NEWS - 2017/04/07

CARNET welcomes new directors

CARNET has recently welcomed Alexander Siebeneich as new industrial director, and Lluís Jofre as new academic director.

Alexander Siebeneich replaces Christoph Wäller, who had held the position of industrial director since the foundation of CARNET. Siebeneich comes to CARNET from Volkswagen Research, where he most recently worked on vehicle concepts for the future. He has a background in design, and holds a degree in Plastic Technologies. He has worked for various departments at Volkswagen since he started there in 1985, including production planning and control, quality management and process development. In 2000, he took on a role in Volkswagen Group Research, where he was responsible for designing the interior of the first one-litre car. This car gained a world record as the first to drive from Wolfsburg to Hamburg using less than one litre of diesel. He has also been responsible for several future interior concepts in research cars and from 2007 was also involved in future delivery car concepts. In 2011, he presented the worldwide first automatic driving delivery car called eT!, which can follow a postman just by using a smartphone. In 2016 he was responsible for Concept GIRA which shows how variable the interior of a car can be (we can rest in a car, communicate on large table displays and sit in a vis-à-vis position while we are driving), for a vehicle that drives automatically over a long distance.

Lluís Jofre replaces Jaume Barceló as the academic director for CARNET on behalf of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). Lluís Jofre holds a degree in Telecommunications from the UPC and is a professor at the Barcelona School of Telecommunications Engineering (ETSETB). He is also attached to the Department of Signal Theory and Communications and is a researcher with the Antennas and Wireless Systems Laboratory (ANTENNALAB). In recent years, he directed the Telefónica-UPC Enterprise Chair before interrupting his tenure to assume other responsibilities linked to university and research policy, first as the Government of Catalonia’s Director General for Universities, and then as Secretary for Universities and Research. He previously headed the Strategic Plan for the Information Society in Catalonia, the Catalan Foundation for Research, and EnginyCAT, a program aimed at promoting engineering studies.

Together, Siebeneich and Jofre aim to continue to build a strong and lasting partnership in order to create contemporary and sustainable solutions in the field of urban mobility. Both see CARNET as a really strong and exciting proposition with lots of potential for further growth.

 

Cofunded by:

FEDER

SUR