Speakers

Autonomous vehicles represent the biggest change to transportation since the car replaced the horse-drawn cart. AVs will not only reshape our cities but also our lives resulting in a massive change to our urban environments and beyond.
Join our industry experts for a wide-ranging discussion on the future of autonomous driving from multiple perspectives including congestion and pollution reduction and the interconnection with smart cities; technological and regulatory breakthroughs and limitations; potential security and ethical implications; and much more.

Alexander Pesch

Senior Director Development Automated Driving / ICV

Alexander Pesch joined Audi AG more than 19 years ago where he began his career and became an expert in Development Automotive Electronics and Safety Functions. Within that time, he took over several leading positions in R&D and responsibilities for project management at Audi AG. Prior to this, Pesch received his master’s degree in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at the RWTH Aachen University in Germany. Since May 2018, Pesch is responsible for the development of all China specific systems and functions for Automated Driving at Audi China R&D.

Tallis Liu

Director of Creative Communications Strategy at Neolix

Prior to joining the autonomous-driving service company Neolix, Tallis Liu worked with top-level International Relations think tanks, UN agencies, governments, and partnered with tech communities across the most innovative hubs in the world to host Tech-4-Humanity-themed hackathons which crowd-sourced solutions for Circular Economy and sustainability. At Neolix, Liu is now bridging cognitive and behavioural science with user-centric human-machine interaction.

Hua Zhong

WeRide SVP of Engineering

Hua Zhong is SVP of Engineering of WeRide, a smart mobility company in China that creates leading L4 autonomous driving technologies. He is leading the R&D engineer team of WeRide in China, responsible for full stack software and hardware solutions of L4 autonomous driving. Prior to WeRide, Zhong was former chief architect of autonomous driving for UCAR USA. Previously he served at Microsoft Research Asia, Google and Siemens Research. Hua Zhong got Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and has published more than 20 papers at conferences of CVPR, SIGGRAPH, TVCG, MICCAI. He holds 16 US patents.

Yufeng Zhang

General Manager, Automotive Business Unit, Horizon Robotics

Yufeng Zhang has been part of Horizon Robotics since 2017 and was initially responsible for global operations. He led the establishment of international customer cooperation and business networks in the United States, Europe, Japan, South Korea and other regions. Since 2019, he is Vice President of Horizon Robotics and, as General Manager of the Smart Driving Product Line, responsible for the smart driving business system. After graduating with a Master’s degree in Engineering and a Master’s of Business Administration, he worked for companies such as Sony and ARM. There he was already involved in automotive, business development, and corporate management.

Richard Robinson

Founding Partner at Whip Wham and Peking University Professor

Richard Robinson has been senior executive or co-founder of eight start-ups for two decades now. He is also a consultant, mentor, and investor for many others. Since 1996, he has also founded five of his own companies in China. Robinson studied at Cambridge University, the University of Southern California, and the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and a Master’s of Business Administration.