International Young Members Chair wins prestigious award

Siddartha Khastgir CEng MIMechE has received an ITS UK national award for Young Professional of the Year in the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS).

The award was made by the ITS organisation, which identifies ITS as the use of IT and communications technologies for surface transport applications. Siddartha is a PhD student in the field of autonomous vehicles.

The nominations were judged by an eminent panel of ITS professionals representing the whole sector and awarded by the current President of ITS UK and former MP, Steve Norris, at a presentation evening in Birmingham.

Siddartha Khastgir is among the UK’s youngest chartered engineers. He is Chair of the International Young Members Committee (IYMC) and sits on the International Strategy Board (ISB). He is currently a PhD student at the University of Warwick, and before taking this role he had already achieved considerable success in automotive engineering. 

In his research, he is developing new methods and knowledge necessary to test autonomous vehicles to ensure their dependability and to make them commercially viable, consequently accelerating their introduction. Reacting to his award, Siddartha said how he wanted to thank ITS for giving him such a prestigious honour and that he will do his best to live up to the expectations.

Professor Paul Jennings, head of the Intelligent Vehicles, and Energy and Electrical Systems research groups at WMG explained why he nominated Siddartha: 

“Siddartha’s work, learning how to make autonomous vehicles trustworthy, is making an impact on the industry in a very challenging area. At the same time his boundless enthusiasm and passion for intelligent vehicles research is inspiring engineers at all levels - from schoolchildren to senior industrialists and policy makers.”

Siddartha recently delivered a technical lecture on driverless vehicles during a visit to Malaysia. Read more here.