Seminar Speakers

Under The Patronage Of H.H. Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince Of Dubai And Chairman Of The Executive Council

Seminar SpeakersUsman Mahmood2023-09-01T14:13:16+00:00

Abdulla Al-Kaff

Intelligent Systems Lab
Assistant Professor & Senior Researcher

Eng. Ahmed Hussein

IAV Gmbh
Senior Development Engineer

Dr. Amine Arezki

Thales
Head of Autonomy

Edward Forrester

Mott MacDonald
Future Mobility Leader

Bentley Lin

Exida Safety Services
Managing Director

Bianca Barbu

CANGO Technologies
Chief Marketing Officer

Jaideep Dhanoa

Circ
Co-Founder & CEO, MENAT

Dr. Dalia Hafiz

Al-Ghurair University
Assistant Professor

Dan Baxter

Stantec Consulting
ITS Roads & Vehicles Practice Lead

Dr. Mamoun F. Abdel-Hafez

American University of Sharjah
Professor and Department Head, Mechanical Engineering Department,

Eugene Chao

The Wharton Business School Alternative Investments Initiative
Research Associate

Adrià Ramirez

SHOTL
Chief Mobility Officer

Hussein Falih

PTV Group
Transport Modeller, Project Management & Services

Dr. Jochen Lohmiller

PTV Group
Manager Microscopic Simulation

Jonathan Spear

Atkins Acuity
Director

Jorge Bialade

YallaMotors
General Manager

Dr. Juan Pimentel

Omnex
International Consultant

Johan Holmqvist

Carmenta Automotive
Vice President Business Development

Mark Wilson

Michigan State University
Professor of Urban and Regional Planning

Martin Thibault

Stantec Consulting
Vice President, Transportation

Massimo Cavazzini

Amazon Web Services
Head of Automotive EMEA

Alan Whaley

AMENA
Founder & Chairman

Bill Nie

Fatri
Chairman

Samar AbdelFattah

Disruptive Mobility Technologies (DMTech)
Founder & CEO

Scott Fennelly

Surface Mobility
Director of ITS and Transportation

Plato Pathrose

Visteon Electronics Germany GmbH
Head of Validation, ADAS & Autonomous Driving

Tommaso Gecchelin

NEXT Future Transportation inc.
CTO, Inventor and Founder

Haya Douidri

Bird
Senior Manager, Government Partnerships

Hrishikesh Mandyam

Skyships Automotive
Chief Engineer

Gary Patterson

Bestmile
COO

Andrew Bevan

Parsons
Smart Mobility Director

Samaneh Khazraeian

Stantec Consulting
ITS Analyst

Hugh Hynes

PROTOinc
Principal

Tim Armitage

Arup
Future Transport Systems Lead

Eng. Mohamed Mahboob Hassan

Roads & Transport Authority (RTA)
Al Ruwayya Depot Manager, Public Transport Busses Department and Regional Planning

Professor Bassam Abu-Hijleh

The British University in Dubai
Dean of Engineering and IT

Dr. Michel Pasquier

American University of Sharjah
Dept. Of Computer Science & Engineering

Dr. Jianxiong Xiao

AutoX
CEO

Mike Rioux

JDA Aviation Technology Solutions
COO

Mike Borfitz

JDA Aviation Technology Solutions
Senior Certification Specialist

Alexander Nase

FEV Consulting GmbH
Managing Director

Nadia Mohamed Abdelsalam

Sypron Solutions
UI/UX Designer

Omnya Amro Elfeki

Sypron Solutions
Digital Media Engineer

Sonal Ahuja

Sunovatech Group
Executive Director

Dieter Gabriel

Velodyne Lidar
Marketing Manager EMEA

Abdulla Al-Kaff

Intelligent Systems Lab
Assistant Professor & Senior Researcher

Abdulla Al-Kaff is an Assistant Professor and Senior Researcher at the Intelligent Systems Laboratory (LSI), Department of Systems Engineering and Automation, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, with a solid theoretical and mathematical background in the fields of Artificial Vision, Artificial Intelligence, and localization algorithms for Intelligent Systems and Automotive ground and aerial vehicles.

He graduated from Aden University in Computer Science and Engineering in 2007 with a grade (Very good) and ranked as the third in his class, and obtained his master degree in Robotics and Automation with grade (Excellent) in 2012 from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering, Electronics, and Automation in 2017 with a grade (Excellent with Cum Laude), with a thesis titled "Vision-based navigation system for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)", which proposed a robust navigation system; in order to allow the UAVs to perform complex tasks autonomously and in real-time. The proposed algorithms deal with solving the navigation problem for outdoor as well as indoor environments, mainly based on visual information that is captured by monocular cameras. In addition, this dissertation presents the advantages of using the visual sensors as the main source of data or complementing other sensors in providing useful information; in order to improve the accuracy and the robustness of the sensing purposes.

During his Ph.D., Abdulla got a European patent in designing a UAV with an advanced visual system for the inspection for the defects in buildings and infrastructures.

In addition, Abdulla was awarded as a best Ph.D. thesis in Spain in Intelligent Transportation systems. His current research interests focused on computer vision, deep learning, trajectories planning, control engineering, intelligent systems, autonomous vehicles, and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), and he has a lot of the publications in these fields.

