Opening / Keynote Session

Mr. Amano joined Toyota Motor Corporation in 1982 & started his career as a factory automation engineer, developing industrial robots & manufacturing operation management systems. Then he expanded his areas covering transportation. He was involved in a variety of projects on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) both in Japan & overseas. He assumed the position of President & CEO of ITS Japan in 2009. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of ITS World Congress & the Secretary-General of ITS Asia-Pacific since 2009. He was a Visiting Professor at the Advanced Mobility Research Center of the University of Tokyo from 2014. After retirement from those positions in 2022, he assumed the Representative Director of Mobility Innovation Alliance Japan, to facilitate collaboration across the academic disciplines, industrial sectors & jurisdiction.

Hiroaki Takada is the Executive Director and a Professor at Global Research Institute for Mobility in Society (GREMO), Nagoya University. He is also the Executive Director of the Center for Embedded Computing Systems (NCES), Nagoya University. He received his Ph.D. degree in Information Science from University of Tokyo in 1996. His research interests include real-time operating systems, real-time scheduling theory, dependability of embedded systems, automotive embedded systems, and dynamic map. He is the leader of the TOPPERS Project, a project to develop open-source real-time operating systems for embedded systems.

Brian Cronin is the Program Director of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Joint Program Office providing strategic direction for the research & deployment of ITS.  Brian provides advice to the Assistant Secretary for Research & Technology on ITS Policy, strategic program direction, & budget allocation.  Prior to this role, Brian served as Director, Office of Safety & Operations Research & Development, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for 5 years, & two years as the Director, Office of Operations Research & Development.  In his most recent role, he provided executive leadership & guidance for improving & advancing transportation safety & operations-related technologies & innovations through research, development, & testing.  Brian provided executive leadership in FHWA’s involvement in the Intersection Safety Challenge, development of a Vulnerable Road User Research Plan Report to Congress, & establishing a new Center of Excellence for New Mobility & Automated Vehicles. Brian guided the development of the Cooperative Driving Automation research program & V2X research efforts.

Prior to his appointment into the SES, Brian served for 11 years in the ITS JPO, with the last 8 years as the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Research Team Leader.  In this position, he provided strategic leadership & direction in the development of ITS solutions to improve transportation mobility, safety, & the environment.  Brian provided technical leadership for the development of the connected vehicle research program & the Secretary’s Smart City Challenge.  

Prior to joining FHWA in 2003, Brian served as the Advanced Public Transportation Systems Team Leader with the Federal Transit Administration where he oversaw research & deployment of transit related ITS technologies to improve transit operations.  

Brian holds a Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University & a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech. Brian is also a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Maryland.Brian recently celebrated his 25^th wedding anniversary to his wife Lisa LaCourse, & has two girls, Lucy & Julia. Brian enjoys camping, kayaking, hiking, swimming, biking, & golf. 

Dr. Stephane Dreher is Head of Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility (CCAM) at ERTICO – ITS Europe. He is coordinating the EU-funded FAME project aimed at supporting the alignment of CCAM R&I and testing in Europe by facilitating the collaboration and sharing of knowledge within the community of CCAM stakeholders, fostering international cooperation and by developing a European Framework for Testing on Public Roads. He is a member of the Executive Group of the European CCAM Partnership under the Horizon Europe funding programme, leading the coordination cluster. From 2015 to 2017, he was a Transport Data and Statistics Expert with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He advised the Saudi Ministry of Transport on technical and policy matters regarding Transport Data, Analytics and ITS in the frame of the update of the National Transportation Strategy and Vision 2030 . Prior to that, he worked 10 years at HERE, in charge of EU Government Programmes in Brussels.