2026 10th International Conference on Intelligent Traffic and Transportation

Professor Mahmoud Shafik
University of Hertfordshire, UK

Biography: Professor Mahmoud Shafik is a well-known expert in Digital Innovation in Engineering with over 20 years of industrial applied research experience. His expertise spans various fields, including, Intelligent Systems and Digital Technology, Innovation for Sustainable Engineering, Industry 4.0, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Industrial Automation, Robotic Systems, Autonomous Systems, Internet of Everything (IoE), Intelligent Traffic and Transportation Systems, Fly, Drive and Steer-by-wire, 3D Smart Sensors and Actuators, Machine Vision, Cancer Treatment using CVD Diamond Radio Therapy Technology, Information Technology for Blind and Visually Impaired people, Electro-Rheological Fluid Micro Actuators Technology, AD-HOC Wireless Technology, Assisted Living Technology, Chronic Diseases ICT Technological Solutions, Telehealth, Telecare, Climate Change, and Software Tools. Shafik has also a number of patents in these areas of industrial applied research and sustainable technology.
Shafik has been leading several industrial applied research projects from European Commission, Innovate UK and UK Research Councils, of a budget of several millions of euros and have made an international technical, economic and social impact in his area of expertise. His research work has brought many groundbreaking outcomes that have been commercially explored by several Small to Medium (SME’s) and large enterprise (LE’s) organisations. This includes and not limited to: Intersurgical Ltd – UK, Veslatec Oy – Finland, Semelab plc. – UK, PTW Freiburg – Germany, Neotek – France, Kirchmayer Handel & Consulting GmbH – Austria, Spectrum Telecom Installations Ltd – Ireland, Diamond Materials GmbH – Germany, Fireworks International Ltd – UK, Pirotecnia Oscense SA – Spain, Total Motion Systems Ltd –UK, Micromech Limited – UK, Smart Technology Ltd – UK, Audi -Germany, Ford – UK, Schlumberger – France, Nissan – Japan and Rolls Royce - UK.
Shafik is the co-founder of Institute of Innovation in Sustainable Engineering (IISE) - https://www.derby.ac.uk/colleges/science-engineering/iise/, founder of International Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics - http://ojs.unsysdigital.com/index.php/ijrm, Editor-In-Chief of both Journal of Traffic and Logistics - http://www.jtle.net/ and International Journal of Mechatronics Engineering - https://www.svedbergopen.com/journals/ijme/about-the-journal/. He is serving as a chairman and plenary speaker of: International Conference on Intelligent Traffic and Transportation (ICITT) - http://www.icitt.org/, International Conference in Automation and Mechatronics Engineering - https://www.icame.org/, International Conference in Communication and Network Technology - http://www.iccnt.org/index.html, and Co-general Chair of International Conference Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research - http://www.icmerr.com/index.html.
Shafik has joined the University of Hertfordshire in September 2025. He is CEO of GIES Innovation Ltd and formal senior lead academic and MSc course director of MSc in Mechatronics University of Derby - http://www.derby.ac.uk/. He has been supervising and external examiners for several PhD, and MSc research programmes across worldwide. He is a visiting professor, industrial and curriculum consultant for a few organisations in EU, Japan, China, and Middle East. He is also a committee member of The Consortium of UK University Manufacturing and Engineering (COMEH) for the Engineering Professorial Council - https://epc.ac.uk/network/communities/comeh/ and is serving as an Assessor and Knowledge Transfer Expert for the UK Knowledge Transfer Network, UKRC, Innovate-UK and EC Research Programmes.
For more information of Professor Shafik profile, career, achievements and selected publications please visit: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/mahmoud-shafik-ph-d/7/237/60 & ORCID: Mahmoud Shafik (PhD) BEng MSc PhD FHEA MIET MASME, Intelligent Systems and Digital Technology (0000-0001-8296-5698) - ORCID & https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mahmoud_Shafik.

