Keynote Speaker

Guri Melby is the Vice Mayor for Transport and Environment within the City of Oslo government. She is representing Venstre, the Norwegian social liberal party. She has a master's degree in Nordic studies from NTNU, and has worked at the Oslo and Akerhaus University College of Applied Sciences.

Urban Consolidation and Distribution

Jardar Andersen is a Senior Research Engineer at the Institute of Transport Economics in Norway. He holds a PhD in operations research and a master's degree in industrial mathematics. He has a wide experience from national and international research projects with participants from research, industry and the public sector and he recently coordinated the European research project STRAIGHTSOL demonstrating more efficient and sustainable city logistics.

Kristin Ystmark Bjerkan is a political scientist and Research Scientist at SINTEF Technology and society. Her research mainly focuses on the implementation of solutions for urban transport, with a particular emphasis on stakeholder involvement, acceptability and adoption policies. She has been involved in a range of research projects on urban transport, such as Green Activity Zones, Green Urban Distribution, Smooth Mobility in Oslo, and Dynamic Transport in Oslo.  

Birgit Hendriks has used her educational background in Governance and Policy Sciences from the Radboud University of Nijmegen (RUN) and her former role as a city manager to rethink inner-city distribution.  In 2008, Birgit and Max Prudon launched Binnenstadservice (Inner-City Service) Nijmegen, a retailer-driven urban consolidation center in Nijmegen, Netherlands. Interest in Binnenstadservice has grown to twelve operational service points in the Netherlands. Binnenstadservice is now a national franchise company. Birgit (with Max Prudon) has now also established the foundation ‘Eco2city.' ‘Eco2city' aims at reducing freight traffic in cities by developing and implementing new sustainable urban concepts and by creating a European network of cooperating urban freight service points.

Maria Lindholm is a researcher from Chalmers University in Gothenburg with PhDs on City Logistics. Her current research focuses primarily on the planning processes of municipalities, freight network and how municipalities can cooperate with freight operators. Maria also works at Closer at Lindholmen Science Park in Gothenburg, where the focus is collaboration between academia, government and industry for increased transport efficiency in Sweden.

Cathy Macharis is Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and visiting professor at the University of Gothenborg. She teaches courses in operations and logistics management, as well as in transport and sustainable mobility. Her research group MOBI – (Mobility, Logistics and Automotive Technology) is an interdisciplinary group focusing on sustainable logistics, electric and hybrid vehicles and travel behaviour. She has been involved in several regional, national and European research projects dealing with topics such as the location of intermodal terminals, assessment of policy measures in the field of logistics and sustainable mobility, electric and hybrid vehicles, etc. She published several books and written more than 100 papers. She is the chairwoman of Brussels Mobility Commission and vice-chair of NECTAR. Please visit the website: http://mobi.vub.ac.be

Hans Quak is a senior research scientist at TNO. He mainly focuses on urban freight transport and sustainable logistics. He worked in EU projects FREVUE, Straightsol (both WP leader), and CityLog. He was the project manager of the Transumo-project ‘Transition towards sustainable urban freight transport' and (co)authored several research reports and papers on freight transport, logistics, business models, and (local) policy in urban areas. Hans involved in VREF Center of Excellence Sustainable Urban Freight Systems. Hans successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis ‘Sustainability of Urban Freight Transport' in March 2008.

Olof Moen is a senior researcher and consultant in transport logistics with focus on transport planning and organizational development. His focus areas are GIScience and vehicle routing from an organizational perspective, where the impact of a new business model implies change in behavior among stakeholders in a supply chain. In the 1990s Olof introduced the commercial use of vehicle routing (route optimization) in Scandinavian countries, in vertical industries such as postal and newspaper delivery, last-mile distribution, and transport planning in local government for household waste, scheduling of home help service and co-distribution of goods.

