ATCx Electrification for Engineers

Christian is a leading Business Development Director – Systems Integration for systems simulation and related applications at Altair. In this role, he is responsible for consulting with customers and establishing solutions based on their needs for system simulation and connected products. Before joining Altair in 2017, he worked at both ITI GmbH and the BMW Group. He holds a Mechanical engineering degree in the field of automotive engineering from TU Dresden in Germany.

AM4EM
Ahmed Selema is also a core lab member at Flanders Make, the strategic research center for the manufacturing industry in Flanders, Belgium. He has been also working as a R&D Senior E-motor Engineer with the Electrical Energy Lab (EELab), Ghent University, in a close collaboration with different industrial corporations in the EU. His research interests include electrical machines and drives, electromagnetics, material characterization, energy-efficient motor design, advanced thermal management, and additive manufacturing.

Letizia Ferrara obtained her Master’s in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pavia.

She started her career at an Italian consultancy firm, for whom she took charge of the laboratory for measurement of magnetic properties of materials, and she mainly worked as electromagnetic and thermal designer. She became head of the research and development department.

She currently works at Altair, since 2019, as Senior Application Engineer in the electromagnetic field.

Dr. Miklos Gäbler is the visionary thinker for business and self development. Aerospace is his active technology fields within Axyal BV, an OEM for Axial Flux technology bases propulsion units for electric aircraft applications. He draws on 20 years of aviation experience at Rolls-Royce.

Dr. Royston Jones is the Global Head of Automotive at Altair. For over thirty years, Dr Jones has been involved in the application of CAE methods to produce design innovation. One of his many passions is leading the development of cutting-edge solutions for e-mobility, including methodologies to significantly reduce vehicle weight, create more efficient e-motors and creating batteries optimized for performance at the cell, module and pack levels.

Oliver is an experienced pre-sales leader with over 18 years of commercial experience, primarily focusing on enabling digital transformation for clients through improved decision management, the use of data science, and advanced analytics (AI/ML). Oliver is passionate about the application of technology to solve real-world business challenges for clients.

Vincent Leconte is directing the business development of Altair’s electromechanical simulation solutions. He graduated and had his Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from the Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble in France, specializing in electromagnetic modelling methods and numerical analysis. He joined Schneider Electric where he spent about 10 years, first designing innovative electromechanical components, and then being responsible for electromagnetic simulation methods and tools, at the corporate level. Before joining Altair, he was CEDRAT’s Chief Technical Officer for 7 years, guiding the evolution of Flux software.

Jim has spent 30 years in the computer-aided engineering industry, and joined Altair in November 2017 to help grow usage of its software tools for Math & Systems Simulation.

His passion is helping engineers, of various levels of experience, to learn, to gain insights, and to develop better products faster – through use of best-in-class engineering simulation software & services.

His focus is on making complex software understandable & useful to customers – by connecting the dots between their goals and Altair’s software capabilities, especially pertaining to Mechatronics.

He holds a Master of Science (M.S.) degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

Ronald is responsible for the development of Altair’s system simulation tool Activate since 2022. Previously, due to his passion for hydraulics and his experience in development and application of fluid power simulation software, his responsibilities included the development of the hydraulics library for Activate. Before joining Altair in 2018, he worked at FLUIDON GmbH and the Institute for Fluid Power (IFAS, RWTH Aachen University, Germany).

Paolo Colombo is the Global Aerospace and Defense Strategy Director at Altair.
He works with companies, research centers, universities, and startups to investigate industry trends and key business initiatives, explore the challenges they pose and how the digitalization of engineering, production and MRO makes them capable of overcoming them at speed.

Paolo has 25+ years’ experience supporting companies in applying rapid product development technologies such as additive manufacturing, simulation, data analytics, digital twins, AI and HPC. He is also the author of several articles and white papers on the Aerospace, Defense and Automotive industry and technology trends.
He holds a Bachelor of Science and an MBA, majoring in innovation.

Chris Penndorf is the Business Development Manager for systems integration and electrification solutions at Altair. In his role, he is leading the customer’s journey to simulation solutions with a focus on electrified systems, incl. electric machines, power electronics and battery systems.
Before joining Altair in 2022, he worked several years at ESI Group as a simulation engineer for multi-physical systems and published multiple industry papers and articles. He holds an electrical engineering degree in the field of automation and control engineering from TU Dresden in Germany.

