Speaker Interviews

Raffaele di Ronza and R&D open innovation expert at Bridgestone EMIA, will give a presentation titled Sustainable tire innovation through collaboration at the upcoming Tire Technology Virtual ‘Live’. In 2017, Raffaele became the center’s expert for open innovation, which saw him become responsible for coordinating collaboration projects with various Bridgestone partners – from industry to academia – focusing on the development of innovative materials. Raffaele holds an executive MBA from MIP Politecnico di Milano, which he received in 2020.

Siemens Industry’s USA tire head, Bill Henderson, will present Make better operational decisions to enable flexibility in your tire at the upcoming Tire Technology Virtual ‘Live’. Bill has a degree in electrical engineering and over 25 years’ experience in manufacturing automation, drives and motion control. He has been working in the tire industry for over seven years and currently manages a team of engineers who are focused on improving tire manufacturing with Siemens technology.

Dominique Cettour-Janet, Michelin senior fellow for tire performance evaluation and tire physics, ETRMA-ETRTO, will give a presentation titled Tire abrasion – method for quantitative assessment. Dominique has 40 years’ experience in the tire industry, working in R&D for Michelin. He works in several domains including tire physics and modeling, vehicle dynamics, tire design in the passenger car and truck tire domains, and tire testing machine design. As senior fellow for tire performance evaluation and tire physics, he is a member of the ETRMA/ETRTO working group.

University of Trente Professor Anke Blume will give a conference presentation at the upcoming Tire Technology Virtual Live titled Aging performance of NR-silica masterbatch compounds. Anke studied chemistry at the University of Hannover, Germany. She undertook her PhD thesis at the German Institute for Rubber Technology (DIK). After nine months’ postdoc time at the DIK, in 1996 she joined the applied technology department at Degussa AG.