Keynote Speakers   Prof. Agus Budiyono Indonesia Center for Technology Empowerment, Indonesia Biography: Professor Dr Agus Budivono is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, having received his qualifications in 1998 and 2000. His academic accomplishments extend to acquiring four degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the reputable institutions of Institut Teknologi Bandung and MIT. His rich professional journey spans over three decades, which includes a productive 15-year tenure in academia. Throughout his academic career, Agus has established a scholarly footprint by publishing more than 300 research papers (with about 6000 citations and an H-index of 24). His expertise was further honed through his service as a professor at different institutions around the globe. From 2008 to 2015, he held the position of Foreign Professor at KKU-Seoul and later, between 2015 and 2017, served as an Associate Professor of Aerospace at RMIT Melbourne. Beyond academia, Agus has been an active participant in various industry-related pursuits. These experiences catalyzed his involvement in startup activities across the United States, South Korea, and Indonesia. As a leading figure in these entrepreneurial endeavors, Agus co-founded and provides advisory services to over 10 small and medium-sized technology enterprises. His knowledge and skills are often sought after, enabling him to offer consulting services to various companies both in the country and abroad, including some Fortune 500 firms. In addition to his academic and professional undertakings, Agus has made contributions to the field of robotics and unmanned systems through his published works. His authored books include "Autonomous Control System and Vehicles. Intelligent Unmanned System," published by Springer Verlag in April 2013, co-edited with Kenzo Nonami, Muljowidodo Kartidjo, and Kwang-Joon Yoon. His other notable work, "Intelligent Unmanned Systems: Theory and Applications," co-edited with B. Riyanto and E. Joelianto, was published under the Studies in Computational Intelligence (SCI) series by Springer Verlag in April 2009. Agus's influence extends to the world of academic journals, where he has served in prominent editorial roles. Since 2013, he has been the Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Unmanned System Technology (JUST), published by UNSYSdigital, Korea. He was also the founding Editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Intelligent Unmanned System (IJIUS), produced by Emerald Publishing, UK, between 2012 and 2016. He is presently the President of International Society of Intelligent Unmanned Systems (ISIUS), the society has organized its flagship international conference (ICIUS) for the last 21 years.

Reader Xiaojun Zhai University of Essex, UK Biography: Dr Xiaojun Zhai is a Reader in the Embedded Intelligent Systems (EIS) Laboratory and co-leader of the Robotics and Embedded Systems Research Group within the National Centre for Nuclear Robotics (NCNR). He has led the technical development of resilient cyber-physical systems designed for operation in extreme radiation environments. Since 2020, Dr Zhai has secured a portfolio of prestigious research grants totalling approximately £8.5 million as PI or Co-I. These include the EPSRC New Investigator Award (EP/V034111/1), EU CELTIC-NEXT, Royal Society funding, EPSRC awards in the areas of digitally enabled circular economy and sustainable digital technologies (EP/Z533749/1), EPSRC Digital Security by Design (DSbD) programme awards (EP/V000462/1 and EP/X52590X/1), the EPSRC New Horizons Award (EP/X015955/1), and multiple Innovate UK projects (FORENSIC, FollowPV, SensiChain, UltraNetAI). Supported by these grants, Dr Zhai has been building a research team focused on high-performance and energy-efficient AI solutions for emerging intelligent devices and autonomous systems deployed in homes, workplaces, and extreme environments. His research emphasises intelligence, performance, security, power efficiency, and reliability. Dr Zhai has published more than 160 peer-reviewed papers across reconfigurable computing, connected health, the Internet of Things, image and signal processing, and acceleration techniques using multicore, FPGA, and GPU-based systems. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a member of both the British Computer Society and ACM. His research interests include embedded systems, high-performance reconfigurable computing, hardware–software co-design, connected health applications, and image and video processing.   Prof. Chun Sing Lai Tianjin University, China Biography: Prof Chun Sing Lai received the B.Eng. (First Class Hons.) in electronic and electrical engineering from Brunel University of London, UK, in 2013, and the D.Phil. degree in engineering science from the University of Oxford, UK, in 2019. He is currently a Yingcai Professor with the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at Tianjin University. His interests are in smart grid, energy system modeling, computational intelligence, and electric vehicle systems. He organized the workshop on Smart Grid and Smart City, IEEE SMC 2017 in Canada and a workshop on Blockchain for Smart Grid, IEEE SMC 2018 in Japan. He was a Publications Co-Chair for IEEE International Smart Cities Conference ISC2 (2020 and 2021). Prof Lai was also a Technical Program Co-Chair for 2022 IEEE International Smart Cities Conference. He was Conference Chair for the 2024 5th International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Human-Computer Interaction, technically sponsored by the IEEE. He is a member of the International Advisory Committee of the 4th International Conference on Smart City and Green Energy, Sydney, Australia. He is the Vice-Chair of the IEEE Smart Cities Publications Committee. He is a Senior Editor for IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics and an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (IEEE/SMCS): Systems and IET Energy Conversion and Economics. He is the Working Group Chair for IEEE P2814 and P3166 Standards, an Associate Vice President, Systems Science and Engineering of the IEEE/SMCS and Chair of the IEEE/SMCS Intelligent Power and Energy Systems Technical Committee. Prof Lai was a recipient of the best paper award in the 2020 IEEE International Smart Cities Conference. He was a recipient of the 2022 Meritorious Service Award from the IEEE SMC Society for "meritorious and significant service to IEEE SMC Society technical activities and standards development". Prof Lai received the IEEE Most Active SMC Technical Committee Award: Systems Science and Engineering in 2024. He was awarded first place in the Chester W. Sall Memorial Awards by the IEEE Consumer Technology Society in 2025. He was awarded a Best Associate Editor Award for IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, and Excellent Reviewer Award for IET Energy Conversion and Economics in 2024. Prof Lai is recipient of IEEE SMC Early Career Award in 2025. He has co-authored "Smart Energy for Transportation and Health in a Smart City", IEEE Press/Wiley, 2023. He has contributed to six journal papers that appear on Web of Science as Highly Cited Papers with three as the lead author. Since 2021, he is recognized as the top 2% of world active scientists by survey conducted by Stanford University. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, UK Chartered Engineer, and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK.

