Speakers & Chairmen

Manu Agarwal is a Senior Developer within the Oasys LS-DYNA team at Arup. He has an Engineering degree from NIT-Surat, India, and 17 years’ experience developing leading software products in the CAD/CAE domain. In his role at Arup, he has played a pivotal role in advancing Oasys PRIMER features, focusing on areas such as meshing, LS-DYNA submission, and positioning tools for Human Body Models.

Jean-Christophe Allain graduated in 1998 in engineering at the Material Institute at Le Mans University. His first job was in ballistic impact simulation and testing at the French military agency until 2000. Then he has been working for 10 Years as advanced project engineer in ESI FRANCE applying PAM-CRASH/PAM-SAFE/PAM-SHOCK in nuclear, defense and crash. From 2011 to 2016 he has been technical account manager for RENAULT and local PAM-CRASH VP team manager. Since 2018 he is Product manager for PAM-CRASH.

Dr. André Backes studied Mathematics at the University of Duisburg. From 2000 to 2006 he was a researcher at the Institute for Mathematics at the Humboldt University in Berlin. His PhD studies at the chair for Numerical Mathematics introduced him to the field of CAE. Since 2006 he works at TECOSIM GmbH and among other topics specialized in NVH. In the area of Virtual Benchmarking he helped developing the TECOSIM-owned process TEC|BENCH where also the Python language was used. In current research projects he investigates the use of Python-based methods for data analysis and machine learning in the CAE process. Since 2020 he has been working at TECOSIM Stuttgart.

Lucia Barbu is an Assistant Professor at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and an Assistant Research Professor at the International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering (CIMNE) in Barcelona, Spain, where she leads the Fatigue Research Unit. Her field of specialty is the numerical modelling of failure processes, both under monotonic and cyclic loading, with 14 years of research experience and collaboration in more than 20 public and private projects.

Michael Baumann worked for seventeen years at Daimler AG and Mercedes-Benz AG in various functions in chassis development. As a CAE engineer, he has experience with MBA and FEA simulation environments. In the area of function data management, he is a founding member of the VDA AK FDX (Function Data Exchange working group; now based at prostep IVIP). He is co-founder of EXOKNOX GmbH, a software company for the development of data management systems, which today belongs to Karakun AG, where Michael Baumann is responsible for the “Digital Engineering Solutions” division.  Michael Baumann studied both mechanical engineering and computational engineering.

Frank Braunroth studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt specializing in materials science. Since 1992, he has been responsible project manager for OPEL/ GENERAL MOTORS, leading several Road Load Data Acquisition and Durability Program Development projects on world- wide OPEL/GM and OEM Proving Grounds, pushing the Road to Lab to Math Concept. In August 2019, he took over the position on Business Unit Manager AI, CAE, RLDA & Calibration at SEGULA Technologies GmbH, focusing on the development of CAE and Artificial Intelligence competencies in the global SEGULA network.

Marian Bulla has studied mechanical engineering in Iserlohn and at RWTH Aachen. In his professional activities at Fraunhofer, Forschungsgesellschaft Kraftfahrwesen, PuZ and Imperia, he has gained extensive experience in computer crash simulation and in experimental research. Since 2008 he has been working as a specialist in crash and occupant simulation at Altair Engineering GmbH. Since 8 years he is a member of the “Core Development Team” and Director Program Management and OpenRadioss.

Dr. Daniel Campos Murcia is a CAE Specialist at Applus DatapointLabs. Daniel is currently working on the development and validation of new material cards for the leading CAE solvers in support of the company’s testing for CAE. Specifically, he has contributed to developing and implementing methodologies for validating composite materials, as well as for other hyperelastic and viscoelastic models for plastic and foams. Daniel obtained his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering in February 2024 from the University of Girona. His research was focused on the development of cutting-edge technologies for manufacturing thermoplastic composite materials and their characterization for their simulation under forming conditions. He has been working in the aerospace and automotive industries for the last five years since he finished his master’s studies in aerospace engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He is passionate about exploring the intersection of advanced materials and computational engineering.

