Hassan Gargouri received his Dipl.-Ing. degree in 2006 and his Dr.-Ing. degree in 2009, both in electrical engineering, from the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany. From 2009 he worked as scientific assistant in OLED development at the Institute of High Frequency, Braunschweig, Germany. From 2011 he acted as project leader, then as product manager and group leader at a mid-sized company in Berlin, where he was responsible for the development and commercialization of new machines and systems for the semiconductor industry. He joined Instrument Systems in 2020 as International Sales Manager, with a focus on international key accounts and their light measurement challenges in the exterior automotive lighting field.

Paul leads, develops and implement the Covestro Automotive and Transportation regional marketing strategy through close collaboration with commercial, product and innovation teams.

• Implements strategies and tactics relevant to customer targets, based on North American needs.
• Serves as the key marketing contact for key accounts while ensuring communication and implementation of segmentation and tactical marketing plans.
• Identifies and develops new market opportunities to ensure a continuous pipeline of opportunities with existing and new markets/applications.

Dr. Michael Hamm joined Audi in May 2012 as manager of headlamp development in Audi Ingolstadt, responsible for all headlamps of Audi. He studied Physics at Darmstadt Technical University. In his PhD work he investigated the colour sensibility and the reaction of the human eye. He was 16 years head of lighting development at Automotive Lighting, working for all innovative lighting systems from Xenon over Full AFS to the latest LED Matrixbeams. During his professional work he contributed to 70 patent families and published more than 35 technical papers, interviews and publications.

After graduating Delft Technical University in the Netherlands he worked 29 years at Royal Philips (including 2 years at Lumileds). During that time he was active for 19 years in the automotive (Lighting and Optical Storage) and 10 years in the Consumer Electronics industry.
He held various international assignments in Product Development, Marketing & Sales and Strategy & Business Development. Since October 2016 he works as an independent Advisor in automotive sales & marketing, strategy, and business development. Leo is one of the organisers of this Lidar Conference.

 Ralf Schäfer, born in 1950, has received his Ph. D. in Physics from the University of Münster, Germany in 1976 based on his research on super conductivity.  
He joined Philips Research Labs in Aachen, Germany in 1977 gathering experience on halogen and HID light sources.  
Ralf became Head of Xenon Development within Philips Automotive Lighting in 1990 with the task to introduce this new technology to the market based in the Aachen facilities. Following positions have been Global Headlighting Development Manager of Philips Automotive Lighting Ralf became Vice President for OEM marketing of Philips Automotive Lighting with the task to balance LED technologies versus conventional light sources. 
He retired December 1st 2011  from his duties and since then works as a free-lance consultant.

Carsten Befelein is an expert for automotive lighting with enthusiasm for styling aspects. He likes to work out cognitive and connected lighting innovations and concepts with feasibility and economic studies for a successful serial implementation.

Carsten Befelein started his professional career as soldier, teacher for Physics and Sports and worked from 1987 to 2009 at BMW as Dipl. Physicist in the departments for lighting, electronics, interior components and styling.

In 2010 Carsten Befelein founded his own engineering office “CB-Lichtdesign” to create styling and customer relevant lighting solutions for automotive and general lighting. From 2012 to 2019 he additionally worked at Toyota Boshoku Europe and Techniplas-Weidplas to develop “smart trim parts” with innovative lighting and electronic integrations in plastic components. As pensioner he continues working at “CB-Lichtdesign” for different companies and DVN & DVN-I on the latest lighting technologies, trends and innovations.

Hector Fratty’s entire career has been in vehicle lighting. From 1995 to 2006, he was Valeo Lighting Systems’ chief of R&D, managing a staff of 650 engineers and technicians and a budget of over €70m. His level of expertise in lighting gained him recognition as one of Valeo’s 5 Master Experts. He headed the Valeo Lighting Expert Committee through March 2008.

Hector Fratty presides over the biennial VISION Congress international vehicle lighting and driver assistance symposium. He is also a member of the ISAL steering committee, which guides and administers the ISAL international symposium on automotive lighting organized by TU Darmstadt.

He founded and is now managing director of Driving Vision News (DVN), the vehicle lighting, ADAS and car smart interior industry’s journal of record, dedicated to keeping the involved community informed and communicating about the latest progress and developments.