Dr. Marika Hoedemaeker is a senior project manager at TNO, where she has been conducting human factors research in mobility since 1999. After finishing her study in experimental psychology, she went to the Delft University of Technology to work as a PhD student on the introduction of Automated Vehicle Guidance systems in personal road transport, especially the effects of Adaptive Cruise Control on individual driver behavior and the acceptance of driver support systems by individual drivers. She performed driving simulator experiments and conducted a large-scale questionnaire study.  She received her PhD in 1999.

At present her main activities are focused on managing complex research projects.

As an example Marika was technical coordinator of the EU-UDRIVE project with 20 international partners performing naturalistic driving studies all over Europe. Before, Marika acted as the coordinator of the GOAL project (5 international partners, 1.000.000 euros) which investigated the transport needs of an ageing society. The GOAL project delivered an important action plan with seven research actions that need to be addressed because of the considerable transport challenges we face by the growth of the older people populations in the coming decades.

Another example of her project management work is a projects for the Pharmaceutical industry focusing on the effects on driving behaviour and cognitive performance of medicines by testing with healthy participants in the TNO driving simulator.

At this moment she is the coordinator of the ENSEMBLE project. The ENSEMBLE project (H2020 with 20 million euros funding) has implemented and demonstrated multi-brand truck platooning on European roads over the next three years. This paves the way for the adoption of multi-brand truck platooning in Europe that will improve fuel economy, CO2 emissions, traffic capacity and throughput for the road freight sector. Also  impacts of platooning on behaviour of other road users, fuel economy, CO2 emissions, traffic capacity and throughput were studied.