With over two decades of public service, Michele Mueller has been a pioneering leader in Michigan’s transition toward smarter, safer, and more sustainable transportation. As a manager for the State of Michigan’s Connected, Automated, and Electrification (CAVE) initiatives, she has played a pivotal role in planning, developing, and deploying advanced mobility technologies that position Michigan as a national and global hub for innovation.
What you’ll learn:
- How Michigan decides which transport pilots are worth scaling
- What criteria are used to move a project from testbed to long-term deployment
- Why real roads expose problems test environments never will
- The practical differences between controlled testing and live traffic, and why the “last 10%” of deployment is where most risk sits.
- How to build public trust
- Why transparency, relevance, and showing people the tech can be more than technical detail.
- How government and industry educate each other in a shared ecosystem
- Where OEMs, tech providers, and infrastructure agencies routinely misunderstand each other and how Michigan bridges that gap.
