For the full list of speakers and links to all bios, visit our main ESV webpage.
Melanie Vanstone
Director General, Motor Vehicle and Road Safety, Transport Canada
Melanie Vanstone is the director general of motor vehicle and road safety at Transport Canada (TC). In this role, she is responsible for the development and implementation of federal regulations and policy in support of vehicle safety standards and commercial vehicle safety in Canada, as well as stewardship of TC’s Motor Vehicle Test Centre.
Previously, Vanstone was director general of multi-modal and road safety programs at TC, a role that included leadership on regulatory policy and innovation. Prior to joining TC in 2019, she was an executive director and director at Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, responsible for policy and programs supporting post-secondary research in Canada. She also worked in various roles at the Privy Council Office and Employment and Social Development Canada.
Vanstone holds a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and Master of Public Administration from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She lives with her husband and children in Ottawa.
John Maddox
Senior Director, Safety Policy and Strategy, Zoox
John Maddox is the senior director for safety strategy and operations for Zoox. He is responsible for establishing and leading corporate safety policy and strategy, implementing a comprehensive approach to operational safety, and ensuring appropriate and complete regulatory reporting to government agencies. Maddox has over 30 years of experience in the automotive and transportation space, with extensive executive experience in industry, government, and academia. In addition to his current position at Zoox, he has worked as the head of AV and product safety for Lyft, associate administrator for vehicle safety research at NHTSA, and was the founder and CEO of the American Center for Mobility. Maddox also served as director of collaborative programs at University of Michigan and Texas A&M University, as well numerous engineering, executive, and research roles at Ford Motor Company and Volkswagen Group North America. He holds several patents in the automated and connected vehicle space and has earned awards and recognitions from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Maddox has served on a number of advisory and executive boards and is very active with the Automated Vehicle Safety Consortium and other national and international bodies.
Orion King
Senior Manager, Product Safety Engineering, Tesla
Orion King leads the Product Safety Engineering group at Tesla, overseeing safety for vehicles, energy products, and robotics. Since joining the company 17 years ago, he has developed core safety technologies and systems used in nearly 10 million electric vehicles and 100 gigawatt-hours of grid storage.
The global scale of these products has enabled King to contribute to international standards development, field incident investigation, and first responder training. He holds degrees in mechanical engineering and physics from Stanford University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Raquel Urtasun
Founder & CEO, Waabi
Raquel Urtasun is the founder and CEO of Waabi. A world-renowned expert in artificial intelligence, Urtasun is pioneering the field of physical AI, beginning with a focus on scalable and safe self-driving solutions. She is a full professor in the department of computer science at the University of Toronto and co-founded the Vector Institute for AI.
During her 25-year career in AI, Urtasun has received several prestigious honors, including a Longuet-Higgins Prize, an Everingham Prize, an NSERC EWR Steacie Award, two Nvidia Pioneers of AI Awards, and three Google Faculty Research Awards. She has also earned an Amazon Faculty Research Award and two Best Paper awards at CVPR, the leading conference in computer vision.
In 2026, she was named to the Inc. Female Founders 250 list, following her inclusion on Fast Company’s AI 20 and The Observer’s Power Index in 2025. She was named a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2024 and received the Order of Ontario—the province’s highest civilian honor—in 2023. She has published more than 200 papers in AI with more than 100,000 citations, giving her an h-index of 132. She has also filed more than 150 patents related to self-driving technology.
Prior to founding Waabi, Urtasun was the chief scientist and head of R&D at Uber ATG and a Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning and Computer Vision. She earned her doctorate from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in 2006 and completed postdoctoral work at MIT and the University of California, Berkeley.
Matthew Avery
Director, Strategic Development, Euro NCAP
Matthew Avery has worked in vehicle safety for 35 years. As strategic development director for Euro NCAP, his role focuses on developing new strategic safety goals for the organization in pursuit of its 2030 vision zero objective.
His current focus is the implementation of a new heavy goods vehicle program that independently safety tests European Trucks for the first time. Designed to address the growing number of vulnerable road user and car occupant crashes on European roads involving heavy commercial vehicles, the suite of tests initially focuses on active safety measures but moves into passive safety in the future.