Prof. Sara Moridpour
RMIT University, Australia

Biography: Prof. Sara Moridpour, holds a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering and earned both her Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Traffic and Transportation Engineering. With over 23 years of professional and research experience in the field, she has been a member of the academic staff at RMIT University since 2010 and is currently a Professor of Transport Engineering.
Sara is actively involved in a wide range of research and professional activities both within RMIT and in the broader transport engineering community. She has led and contributed to numerous projects, published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, and presented her work at leading national and international conferences. Her areas of expertise include transport modelling, traffic simulation, road safety, and sustainable transport.
In addition to her research contributions, Sara has served on the technical and organising committees of various conferences and holds editorial board positions with several engineering journals.

Prof. Fabián Díaz
Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Ecuador

Speech Title: Operational Demand and Loading-Bay Capacity for Urban Freight Distribution in a Medium-Sized City: Evidence from Commercial Establishments in Loja, Ecuador

Abstract: Urban freight distribution is essential for urban supply, but it also intensifies curbside competition and operational conflicts, particularly in medium-sized cities with limited road space. Although previous studies have emphasized the importance of loading and unloading zones, empirical evidence for estimating the required number of bays in emerging urban contexts remains limited. This study aimed to estimate operational loading and unloading demand and determine the number of required bays for urban freight distribution in a commercial setting in Loja, Ecuador. A structured digital questionnaire was applied to 100 commercial establishments through ArcGIS Survey123, and the resulting database was cleaned, recoded, and transformed into derived variables related to daily-equivalent operations, unloading time, and schedule-specific demand. A capacity-based approach was then implemented under base, operational, and conservative scenarios. The results showed an expected daily demand of 40.333 operations, with a critical concentration between 06:00 and 07:00, when 14.490 operations were estimated. The weighted mean unloading time was 13.056 minutes, and the scenario analysis indicated requirements ranging from 3 bays under daily base conditions to 6 bays under conservative peak conditions. Overall, the study demonstrates that combining establishment-based survey data with operational capacity modelling provides a consistent basis for loading-bay planning in medium-sized cities.

Biography: Fabián Patricio Díaz Muñoz is a Civil Engineer from the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja (UTPL), Ecuador, with advanced academic training in infrastructure planning, transportation, mobility, road safety, and logistics. He holds a Master’s degree in Planning and Management of Infrastructures from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos; a Master’s degree in Transport Management, with a specialization in Traffic, Mobility, and Road Safety, from the Universidad Internacional del Ecuador and EIG, Spain; and a University Master’s degree in Logistics Management and Supply Chain Management from the Universidad Europea, School of Sustainability. His academic background has enabled him to develop an interdisciplinary perspective linking civil engineering, transport systems, mobility analysis, and logistics management.

He is a university lecturer at UTPL and has undertaken academic leadership responsibilities in both undergraduate and postgraduate education. His professional and academic work focuses on the development of civil engineering projects and on the analysis, planning, and management of transportation, mobility, and logistics systems. He has led and participated in institutional projects related to university mobility, accessible transport, urban freight distribution, and sustainable supply chains, and he is the author of academic books and indexed publications in the fields of transportation, traffic engineering, logistics, and engineering education. His work combines teaching, applied research, and project development aimed at addressing current challenges in mobility, infrastructure, and logistics.

