News & Events.
exida Expert to Keynote at European Space Agency Conference
September 10, 2025
Sellersvile, PA - exida is excited to announce that Dr. Molly O’Brien, part of a team of experts developing a certification scheme for Safety Functions that include Machine Learning (ML), will deliver a keynote presentation at the European Space Agency's (ESA) Software Product Assurance Conference. The event, which brings together international leaders in the space sector and related industries, will be held at the ESTEC (European Space Research and Technology Centre) in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, from September 22-25.
Dr. O'Brien's keynote, titled “AI & Safety in Automotive Applications: AI Safety Standards, Current Applications, and Future Work,” will address the critical and rapidly evolving challenges of artificial intelligence and assurance.
"The space industry doesn’t have standards for how to deal with AI in space applications yet," says Dr. O’Brien, "but we do have them in automotive, and they are rapidly evolving. The techniques for assessing software and hardware for quality and safety are well established, but that is not the case for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning."
Her presentation will offer valuable insights and practical guidance on assessment techniques that can be applied to any industry, including the space sector. It will highlight the seminal functional safety standards applied to the Automotive and Process Industries (ISO 26262 and IEC 61508) and their new companion guidelines focused on ML and AI (ISO/PAS 8800 and ISO/IEC TR 5469).
The ESA Software Product Assurance Conference aims to foster dialogue and exchange ideas on software product assurance, cybersecurity, and model-based software engineering. The event attracts experts from various domains, including automotive, railway, aviation, and medicine.
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