Vote for the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award

This year's finalists are listed below. Please take your time to read their nominations before voting at the end of the page.

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Mr Juhani Jääskeläinen

Mr Juhani Jääskeläinen
Reasons for nomination:
Juhani Jääskeläinen has been one of the biggest driving forces of ITS in Europe & Juhani Jääskeläinen has been the man in ITS for a long time.

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Mr. Dorin Mircea Dumitrescu

Mr. Dorin Mircea Dumitrescu
Reasons for nomination:
Fantastic transformation of ITS domain in Romania and Eastern Europe and the inclusion of Romania in European ITS Map. All these things and the impact at national level of his work support this nomination.

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Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Klaus Kompass

Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Klaus Kompass
Reasons for nomination:
We would like to nominate Klaus Kompass for all his engagement and leadership to successfully develop safety related connectivity applications.

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Mr. Michel Parent

Mr. Michel Parent
Reasons for nomination:
Mr. Michel Parent is since more than 20 years a key researcher and early entrepreneur in the area "auf automated and semi-automated road vehicles". This early research activities today are reflected in a world-wide research and development effort to revolutionise the future way of road transport globally.

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Dr. Reinhard Pfliegl

Dr. Reinhard Pfliegl
Reasons for nomination:
Dr. Reinhard Pfliegl is committed to ITS for a very long time: In Austria he was one of the pioneers in ITS and contributed to build up the Austrian ITS community from the scratch. He initiated and developed the first strategic projects which helped to raise awareness on ITS not only in Austria, but also on European level. He also became a forerunner for harmonized ITS implementation in Europe and beyond by being one of the brains behind trendsetting European R&D projects. His strong personal engagement in community building activities helped the ITS sector to increase its importance also on political level. After so many years of highly professional engagement he is still looking for new approaches to bring the ITS sector forward.

From the very beginning he was very much involved in the national research and implementing activities: Starting in 1994 he headed at Alcatel different development teams. Among them a team for developing a full electronic scheduling system for public transit in the City of Vienna, the Austrian Motorway tolling system tendered by ASFINAG and a commercial system for seamless tracking and tracing for parcel services, which was based on GPS and GMS/SMS the first time in Austria. As a strategic research manager in Via Donau, a state owned company for the development of the waterway Danube, he developed and tendered the system specification for the national Austrian River Information Services (DORIS), which was implemented in Austria by Via Donau in the beginning of the nineties the new Millenium. Because of his broad experiences in ITS the Austrian Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology assigned him to establish an Austrian ITS Development Agency, which he successfully headed as a Managing Director between 2007-2011. During his time as Managing Director he launched the first national ITS Masterplan in Austria and several national ITS projects. Besides, he established the national ITS platform called ITS Austria and organized several national ITS Conferences and implemented the first academic training program for ITS in Austria.

The professional engagement of Dr. Pfliegl in different Austrian companies was always accompanied by a strong commitment to international activities. He was coordinating and so an important player in large strategic European projects like CORVETTE, INDRIS, COMPRIS, CONNECT, EASYWAY, Freightvision 2050 and COOPERS. His involvement was very much committed to foster harmonized ITS solutions to develop interoperable, seamless solutions within Europe and beyond. In this function Dr. Pfliegl worked in close cooperation with the European Commission and other ITS relevant European and international institutions and organizations like ERTICO.

Knowing the importance of conferences for the development and deployment of ITS solutions he was successfully organizing several international conferences, which took place in Vienna and which was the meeting point of researchers and relevant stakeholders worldwide: IEEE ITSS 2005 in Vienna, Smart River Conference, 2007 in Brussels, 1. FISTS (Forum Integrated Sustainable Transport System), 2009 in Vienna. Having been a continuous, strongly engaged active participant of the ITS World Congress since 1994 his highlight was organizing the ITS World Congress in Vienna together with ERTICO and the regional ITS platforms. As a co-chair he was mainly responsible for this great success, reflected by more than 10.000 attendees for the first time of more than 91countries and impressively technical demonstrations. Under his patronage the 3rd ICCVE Conference will take place in Vienna 2014 dealing with connected and automated vehicles and 300-400 participants are expected to come to Vienna. With these life time achievements in ITS Dr. Pfliegl branded not only the Austrian ITS approach, but also contributed strongly to the European ITS Development .

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Prof. Eric Sampson

 Prof. Eric Sampson
Reasons for nomination:
Prof. Eric Sampson has been with us since the start of ITS and is still helping us develop the area. Unique competence and has always been working for the global best.

Prof. Eric Sampson’s contribution to the World Congress has been invaluable. He is one of a select few who have contributed to every World Congress. At the first Congress in Paris, he opened the Congress and was introduced as “President Eric Sampson”. He was followed by a rather more famous speaker, but who nevertheless could only be introduced as the less impressive-sounding Vice-President Al Gore. Al seemed to accept his inferior status with good grace.

By the time that planning for London 2006 started, it was clear that a European success was needed to save the future of the Congress. Recent dissatisfactions had included an overpriced and over hyped San Francisco, a typhoon affected Nagoya and a street crime ridden Madrid. Eric assembled an international advice team and secured personal and financial commitment from his Ministers which helped to ensure that London provided the success that was required. This once again reinforced how good the event could be and helped lay the foundation for continued success in Europe at Stockholm and Vienna where he delivered a comprehensive closing summary. Eric continues his ITS mission as a vocal advocate of the ERTICO concept, and the work it is doing and a staunch supporter of the World Congresses for which he is the main Congress programme organiser for Europe.

Eric Sampson personifies the qualities and achievements of the highest standard for International leader in ITS and fully deserves to be recognised in the ITS World Congress Hall of Fame.

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Mr. Heinz Sodeikat

Mr. Heinz Sodeikat
Reasons for nomination:
Mr. Heinz Sodeikat is an ITS pioneer. He was instrumental in building ERTICO (Chairman 1995-1998, President & Spokesman 1998-2001, Advisor to the Board 2001-2004). The ERTICO membership doubled during his 3 years of chairmanship. He further co-founded and chaired ITS Munich (2001-2008) as well as ITS Network Germany (2007-2011). In 1997 he was Chairman of the 4th ITS World Congress in Berlin.

During the nineties he served as ITS "ambassador" of Siemens and toured the globe advocating ITS systems and services, as well as their benefits, at all major international congresses and conferences. He was invited to numerous national events in European countries, the US and Japan to share his views and experiences. Lots of the concepts he presented are realized today.

For some 15 years, he actively participated in the standardisation work on international (ISO), European (CEN) and German (DIN/DKE) level. Furthermore, he was an elected foreign member of Transportation Research Board (TRB) committees. He also served on the University of Michigan Industry Advisory Board to advise and steer ITS research programmes.

He experienced that global ITS activities sometimes lead to global friendships and mutual respect, even between competitors.

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Mr. Manfred Swarovski

Mr. Manfred Swarovski
Reasons for nomination:
We would like to nominate Mr. Manfred Swarovski for all his engagement and leadership to make roads safer and more efficient by successfully deploying infrastructure based ITS.

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It's time to vote!

It's time to vote!

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* 1. Please choose the person you would like to win the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award

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