Christian Wille
German Aerospace Center, Germany

Biography: Christian Wille holds a bachelor’s degree in telematics (the combination of telecommunications and computer science) and obtained his master’s degree in information and communication technology in 2018. Christian has been working at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) since 2012 and therefore has more than 13 years of professional and research experience. He currently works as a group leader in the Cooperative Road Vehicles and Systems department.

Christian is an expert in the field of connected mobility and intelligent transport systems, with a particular focus on V2X communication across multiple transport domains, including road, rail, and maritime systems. He works closely with leading players from industry and the public sector on various research and development projects.

His key work includes several V2X-based projects for traffic prioritization and control. These range from prioritizing public transport shuttles and buses (projects with BVG and Fraunhofer), to applications in rail transport such as on-demand train stops and intelligent level crossings (in cooperation with Deutsche Bahn and Siemens), as well as maritime communication between ships and infrastructure (Ship2X), and the prioritization of emergency vehicles in urban traffic together with the Berlin Fire Department. The results of these projects have also been published at various national and international conferences. Through this work, Christian makes a significant contribution to the advancement of cooperative, connected transport systems and the digitalization of transport infrastructure.

His areas of expertise include V2X communication, traffic engineering, traffic simulation, road safety, and sustainable transport. In addition, he is active in ETSI and the C2C Communication Consortium, where he contributes to the development of standards and specifications in the field of V2X communication and automated driving.

Assoc. Prof. Joewono Prasetijo,
Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Malaysia

Biography: Joewono Prasetijo is now serve as an academician and Principal Researcher at the Industry Centre of Excellence for Railway (ICoE-Rel) at the Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM). He earned his Doctorate in Traffic and Transportation Engineering (Dr.-Ing.) from Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, and holds a Master of Science and Diploma Postgraduate from IHE-Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. With a career bridging road and rail transport, his expertise encompasses highway capacity analysis, traffic safety modelling, and railway track engineering and maintenance. He has led numerous research projects, including the development of hazardous location identification models and sustainable transport planning.

A recognized national expert, Joewono Prasetijo serves as a member of the Committee of Expert Working Group on Public Transport – Road Congestion at Malaysia’s Ministry of Transport. He is also a member of the Technical Committee for the Malaysia Railway Industry Standard (MRIS) and an Appraisal Panel member for the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA). He holds professional certifications as a Professional Technologist (Ts.) with the Malaysia Board of Technologists (MBOT) and is a registered Engineering Technologist with the Board of Engineers Malaysia (BEM). His scholarly contributions are significant, with 92 documents under Scopus and over 2,000 citations, reflecting his impactful work in transportation engineering and safety.

Assoc. Prof. Emre Kuşkapan
Erzurum Technical University, Turkey

Biography: Associate Professor Emre Kuşkapan holds a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering and completed both his master’s and doctoral studies in Transportation Engineering. Since 2018, he has been a faculty member at Erzurum Technical University, where he continues his academic and research activities. His work primarily focuses on key areas of transportation, including traffic safety, sustainable transportation systems, intelligent transportation systems, and micromobility. He has authored numerous academic publications in these fields, contributing to both theoretical advancements and practical applications in transportation engineering.

In addition to his research, Dr. Kuşkapan serves as a member of the editorial boards of various engineering journals, actively contributing to the dissemination of scientific knowledge. He has led and participated in multiple research and development projects and has provided academic consultancy to various public and private institutions. Through these efforts, he has played an active role in bridging academia and practice in the field of transportation. Furthermore, he is a full member of Sigma Xi, one of the oldest and most prestigious scientific research societies in the international scientific community.

Assoc. Prof. Marko Đurasević
University of Zagreb, Croatia

Speech Title: Application of hyper-heuristics for the vehicle routing problem.

