Technical Steering Committee

Alessandro is a software developer with a decade-long career.

Starting as a Network Engineer, he delivered network services to major Italian telcos. Later, he transitioned to VoIP, firmware engineering, and Linux Kernel roles, with a focus on security and automotive applications. His expertise spans C programming, Linux Kernel internals, and low-level machine language, contributing to the Linux Kernel and various upstream projects. His interest in safety matured after joining the Red Hat Automotive group, where he continues to work in safety related tech roles

Gabriele Paoloni is an Open Source Community Technical Leader at Red Hat where he defines best methodologies and requirements to qualify Linux for functional safety usage. He is a passionate technologist and has strong experience in both functional safety and Linux Kernel development, including previous roles leading FuSa software architecture for Intel platforms, CCIX vice chairman of the TDL working group and HiSilicon PCIe Linux maintainer. Gabriele received a master’s degree with honors in electronic engineering from the University of Rome.

Kate Stewart is the VP, Dependable Embedded Systems at The Linux Foundation.

She is responsible for the Open Source Compliance and Safety Certification related programs. She is acting representative from the medical devices working group to the TSC. Since joining The Linux Foundation, she has launched Real-Time Linux, Zephyr Project, CHAOSS, ELISA and ACT programs.

With almost 30 years of experience in the software industry, she has held a variety of roles and worked as a developer in Canada, Australia, and the US and for the last 20 years has managed software development teams in the US, Canada, UK, India, and China. She received her Master’s in computer science from University of Waterloo and Bachelor’s of computer science (co-op program) from the University of Manitoba.

Luigi is a mechanical engineer with over 10 years of experience in the automotive industry, combining a deep passion for both software development and engineering.

Starting as a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) engineer, Luigi quickly became involved in software validation, focusing on improving the testing and validation processes for automotive embedded applications, with a strong emphasis on functional safety.

Over the years, Luigi took on increasingly responsible roles, including that of Software Validation Project Leader, where he led teams to ensure the highest standards of software quality in automotive applications.

With a solid foundation in both mechanical and software engineering, Luigi transitioned to Red Hat, where he now collaborates on the certification of RHIVOS, Red Hat Linux distributions for the automotive industry.

In addition to his professional work, Luigi developed and continues to maintain BASIL The Fusa Spice, an open-source tool, designed to assist in the validation of functional safety applications. BASIL is a tool that facilitates the definition of traceability matrices, helping to assess compliance with safety standards

Matt Weber is a Chief Software Architect at the Boeing Company in the Enterprise Software Products & Capabilities organization. He’s focused on Linux in aerospace and defense. This focus is a theme in Matt’s career, which has involved close to two decades of embedded system development in regulated industries. Matt has previously participated in the RTCA SC-240/WG-117 (Topics on Software Advancement – SubGroup2) supplement and early during the original automotive-focused formation of ELISA. Matt attended Iowa State University, focusing on computer engineering, emphasizing networking and cybersecurity.  He holds a Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering and a Master’s in Engineering from Iowa State University.

Nicole Pappler is a founding member of AlektoMetis, specializing in functional safety, embedded software and open source. With extensive experience as a safety assessor, she has led projects in safety-critical applications and open-source compliance.

Being a recognized speaker, sharing her expertise at international conferences and through various online platforms. She actively contributes to the Zephyr Project as a Functional Safety Manager and is actively involved in the SPDX project, leading the SPDX Functional Safety Special Interest Group. Nicole holds a degree in Electrical Engineering and is passionate about making emerging technologies safer to apply, managing risks in the supply chain, and automating processes wherever possible.

Olivier Charrier obtained a Master’s degree in Software Engineering (DESS) from Bordeaux University in 1989. Prior to joining Wind River, Olivier worked for Alsys/Aonix developing and integrating Ada development environment for embedded systems.

After an almost 4 years in the Ada95 engineering center of Aonix located in San Diego, California, Olivier moved back to a South European role, providing consulting on integrating Ada COTS development environment for Mission Critical Space programs.

Olivier Joined Wind River in June 2001 as Senior Field Application Engineer for the South- western region of Europe dedicated to the Aerospace & Defence Market, supporting Thales, Airbus and Safran groups as well as their subcontractors.

In 2007 he became EMEA Aerospace & Defence Principal Engineer to support and coordinate EMEA wide A&D programs, provide consulting on Integrated Modular Avionics and the use of COTS Software Development environment and Operating Systems for Safety Critical systems, also participating in the definition of Wind River corresponding solutions in particular for Safety Certification using Multi-Core systems. In the same timeframe he joined the SAE/ARINC APEX Software Subcommittee to participate in the elaboration of the ARINC 653 standard.

Since January 2017 Olivier has been extending his scope to contribute to other markets, like Railway, Nuclear, Medical and Automotive, also adding new geo like APAC.

Paul Albertella is a consultant at Codethink. With more than 30 years development experience in the automotive, mobile device and financial sectors, Paul is passionate about software engineering processes and the role that open source software and open communities are playing in their evolution. He is a certified functional safety practitioner and has been involved in ELISA since the start of the project.

Philipp Ahmann is a Sr. OSS Community Manager, at ETAS GmbH (BOSCH) with focus on Open Source activities. He represents the ELISA project of the Linux Foundation as an ambassador and TSC member. He has more than 10 years of experience in the field of Linux automotive SW base platforms working as engineer, team leader for all test activities and as project manager. All of these projects utilized complex multi-core chipsets. In his current position he contributes to a project focusing on embedded Linux in industrial applications and wider IoT scope beyond pure Automotive use cases.

Sudip is a Kernel Engineer at Codethink. Sudip has a B.Sc degree and also hold a Diploma in Electronics Engineering. He has been a mainline kernel contributor since 2014. Sudip is also a Debian Developer and has worked in multiple automotive projects for Codethink’s clients.