr Kevin Lu received his BS in Physics and MS in Optics from Nanjing University in China, and MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering and PhD in Optical Physics from Wayne State University in USA.  He has authored over 40 papers in refereed scientific journals and conference proceedings.  He has 17 issued patents and more than 45 patent applications in the fields of optical system designs, automotive cameras and machine visions.

Shashank Dabral is a recognized industry leader with 16 years of experience leading projects in Imaging /computer vision related technologies. His areas of interests include HW/SW algorithm and IP. Design focusing on image processing, system level engineering as well as emerging automotive applications like Surround-View, CMS and Driver Monitoring Systems. In his current role, Shashank leads the development of TI’s in house ISP and Surround view programs. Shashank has over 21 patents and patent application and has presented multiple papers in international conferences.

John has over 20 years of imaging and semiconductor industry experience spanning the Automotive, Mobile Phone, Digital Still Camera, Industrial, and Biotech markets. John’s core technical experience is with image sensors and image processing. John has served as Vice President and General Manager of GEO Semiconductor’s Automotive Business for the past 4 years during which time GEO has established itself as a major supplier of Camera Video Processors for the automotive markets. Prior to joining GEO, John drove worldwide Marketing for the Automotive and Industrial Business Unit at Aptina (now ON Semiconductor). John holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Dr. Martin Punke is leading the Camera Technology group at Continental. He is working on concepting, engineering and productization of forward looking camera systems for ADAS applications. In his previous positions at Nokia he was responsible of camera, flashlight and illumination technologies in mobile phones. Martin received the Dipl.-Ing. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and information technology from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, in 2003 and 2007, respectively. In his Ph.D. thesis he worked on organic semiconductor devices for microoptical applications.

Albert Theuwissen was born in Maaseik (Belgium) on December 20, 1954. He received the degree in electrical engineering from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) in 1977. His M.Sc. thesis work was based on the development of supporting hardware around a linear CCD image sensor. From 1977 to 1983, his work at the ESAT laboratory of the Catholic University of Leuven focused on semiconductor technology for linear CCD image sensors. He received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 1983. His dissertation was on the implementation of transparent conductive layers as gate material in the CCD technology.

With SmartSurv, Dr. Sven Fleck is a consultant for a Premium German Automotive OEM in the field of Image Quality (IQ), Calibration and Object Detection. He has been responsible for IQ and Calibration algorithmic functionality for 5+ years now to ensure “best IQ or nothing”. He is in close contact with premium suppliers and Tier-2 imager companies on a daily basis to push the limits of camera systems for viewing applications and generate KPIs and test methods for IQ2.0. Sven Fleck studied computer science and received MS and PhD from the University of Tübingen in the field of computer vision and embedded processing: “Privacy sensitive surveillance – Smart Camera based Distributed Scene Analysis Reflected in an Integrated 3D Environment”. He published 25+ publications in various conferences, journals and book chapters and holds multiple patents in the field of computer vision and is program committee member of multiple IEEE conferences.

Education:

• Diploma in Applied Physics from Frankfurt University (Topics: Complex Systems and Neural Networks applied to Image Processing tasks)
• MPhil in Electrical Engineering from University of Manchester (Topics: Vision Chips and Computer Vision Algorithms)
• PhD in Physics from Heidelberg University (Topics: Computer Vision Algorithms for video based ADAS Systems)
  • In Cooperation with Robert Bosch GmbH

Professional Life:

• Software engineer for video based ADAS Systems
  • Focus towards the hardware-software interface and the control software for Imagers, ISPs and Safety (ISO26262, Automotive Spice)
• 2014-2019:
  • Software architect for optical systems in the predevelopment for Bosch’s next generation video systems

Benjamin May was born in Berlin in 1982. During his studies at Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald for theoretical physics he started to work in ADAS space for automotive in parallel starting in 2005. He graduated in 2007. In the last ten years a wide spectrum of different projects and roles were taken over to support multiple OEM and advanced projects where a camera sensor was usually involved. In these ten years the evolution from simple to more complex systems was part of the activity to be prepared for the upcoming challenges of the future.

Professor Dr Anestis Terzis is the head of the Automotive Electronics study course at Ulm University of Applied Sciences in Germany and the coordinator of the university’s International Electrical Engineering Program (IEEP). His professorship is for Digital Systems Design in lectures and research. His primary research field is advanced camera-based driver assistance systems. Prior to this, he was with Daimler AG for ten years and worked in the “Group Research & Mercedes-Benz Cars Development,” with a main focus on future advanced driver assistance systems. Anestis Terzis received his diploma in Communications Engineering from Ulm University of Applied Sciences and his doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He is one of the authors of the ISO 16505 content and an expert member of the standardization and regulation committees in the field of camera monitor systems. He was also an expert member of the working group ISO/TC 22/SC 17/SC 3 “Road vehicles – Video communication interface for cameras” (ISO 17215). He is the editor of the “Handbook of Camera Monitor Systems – The Automotive Mirror-Replacement Technology based on ISO 16505” published by Springer.

