All Aboard? Ensuring User Acceptance for Connected Automated Vehicles brings together leading experts from academia and practice to explore one of the key challenges in automated driving: user acceptance.
In this panel, Margriet van Schijndel (TU/e), Natascha Merat (University of Leeds), Siddartha Khastgir (University of Warwick) and Timo Woopen (Institute of Automotive Engineering, RWTH Aachen University) will share their insights on trust, human–machine interaction and the conditions needed for people to feel comfortable using connected and automated vehicles.
The discussion will be moderated by Evan Corey Costagliola (Citify) and will focus on what it really takes to get users on board — from design and communication to real-world deployment.
After graduating from RWTH Aachen University in 2016 with an M.Sc. degree in Automotive Engineering, Timo Woopen joined the Automated Driving Department at the Institute for Automotive Engineering (ika) of RWTH Aachen University. His primary research interests include automated and connected vehicles, alongside infrastructural support. From 2018 to 2023, Timo Woopen served as the overall project manager for the UNICARagil project, pioneering modular architectures for agile and automated vehicle concepts. Since 2019, is head of the Vehicle Intelligence & Automated Driving division at ika. In 2021, he additionally assumed the role of CEO at Thinking Cars GmbH, a startup spawned from the UNICARagil project focusing on Open-Source-Software for functional components and middleware of autonomous vehicles. In 2025, he completed his doctoral degree with honors.
Margriet van Schijndel-de Nooij is Program Manager Responsible Mobility at
Eindhoven University of Technology, since 2019. Within the university, she is based at EAISI (Eindhoven AI Systems Institute). Margriet works across all nine departments of the university, aiming at multidisciplinary mobility research with impact. The research program Responsible Mobility addresses societal challenges regarding sustainable, inclusive, safe and efficient transport; exactly what Margriet believes is essential for the future of our mobility system and for e.g. the livability of cities.
Margriet is a mechanical engineer from Eindhoven University of Technology (M.Sc.) and started her carrier at the Dutch research institute TNO. She coordinated several European funded mobility projects. She was Secretary General of the European Automotive Research Partners Association (EARPA), 2013-2020.
Since 2021, Margriet is Executive Board Member of the CCAM Partnership, leading Cluster 5 on Key enabling Technologies. Since 2022, she is a member of the Delegation to the Partnership Board, 2Zero Partnership on zero emission road mobility. She’s an EARPA Board member since 2024, and leading the Foresight Group on Connectivity, Automation and Safety since 2020.