Abstract: The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is a well-known combinatorial optimisation problem that seeks to determine efficient routes for a fleet of vehicles while ensuring that all customers are served and one or more objectives are optimised. Due to the large number of VRP variants and the diverse constraints and optimisation criteria that must be considered, designing effective solution methods remains a challenging task. In dynamic and large-scale environments, where complete information is often unavailable in advance, simple constructive heuristics are frequently employed because they can rapidly adapt to changing problem conditions using the latest available information.
Traditionally, the design of such heuristics has relied heavily on human expertise, making the development process time-consuming and problem-specific. Hyper-heuristics offer an alternative approach by automating the generation or selection of heuristics, aiming to produce more general and adaptable solution methods. In particular, genetic programming can be used as a high-level search mechanism to automatically design heuristic rules that rank available decisions during solution construction. Based on these rankings, the hyper-heuristic selects and executes the most promising decision at each step.
The ability to automatically generate decision-making rules enables hyper-heuristics to be applied across a wide range of VRP variants and optimisation objectives, reducing the need for manually crafted problem specific heuristics. Initial results indicate that such approaches can achieve competitive and often superior performance compared to manually designed heuristics, demonstrating the potential of hyper-heuristics as an effective methodology for solving vehicle routing problems.

Biography: Marko Đurasević is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER), University of Zagreb. His research is centered on evolutionary computation, particularly genetic programming and hyper-heuristics for solving complex scheduling and optimization problems. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from FER in 2018, with a dissertation focused on the automated design of dispatching rules in unrelated machines environments. Dr. Đurasević has published over 100 scientific papers in international journals and conferences, contributing extensively to the fields of combinatorial optimization, machine learning, and soft computing. He is the principal investigator of two nationally funded projects dealing with optimization of containers in ports and routing of electric vehicles. Furthermore, he also leads a project in collaboration with the company AVL-AST. His scientific excellence has been recognized with the Annual Award for Young Researchers by the Croatian Parliament in 2023 and several other national institutions. Dr. Đurasević is an active member of IEEE, IEEE CIS, ACM, and ACM SIGEVO, and regularly serves as a reviewer for leading journals in artificial intelligence and operations research

Assoc. Prof. Amur Salim Al Yahmedi
Sultan Qaboos University, Oman

Speech Title: Towards Human-Centred and Explainable Autonomous Vehicle navigation

Abstract: Autonomous vehicles should not only move efficiently; they should move in ways that are safe, comfortable, transparent, and aligned with human expectations. This talk presents a human-centred approach to autonomous vehicle control, with particular focus on Adaptive Cruise Control as a foundational function in intelligent traffic and transportation systems.

Conventional ACC design often emphasizes technical objectives such as tracking accuracy, stability, and constraint satisfaction. While these are essential, they do not fully capture how passengers and surrounding road users experience automated motion. The work presented reframes ACC design as a behaviour-synthesis problem in which safety, ride comfort, natural following behaviour, and interpretability are embedded directly into navigation of AV.

The proposed framework combines a Sugeno-type fuzzy logic controller with multi-objective optimization. The controller generates longitudinal acceleration commands using spacing error, relative velocity, and speed-limit deviation. Human-relevant objectives are represented through Time-to-Collision, jerk, and time-headway tracking, allowing safety, comfort, and natural driving behaviour to be treated as explicit design goals rather than post-hoc evaluation measures. Simulation-based optimization is then used to tune the fuzzy membership functions and generate a family of controller solutions, revealing the trade-offs between conservative safety behaviour, smoother motion, and closer headway regulation.

Biography: Dr. Amur Salim Al Yahmedi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. He received his B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering from Sultan Qaboos University, his M.Sc. in Control Systems from UMIST, Manchester, UK, and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Davis, USA.

His research and teaching are centred on modelling, simulation, dynamics, control, robotics, and autonomous systems. His earlier work includes biped robotics, biomechanics, mobile robot navigation, fuzzy-logic-based control, and motion prediction. More recently, his research has expanded toward human-centred robotics and autonomous vehicle behaviour, with emphasis on scenario-based simulation, explainable fuzzy decision-making, and the design of autonomous systems that behave safely, transparently, and appropriately in environments shared with people.

Dr. Al Yahmedi has supervised and co-supervised graduate research projects in human gait prediction, biomechanical modelling, in-pipe inspection robots, mobile robotics, and autonomous systems. His scholarly work spans robotics, mechatronics, biomechanics, fuzzy logic, modelling and simulation, and engineering education. He has also contributed to curriculum development, quality assurance, accreditation, and the development of mechanical and mechatronics engineering programmes and laboratories at Sultan Qaboos University.

He has held visiting or research appointments at several international institutions, including KAIST in Korea, the European Centre for Mechatronics in Aachen, the University of California, Davis, Cornell University, and the University of Portsmouth. His current work seeks to connect rigorous engineering design with the human qualities of motion: comfort, trust, interpretability, and responsible autonomy.