Peter Burns
Dr. Peter Burns leads Transport Canada’s Ergonomics and Crash Avoidance Division, where he oversees research supporting the development of motor vehicle safety standards, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and automated driving technologies. His expertise spans human factors, vehicle ergonomics, driver behaviour, and crash avoidance. He represents Canada in international regulatory activities, including the UNECE World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations. Before joining Transport Canada, he worked as a human factors psychologist at the Transport Research Laboratory (UK) and Volvo (Sweden). He holds a Ph.D. in Automotive Human Factors from Loughborough University and an M.A. in Psychology from Queen’s University.
Amy Oke
Amy is a Research Development Officer in the Automated Driving Systems (ADS) Testing and Evaluation group at Transport Canada. She contributes to research and evaluation activities that support the safe deployment of connected and automated vehicle technologies in Canada. With more than seven years of experience spanning telecommunications, cybersecurity, and public-sector innovation, she has also held technical and policy roles at Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. Amy holds a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and a Professional Master of Public Administration from Queen’s University.
Benoit Anctil
Benoit is a Senior Crash Avoidance Research Engineer at Transport Canada, where he leads research on the safety implications of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and automated vehicles. His work focuses on crash avoidance technologies, automated driving system evaluation, vulnerable road user protection, and vehicle safety standards. Prior to joining Transport Canada, he held engineering leadership roles in industry, directing research, development, and testing projects related to protective equipment, vehicle safety, and instrumentation systems. He earned a B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering from Polytechnique Montréal and an M.Eng. in Biomedical Engineering from McGill University. He contributes to international automotive safety standards through SAE International and ISO working groups on automated driving systems and has authored numerous technical publications.
Didem Cicek
Didem is a PhD Candidate in Digital Transformation and Innovation Program of University of Ottawa and a researcher in Smart Connected Vehicles Innovation Center (SCVIC). She serves as Chair of the Government Regulations Committee for CAVI’s Trans-Canada Automated Trucking Initiative, supporting regulatory dialogue and cross-sector coordination for autonomous freight mobility in Canada. She also brings over 15 years of corporate industry experience in finance, strategy, digital transformation, and project leadership.
Ross Greer
Ross leads the Mi³ Lab (Machine Intelligence, Interaction, and Imagination) at UC Merced, where his research focuses on computer vision and AI for safe autonomous driving. His work centers on uncertainty quantification, robustness to rare and open-world events, human–AI interaction, trust in AI, and data curation for safety-critical systems. He serves as an Area Chair for ICLR, ICML, and NeurIPS. He earned his Ph.D. from UC San Diego under the supervision of Mohan Trivedi at the Laboratory for Intelligent & Safe Automobiles (LISA) and collaborated with Shlomo Dubnov through the Center for Research in Entertainment & Learning (CREL) on AI and music, co-authoring the textbook Deep and Shallow: Machine Learning in Music and Audio.
John Tambwe Wambombo
John is the Program Coordinator for the Safer Roads Ottawa Program at the City of Ottawa, where he leads stakeholder engagement, community outreach, and the development of road safety initiatives under the City’s Road Safety Action Plan. He has held several project leadership roles supporting the Safer Roads Ottawa program and the Stage 2 LRT expansion project, with expertise in transportation safety, public engagement, and program management. John holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication and Media Studies from Carleton University and an Advanced Diploma in Public Relations from Algonquin College.
Omar Choudhry
Omar Choudhry P. Eng. is Senior Specialist for Intelligent Transportation Systems at the City of Ottawa. He has worked extensively on projects across the United States and Canada, covering the entire range of applications from development of system architectures to electronic collection systems design and from data integration for system operations to deployment of information management systems. Omar spent 10 years working in the United States before returning to Ottawa to create the boutique consulting company which assisted government agencies in developing and deploying advanced technological solutions to solve traffic problems, and then venturing into the startup world founding or advising companies in the digital data and blockchain spaces.
Omar has been developing and implementing technology solutions for over 25 years on projects across the United States and Canada. His work currently focuses on new technologies in the Intelligent Transportation Systems and Connected Automated Vehicle spaces to assist in improving mobility, traveller information and traffic management for residents. Omar been asked to moderate panel sessions, spoken at conferences across North America and published numerous articles on the subject of traffic information, data processing and management.
Raghavender Sahdev
Raghavender is the President & CEO of NuPort Robotics, Canada’s first autonomous trucking company. He is one of Canada’s leading AI entrepreneurs having extensive experience in the fields of Applied AI & Robotics. Raghavender was listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 for North America, BITSAA Global 30 under 30 list, York University 30 under 30 alumni, and received the 2020 Mitacs Environmental Entrepreneur award and the Audience Favorite award. He has a Masters in Computer Science from York University, Bachelors in Computer Science from BITS Pilani and has worked at Huawei, Google Summer of Code, Open Robotics, University of Toronto, Next Canada prior to founding NuPort. He participated in accelerator programs such as Next Canada’s Next AI, UC Berkeley SkyDeck, MaRS Supply Chain AI, Plug and Play and his company has received coverage in Forbes, TechCrunch, Betakit, Invest Ontario, Business world, Autocar professional, Economic Times, etc.
Luc Brunet
Luc Brunet is the Director of Robotics and Autonomous Systems at Rheinmetall Provectus. He holds a Master’s degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT, and a Bachelor’s degree from Carleton University’s Aerospace Engineering program. With nearly two decades of experience, his expertise lies in developing and deploying advanced autonomous navigation systems within the defense sector.
As a co-founder of Provectus Robotics Solutions, Luc architected the company’s core autonomy software through to its successful acquisition by Rheinmetall in 2019. Today, he leads the technical vision and productization of Rheinmetall’s PATH Autonomy Kit, a modular, platform-agnostic autonomy system, driving its adoption and deployment across multiple NATO countries. Throughout his career, he has specialized in guiding engineering teams through the full product lifecycle, taking autonomy concepts from the lab to the front lines.
Mojtaba Ahmadi
Mojtaba Ahmadi (Senior Member, IEEE) received the B.Sc. degree in mechanical engineering from the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 1989, the M.Sc. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Tehran, Tehran, in 1992, and the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada, in 1998. In 2005, he joined the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada, where he is currently a Professor and a Cross-Appointed Professor with the Systems and Computer Engineering Department. From 1998 to 2000, he worked on robotic teleoperation and autonomous operation as a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Montreal. From 2000 to 2005, he held senior positions in different industries, such as Opal-RT Technologies Inc., Montreal; Quantum and Matrix Corporations, San Jose, CA, USA; and the Institute for Aerospace Research, National Research Council Canada, Ottawa. He also founded the Advanced Biomechatronics and Locomotion Laboratory (ABL), Ottawa. His research interests include rehabilitation robotics and assistive devices, human-robot interaction, design and control of mechatronic systems, autonomous vehicles, and legged robots.
Arash Abarghooei
Arash Abarghooei received the B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Shahid Rajaee University, Tehran, Iran, in 2014, the M.Sc. degree in Mechatronics Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2017, and the Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada, in 2025. He is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Carleton University.
Dr. Abarghooei is the founder and lead of the Intelligent Connected Assistive and Autonomous Vehicle (iCAAV) group within the Advanced Biomechatronics and Locomotion (ABL) Lab, where he and his team develop high-fidelity driving simulators, real-vehicle sensing and control platforms, driver monitoring systems, and perception algorithms to support research and training in autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles. His research focuses on autonomous vehicles, intelligent and advanced driver assistance systems with an emphasis on human-centred, risk-aware shared control strategies, driver behavior modeling, accident risk assessment, multi-modal sensing, and machine learning.