Session Overview
Focusing on the use of automated driving as a public transportation, this session will introduce the latest initiatives from around the world and discuss the challenges that must be addressed to achieve sustainable deployment of public transportation.
Speakers
Moderator
Gregory Trencher
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Japan
Gregory Trencher is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies at Kyoto University in Japan. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 2014 and held previous posts at Clark University in the USA and Tohoku University in Japan. His research focuses on decarbonisation and energy policy and the governance of energy and mobility transitions. Current projects are investigating topics such as fossil-fuel phase-out and decarbonisation policies, next-generation mobility, company decarbonisation and electrification behaviour and voluntary carbon markets. He serves on the editorial board for Energy Research & Social Science and as an editor for Frontiers in Sustainable Cities. His research has been published in journals such as Nature, Nature Communications, One Earth, Environmental Research Letters, PLOS One, Climatic Change and Technological Forecasting and Social Change. His research and opinion have featured in media outlets such as The Guardian, New York Times, Le Monde, Nikkei Asia, Channel NewsAsia (CNA), ABC Australia and Carbon Brief.
Speakers
Henriette Cornet
CEO of Urban Innovate, United States
Henriette Cornet, Ph.D., is the Founder and CEO of Urban Innovate and an Adjunct Professor at the University of San Francisco. She holds a Ph.D. in Engineering and Environmental Sciences from the Technical University of Munich and works internationally in the fields of autonomous mobility and sustainable urban transportation.
After five years in the German automotive industry, Dr. Cornet moved into autonomous mobility, working across technology development, human-machine interfaces, inclusive business models, and societal impact. As Principal Investigator at TUMCREATE in Singapore, she led research on autonomous vehicles for dense urban environments. She later coordinated one of Europe’s largest autonomous vehicle deployment projects, involving 70 vehicles across 15 cities, at the International Association of Public Transport (UITP).
Now based in California, Dr. Cornet advises cities, mobility operators, and technology stakeholders on the strategic, regulatory, and societal dimensions of transportation innovation. She developed pulsur™, a social media narrative analysis tool that identifies public attitudes toward emerging technologies. At the University of San Francisco, she co-directs the Autonomous Vehicles and the City Initiative. She also advises the European Commission on autonomous vehicle regulation, contributes to the Mineta Transportation Institute, and serves on the editorial board of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Mobility series.
Guy Fournier
Professor at Pforzheim University (Germany) and CentraleSupelec (Paris, France)
Board member and scientific coordinator of ULTIMO, France
Guy Fournier is Professor affiliated to Pforzheim University in Germany and CentraleSupélec Paris Saclay in France. He is an expert in sustainable mobility and system innovation which serves general interest. His core interest and expertise, honed through many projects, lies in international economics, sustainable development and new innovative business models with automated vehicles (AV), MaaS (Mobilty as a Service), self-learning ITS (Intelligent Transport System) and LaaS (Logistics as a Service). Here he has guided municipalities, companies of German industry and the European Institutions towards more eco-friendly and sustainable approaches to energy consumption and mobility, engaging stakeholders to make mobility truly citizen-centric, inclusive, sustainable, economically viable, safe and resilient. To accelerate the development of carbon-free smart cities, he explores further how MaaS and CCAM coud improve urban mobility by ISO.
He was board member and responsible for the impact assessment of the H2020 AVENUE Project and is currently board member and scientific coordinator on ULTIMO Horizon Europe project to integrate automated mini-buses in a MaaS/ITS in Geneva (Switzerland), Herford (Germany) and Oslo (Norway) and enable sustainable citizen centric mobility. He is a member of the CooL4 (cooperative Level4 Automated Mobility Services) collaboration between the EU and Japan.
Kimihiko Nakano
Professor, Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Kimihiko Nakano received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1997 and 2000, respectively. After spending six and a half years at Yamaguchi University, he joined the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo, as an Associate Professor in 2006 and was promoted to Professor in 2019.
His primary research interests include dynamics and control, vehicle engineering, driver assistance systems, automated driving, and energy harvesting. Over the past five years, he has served as the leader of Theme 4 of the Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment of Automated Driving toward Level 4 and Enhanced Mobility Services (RoAD to the L4) project and has been involved in the deployment of Level 4 automated shuttle bus services.
He serves on the Board of Directors of the Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan. He is a Fellow of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers and a member of the Engineering Academy of Japan, the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Yuhan Xiao
Training & Research Manager, UITP Asia-Pacific Office, Hong Kong
Dr. Yuhan Xiao is the Training and Research Manager at UITP Asia-Pacific, specialising in public transport policy, rail governance, and regional development. Prior to joining UITP, she worked widely in transport policy research roles in the UN and academia, contributing to sustainable mobility and regional transport projects across Asia-Pacific. At UITP, she manages regional research projects and training activities focused on autonomous mobility, rail financial sustainability, data and digitalisation, and institutional governance across the Asia-Pacific region, with a strong interest in the role of public transport in supporting long-term urban and regional transformation.