Marianne E. Nordtømme is a research manager at Sintef, Department of Transport Research. She has worked at Sintef for six years as a researcher, focusing on user groups in the transport system. For the last three years she has been involved in two projects studying measures for greener city logistics.  

Toril Presttun is a senior advisor at the Norwegian Public Road Administration. She has worked with freight issues in transport planning and research for more than 15 years. She was project manager for NPRA's Freight transport research program from 2007 to 2012. She has also participated in European funded research projects in reference groups. Now she is working together with the National government for railway services and the Norwegian Coastal Administration in a project who's main objective is to analyse new measures for efficient and sustainable freight transport.  

Mari Svolsbru has a master degree in Human Geography from the University of Oslo. In a stroke of genius she applied for jobs in the City of Oslo long before her final thesis was done. After a total of seven days of liberty/unemployment she began working at the Agency for Urban Environment in the Department for Traffic and Technology. She has been responsible for the second demonstration within the project Green Urban Distribution in Oslo. She also works with prioritization of public transit in urban neighborhoods. In her spare time she likes to read, cook and home brew. She always listens to podcasts on the subway.

ITS and Big Data 

Mark Hallenbeck is the Director of the Washington State Transportation Center (TRAC) at the University of Washington (UW.) He is also the Associate Director for Outreach at for the Region 10 University Transportation Center (PacTrans.)  Mark has been with TRAC for 30 years. He developed and teaches the Intelligent Transportation Systems class in Civil Engineering.  Much of Mark's research involves the collection, use, summarization, reporting and sharing of data that describe transportation system performance.  He was instrumental in the development and implementation of the Washington State Department of Transportation's policies on the collection and sharing of roadway performance information with private companies. For ITS America, he wrote the primary U.S. guidance on business planning for traveler information systems.  For USDOT, he has performed a series of studies that examined ways to identify and surmount institutional barriers to the public/private cooperation required to successfully implement and operate ITS improvements for commercial vehicles.  He is currently working with USDOT to resolve issues associated collection and handling of data that will be generated by connected vehicle technologies, with the intent of using that data for improving traveller information systems for both commercial and passenger vehicles.

Mansooreh Mollaghasemi, Chairman and CEO, founded Productivity Apex (PAI) in 2001 with the goal of using sound principles of industrial engineering and operations research to help commercial enterprises and government agencies improve their productivity and maximize their efficiencies. She is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems at the University of Central Florida where she has been teaching and conducting research since 1991. Her areas of expertise include system optimization, simulation modeling and analysis, multiple criteria decision making, and data analytics. She has successfully completed numerous funded projects over the last 20 years.  Her work has been funded by NASA, Department of Transportation, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Disney, Universal Studios, The Boeing Company, SAIC, Marriott Corporation, Orlando International Airport, Eastman Kodak, and the US Army, among others.  Her research has been published in many prestigious scholarly journals such as IIE Transactions, Interfaces, Annals of Operation Research, Computers and OR, Journal of operational Research Society, IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Transactions of the Society for Computer Simulation, Journal of simulation, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, among others. Her publications also include several book chapters as well as a book entitled "Making Multiple Objective Decisions" published by IEEE Computer Society Press.

Mark Jensen, PMP, a Principal with Cambridge Systematics, has 27 years of years of experience, and has successfully managed and delivered multiple ITS research and freight transportation technology projects; and has fostered the development of public-private partnerships to support these types of systems. For the USDOT, he recently led the successful development of the Freight Advanced Traveler Information System (FRATIS) Concept of Operations, and is now leading two FRATIS prototype testing projects in California and Florida. He also is currently involved in two projects related to tuck Connected Vehicle technologies, including the development of a test program for Los Angeles METRO to conceptualize and plan for a multi-year test program of truck platooning vehicle-to-vehicle technologies with trucking fleets in Southern California. Mr. Jensen holds advanced degrees from Georgetown and The Mineta Institute, and is a member of the TRB committees on International Trade and Transportation, and Freight Terminal Operations and Design.