Avery spent 35 years as director of research at Thatcham Research in the UK where he was instrumental in new whiplash tests subsequently adopted by consumer rating schemes globally.
Jennifer Morrison
Director, Vehicle Safety Strategy, Mazda
A nationally recognized automotive safety expert, Jennifer Morrison is Mazda’s chief safety advocate in the United States, shaping technical policy positions, guiding public‑facing safety communications representing Mazda across regulatory, academic and industry forums.
Morrison led Mazda North American Operations to establish the vehicle safety strategy communications department for Mazda North American Operations, where she oversees safety compliance, vehicle safety ratings, and advanced safety research for the U.S. market. She is responsible for aligning Mazda’s safety roadmap with emerging regulatory, technological, and industry trends, while advancing the company’s human‑centric approach to crash avoidance, crashworthiness, and occupant protection. Her work supports Mazda’s long-term vision of eliminating roadway fatalities and reinforces the brand’s reputation as a leader in safety engineering.
Morrison began her career in the Office of Defects Investigation at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) before spending 15 years as a Vehicle Factors Investigator and Investigator‑in‑Charge at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) There, she investigated more than 70 major loss‑of‑life crashes involving passenger vehicles, trucks, buses, and trains. Those cases profoundly shaped her dedication to preventing roadway crashes and driving measurable improvements in vehicle safety.
Andre Weimerskirch
COO, Block Harbor Cybersecurity
André Weimerskirch is chief operating officer of Block Harbor Cybersecurity. Previously, Weimerskirchwas vice president for product integrity and technology at Lear Corp., where he was responsible for product security, functional safety, platform software, and validation labs. He also established the transportation cybersecurity group at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) and still holds an adjunct associate research scientist appointment. He co-founded the embedded systems security company ESCRYPT in 2004, which was sold to Bosch in 2012.
Weimerskirch is active in all areas of transportation and AI robots cybersecurity and privacy. He is co-founder of the American Workshop on Embedded Security in Cars (escar USA), co-chairs the CCAT cybersecurity working group at the University of Michigan. He is an advisor to the University of Michigan-Dearborn computer and information science department.
Jim Alfred
General Manager, Certicom; Vice President, Blackberry Technology Solutions
Jim Alfred is the vice president of BlackBerry Certicom, part of the QNX division of BlackBerry which specializes in real-time embedded software. Alfred manages a comprehensive portfolio of cryptography, key management, and public key infrastructure (PKI) products for the automotive and internet of things (IoT) markets.
His business focus is central to establishing end-to-end trust in the IoT supply chain, starting at the point of silicon manufacturing. By implementing secure personalization and "device birth certificates," Certicom technology enables OEMs to verify component authenticity and protect against counterfeiting before a vehicle ever reaches the road.
Certicom’s applied cryptography solutions address the critical need for a "chainable" trust bootstrap, ensuring that connected applications—from OEM telematics systems to critical infrastructure like smart grid and EV charging—remain secure throughout their entire lifecycle.
Robert Kaster
Chief Technical Expert, Bosch
Robert Kaster is a chief technical expert and regional cybersecurity officer at Bosch, where he leads the global cross-divisional automotive product security team. In his 29 years at the company, Kaster has submitted more than 100 invention records, earned 18 patents in automotive safety and security, and designed braking controllers for more than 40 million vehicles.
In his current role, he manages automotive product security experts, interfaces with security leaders at original equipment manufacturers, and serves on the Auto-ISAC board of directors. Kaster completed his Ph.D. in automotive cybersecurity in 2024.
Christopher Hynes
Director, Connected Vehicle/Automated Vehicle Regulatory Policy, Transport Canada
Christopher Hynes is director of connected and automated vehicle regulatory policy at Transport Canada. He has extensive experience in legislative and regulatory development and modernization. Hynes holds a master’s degree in international affairs and is a member of the New York State Bar and the Law Society of Ontario.