For over 25 years, Rudy Burger has worked with computer vision, digital imaging and embedded camera technologies as a founder, operating executive and advisor. He has developed both a deep technical expertise and an awareness of market opportunity dynamics in these sectors that he leverages to guide his clients towards strategic successes. He currently focuses on the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) sector and has written several industry research reports to profile the leading and emerging technologies and outline the market landscape.

Rudy is the Managing Partner of Woodside Capital Partners and works with growth stage technology companies to execute local and cross-border M&A transactions and private placements. Prior to founding WCP, he led Scipher plc through a corporate restructuring as CEO. His professional experience also includes executive roles with NEC, Visioneer and Xerox as well as founding the MIT Media Lab Europe joint venture with the Irish government. He currently serves on the boards of two UK companies, Bango plc (AIM:BGO) and Seeing Machines plc (AIM: SEE).

Rudy holds degrees from Yale (BSc and MSc in EE) and Cambridge (PhD in Digital Imaging).

Jürgen Dörflinger is a senior hardware expert of Mercedes cars within Daimler AG’s research & development. He plays a central role within the hardware development of the camera based driver assistance systems. He is with Daimler AG since 2003 where he concentrated on telematics and ESC. Since 2009 Jürgen is part of the camera hardware development. His roles comprise both project leadership of multiple camera projects and hardware expert. With his hardware background, his key topics inlcude image quality, camera industrialization and EMC. Jürgen holds a Mercedes Green Belt status and in this respect he is involved in all camera specific hardware and imaging topics.

Younggi Song is managing R&D Center of Excellence group at ImageNEXT which he founded March 2007 as an innovative image recognition solution provider. Younggi Song holds a M.S. degree in electrical engineering and previously served as Researching professor of Yonsei University and also worked for biometric identification system for more than 7 years in Hyundai information technology. Younggi Song is an expert in imaging technologies and sensing system for automotive industry for more than 9 years from the beginning and successfully implemented those technologies for the series production to car makers. He is also the owner of ADAS group at linkedin and now the member is reached to 4,000 experts from all over the world. His ambition is to make “reliable and innovative” products to make more safe and convenient cars for autonomous vehicles.

Andy Lewin completed his PhD on Laser Interferometric Sensors at Kent University in 1986 and then moved to Polytec in Germany to develop Laser based sensor products for commercial applications. The Laser Doppler Vibrometers became trusted tools for automotive noise & vibration studies, as well as for biomechanical studies, hard disk design work and within national physical laboratories. In 2001 Andy returned to UK joining QinetiQ (previously Royal Signals & Radar Establishment) to develop specialist optical systems such as 3D imagers, space-based laser range-finders and specialist laser vibrometry systems. In 2016, Andy joined JLR to focus on the implementation of optical and radar systems for active safety and automated drive applications. Andy is currently Group Leader for Active Safety in the ADAS section at JLR. Andy has > 25 patents on optical sensing and signal processing architectures and has generated >40 papers on related topics.

Alain completed an MSc and a PhD in Control Systems Engineering at Coventry University before joining Jaguar Land Rover as a control system engineer, working on adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning and collision avoidance systems. He later became a research technical specialist in sensor systems where he was responsible for the early development of a number of driving assistance systems. At SBD he is responsible for the Safe Car division where he guides and manages the Research and Consulting Division. Alain is an ADAS technology expert who provides recommendation to SBD’s clients on defining and implementing their ADAS strategies.

Riccardo Mariani holds a Ph.D. in Microelectronics from the University of Pisa. He won SGS-Thomson and Enrico Denoth best engineering awards. Before founding YOGITECH, he was Technical Director in former Aurelia Microelettronica. Yogitech was recently acquired by Intel and Riccardo now holds the role of Intel Fellow Functional Safety.

Riccardo has worked for many years on the specification and design of ICs and IPs for safety critical systems in automotive, industrial, medical and railway applications. He is an active member of international committees for functional safety: in ISO 26262, he is leading the chapter about “ISO 26262 and microcontrollers. Riccardo is IEEE member and he has authored many papers related to High-Reliability Circuits, Design for Testability and Asynchronous Circuits.

Dr. Nguyen is the Head of ADAS at Panasonic Automotive Europe. He drives the overall development of Panasonic ADAS in EU, and technically responsible for the overall system architect of ADAS and Autonomous Driving Systems.
His research of interest includes Robotics and Intelligent Vehicle Systems – SLAM, Localization (DSO, SVO, VO, Ackermann Model, etc.), SFM, MOD, 3DOD, Sensor Fusion, Machine Learning, Trajectory Planning & Control.
Dr. Nguyen has served as an organizer, session chair, editorial board member, advisory/program committee board member, and a designated reviewer for a number of journals (IEEE RAS, Elsevier RAS, MPDI Sensor, Wiley ITS, IEEE ITS trans., etc.) and conferences (IEEE IV, IEEE ICRA, IEEE IROS, IEEE ICIP, IEEE ITS, etc.).
He has published 1 book, 1 book chapter, 3 top-tier journals, 24 conference-papers, and 12 patents.
Dr. Nguyen is a member of IEEE Automotive Standard P2020, and a member of European ITS.