Tomas Levin currently holds a position as senior principal engineer at the ITS section at the Norwegian public roads administration. Tomas has worked as a transport analyst in Rambøll and as a researcher at SINTEF. His main research interest has been freight transport and ITS and he also holds a PhD in freight transport emission calculations.

Marius Råstad is the Corporate Logistics Manager at ASKO NORGE AS. He has worked at ASKO for 6 years within Distribution, Transport and Environment. He has a Bachelor of Business Administration, Strategy and Supply Chain Management.

Liv Øvstedal is a senior researcher at SINTEF Transportation studies. She has experience in the fields of electric mobility and privacy issues in Intelligent Transport Systems, and is involved in the ongoing EU-project FREVUE demonstrating freight electric vehicles in European cities. Among other fields of interest are universal design of the transport system, non-motorised transport,  children independent mobility, and mobility for disabled and elderly. 

Smart Growth and Sustainability

Michael Browne is a Professor of Transport and Logistics at the University of Westminster. He serves as Associate Editor of Transport Reviews and Regional Editor of Logistique et Management. He is a member of the Transportation Research Board Committee for Urban Freight Transportation (AT025). His research focuses on issues of sustainable distribution and logistics at both the urban and regional scale. Recent projects include: best practice in urban freight initiatives in European cities; potential energy savings from city logistics strategies; mapping energy use in global supply chains; forecasting future trends in freight transport and distribution; benefits from improved city logistics strategies; how partnerships can be used to promote improved urban freight operations and the impact on freight transport of the 2012 Olympic Games in London. He represents the University on many external committees and boards and chairs the Central London Freight Quality Partnership. He has held visiting professorships at the University of Gothenburg and Paris II University.

Colin Campbell is the Director of Environment and Diversity at Norway Post. Norway Post and Bring ("The group") is a Nordic Post and Logistics company that has over 20 000 employees and had a turnover of NOK 23 billion in 2013.  The group delivered 38 million packages and 2 billion letters in 2013. Norway Post and Bring is continually working on reducing its environmental impact. The environmental work is a part of the group's social responsibility work but is also essential as many customers require low emission solutions. The group has established ambitious environmental goals and plans to reduce its carbon emissions by 40% from 2009 baseline. The group has carried out a number of initiatives which include introducing almost 1000 electrical vehicles, environmental e-learning for all employees, green fund for good ideas, eco-driving training for drivers, testing low emission transport solutions and CO2 free urban delivery.

Dr. José Holguín-Veras is the William H. Hart Professor and Director of the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations Center of Excellence for Sustainable Urban Freight Systems, and the Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2013 White House's Transportation Champion of Change Award, the 1996 Milton Pikarsky Memorial Award, and the 2001 National Science Foundation's CAREER Award. Current research activities focus on freight transportation modeling and economics, and humanitarian logistics. His work has opened the door to new paradigms of freight systems that, not only increase economic efficiency but environmental justice. His research has led to major changes in transportation policy and substantial improvements in the ability to improve urban freight systems. His work on humanitarian logistics has played an influential role in disaster response procedures, and has led to deeper insight into how best to respond to large disasters and catastrophic events. He is President of the Scientific Committee of the Pan-American Conferences of Traffic and Transportation Engineering, and member of the Scientific Committee of the World Conference of Transport Research. He is a member of numerous technical committees and editorial boards of leading journals. He received his Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin; a M.Sc. from the Universidad Central de Venezuela; and a B.Sc. from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo.

Kelly Pitera is an Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She graduated with a Ph.D in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington. Her research interests include sustainable urban transport and engineering education, and her current work is focused on infrastructure planning and design in urban areas to accommodate diverse users.  She holds a BSCE from Villanova University and a MSCE from the University of Washington. Prior to graduate school, Kelly worked for Berger/ABAM Engineers and was responsible for bridge and roadway design for numerous transportation projects.