The Director of HIT and Vice-President of CERTH, Evangelos Bekiaris, is a PhD Mechanical Engineer of the National Technical University of Athens, former Research Director (Grade A Researcher) and former Head of the sector “Driver & Vehicle”, since HIT establishment (first elected Institute Researcher in 2001). He has participated in over 100 research projects up to date, roughly 42 of which he has coordinated. His field of expertise covers issues of transport safety, automated and clean vehicles, smart city applications, specialized telematics applications for vehicles and public transport, accessible transportation and personalized services for people with reduced mobility. He has been/is: • Editor and/or author in 46 scientific book chapters, 75 publications in international scientific journals and 298 presentations in international conferences. • Member of the National Council for Research and Innovation (N.C.R.I.), since 2019 (http://www.esek.org.gr/). • National Representative in the European Commission Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission Board of Horizon Europe (HE). • National Representative for the HORIZON 2020 in the Smart, Green and Integrated Transport Programme Committee. • President of the Hellenic Institute of Electric Vehicles (HELIEV - www.heliev.gr). • President of the European Transport Research Alliance (ETRA - etralliance.eu) • President of the European Conference of Transport Research Institutes (ECTRI - www.ectri.org) since January 2019 and member of its Board since 2016. • President of the European Organization EURNEX (EUropean rail Research Network of EXcellence, http://www.eurnex.org) since June 2019. • Member of the Plenary Board of the Cooperative, Connected, Automated and Autonomous Mobility (CCAM) Single Platform. • Vice-President of the European Association for Battery, Hybrid and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (AVERE - www.avere.org) (2014-2016). • President of the European Association HUMANIST European Centre of Excellence in Human Machine Interaction (HMI) in Transport (www.humanist-vce.eu) (2012-2015). • Chairman of the Forum of European Road Safety Research Institutes (FERSI - www.fersi.org) (2008-2011). • Board member of the Hellenic Researchers Union (2012-2015) • Editor-in-Chief of the European Transport Research Review – An Open Access Journal (ETRR) of Springer (2008-2013). • Visiting Professor in Transport Telematics at the Mechanical Engineering department of University of Trento (Italy) from 2008 to 2009 and at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK) (2008-2013). • Lecturer on Transport Telematics in a Master course of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) (2003-2011).