Eng. Ahmed Hussein

Senior Development Engineer,
IAV Gmbh

Eng. Ahmed Hussein has received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechatronics Engineering from the German University in Cairo (GUC), Egypt, in June 2012; followed by his in Mechatronics Engineering from the German University in Cairo (GUC), Berlin campus, Germany, working on optimization of multiple robot systems cooperation in May 2013. In September 2018, he received his PhD Degree in Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Automation from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), Spain. During the doctoral degree period, he was working with the Intelligent Systems Lab (LSI) research group, where he was one of the team leaders of the Intelligent Campus Automobile (iCab) project, working on the development and implementation of localization, mapping, planning, control, communication and cooperative driving techniques for multiple self-driving vehicles. Currently he is a Senior Development Engineer in the Department of Perception and Camera Functions at IAV GmbH in Berlin, Germany.

His research interests are focused on intelligent transportation systems fields, mainly on sensors data fusion, autonomous systems control, optimization techniques, computational intelligence and cooperative vehicles systems. Recently, his research interests also include computer vision, deep learning and development of perception systems based on camera and lidar data for object detection, recognition and classification.

Ahmed is a member of IEEE, a member of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS) since 2015, and a member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) since 2012. He is the Treasurer and Registration Co-Chair for the IEEE ITSC2019, the Publicity Chair for the IEEE ICVES2019, and the Workshops Co-Chair for the IEEE IV2020. Additionally, he was the Student Activities Chair for the IEEE ITSS Spanish Chapter for the period from 2017 to 2019, the General Co-Chair and Financial Chair of the IEEE ICVES2018, and was a member of the Organizing Committee of IEEE ICET 2012, IEEE RST2016, IEEE ICVES2017, IEEE ITSC2018, IEEE IROS2018, and IEEE IV2019, among other international events. He also chaired and co-chaired several workshops, in addition to serving as a reviewer and/or an associate editor in numerous international conferences. Furthermore, he has been invited to give speeches, lectures, and seminars at different institutes.

Dr. Dalia Hafiz

Assistant Professor
Al-Ghurair University

Dr. Dalia Hafiz is an architect, academic, researcher, and phenomenologist who has a passion for environmental design, she received her PhD from the school of Architecture and Design (A+D), Virginia Tech. She received her master’s degree in Architecture in 2011 from the same school. She graduated her bachelor of science in architecture engineering from the Faculty of Engineering Architecture Department, Alexandria University, Egypt in 2007. She was recognized as the best design research student by the School Of Architecture and Design in Virginia Tech twice. Also she was awarded the Richard Kelly Grant for lighting research excellence in 2015.

She taught and helped teaching various courses in both architecture and interior design fields in several universities in US, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.

One of Dalia’s research explores ways to enhancing the relationship between the education and practice of architecture. In addition to this she has other research that examines the daylighting dynamism which can create uncomfortable situations causing visual discomfort. She focuses on the time and space dynamics of the daylight condition, the representation and re-imagining of these dynamics especially in the early stages of the design process.

This research area has numerous applications in a diverse of fields: Behavioral decisions in transit stations, wayfinding in interior spaces and outdoors, design aid for visually impaired/elderly and energy saving technologies.

Dalia published articles related to this research in several conferences, newsletters, and publications including Transportation Research Board (TRB-2016), Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) research symposium III- 2016. BESS (Building Environmental Systems Symposium), ARCC (Future of Architecture Research 2015) and NIBS (National Institute of Building Sciences) conference and expo 2014. Her research has been selected for publication in multiple journals including NIBS Journal, Enquiry: The Journal for Architectural Research, and a book chapter "Design Innovations for Contemporary Interiors and Civic Art".

She is looking in her future research to collaborate with professionals and other academia to explore potentials to bridge architecture education and practice. She is looking to extend her previous research to examine visual discomfort conditions for elderly, in addition to possibilities to expand the research to adapt dynamic eye movement and test different visual discomfort relationships with noise, acoustics and thermal discomfort.

Dr. Juan Pimentel

Principal Consultant, Omnex Inc.

Dr. Juan R. Pimentel is an expert international consultant in the areas of safety of automated vehicles, automotive cybersecurity, safety and cybersecurity of industrial control systems (ICS), and intelligent transportation systems. He is a sought after expert speaker at well known professional venues around the world on the topics of automated vehicle safety, automotive cybersecurity, ICS safety and cybersecurity, and international standards such as ISA/IEC 62443, ISO 26262, ISO/PAS 21448, and ISO/SAE 21434. Prior to his consulting endeavors he was a Professor of Computer Engineering at Kettering University in Flint, Michigan, USA. He is a recognized international expert in the area of industrial communications, real-time and dependable systems, and autonomous vehicle and industrial functional safety and cybersecurity. He has written 8 books on industrial networking, multimedia systems, safety-critical automotive systems, and the Safety of Automated Vehicles. He has performed extensive research, consulting and conducted professional training in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. He has performed research at well known institutions around the world such as the Franuhofer Institute in Karlsruhe, Germany, INRIA in Nancy, France, University of Padova, Italy, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia, and UTEC, Lima, Peru. In 2007 he received the “Distinguished Researcher Award” from Kettering University for contributions in the area of industrial communication systems and automotive systems. He has written over 90 peer reviewed papers at international conferences and Journals, primarily the IEEE and SAE.

With a Ph.D. and Masters degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia, his accomplishments include the co-development of the application layer for the industrial network Profibus (with Siemens), and the development of FlexCAN, a CAN-based safety-critical architecture. In the last few years he has been involved with various projects dealing with self-driving vehicles including design, simulation, testing, functional safety, cybersecurity, and developing professional training materials.