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The 2023 Automated Road Transportation Symposium
Keynote Speakers
Ann Carlson
Acting Administrator, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Ann Carlson, NHTSA’s Chief Counsel, oversees legal services across the agency, including the agency’s statutory authorities. Her office supports NHTSA’s mission in a variety of ways, including setting and enforcing vehicle safety standards, overseeing investigations and litigation, and setting and enforcing fuel economy standards for cars and trucks.
Since joining NHTSA, Carlson oversaw the agency’s historic action to issue a Standing General Order requiring timely reporting of critical safety data related to vehicles equipped with automated driving systems and advanced driver assistance systems; initiated formal rulemaking to require pedestrian automatic emergency braking and automatic emergency braking in light- and heavy-duty vehicles; and helped secure a historic 50 percent increase in funding and staffing resources for the agency under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. She also oversaw the issuance of new light-duty fuel economy standards as directed by President Biden’s Executive Order 13990.
Before joining NHTSA in January 2021, Carlson served on the faculty of the UCLA School of Law, where she was the Shirley Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law and the faculty co-director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. She also served as the California Assembly’s representative to the Independent Emissions Market Advisory Committee and won three teaching awards, including the highest honor awarded by UCLA.
Carlson is a graduate of both the University of California, Santa Barbara and Harvard Law School, and has co-authored a leading environmental casebook, co-edited a book “Lessons from the Clean Air Act,” and written numerous environmental law publications.
Trent Victor
Director of Safety Research and Best Practices, Waymo
Dr. Trent Victor is Director of Safety Research and Best Practices at Waymo, an autonomous driving technology company with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to get where they're going. Trent oversees safety research to support safety evaluations and strategic initiatives; provides safety expertise in the area of collision data analysis, collision causation, injury severity assessments, and naturalistic driving data research and analysis; represents safety issues within Waymo; and coordinates the development of best practices within Waymo and external industry standard-setting groups.
Trent has published extensively in the field of crash avoidance and autonomous driving safety research (over 100 papers, 36 patents, >5000 citations). Prior to Waymo, he was senior technical leader at the Volvo Cars Safety Centre, adjunct professor in driver behavior at Chalmers, and adjunct professor at the University of Iowa. He has received top awards such as the US Government award for Safety Engineering Excellence, Volvo Cars Technology & Innovation Award, and the Jerome H. Ely Human Factors (journal) Article Award.
Yanbing Li
Senior Vice President of Engineering, Aurora
Dr. Yanbing Li is a global business and technology leader with extensive leadership experience building market leading products and hyper-growth businesses of $1B+ in the US and China.
Yanbing is currently a Senior Vice President of Engineering at Aurora, the company building self-driving technology to deliver the benefits of the future of transportation safely, quickly, and broadly. She leads all software development for Aurora including autonomy, ground truth, mapping, simulation, platform, cloud infrastructure and data platform.
Prior to Aurora, Yanbing was a Vice President of Product and Engineering at Google, responsible for the commerce platform for cloud, and operations management and service infrastructure powering both Google Cloud and Google.
Prior to Google, Yanbing was the Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Storage and Availability Business Unit at VMware. She led product development, engineering, and go to market and built one of the fastest growing businesses and a new $1B category for VMware. During her tenure with VMware, she held multiple executive leadership roles including VP of Engineering for Storage, VP of Central Engineering, VP of Global R&D Sites, and Managing Director of China R&D.
Yanbing worked at Synopsys (a leading Electronic Design Automation software maker) for nine years in various research, development, and engineering leadership roles.
Yanbing holds a Ph.D. degree from Princeton University, a Master's degree from Cornell University, and a BS degree from Tsinghua University (Beijing), in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering.
Vinn White
Senior Advisor for Innovation, U.S. Department of Transportation
Mr. Vinn White is responsible for coordinating Secretarial initiatives on emerging transportation technologies, including automated driving systems, drone and advanced air mobility systems, surface vehicle-to-everything connectivity, 5G integration with critical aviation infrastructure and other innovative mobility models.
He returned to the USDOT in January 2021, after having previously served as the Acting Assistant Secretary/Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Department in 2016, where he was the chief architect for USDOT’s 30-Year Transportation plan, Beyond Traffic. Over this period, Vinn was part of a core group of advisors who led the Department’s work to drive transportation innovation across multiple domains, including shaping connected and autonomous vehicle policies, administering a round of AV proving ground designations, launching the Advisory Committee on Transportation Automation, and supporting the 2016 Smart City Challenge. Altogether, Vinn has worked with four USDOT Secretaries and received the Secretary’s Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievement for leading the development of Beyond Traffic and efforts related to launching a national dialogue about the future of our transportation system.
Previously, Vinn served as a senior advisor to New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, where he advised on transportation and mobility policy and worked closely with NJ’s Department of Transportation, Motor Vehicle Commission, NJ TRANSIT, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to inform State strategies and approaches. During this period, he coordinated the New Jersey Autonomous Vehicle Task Force, helped launch the Partnership to Plug-In— a cross-governmental response to vehicle electrification— and worked closely with NJ TRANSIT to develop plans around bus fleet electrification.
Dr. Robert C. Hampshire
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology and Chief
Science Officer, U.S. Department of Transportation
Dr. Robert C. Hampshire serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology and Chief Science Officer. Hampshire was previously an associate professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He was also a research associate professor in both the U-M Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) and Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS), and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering (IOE).
His unique blend of engineering systems research with public policy has made him a leader in not only transportation research, but also on the disparate impact of policy decisions in transportation systems. This has led to important strides in our understanding of transportation equity. His research applies operations research, data science, and systems approaches to analyze novel transportation systems such as smart parking, connected vehicles, autonomous vehicles, ride-hailing, bike sharing, car sharing, as well as, pedestrian and bicyclist safety. His research focuses on environmental impacts, equity, and access to opportunities. His work has been cited widely, and covered by major press outlets. He has worked extensively with both public and private sector partners worldwide. He has also been a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University and a visiting professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hampshire received a PhD in operations research and financial engineering from Princeton University.
Aicha Evans
CEO, Zoox
Ms. Aicha Evans joined Zoox as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in February 2019. Prior to Zoox, Evans served as Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Intel Corporation, driving the company’s transformation from a PC-centric to a data-centric company. Previously, she ran the company’s wireless efforts and oversaw a global team of 7,000 engineers.
Evans is a member of the Supervisory Board of SAP and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from The George Washington University.