Ankit R. Patel is a transport researcher and is currently associated with the  University of Minho, Portugal. He has been involved as a keynote speaker in more than 25 international venues, including India, Italy, Germany, the USA, Morocco, the Czech Republic, South Africa, China, and Vietnam. He has associated with various prestigious international conferences like ACM (CHI, NordiCHI, OzCHI, AutomotiveUI, Mindtrek, COMPASS, GROUP, IMX, MuC, India HCI), IEEE (ITEC, AFRICON, e-Science, MELECON, LOGISTIQUA, WF-PST, ECCE, GTSNZ, SeFeT), Design Research Society (LXD), Participatory Design Conference (PDC), and IFAC (CTS). At the ASME/IEEE 2026 Joint Rail Conference (JRC), he will serve as the paper chair. He also serves as a lead editor for the special issue in the Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces (User-Centered Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) and in Future Transportation (Sustainable Transportation and Quality of Life), and as an editorial board member in the International Journal of Innovative Research and Scientific Studies; Journal of Social Economic Research; Future Transportation; Journal of Sustainable Urban Mobility; Transportation Development Research; and Edelweiss Applied Science and Technology. His research interests lie in the fields of automotive human factors and interaction, smart cities, policy and design, sustainable and socially inclusive transportation.

Pnina Gershon, PhD, is a Research Scientist at MIT AgeLab, Center for Transportation and Logistics, where she co-directs the Advanced Vehicle Technology (AVT) consortium and leads the naturalistic driving research. Dr. Gershon’s research provides the theoretical and applied insights needed to develop solutions to next-generation transportation challenges and advance the future of safe, efficient, accessible, and sustainable mobility. She works closely with the automotive, insurance, and tech industries to deliver data-driven design decisions. Dr. Gershon’s research focuses on the impact of emerging technologies, automated and electrified mobility, driver distraction, impairment, and behaviors of high-risk driver populations on driving safety. Dr. Gershon is an invited member of the National Academies of Sciences Transportation Research Board's Committee on Operator Education and Regulation and a member of the Young and Older Driver Subcommittee. Dr. Gershon received the NIH Fellows Award for Research Excellence (2018) and the NICHD Collaboration Award (2017).

Azra Habibovic is currently Technology Leader for Human Factors and Automation at TRATON R&D where she is responsible for defining and driving forward Scania’s roadmap for early stage research in these two areas. Prior to joining Scania, Azra was with RISE Research Institutes of Sweden as senior researcher and project leader, and with the research center SAFER as research area director for road user behavior. She holds a PhD in Vehicle Safety Systems (2012) and a MSc in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (2006), both from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. Her research focuses on improving traffic safety and user experience by means of automation and connectivity. A special interest is design and evaluation of interactions in and around automated vehicles, including interactions related to remote operation of automated vehicles.

Fjollë Novakazi is a Human Factors researcher specialising in cognitive ergonomics, dedicated to the human-centric development of complex technical systems. She earned her PhD in Human-Technology-Design in December 2023 at the Division of Design & Human Factors at Chalmers University of Technology. Her thesis explored the factors that influence drivers' perception and consequent understanding of driving automation systems.

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In 2024, she joined the Centre for Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems (AASS) at Örebro University as a postdoctoral researcher. where she particularly focuses on the factors affecting the successful introduction of collaborative robotics in the manufacturing workplace and participates in efforts to develop a knowledge framework describing the complex setting in production assembly lines to inform the development of intention recognition frameworks for collaborative manufacturing. Fjollë employs an empirical mixed-methods approach in her work, utilising surveys, in-depth interviews, co-design workshops, naturalistic studies, field evaluations, ethnographic observations, and more to gather comprehensive insights for her research.

In her other capacities, Fjollë is an editorial board member of the International Journal of Human Factors and Ergonomics and contributes as a standard developer within TK380/AG 2 Ergonomics and Human Factors at the Swedish Institute for Standards (SIS) and in international working groups, ensuring that ergonomic principles are integrated into technical standards.

Before her tenure in academia, Fjollë worked as a Senior Design Engineer at Volvo Cars. In this role, she led various research studies and supervised activities to ensure the human-centric development of automotive user interfaces. Her work involved interdisciplinary and international collaboration, covering all stages of research projects, from the initial planning and organisation to the execution.

Sakura Akahoshi is a Ph.D. student in Degree Programs in Systems and Information Engineering at University of Tsukuba, Japan. She is currently staying at the Tsukada Lab. at The University of Tokyo as a visiting student.

Her research interests lie in the fields of human factors, authority distribution during automated driving, human-machine collaboration, and trust-building between humans and automated vehicles. Her current research projects focus on exploring new applications to balance the control authority between humans and automation in the design space of human-machine mediator/arbitration. She stayed at RWTH Aachen University, Germany from September 2023 to February 2024 and was engaged in this topic, which she continues to do to this day.
 

The goal of her research is to create and embody a new perspective and/or design philosophy toward a successful collaboration between humans and automation.

Areen Alsaid is an assistant professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and the director of the User State Estimation Laboratory. Before joining UM-Dearborn, she worked as a research scientist and data scientist at Ford Motor Company where she worked on developing in-vehicle technologies to increase trust and acceptance of automated vehicles. Areen earned her PhD in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and MS degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Central Florida.

 Areen’s research focuses on affective computing and user state estimation to facilitate human and automation teaming. She employs statistical methods, machine learning algorithms, and data visualization techniques to understand user cognitive states and develop strategies to improve interactions between humans and technologies. Her work in the automotive industry includes several projects dedicated to estimating critical driver states such as motion sickness, drowsiness, emotions, and trust.

Kyungjoo Cha is a Principal Academic in Product Design (User Experience Design) in the Department of Design & Engineering at Bournemouth University. She possesses PhD in Design Research and Human-Computer Interaction at Brunel University London.

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She previously worked as a design researcher specialising in human-centred design in academia and the commercial sector. She performed several funded research projects focused on user experience design for automobiles sponsored by Jaguar Land Rover at Brunel University London. She recently worked on design research for an autonomous vehicle design partnered with Hyundai and Kia Motors as PI. Before academia, she worked as a consultant in the advertising campaign division of Cheil Worldwide, a Samsung company, which has been the Headquarters of the biggest marketing communication agency in South Korea since 2005. She developed brand campaigns and creative media strategies to make brands and products successful in the market for various clients such as Samsung Life Insurance, Asics Sports and CJ.

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Her current research interests are in using a human-centred speculative approach in the mobility sector to understand the emotional experience. She has performed several funded research projects that focused on user experience design for automobiles and facilitated a series of design workshops for students, commercial designers, and engineers to practice scenario building, emotional experience mapping, and product/system concept generation.