Description:

Autonomous Transportation Services Take the Road 

Workshop Agenda

2:00 PM              Welcome 

Bret Johnson | Interim Director | NUTC 

2:10 PM              Presentations

Tom Baroch | Sr. Director, Strategic Partnerships | Waabi                        

Jay Campbell | Head of Product for Autonomous Mobility & Delivery | Uber

CJ King | Chief Technology Officer | Torc Robotics

Harry Zander | Chief Operations Officer | Intramotev

3:15 PM              Networking Break

3:45 PM              Panel Discussion

Moderator | Alireza Talebpour | Associate Professor | The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

4:30 PM              End of Program

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Tom Baroch 

Tom Baroch is a seasoned professional in supply chain management and strategic partnerships, currently serving as the Sr. Director of Strategic Partnerships at Waabi since August 2025, focusing on OEM and Tier 1 technical partnerships. Previously, Tom held various leadership roles at Outrider, where significant contributions included developing a partnership ecosystem for autonomous yard operations and establishing the Global Supply Management and Materials Planning teams. Tom's extensive experience also encompasses positions at Waymo, Tesla, Apple, and Bosch, where expertise in global supply management, sourcing, and strategic negotiations has been demonstrated across automotive and technology sectors. Tom holds an M.B.A. in Finance from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Jay Campbell

Jay Campbell leads Product for Autonomous Mobility & Delivery at Uber, where he’s building a hybrid AV marketplace that blends autonomous fleets with human drivers to optimize AV utilization, network reliability, and rider experience at scale. His team builds Uber’s AV integrations and APIs, AV rider and delivery experiences, pricing and matching algorithms, and fleet-operations platforms for autonomous fleets. Previously, Jay built and scaled major consumer products at Airbnb, Instagram, and Cash App. He holds an MBA from Chicago Booth and a BA from UNC–Chapel Hill.

Lauren Harper

Lauren Harper is the Chief of Staff at Kodiak Robotics, a leader in autonomous trucking technology. She partners directly with the executive team to advance the company’s most critical strategic initiatives.

Prior to Kodiak, Lauren worked at TuSimple, the first publicly traded autonomous trucking company, as a member of the Corporate Strategy team focused on launching the company’s Autonomous Freight Network. 

Lauren holds a BBA in Finance with a specialization in Alternative Assets from Southern Methodist University and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. She lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband, young son, and dachshund.

C.J. King

C.J. King is an industry-recognized technology leader with over 20 years of successfully delivering innovation across automotive, mobility, and cloud-based technologies. He brings deep expertise in product development, technology optimization, and large-scale system implementations.

C.J. began his automotive technology career at Toyota, where he built and launched Toyota Entune—the company’s first connected entertainment system—in both North America and Europe, establishing Toyota’s early presence in connected vehicle services.

At Ford, he led the development of the open-source SmartDeviceLink platform and launched the Ford Developer Program, enabling over 30 third-party apps to integrate into in-vehicle infotainment systems. He also played a key role in bringing Apple CarPlay and Android Auto into the Sync platform. Notably, C.J. led the development of the foundational hardware and software stack that was later transitioned to Argo AI, forming the technical base of its autonomous vehicle platform.

Following his work in automotive, C.J. joined Amazon as a Senior Software Development Manager, where he led the Native Cloud Re-Architecture Engineering team, delivering scalable cloud solutions aligned with long-term business strategy. At HERE Technologies, he continued to drive global technology innovation, managing diverse engineering teams and implementing large-scale system transformations.

C.J. has a proven ability to build and lead high-performing global software development teams, fostering cross-functional collaboration in fast-paced environments. His work has consistently advanced the connected car and autonomous driving landscape, delivering technologies that bridge complex engineering with real-world mobility solutions.

Alireza Talebpour

Dr. Alireza Talebpour is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he leads the ILI-MOBILOGY group. His research focuses on autonomous and connected vehicles, traffic flow theory, infrastructure-aware automation, and quantum-enhanced transportation modeling. He led the FHWA-funded Third Generation Simulation (TGSIM) project, one of the largest naturalistic vehicle trajectory data collection efforts to date, capturing detailed interactions among automated and human-driven vehicles to advance modeling, calibration, and safety analysis. His work integrates real vehicle control logic into simulation environments, bridging the gap between experimental automation and large-scale traffic systems. Before joining UIUC, he led Texas A&M University’s team in the SAE/GM AutoDrive Challenge to develop a Level-4 autonomous vehicle.

Harry Zander

Harry Zander is the Chief Commercial Officer at Intramotev, a St. Louis-based manufacturer of battery-electric, self-propelled railcars. With over 30 years of experience in the rail industry, he has served as Chief Revenue Officer of Patriot Rail, a leading shortline railroad holding company with over 30 railroads, and as SVP of New Product Development at TrinityRail, a major railcar manufacturer. Harry also spent more than two decades as an executive in the rail asset leasing industry and has served on numerous boards and executive committees of industry trade associations, including as a current board member of the North American Rail Shippers Association (NARS). He is a past president and current board member of the Midwest Association of Rail Shippers (MARS). He has a BA in Economics from the University of Colorado and a Masters In Finance from Insead - Fontainebleau