The Organizers

The IPerSense Workshop Series is organized by an international committee of researchers working on infrastructure-based and integrated perception systems for intelligent mobility.

Simon Schäfer earned his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Computational Engineering Science from RWTH Aachen University, Germany. He is currently a Research Associate at the Chair for Embedded Software at RWTH Aachen University, where he conducts research within the Collaborative Research Center Transregio 339 (DFG), which develops a digital twin of the road infrastructure. His work focuses on infrastructure-based localization of traffic participants and multi-sensor fusion for connected and automated vehicles. He is expected to complete his Ph.D. in the field of infrastructure-based localization in mid-2026.

Since 2024, he has served as Project Leader of the Cyber-Physical Mobility (CPM) Lab, a small-scale connected and automated vehicle (CAV) testbed for cooperative perception, planning, and control. In this role, he coordinates research activities, advances the system architecture, and supports experimental validation of cooperative driving concepts. In 2024, he was a Visiting Researcher at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. He holds Graduate Student Member status at IEEE.

Learn more about Simon Schäfer.

Email: schaefer@embedded.rwth-aachen.de

Dr. Bassam Alrifaee is a Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Director of the Professorship for Adaptive Behavior of Autonomous Vehicles at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich. Prior to this, he served as a Senior Researcher and Lecturer and was the founding director of the Cyber-Physical Mobility (CPM) group and CPM Lab at RWTH Aachen University, Germany (2017-2024). He held a Visiting Scholar position at the University of Delaware, USA, in 2023.

Prof. Alrifaee received his Ph.D. from RWTH in 2017. His research focuses on distributed predictive control, service-oriented architectures for control systems, and their applications in connected and automated vehicles. Prof. Alrifaee has secured grants from various institutions and received awards for his advisory and editorial contributions. He holds Senior Member status at IEEE.

Learn more about Bassam Alrifaee.

Email: bassam.alrifaee@unibw.de

Dr. Ignacio Alvarez has held the Bavarian Top Professorship for Human-Centered Intelligent Systems at Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt (THI) since 2025, where he leads research on AI-driven mobility with a focus on automated driving, safety, human-AI collaboration, and in-vehicle user experience. His work spans formal methods, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and human-centered design within intelligent transport systems.

Before joining THI, he served as Principal Engineer and Executive Technical Advisor at Intel Labs (2021-2025) and Senior Research Scientist and Autonomous Driving Lead at Intel Labs (2014-2021), driving global R&D and strategy in autonomous driving and AI. Earlier, he was Senior IT Manager and Connected Drive Lead at BMW (2012-2014) and held advanced research roles with BMW and Clemson University (2009-2012). He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science (Automotive Intelligent Systems) in 2012 from the University of the Basque Country (Spain) and Clemson University (USA), graduating summa cum laude. He holds Senior Member status at IEEE and is a board member of professional societies in intelligent transportation and HCI.

Learn more about Ignacio Alvarez.

Email: ignacio.alvarez@thi.de

Dr. Ehsan Hashemi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alberta (since 2021). He earned his PhD in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering from the University of Waterloo (Canada). Dr. Hashemi was a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo, a Visiting Professor at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), the General Chair of the IEEE ITS Conference 2024 in Edmonton, Program Committee member for the American Control Conference (ACC) 2024, and Publication Co-Chair of IEEE Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob 2026).

He has led large- and small-scale projects with Canadian and international industry partners on autonomous navigation, networked control systems, robot perception, and explainable AI with several technology transfers. Dr. Hashemi is an IEEE Senior Member and Technical Committee member for the IEEE Control Systems Society. His current research programs focus on cyber-physical systems, distributed estimation and diagnosis, robot learning, control theory, and human perception.

Learn more about Ehsan Hashemi.

Email: ehashemi@ualberta.ca