Ovidi Casals has a PhD in Materials Science from Barcelona Tech and MSc in Physics from the University of Barcelona. He has developed most of his professional career focused on the development of simulation software and its application to Computer-Aided Engineering analysis. In the academic area, he stayed in the “Centre des Matériaux Pierre-Marie Fourt” at Mines Paris-Tech working on the modeling of the behavior of single crystals and metallic polycrystalline aggregates under contact conditions. Nowadays, he has a position as project engineer in the materials team of the Body Performance department at IDIADA where he focusses on the development of new methodologies for the characterization and calibration of plasticity and failure models for crashworthiness applications.

Dr. Fabiola Cavaliere is currently responsible of the “AI structural simulation” activities at the SEAT R&D Center in Barcelona. In April 2022 she successfully obtained her doctorate in Mathematical and Computational Modeling from Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) in Spain and Swansea University (SU) in UK. During her research activity in close collaboration with SEAT, she developed a novel methodology based on a machine learning approach to optimize the development process of a car structure. The method allows to maximize the driving comfort and vibroacoustic performance of the vehicle already from the preliminary phase of a project.

Jaehwan Choi got his Ph.D. degree from the Ohio State University in 2004 right before joining Abaqus, Inc. He continued to serve as technical consultant for Dassault Systemes SIMULIA Corp. after Dassault Systemes acquired Abaqus Inc. in 2005. He also has 11 year experience of working as CAE engineer for Hyundai Motor Company in South Korea. He focused on the body structure strength and durability simulations when he was working for Hyundai Motor Company. His current role is supporting Abaqus and fe-safe worldwide focusing on material modeling and calibration, and simulation method development by using Abaqus and fe-safe (and fe-safe/Rubber). His specialty is rubber and plastic material modeling and rubber fatigue assessment including rubber material and fatigue testing.

Luis Otavio Cortes Magalhaes has a Bachelor in Mechanical Engineering by the federal university of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil. After graduating he started working at Fraunhofer EMI and began to research the theme of Lithium-Ion Battery thermal runaway CFD simulations. His professional expertise lies in the field of modeling and simulation of fluid flow and heat transfer. Since joining EMI, developing and improving models in the context of battery thermal runaway has been his major field of research.

Vincent Dampuré graduated from the French engineering college ENSMA in 2006 with a degree in aerospace engineering. He then worked for 6 years as a crash engineer at Imperia GmbH in Aachen. He has currently been with Altair Engineering for 12 years. Initially 4 years as a crash specialist and customer support in the field of crash simulation and for 8 years as "Product Manager Crash" in the HyperWorks Core development team for "explicit Solvers and Crash & Safety" solutions.

Emanuele Di Meo completed his studies in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, graduating in 2019 with a thesis focusing on FEA shape optimization of a B-segment car front subframe in collaboration with Nissan Europe. An evolution of this study was presented at the International CAE Conference 2022. With expertise in mechanical design, FEM, and CFD, he currently contributes to research projects in Digital Twins, Reduced-Order Models development, and mesh morphing optimization, with a particular emphasis on automotive crash simulation and occupant safety.

Kenichiro Fukagawa received a Bachelor of Engineering from The University of Tokyo in 2003 and a Master of Engineering from The University of Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan) in 2005. Since then he works in the R&D Department of Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (Japan). He has 15+ years experience as crash and safety engineer to improve crash CAE technology. Currently he is primarily engaged in aluminum casting modeling studies. His Research fields are: CAE modeling (aluminum casting, steel plate, and rubber), CAE material database management, Test-Simulation integration

Prof. Dr. Andrés-Amador García Granada in 1995 became an Industrial Engineer at ETSEIB-UPC Barcelona specialized in Structural Mechanics. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical Engineering from the University of Bristol UK in 2000 with the thesis “The effect of creep and mechanical load on cold expanded fastener holes” (Fatigue Cracks in Aluminum). He earned engineering experience in simulation for the engineering consultancy EDAG 2000-2001, car manufacturers SEAT 2001-2005, and AUDI 2005-2007. Here he was responsible for head impact simulations and material database for implicit and explicit simulations. Since 2007 he is Lecturer of Computer Aided Engineering Design, Industrial Drawing, Mechanics, Machine Element Calculation, Advance Machine Technology and Crash Management IQS-URL Barcelona. Erasmus lecturer Regensburg and Ingolstadt. Head of Department Industrial Engineering 10.10.2018 - current and research group 10.10.2021-current.

