6th December, Thursday – 1st Edition of ERF Lab

25 October 2018 | Brussels, Belgium

The next generation of mobility will involve, among others, new players from the energy and telecommunication sector. An efficient inter – sectoral cooperation will bring several benefits to traditional stakeholders, road managers and users in terms of safety, sustainability and efficiency.

The ERF Lab is intended to be the first of a series of events to give the floor to representatives from the ecosystem around roads to present their visions on future mobility trends and possible impacts on the road infrastructure sector.

This event will take place at Espace Monte Paschi (Avenue d’Auderghem 22-28 1040 Brussels) from 14:00 to 17:30.

The programme will feature a series of interesting speakers such as:
• Jacobo Díaz Pineda (AEC- Spanish Road Association)
• Xavier Tackoen (Espaces Mobilité)
• Rik Nuyttens (3M)
• Pedro Miguel Rosado Barradas (European Commission)

The complete programme will be available soon.

The ERF Lab will be followed by a cocktail reception to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the European Union Road Federation.

Meet the speakers

Pedro Barradas holds a Civil Engineer Master degree and is currently a policy officer on SNE Intelligent Transport Systems at the European Commission. He is experienced and widely knowledgeable of cut crossing issues over the road sector, from territorial and transport planning in cities to road design, construction, operations and maintenance. His works is focused, amongst others, on traffic management, asset management, road safety, quality and performance assessment for concession contracts, road innovation, road standardisation, Intelligent Transport Systems, European policy and deployment Projects.

Elena is a senior PHD MSC Civil Engineer specialized in road transport, field where she has been working in the national and international context for the last 15 years. She is currently the Deputy Director for Technical Affairs of the Spanish Road Association, organization where she started her professional career. In addition to her full time position in the Association, she also acts as Chair of the working group “Sustainable Roads” of the European Union Road Federation  and of the “Smart Mobility” Technical Committee of Smart Transportation Alliance and, as well as Secretary of the technical committee on transports of the Spanish Civil Engineers Association.  

Although her main field of work has been road safety, she also has a significant background on road maintenance, performance indicators, integration of roads in the environment, financing, new technologies, etc. She has developed consultancy services for private companies, such as Philips, 3M, Mapfre and others. But most of her professional activity has been linked to the development of assessments to Public Administrations and Development Banks. At a European level, she had the opportunity to participate in several research programs in the last years. In addition, she has had an intensive activity as professor and she has participated as lecturer in at least 30 national congresses or technical meetings, as well as 10 international congresses.

Gino Franco is the Head of Innovation for the ITS Division of the Swarco Group, with the role of coordinating the innovation and research activities with specific focus at exploring new technologies, new business models and partnerships that can enrich the Swarco product portfolio and business.

He has more than 25 years of experience in the field of ITS, before the current role, he has been working for Swarco Mizar with the role of Head of Innovation and with the responsibility of Business and Sales development. He has specific skills and experiences in project management, implementation of pilot demonstrations and deployment of traffic management and control systems. For several years has been playing an active role in both European and National projects for the research, development and deployment of innovative solutions for the road transport safety, efficiency and sustainability.

Ian Koeppel has been applying Geographic Information Systems to transportation for 28 years. At Esri he’s responsible for transportation business development in Europe. He’s a cultural geographer and presents on a wide range of topics relating to infrastructure management and smart mobility. Ian resides with his family in the Paris area, and has 3 children between the ages of 5 and 22 who frequently remind him why it’s so vital to create a smarter and safer future.

After nearly 20 years at Michelin in France, Mexico, Japan and China (sales, sales management, country, zone and then world marketing management), Alexis Offergeld became “Innov’Up” Project Manager for the Group. Objective: To stimulate the creativity and collective intelligence of employees to encourage commitment and innovation.

He has been Director of Open Lab Mobility for a year. The Open Lab Mobility is a Think and Do Tank to promote sustainable mobility, created in 2014 and led by Michelin. The Open Lab Mobility federates more than 200 companies, universities, start-ups, consultants, public organizations, cities … that work permanently in communities of interest and meet annually at MOVIN’ON, the world summit of mobility.

The 2018 edition took place in Montreal, Canada, on May 30th and 31st. Graduate of HEC option Entrepreneurs, he is also co-founder and organizer of TEDx conferences in Clermont-Ferrand.

Kristof Rombaut is an electromechanical industrial engineer. He started his carrier in the private sector, in the automotive as technical trainer. In this role he acquinted national trainers with new vehicle technology. He built up experience with Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and ITS systems.  

About five years ago he switched to the public sector where he is ITS study engineer within the Flemish Agency for Roads and Traffic focusing on C-ITS and automated vehicles. 

Xavier has a degree in Commerce from ICHEC in Brussels and a specialized studies diploma (DES) in transport management from CIEM. After some ten years in the academic world, Xavier joined Espaces-Mobilités in 2009. He is in charge of strategic studies on mobility with a thorough knowledge of the public transport sector and a strong interest in new forms of mobility. Xavier also participates as a trainer in training programs for public administrations, transport operators and private companies.