April 17, 2019 | Michael Kirk

Self-Driving Vehicle Technology Conference to be Held on April 23 at Rentschler Field

On Tuesday, April 23, from 9 a.m.-12:05 p.m., Greater Hartford AAA Allied Group and the UConn Transportation Safety Research Center will be holding a free and open to the public speaker series at Pratt & Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field, which will focus on the the world’s transition to autonomous vehicles.

By: Ryley McGinnis, Student Written Communications Specialist, UConn School of Engineering

On Tuesday, April 23, from 9 a.m.-12:05 p.m., Greater Hartford AAA Allied Group and the UConn Transportation Safety Research Center will be holding a free and open to the public speaker series at Pratt & Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field, which will focus on the the world’s transition to autonomous vehicles.

At the Technology Take the Wheel event there will be two speakers, Jessica Nigro and Chan Lieu, and moderator Amy Parmenter from AAA Greater Hartford, who will discuss the possibilities and challenges that autonomous vehicle technology brings.

Nigro is the head of Technology and Innovation at Daimler North America Corp., who just recently became a founding member of PAVE, a new coalition that aims to promote public education around autonomous vehicle technology. She mainly works on policy, connectivity, data and cybersecurity and future mobility strategies for automated vehicles.

Lieu is a member of the Connecticut Autonomous Vehicles Task Force. He has extensive experience with autonomous vehicles in the areas of transportation, data and cybersecurity, privacy and emerging technologies.

There will be a Q&A with both of the speakers after their presentations, which will be followed later in the day by a panel consisting of Tyler Suiters from the Consumer Technology Association, Eric Jackson, the director of the Connecticut Transportation Safety Research Center at UConn, and Peter Calcaterra, transportation planner at the Connecticut Department of Transportation.

The Connecticut Transportation Safety Research Center at UConn, which is co-sponsoring the event, was established in 2012 by the Connecticut Department of Transportation to create tools to analyze crash data, research safety improvements and concerns, build outreach and education to address and fix transportation-related concerns, and conduct industry safety research. For more information on the Center itself, visit its website here.

The event is open to the public but space is limited, so please register here to reserve your spot.