Gagan Gopal has over 6 years of experience in the automotive industry focusing majorly on self-driving technology. He has worked closely with top OEMs such as BMW, Mercedes, and Bosch in leveraging simulation to navigate their validation needs and pushed for safer self-driving technology. Apart from expertise in validation of autonomous cars, Gagan has background in sensors in various industries from electric mountain bikes to smart wearables. He holds a Masters in Automotive Software Engineering from TU Chemnitz and is currently working as a Presales Engineer in Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence for their simulation software VTD.

Dr. Hannes Grimm-Strele is a research associate at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics (ITWM) in Kaiserslautern. Previously, he worked as a development engineer at Numeca Int. in Brussels and earned his doctorate in computational fluid mechanics at the University of Vienna. His current research focus is the efficient numerical characterization of the mechanical behavior of fiber-reinforced plastics using multiscale simulation.

Alexander Gromer has a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Stuttgart. Since 2007 he is employed with DYNAmore and held various roles in Germany as well as the US. For more than fifteen years, he is working the fields of crash analysis, dummy modeling and occupant simulation. Over the last two years he is responsible for the development of human body models at DYNAmore.

Michael Hack is business product line manager for durability simulations. He graduated and obtained his PhD at Kaiserslautern University in applied mathematics. Combining customer needs with academic research he followed numerous research projects, and he presented and published on hysteresis operators, rainflow counting, thermal fatigue, composite fatigue as well as reliability and optimization topics.

Dr. Axel Hänschke studied mechanical engineering at the TU Braunschweig. In 1989 he received his PhD on „Computer Aided Vehicle Structure Layout” from TU Berlin. Thereafter he worked 5 year as manager CAE-projects at VW Gedas in Berlin. Following were 25 years experiences at Ford Werke GmbH. In his last position he was responsible for all Virtual Prototypes as Supervisor Analytical Prototypes, CAE Integration and CAE Model build. Since December 2019 he is “Head of Business Development for Simulation projects and Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE)” at CPS Consulting. During his time at Ford he taught at the TU Berlin and headed the Working Group 27 "Simulation Methods and Virtual Validation" of the German Automotive Research Association (FAT). Last but not least he is a member of the Scientific Committee of the automotive CAE Grand Challenge.

Klemens Jantscher studied physics and advanced materials science at the University of Technology Graz. Since 2011 he is a researcher at Virtual Vehicle Research GmbH. His fields of research from 2011 to 2016 were crash simulations with a focus on side impact, b-pillar performance and test bench simulation. Since 2017 his work focus has shifted to crash testing and simulation of Lithium-Ion batteries. An additional field of research is thermal runaway testing of directly cooled battery systems.

Samu Karanko is the head of science for Vaisala Xweather Europe. With more than 20 years of road weather and R&D experience, he is used to balancing the challenges of technical feasibility, quality, and return on investment. Prior to joining Vaisala, Samu worked as the chief scientist at Foreca, where he was responsible for the development of the company’s Road Weather Model, which was later acquired by Vaisala. He has also designed the national road weather services for New Zealand and Sweden, as well as created the foundation for the public road weather forecasts in Finland.

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.

Thorsten Koch is the managing director of Comsol Multiphysics GmbH. There, he worked as an application engineer and was a member of the development team. He holds degrees in physics and applied mathematics, completing his PhD studies on 3D contractility measurements of living cells at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

Ferenc Leichsenring has studied Civil Engineering at the Technische Universität Dresden. During his time as a research assistant at the Institute of Structural Analysis he was working on various topics including Uncertainty Quantification, Surrogate Models and multi-scale analysis of concrete structures. In 2022 he received his PhD at the TU Dresden. Currently he is working as Technical Consultant at SCALE GmbH.

Thanassis Lioras pursued his diploma in Mechanical Engineering at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, followed by completing his master's thesis in Computational Mechanics at the National Technical University of Athens. Since 2008, he has been working at BETA CAE Systems SA, contributing as a software developer specialized in Crash and Safety applications. Over the past few years, he has played a pivotal role in the development of tools for Human Body Models, collaborating closely with the relevant communities. Currently, he serves as a Senior Supervisor in the Crash and Safety Applications department.