Dr Håkan Sivencrona started his professional carrier within dependable systems in the 90th when he did research in the European Research Project X-By-Wire, achieving dependable communication for aerospace and automotive applications.

In 2001 Dr Sivencrona received a research grant from Honeywell to work on improving and validating the time triggered architecture. Håkan has also worked some years for SP Swedish test and research institute where he worked in several research projects around dependable communication and architectures. 2005 Håkan joined Mecel, where he worked as an international expert in ISO 26262 and Autosar standardization.

After a few years Håkan joined QAMCOM, a high tech company focusing on radar, signal processing and safety. During this time he was a contractor working for major OEMs and Tier 1s. In2013 he started to work with Delphi E&S where he has since then been working as a Functional Safety Manger for several ADAS production projects. Håkan still maintains his interest for ISO 26262 although he has moved much more into ADAS and autonomous driving area in the recent years. Håkan drives a Volvo V70 with AEBS and ACC and really likes these applications.

Phil is currently Principal Analyst and Co-Founder of VSI Labs. VSI provides custom and syndicated information on vision and sensing solutions used for automotive ADAS applications. VSI’s syndicated solutions include the Vision Systems Profiler, a database of sensors, controllers, and modules. Phil Magney is a well-respected automotive consultant and senior manager with over 25 years of experience with core specialties in automotive ADAS, infotainment and mobile computing. Phil is the author of numerous reports and papers for industry trade publications in addition to being a frequent speaker at global automotive conferences.
As an automotive analyst and consultant Phil provides clients with pragmatic insight on the current and future of technology deployment in automotive. Phil’s subject matter expertise includes both automotive and information technology.
In 2000, Phil co-founded the Telematics Research Group (TRG) to provide syndicated and custom market intelligence to the Automotive Industry. TRG was acquired in 2008 by iSuppli (LA) where Phil led the newly formed automotive practice focusing on automotive electronics for Infotainment and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). In 2011, iSuppli was acquired by IHS where Phil led the Automotive Technology Group within IHS Automotive.
Earlier in his career Phil co-founded Associated Research Services (Dallas) as a provider of business intelligence to the mobile computing industry. This company was the first of its kind to utilize the internet to deliver real-time industry intelligence. ARS was sold in 2000 to Current Analysis.

Goksel is the Lab Director of PercepTonic, his professional consulting practice based in Dallas, Texas. Thanks to the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon, the Robotics Research Lab at USC, and seven years with Texas Instruments’ R&D labs, Goksel is a recognized expert in Computer Vision. He has made product contributions and received patents in automotive safety, video security, face and gesture recognition, wearables, and autonomous robotics. When he’s not busy prototyping, Goksel is presenting at an industry event or chairing an IEEE workshop. You can view his demo videos, tutorials, and publications at goksel-dedeoglu.com

Marco Jacobs, VP Marketing at videantis, has over 15 years of experience in the semiconductor IP industry and multimedia applications. At videantis, he is responsible for corporate and product marketing and works with key semiconductor manufacturers to bring novel, higher-quality computer vision and video applications to its customers. Prior to joining videantis, Marco was VP of Marketing at Vector Fabrics, Director of Multimedia Marketing at ARC, held management positions at semiconductor startups Silicon Hive (acquired by Intel) and BOPS, and was a software architect at Philips. Marco studied computer science at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He holds 7 issued patents.

Prof. Dr. Alexander Braun has 20 years of experience with optical technologies of all flavours, from fundamental quantum optics research to optical quality questions arising during assembly of 100.000 cameras per year. During his position as optical designer at Kostal (Tier 1) he was responsible for the optical quality of the camera ADAS, designing MTF test benches for all purposes (in climate chambers, for one-person-use on the road, and for whole cars!). As a Professor for Physics at the University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf he is now looking at all the questions surrounding optical quality from a scientific point of view. Special research interests are the limits of current MTF algorithms (with regard to noise, distortion and HDR) and linking optical design to function performance.

unmuk has been with Hyundai Autron, a subsidiary of Hyundai-Kia Motors Group, since 2012. He is currently a senior research engineer and a member of the ADAS and New Technology Team. His highest interest and expertise is in the field of developing ADAS sensors and autonomous driving. Currently, he is the project manager of developing front camera and is also partly involved in deep learning.
In 2006, He earned his MS degree in Mechanical and Control Engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. After graduation and returning back home to Republic of Korea, he devoted himself in developing line scan cameras, optical inspection units and other imaging equipments at Samsung Electronics for nearly 7 years, before joining Hyundai Autron.