BW2 : Future Sustainable Mobility in a Changing Climate

Professor Takashi Oguchi, born in Tokyo in 1964, graduated Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) in 1988 and got Ph.D from Graduate School of Engineering of UTokyo in 1993. After joining to Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., he started his academic career in Tokyo Metropolitan University, and promoted to Professor in 2007. He moved to Institute of Industrial Science (IIS) of UTokyo in 2011. He is in charge of education for the Department of Civil Engineering at UTokyo. He has assigned to Director of Advanced Mobility Research Center (ITS Center) of IIS, UTokyo, from 2018 to 2025, and is serving as a Deputy Director of IIS, UTokyo in 2024. He is also a member of Mobility Innovation Collaborative Research Center (UTmobI) at UTokyo started in July 2018 and serving as a Director of UTmobI from 2025. He is also adjunct Project Professor both in Social Cooperation Program on "Data informed Transit and Urban Management" in UTmobI from April 2024 and Social Cooperation Program on "Urban Surface Street Management for Smart Mobility" in IIS from October 2024. His major research field is Traffic Engineering, Traffic Management and Control including advanced traffic signal control, advanced highway network traffic management systems, integrated transport and mobility system design including utilization of automated vehicle technology, harmonized design of infrastructure facilities and hierarchical road transport system. He also contributed to the Japanese national project SIP-adus (Cross-Ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program in the Innovation of Automated Driving for Universal Services) from 2016 to 2023.

Manabu Umeda is a project researcher at Mobility Innovation Collaborative Research Organization, the University of Tokyo (UTmobI). He is also appointed as a Collaborative research coordinator in Mobility Innovation Alliance Japan since Jan. 2024.
He has many years of experience in safety performance development at an automotive company, where he has played a key role in developing vehicle safety technologies, and holds extensive expertise and deep insight in the field of automotive safety.
Since he joined the University of Tokyo in November 2019, he has contributed to promoting international collaboration activities regarding automated driving research fields. He was appointed as a Collaborative research coordinator in SIP-adus (the Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP), Automated Driving for Universal Services) steering committee in Japan from Jan. 2020 to March 2023. And he is currently working for SIP, Development of Smart Mobility Platform to promote international collaboration. He serves as an Advisory Board Member for several European research projects, including the CCAMbassador, SENSEI, and Roads4All.

Yudai Honma is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Industrial Science (IIS), The University of Tokyo, and Deputy Director of the IIS Harmonic Mobility Research Center. He is also Director (UTokyo side) of the DENSO-UTokyo Lab, a ten-year, university-wide partnership with DENSO.
His field is mathematical optimization for urban and architectural planning, focusing on the interaction between facility location and human movement. He applies this approach to the optimal location of infrastructure for decarbonized road transport, from hydrogen and electric vehicle (EV) charging stations to dynamic wireless power transfer (DWPT) on city streets and expressways. In a case study of Kawagoe City, electrifying only about 1.5% of total road length could let EVs travel without stopping to charge and with much smaller batteries, which would cut emissions from battery production. He has published in journals such as Transportation Research Part C, Transportmetrica A, Networks and Spatial Economics, Transportation Research Today, and the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy.
He has collaborated with Arizona State University since 2017 and conducted joint DWPT research at the E|Road Center of FAU and Fraunhofer IISB in Germany. He was a keynote speaker at IEEE WPTCE 2024. He is a member of the TRB Standing Committee on Mobility Management (AEP14) and a Paper Review Coordinator for the TRB Annual Meeting 2027. He has also worked on Japan’s Science, Technology and Innovation Basic Plans at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and is the lead author of two Science-Policy Briefs for the UN STI Forum.

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.