Mohammadali Mirsalehian received a master’s degree in Energy Science and Technology from Ulm University. He did his thesis in Fraunhofer ISE on simulation of Li-ion batteries in terms of thermal and aging behavior. Following that, he carried out his PhD studies on multi-physics simulation of Li-ion batteries at RWTH Aachen University. Since 2018 he has been cooperating with FEV Europe GmbH in different research and industrial projects initially as simulation engineer and now as technical specialist. He is involved in the projects with different modeling focuses including thermal propagation, aging and electrochemical behavior of Li-ion batteries.

Fabian Möller studied Civil Engineering at RWTH Aachen University and completed parallel a training as a welding engineer towards the end of his studies. He then worked for six years as a research assistant in Aachen in the field of fiber-reinforced plastics and lightweight steel construction before joining EDAG Engineering in 2015 as a project manager in the field of structural simulation. In 2018, he took over the management of a team for structural analysis, NVH and CFD analysis. He is responsible for the development of battery simulation for EDAG Engineering.

Daniel Muñoz is one of the founders of Newgentechs, where he manages the simulation, analysis and programming activities. Daniel has been a mechanical engineer since 1998. He has experience as a crash test engineer, CAE engineer and project manager. He has been involved in numerous research and development projects, as well as in the creation of business lines in the areas of passive safety and material characterization among others.

Dr. Mihai Nica is currently Global Head of ADAS/Automated Driving & Connectivity, at AVL List, GmbH, Graz, Austria (headquarters) – powertrain division. He has more than 17 years of work experience in the field of verification and validation for cyber-physical systems, 10 years’ experience in the area of EU R&D project management and more than 6 years’ experience in the area reliability engineering and functional safety development and management (ISO 26262). He worked in over 40 customer projects and 12 EU research projects with customer and partners from over 25 countries (China, India, Japan, US; UK, South Korea, Germany etc.). Dr. Nica received his PhD (Dr.-techn.) in the area of software debugging and testing, at Graz University of Technology.

Gernot Oberhofer studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Munich with focus on numerical simulation methods, as well as design and development. From 1993 to 1999 he worked as a consulting engineer in the field of numerical simulation in close cooperation with MATFEM Ingenieurbüro Dr. Gese processing numerous research and development projects in automotive, aerospace as well as medical technology. From 1999 to 2021he has been Managing Partner of MATFEM Partnerschaft Dr. Gese & Oberhofer. Since 2022 he is Managing Director of MATFEM Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH Besides organizational tasks, the coordination of software development (e.g. development and implementation of new material models) as well as the coordination of material characterization for plastics and composites are Mr. Oberhofer's main tasks.

Bart Peeters Weem studied mechanical engineering at the University of Technology in Eindhoven with focus on system and control. Since 2003 he has been working at BMW on passive safety development. First as simulation engineer, later as team leader side impact and rollover protection and as project technical advisor Vehicle safety of the BMW New Class Architecture. 2019-2021 he was pilot of the ACEA-Expertgroup on Virtual-Testing - Crashworthiness.  Since 2022 he is technical advisor for innovative virtual development methods of BMW-Exterior and Interior.

Thorsten Pohl studied Aeronautics at Imperial College London. In 1998 he joined the vehicle CAE department of Opel – at that time part of GM. In 2017 Opel became part of Groupe PSA, since 2021 it is Stellantis. Thorsten started as Development Engineer for Body-in-white Structures. From 2003 he has been Team Leader FE Modelling, from 2012 Manager CAE Strategies and Operations since 2022 he is Manager CAE Methods and Tools Development.

Dr. Tony Porsch studied mechanical engineering at the University of Applied Sciences Leipzig / University of the West of Scotland and graduated with a double master degree in Master of Engineering and Master of Science in 2015. From 2015 to 2018, Mr. Porsch was employed as a PhD student in research and development department at Volkswagen AG and completed his PhD in November 2019. Since September 2018 Mr. Porsch is employed in FEM method development in the technical development department at Volkswagen AG.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Pyttel studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Technology Dresden from 1987 to 1992. From 1992 to 1997 he has been a researcher at University of Technology Dresden and received his PhD on “Anisotropic shells in convective description”. Since 1997 he worked at ESI GmbH (Eschborn, Germany) as a Senior Engineer and Group leader on Crash and safety applications and Dummy development. From 2002 to 2005 he has been the Technical Manager of ESI GmbH (Eschborn, Germany). Among others he has been the Coordinator of the Brite Euram Project “IMPACT”.Since April 2005 he is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Applied Science Giessen-Friedberg in Friedberg (Germany).

