Josef Aschbacher is the Director of Earth Observation Programmes (D/EOP) at ESA since 2016. Born in Austria, Josef studied at the University of Innsbruck, graduating with a Master’s and a Doctoral Degree in Natural Sciences. He then worked as Research Scientist at the University Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics (1985–89). Josef started his career in ESA in 1990 as a Young Graduate at ESRIN and was then seconded as ESA Representative to the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok in Thailand (1991-1993). He then worked at the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy (1994-2001), where he was, in his last post, the Scientific Assistant to the Director of the Space Applications Institute. He then returned to ESA working on a wide variety of EO and Copernicus initiatives, heading the Copernicus Space Office (2006) and then the Programme Planning and Coordination at ESRIN (2014).

Born in Milan, Italy, on 26 April 1977 Samantha Cristoforetti is an avid reader with a passion for science and technology, but an equal interest in humanities. 

In 2001, Samantha joined the Italian Air Force. She was admitted to the Air Force Academy as an officer candidate and served as class leader for four years. Following her graduation in 2005, she attended the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training program at Sheppard Air Force Base in the United States, where she earned her fighter pilot wings in 2006.

Samantha was selected as an ESA astronaut in May 2009. She joined ESA in September 2009 and completed her basic astronaut training in November 2010. She was then assigned to the role of ESA reserve astronaut, which allowed her to earn her initial qualifications in EVA and robotics, as well as the certification as flight engineer of the Russian spacecraft Soyuz. In March 2012 she was assigned to fly as flight engineer on the Soyuz TMA-15M, as part of the crew of Expedition 42/43 on the International Space Station.

In July 2015 Samantha was awarded the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by the Italian president.

Pekka is the Chief Financial Officer and co-founder of ICEYE. ICEYE aims to launch and operate a constellation of micro-SAR satellites providing access to timely and reliable Earth observation data. ICEYE is the first company that has successfully miniaturized a SAR satellite, creating a unit that is 100x more cost-efficient than the closest counterpart. With the 18 satellite constellation, ICEYE will offer its partners a set of unprecedented surveillance capabilities, accessing an area or interest faster, more frequently and at lower cost. As CFO, Pekka has been instrumental in establishing company-wide financial procedures and raising funds for ICEYE, which has now received over $15M in recent capital infusions. As a nordic native from Finland watching the Arctic ice caps melt, Pekka joined forces with Rafal Modrzewski to create synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) microsatellites in hopes of ensuring the sustainability of global warming research. Prior to co-founding ICEYE, Pekka played an instrumental role in Finland’s Aalto University Nanosatellite Program, where he studied as a student of the Engineering and Geoinformation Systems program. Using this engineering and entrepreneurial experience, he helped to co-found a spin-out company of Aalto University, which would later become ICEYE.

Alison combines technical and theoretical computer science with a physics background and over 20 years of experience in international project management, entrepreneurial activities and the Internet. After spending her first year with NVIDIA as a Deep Learning Solutions Architect, she is now responsible for NVIDIA's Artificial Intelligence Developer Relations in the EMEA region and continues to oversee the community of AI & Machine Learning researchers around the world, staying knowledgeable in state of the art across all areas of research. She also travels and advises, teaches NVIDIA’s capability around the globe. She consults on a wide range of AI applications, and helped establish the Frontier Development Laboratory, originally with NASA & the SETI Institute, now also with ESA.

Peter is the Chief Executive Officer of Spire Global (spire.com). He cofounded the company in 2012 with a vision to provide satellite-powered data from any location on earth. Peter is now regarded as one of the pioneers in launching small form factor satellites into space. He has been widely recognized for his visionary leadership and was named a White House Champion of Change in 2013. He was also named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum in 2015 in acknowledgement that Spire’s technology is poised to have a significant impact on business and society. Prior to launching Spire, Peter trained at CERN and the Max Planck Institute before turning to business with the Boston Consulting Group in Germany, Singapore, and Thailand. He spent nearly a decade on Wall Street as a quantitative trader before leaving finance in 2011 to focus on high frequency and high accuracy data in space. He advised on space commercialization at NASA Ames’ Space Portal while completing an MSS from the International Space University. He co-created and launched CareerTeams at Harvard Business School and currently serves as a Career Coach for students and alumni. Peter received an MS in Physics from the Technical University of Vienna and an MBA from Harvard.

Parya is a Geoinformatics engineer who works as a lecturer at the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) of the University of Twente, the Netherlands. During the past five years, she has been involved in development, coordination, and delivery of several GIS and EO courses and serves a member of faculty’s ‘programme committee for education’ which ensures the quality of education for the MSc., Spatial Engineering, and Postgraduate diploma programmes. Parya has extensive knowledge in educational domain and is experienced with various modes and formats of teaching including face-to-face, distance, blended-learning, and international tailor made capacity building courses. She is also conducting research on effective studies in Geoinformation domain based on student profiles and is using her experience from teaching in international environment to deliver workshops and courses on intercultural sensitivity and internationalization.