1989: M.Sc. Mechanical Engineering, Linköping University, Sweden
1996: Ph.D. Solid Mechanics, Linköping University, Sweden
1996: Altair Engineering GmbH, Project Engineer
2001: Altair Engineering GmbH, Engineering Manager
2007: Altair Engineering GmbH, Director PD Germany
2014: Altair Engineering Sweden, Director Business Development
2017: Altair Engineering GmbH, Vice President Business Development
2022: Altair Engineering GmbH, Senior VP, Strategic Solutions

Dr. Lars Fredriksson has more than 30 years’ experience of Automotive development. Leading the product design business in Germany for 7 years, he is now responsible for a core solutions team at Altair supporting definition and realization of domain and product development related solutions at Altair.

Raphael is currently the Senior Innovation Engineer at Maxion Structural Components, focusing on chassis and structural components. Raphael has a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Taubaté University, a master’s degree in Mechanical engineering from Taubate University, and he is a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Unesp.

Berker Bilgin received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA, in 2011, and the MBA degree from DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada, in 2018.
Dr. Bilgin is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), McMaster University. He is the Co-Founder and the Vice President of Engineering of Enedym Inc., Hamilton, ON, Canada, which is a spin-off company of McMaster University. Enedym specializes in electric machines, electric motor drives (EMDs), advanced controls and software, and virtual engineering. Dr. Bilgin has authored and co-authored 143 journals and conference papers and 3 book chapters. He is the Principal Inventor/Co-Inventor of ten patents and pending patent applications. His current research interests include electric machines, switched reluctance motor (SRM) drives, acoustic noise and vibration analysis and reduction, and power electronics and EMDs. He is the lead editor and author of the textbook titled SRM Drives: Fundamentals to Applications.
Dr. Bilgin was the Elected General Chair of the 2016 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference and Expo (ITEC). He also serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification.

Valentin has an Engineering degree from ENSEM engineering school where he studied mechanical, electromagnetism and electrical engineering, including electric motors. He joined Crouzet in 2015 and has been working on electric motor and gearbox design with a specialization in electromagnetic design of the motors.

Davide Berti Polato holds an Automotive Engineering Master Degree from the Polytechnic University of Turin, in 2016; with an experimental thesis concerning the correlation and optimisation of the NVH performance of an automotive component in a virtual environment.
In 2016, he started working as a researcher at the Polytechnic of Turin, specialising in virtual modelling of composite materials. In 2017, he started working at BeonD, dealing with dynamic FEM analysis in the RADIOSS environment. In 2019 he started a specialization in modelling and simulation of external aerodynamics and thermal management. One of his current focuses in the company concerns virtual simulations related to the thermal and structural analysis of battery packs.

Andrea Carcone graduated in the field of Mechanical Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Turin, with a thesis on the design of an assembly line for an electric quadricycle.
After graduating, he started working in the field of virtual simulations, analysing and developing various components in the automotive and industrial fields. At BeonD, he is currently involved in FEM analysis with the Altair RADIOSS solution, with a focus on crash simulations of composite components for automotive use.

Marta Ocaña currently holds the position of Head of the area of Performance Simulation and Analysis in Héroux-Devtek Spain (formerly CESA – Compañía Española de Sistemas Aeronáuticos). Her main responsibilities are the creation and management of multiphysics performance simulation models to support design activity, development tests and qualification of the company’s own designs: hydraulic, pneumatic and electromechanical equipment and systems. She has a master degree in Aeronautical Engineering (5 years), and a specialized master in Fluid Mechanics (2 years) from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM).

David is a Junior Engineer in the Simulation Department at Héroux-Devtek Spain, developing preliminary designs of electric motors for subsequent optimization based on the obtained results and established requirements.
He has a master degree in Aerospace Engineering from the E.T.S.I (Sevilla) and a specialized master in Aeronautical design, Maintenance, and Manufacturing from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid)

As part of our Aerospace & Defense team, Gildas plays the role of Global Technical Mechanical Manager for some major actors among Altair’s customers in this field, helping them to find technical solutions to their growing needs and adopting the Altair solutions as efficiently as possible.

Starting from a mechanical training background (Engineering degree at ENSMA) and past experience, he joined Altair in 2013 and since then has expanded his knowledge of the Aerospace new challenges.

Agnese Castellani joined Spin Applicazioni Magnetiche in 2023 and works in the R&D Department as a Physicist. Her work is mainly focused on scripting, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning applied to the
Electrical Engineering world.