Dr.-Ing. Sirus Rafiee received a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering (Design of Solids) at the University of Shiraz/Iran in 1993 and a M.Sc. in 1999. In 2003 he received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (Computational Engineering) at the Technical University Darmstadt. From 2003-2016 he has been working in the Automotive branch for different companies, such as, ARRK Engineering in Munich (methods and materials development), MAGNA Cosma in Sailauf (chassis & crash management systems), Adam Opel GmbH (NVH & crash) in Rüsselheim, Ford -Werke GmbH (chassis engineering) in Köln, Zhongding group in Montabaur (rubber and vibro-acoustics materials). Since 2016 he is working in the R&D department of Waldaschaff Automotive GmbH in the group product development, and is responsible for FEM-Simulation and Testing.

Dr. Rensink joined the Segula Group in Rüsselsheim in July 2020 as team leader for structural and thermal CAE, data management and AI methods. Before he worked as a Senior IT Consultant at :em engineering methods and as a CAE engineer for FEM and CFD methods at Opel. He studied Physics at University of Bielefeld and Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh and received his doctoral degree from Institute of Fluid Mechanics at University Erlangen-Nuremberg. He is lecturer for applied CAE methods at University of Applied Science in Bingen.

Philipp Rosenberger is co-founder and CEO of Persival GmbH, which supports sensor manufacturers and OEMs in the specification, development and validation of perception sensor models. He recently finished his PhD thesis on "Metrics for Specification, Validation, and Uncertainty Prediction for Credibility in Simulation of Active Perception Sensor Systems". Until the end of 2022, he has been working for six years as a research assistant at the Institute of Automotive Engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt under the supervision of Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Hermann Winner. In the European project "ENABLE-S3" he led the work package for simulation and stimulation and in the German project "PEGASUS" he was responsible for the development and validation of sensor models. Recently, he was involved in the German projects "SET Level" and "Verification & Validation Methods" to continue his work on model development and validation. He is also a founding member and part of the Change Control Board of the ASAM OSI standard. Together with his research group at TUDa FZD, he founded the PerCollECT initiative to collect and provide perception sensor cause-effect chains in a tree-like ontology. Furthermore, he is an active contributor to the open source perception sensor models of the asc(s e.V. - ENVITED Open Source Model & Simulation Library.

Dr. Fabio Schneider-Jung studied Applied Mathematics at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern and got his PhD on co-simulation of flexible multibody systems. Since 2016 he is researcher at Fraunhofer ITWM, working in the division “Mathematics for vehicle development”. He is responsible for method development regarding the simulation of cables and hoses. This covers, e.g., dynamic effects, frequency analyses, durability and corresponding experimental mechanics.

Istvan Soproni graduated from the Technical University in Budapest. He began his career at Magna in 2000 as a CAE engineer at Engineering Center Steyr. Then he moved to Cosma Engineering Europe, where he developed chassis components as a CAE engineer. Later he became head of a CAE simulation team. He currently heads the global Advanced Simulation Team at Magna Cosma.

Johannes Sperber works as an application engineer at Comsol Multiphysics GmbH. He studied chemistry at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, where he investigated platinum deposition in nanoporous alumina. For his doctorate at the Georg-August-University Göttingen, he worked with lipid bilayers and developed nanoscale porous support structures for cell membrane models.

Simon Thel, a PhD student at Volkswagen AG and Technische Universität München, specializes in merging Artificial Intelligence with Finite Element Methods to enhance crash simulation speeds. With a background in aerospace engineering and a focus on neural networks for long time series analysis, his PhD thesis aims to integrate neural networks with finite element method to improve the computational efficiency of crash simulations.

Diploma in mathematics and author of more than 50 scientific publications and four patents. 1984-2012 GMD – Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik and Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI). Since 2012 CEO of SIDACT GmbH.

