SPEAKERS

Prof. Dr. Ahmet Yılmaz was born in Istanbul in 1985. He completed his BSc and MSc at ITU Transportation Engineering, followed by a PhD at TU Munich. Over a 15+ year career he served as technical advisor on over 30 smart public transport projects across Europe and Asia. He has over 40 international publications on EMV open-loop payment systems, NFC ticketing and account-based transit. He currently serves on the board of IOTA (International Association for Transportation Technologies).

Dr. Fatma Kaya is a faculty member at Kocaeli University, Department of Electrical-Electronics Engineering. Her research covers EV battery management systems, charging infrastructure optimisation and smart grid integration. She leads 5 TÜBİTAK-funded research projects and represents Turkey in the European Electric Vehicle Association.

Murat Demir founded FiloSmart Technology in 2010. The company has grown into a leading fleet management platform tracking over 5,000 vehicles in real time across Turkey. He also mentors start-ups in the transportation technology ecosystem.

Ing. Maria Schmidt serves as Director of Digital Transformation at the Hamburg Transit Authority (HVV). Between 2019–2023 she successfully delivered the full digital transformation of Hamburg's public transport network serving 1.2 million daily passengers. The project won the 2023 UITP Global Urban Mobility award.

Kemal Arslan is Technology Director at Metro Istanbul, responsible for the digital infrastructure of Istanbul's metro network. He is the technical architect of the Smart Operations Centre launched in 2018, and has pioneered IoT sensor networks, predictive maintenance and AI-driven passenger density management.

Zeynep Özdemir co-founded CardPay Systems in 2015 to launch Turkey's first EMV-compliant open-loop payment platform for transit. The platform now reaches 8 million active users across 12 cities. She is also a mentor at the FinTech Istanbul start-up accelerator programme.