As vice president of Product Planning for vehicle systems for the ZF group, Whydell is responsible for identifying new market trends and product requirements, as well as guiding the company’s systems development strategy to best meet those needs. Mr. Whydell is based at ZF’s North American Headquarters in Livonia, Michigan. His current responsibilities include product planning and strategy development across the ZF group’s broad portfolio of chassis, electronics and occupant safety products. Before assuming this role Whydell was Product Planning director responsible for the Global Electronics product line, and also served as Product Planning senior manager for the TRW Driver Assist Systems product line, located in Shirley, England. Mr. Whydell joined ZF in February 2007, having progressed through a number of Engineering, Business Planning and Program Management positions within the Ford Motor Company Electronics and Visteon organizations. A graduate of Leeds University in England, Mr. Whydell holds a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.

Tilo Schwarz is Vice President and Head of Autonomy at Nuro Inc., Mountain View, CA. He leads the team responsible for delivering an AI-first Autonomy stack which powers autonomous vehicles for various applications. Before his time at Nuro he spent over 20 years at Mercedes-Benz, both in Germany and in the Silicon Valley headquarter of Mercedes-Benz Research and Technology North America. Throughout his career he focused on innovative technology and software development for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and Autonomous Driving. He has deep expertise in L2, L3 and L4 vehicle systems.

The Pop in Your Job – What drives you? Why do you love your job?
Making Autonomous Driving a reality - in a product - on the road - safely.

Robert Gee is the strategy manager responsible for standards, government, and intellectual property globally, within Continental’s Architecture and Networking Business Area. He collaborates with customers, consortia, governments, and other companies to enable safe transportation, sustainable business practices, and consumer information needs.
Spanning more than 30 years, Robert’s experience at IBM, Loral, Motorola, and other leading companies includes military and commercial communications systems, space and terrestrial technologies, and secure government communications for dozens of countries in Europe, North America, and Asia. He has a Master’s Degree in Computer Science, a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering, and over 20 issued patents.
Robert’s experience extends to the news and entertainment industry, in which he is a national television Emmy Award recipient for his work as a producer for CNN. He has been credited for successfully pioneering the modern contracting approach for citizen photojournalists, and at one point had a CNN-estimated syndication audience of over 1 billion viewers.

The Pop in Your Job – What drives you? Why do you love your job?
Some lessons aren’t taught in a classroom. While my wife and I were fortunate to walk away from two terrorist attacks, dozens of people near us did not. The lesson we learned was that the daily grind and the disagreement of the moment are frivolous in comparison to making positive differences in others’ lives, sometimes as simple as starting with a smile. As engineers and scientists, we collaborate to do even more, such as working on cooperative and connected technologies that can address millions of unnecessary Roadway Injuries and Deaths (RIDs) each year. It is a daunting challenge, but one that can bear a wonderful result: not only at the macro level in which the statistics are large, but at the individual level, conveying friends and families to gather together each evening after their daily activities, helping to keep them safe throughout all modes of transportation, and enabling the more important activity of human connection to occur. Doing this broadly across all demographics, regardless of transportation means or individual financial situation, greatly motivates me because it aligns with the tough lessons learned in those fraught situations that my wife and I experienced. It’s always about the people. After all, Point A to Point B isn’t the point, unless we are successful in getting to B.

Working in the field of ADAS and Autonomous Driving since 2019; part of Kognic's mission to enable budget-effective development of data-defined perception software since 2022.

Sahil Potnis is a VP of Product and Partnerships at Digital Divide Data (DDD), one of the leading companies offering ML data annotation and labeling products across the globe. He joined DDD very recently and is a subject matter expert in the domain areas of Autonomous Vehicle Data Operations, Systems Engineering and Test Strategy. Prior to DDD, Sahil led a diverse group of data transformation functions as Director of Operations at Motional. He is a dynamic professional with over 8 years of experience in end to end Systems Engineering, Functional Safety, and Testing of Autonomous Vehicles. Sahil brings in a cross-functional approach, by combining Product Development, Engineering Management and Systems Design, to solve next-gen challenges. Sahil holds a Master’s degree from Cornell University and has worked prior with notable companies such as Aurora and Uber.

ZF is a global technology company supplying advanced mobility products and systems for passenger cars, commercial vehicles and industrial technology. Its comprehensive product range is primarily aimed at vehicle manufacturers, mobility providers and start-up companies in the fields of transportation and mobility. ZF electrifies a wide range of vehicle types. With its products, the company contributes to reducing emissions, protecting the climate as well as enhancing safe mobility. Alongside the automotive sector – passenger cars and commercial vehicles – ZF also serves market segments such as construction and agricultural machinery, wind power, marine propulsion, rail drives and test systems.

Nuro exists to better everyday life through robotics. Founded in 2016, Nuro is a leading autonomous technology company with vehicles on the road today in multiple U.S. cities. The company is helping automotive OEMs and mobility providers accelerate autonomous vehicle development through the Nuro Driver™ platform, a state-of-the-art autonomous driving system that combines automotive-grade hardware and AI-powered self-driving software to enable up to Level 4 systems on mobility platforms and personally-owned vehicles.

Continental develops pioneering technologies and services for sustainable and connected mobility of people and their goods. Founded in 1871, the technology company offers safe, efficient, intelligent and affordable solutions for vehicles, machines, traffic and transportation. In 2022, Continental generated sales of €39.4 billion and currently employs around 200,000 people in 57 countries and markets.

Kognic provides a modular MLOps platform to ADAS/AD perception developers. It includes sensor fusion annotation and analytics tools, enabling automotive-grade development of performance-critical ML models.

DDD delivers digital content, data and research services to clients worldwide. Customers receive high-quality competitively priced digital content services. At the same time, DDD's innovative social model enables talented youth from low-income families to access professional opportunities and earn lasting higher income. This model, established by DDD in 2001, is now called "Impact Sourcing"​ and has been implemented by dozens of firms around the world. DDD's clients include leading publishing, media and information services firms; consumer brands and retailers; government agencies; libraries, museums and archives; investment, telecommunications and manufacturing firms, as well as NGOs. Since 2001, DDD's program has increased lifetime earning for youth in Cambodia, Laos and Kenya by a projected total of more than US$250,000,000. DDD's social model is unique in that youth have the opportunity to complete higher education while they gain work experience. DDD has been recognized worldwide for quality service, innovation, and social impact. Among many awards and recognitions, the Global Sourcing Council presented DDD its 3S Award for Sustainable and Socially Responsible Sourcing. DDD has been consistently on the list the Top 100 NGOs worldwide in The Global Journal and is a recipient of the Google Award for Innovation in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).