Astrid Linder is Professor of Traffic Safety at Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, VTI, an Adjunct Professor at Chalmers University, Sweden, and Adjunct Professor (Research) at Monash University, Australia. She received her PhD in traffic safety from Chalmers from where she also has a MSc in Engineering Physics. Traffic safety, models of the human in crash testing, injury prevention and crash related countermeasures are main fields of her research. Prof. Linder initiated and led the research resulting in the world’s first physical dummy model based on the average female, the Seat Evaluation Tool (SET 50F) and the equivalent average male (SET 50M) for assessment of the vehicle occupant safety and was listed as one of 100 most inspiring and influential women from around the world for 2023 by BBC and on Forbes 50 Over 50 2025.

Astrid is an affiliated professor at:

Chalmers, Vehicle Safety at the Department of Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (chalmers.se) External link.

Monash University Accident Research Centre, MUARC (monash.edu/muarc)Länk till annan webbplats. External link.

Astrid's doctoral thesis from Chalmers University of Technology:

Neck injuries in rear impacts: Dummy neck development, dummy evaluation and test condition specifications (DiVA Portal) External link.

VIRTUAL: Open Access Virtual Testing Protocols for Enhanced Road User Safety

VIRTUAL was a research project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme. Running from 2018 to 2022 with a total budget of €6.99 million, the project brought together 15 partners from academia and industry across Europe. The project aimed to provide open tools and testing protocols to evaluate new safety systems, focusing particularly on including more types of road users than traditional physical crash safety tests do. The project also sought to bridge the gap between virtual testing and standardised safety assessments by utilising digital human body models (HBMs) in simulations. In this project the world first crash test dummy of an average female, the SET (SET Evaluation Tool) 50F and the equivalent average male model SET 50M was developed. In addition, the VIVA+ models of both an average female and an average male to be used as all road users were developed. All models (physical and virtual) are provided open source and are available at the OpenVT through the organisation OVTO, ovto.org External link..

Project website: projectvirtual.eu External link.

ViVA II: Virtual Vehicle Safety Assessment, Step 2 — Open Source Human Body Models and Crash Testing

ViVA II was a research project carried out between 2016 and 2018 with full funding from VINNOVA, and a total budget of 3.1 million SEK. The project aimed to finalise the development of ViVA F50, the world's first open-source virtual model for human-in-vehicle crash simulations. ViVA II was a collaboration between VTI and Chalmers University of Technology, with Folksam Research and Volvo Cars as associated partners.

Find out more about ViVA II at vinnova.se External link..

ViVA – Virtual Vehicle Safety Assessment: Open Source Digital Human Body Models and Crash Testing

The ViVA project ran from 2013 to 2016 and was fully funded by VINNOVA, with a total budget of 4.995 million SEK. The project aimed to develop the world's first open-source digital human body model for crash testing, focusing particularly on improving gender equality in vehicle safety. Addressing the lack of female body types in traditional crash test models, the project aimed to enable more inclusive and equitable road safety research. It was run in collaboration with VTI, Chalmers, Folksam Research and Volvo Cars.

Find out more about ViVA (VTI's project database) External link..

ADSEAT – Adaptive seat to reduce neck injuries for female and male occupants

The ADSEAT project ran from 2009 to 2013 with a total budget of €3.45 million, funded partly by the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (€2.5 million) and partly from national sources (SEK 2 million). The project aimed to develop adaptive car seats that would reduce the risk of neck injuries for both female and male passengers in collisions. The project brought together twelve European universities and industry partners, including VTI, Chalmers University of Technology, Graz University of Technology, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Loughborough University, the University of Strasbourg, CIDAUT, Volvo Cars, the Foundation for Accident Mechanics (AGU), Faurecia Sièges d'Automobile, Folksam and Humanetics. In this project the world first virtual crash test dummy of an average female, the EvaRID, was developed.

Project website: www.adseat.eu External link.