Dr.-Ing. Dirk Ulrich studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt and stayed at the TUD to work on a government research project in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) on which subject he also received his doctorate. After that he joined Audi R&D to work in the department for computational methods and was responsible for the introduction of nonlinear FEM applications. Thereafter he worked for several international providers of simulation software for automotive applications (ESI, SOFY, TNO). Since 01.04.2007 Dr. Ulrich has been managing the CAE-training activities of carhs.training gmbh.

Christoph Vieler is currently Head of Functional Development FMVSS201, ECE-R21 & Airbag Deployment for Vehicle Safety at Volkswagen. He completed his diploma in aerospace engineering at the TU Braunschweig in 1998. Subsequently, he worked for 7 years at IAV GmbH in Gifhorn as an analysis engineer for various development topics. He moved to Volkswagen in 2005 and has since held management positions and tasks in simulation and testing. He is driven by strengthening digital product development in vehicle safety in order to ensure a very high level of protection for Volkswagen's customers.

Alexander F. Walser studied civil engineering at the University of Stuttgart in the field of modeling and simulation methods. After completing his studies in 2011, he joined Automotive Solution Center for Simulation  e.V. – a non-profit association for know-how carriers in the field of Automotive Simulation. As a scientific project manager he was responsible for various BMBF joint projects in the areas of crash simulation and structural optimization. In July 2013, he took over the position of Managing Director. His responsibilities include the management of the Stuttgart office, the organization of network activities and the strategic development of the competence network and the ENVITED marketplace – an open community platform in the field of virtual validation of autonomous vehicles.

Dipl.-Ing Axel Werkhausen visited a mechanical engineering school and studied technical mathematics at the University of Linz (Austria) where he also worked as a researcher for 2 years. He then joined Magna Powertrain Engineering Center Steyr GmbH & Co KG (short ECS) where he first worked in the structural analysis department. Since, 20 years he works in the technical support and has sales responsibility for FEMFAT.

Jürgen Wille is Managing Director FrontMod GmbH (Grafenau, Germany). Mr. Wille studied Mechatronic at the Technische Hochschule Ulm from 1988 -1993 and Information Technology at the University Paderborn from 1993 – 1999. After his studies he worked for 2 years as a Research Assistant at Fraunhofer IZM. Thereafter for 17 years at Valeo in Bietigheim. First as a hardware developer and then as a simulation engineer. In October 2018 he founded FrontMod GmbH.

Franz Wotawa received an M.Sc. in Computer Science in 1994 and a Ph.D. in 1996, both from the Vienna University of Technology. He is currently a professor of software engineering at the Graz University of Technology. From the founding of the Institute for Software Technology in 2003 to 2009, and starting in 2020, Franz Wotawa has been the head of the institute. His research interests include model-based and qualitative reasoning, theorem proving, mobile robots, verification and validation, and software testing and debugging. Besides theoretical foundations, he has always wanted to close the gap between research and practice. For this purpose, he founded Softnet Austria in 2006, a non-profit organization conducting applied research projects with companies. Since October 2017, Franz Wotawa has been the head of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Quality Assurance Methodologies for Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems. Franz Wotawa has written more than 450 peer-reviewed papers for journals, books, conferences, and workshops during his career. He supervised 104 master's and 41 Ph.D. students. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Diagnosis Community (DX) for his work on diagnosis in 2016. Franz Wotawa has been a member of various program committees and has organized several workshops and special issues of journals. He is a member of the Academia Europaea, the IEEE Computer Society, ACM, the Austrian Computer Society (OCG), the Austrian Society for Artificial Intelligence, and a Senior Member of the AAAI.

Dr. Jochen Zausch studied Physics at the University of Mainz (Germany) and earned his PhD degree in the field of computational soft matter physics working with molecular dynamics methods. Afterwards, in 2009, he moved to the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics in Kaiserslautern to the department for Flow and Material Simulation where he started working on lithium-ion battery modeling and the development of ITWM’s “Battery and Electrochemistry Simulation Tool BEST”. The Battery Modeling Group he is now heading is developing BEST even further to make it available in commercial software tools and to apply it in projects together with industrial and research partners.