Marino has joined Arianespace in March 2016 as Vice President Vega Business Unit. In this capacity he manages the Vega exploitation program and controls its associated Profit & Loss. Since February 2018 he is also in charge of the overall Vega sales, marketing & business development activities in Arianespace. From January 2009 until March 2016 he served at EUMETSAT as Launch Services Manager. He previously covered different positions in industry, he began his career in Cannes, at Alcatel Space Industries, as mechanical engineer on telecom satellite projects and then joined ELV (European Launch Vehicle, an AVIO and A.S.I. company) in 2003 were he was later appointed Head of Mechanical Systems Development in the frame of the Vega development program. Before joining EUMETSAT he was also Head of the launcher design department at AVIO. 

Sanna is a Research Manager at the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) and the Coordinator of Aerosols, Clouds, and Trace gases Research Infrastructure (ACTRIS) implementation in Europe, and project coordinator of EC-funded ACTRIS preparatory phase project.  Her scientific background is in climate and Arctic research, paleoecology and limnology, and she has more than 20 years of experience in climate and environmental change research including a broad experience in coordination and implementation of research and research infrastructure activities at the international, European and national levels. Recently Sanna has worked particularly with ESFRI Environmental Research Infrastructures, e.g. setting-up ICOS RI and ICOS ERIC, leading the implementation of ACTRIS, chairing the Board of European Environmental Research Infrastructures (BEERi) and contributing EC-funded research infrastructure projects (ENVRIplus, COOPEUS, COOP+, RISCAPE). Sanna is also working with research data issues and data infrastructure collaboration, e.g. as scientific committee member of ICSU-WDS, co-chaired the OECD Expert Group on International Data Infrastructures, and participated in development of EOSC (EOSCpilot).

Rainer is Managing Partner of SpaceTec Partners and a member of several institutional boards in space programmes in Europe and Asia. He has long experience in New Space, space applications and geospatial industry as consultant and investor. Prior to becoming a successful entrepreneur, Rainer led the European space consulting practice at Booz Allen Hamilton. Rainer has studied at ESB in Reutlingen & London and attained an MBA from INSEAD. The strategy and management consultancy firm SpaceTec Partners covers all areas of space businesses ranging from space programmes, their applications and their impact for life on earth. The firm advises its clients on business strategy, technology strategy, user engagement and international cooperation. SpaceTec Partners has been instrumental in shaping the European space innovation ecosystems through the development of space funding programmes, accelerators and incubators.

 

Maria has a Degree with honors in Physics, PhD in Geodesy. She is Professor of “Geographic Information Systems”, “Digital Mapping” and  “Geospatial Web, GEO Big Data and Citizen.Generated Geographic Information”at the Politecnico di Milano (PoliMI). From 2006 to 2011 she lectured GIS at  the ETH of Zurich. From 2001 to 2011 she was the Head of the Geomatics Laboratory of PoliMI and from 2011 to 2016 she was Vice Rector of PoliMI for the Como Campus. She is the chair of ISPRS WG IV/4 “Collaborative crowdsourced cloud mapping (C3M)”, Associate Editor of Applied Geomatics Journal (Springer); member of the Board of the Italian Photogrammetric and Topography Society (SIFET); one of the Directors of OSGeo; member of the Advisory Board of GeoForAll, chair of the “Capacity Building WG” of the UN Open GIS Initiative, Deputy-Chair of the UN-GGIM Academic Network and Member of the ESA Advisory  Committee for Earth Observation (ACEO). Her research interests have been various, starting from geodesy, radar-altimetry and moving later to GIS, webGIS and Citizen Science. She is participating and leading research on these topics within the frameworks of both national and international projects and scientific networks. One of her main interest is in Open Source GIS, where she is playing a worldwide leading role.

Richard is the founder and CEO of Earth-i, one of the world’s leading ‘new space’ pioneers in the related fields of Earth Observation imagery, analytics and insights. Previously, Richard was the founder and CEO of Aerospace Resources Ltd (ARL), an aerospace services and consulting company with an extensive track record in the defence and security sectors. Prior to ARL, Richard was the Commercial Director and Chief Pilot for Farnborough Aircraft Corporation Ltd, which developed and built an advanced turboprop aircraft for corporate and air taxi use. A pilot for over 30 years, Richard holds US and European Commercial Pilot's Licences with Instrument Ratings, a Seaplane Rating and an Air Display Licence In addition to his aerospace interests, Richard owns a healthcare company which he established in 1993, that now facilitates and manages the healthcare needs of over 95% of all professional footballers and cricketers in England and Wales, including the national squads. With decades of experience in the aviation and aerospace industries Richard is now focussed on bringing commercial success, rapid growth and new high-tech jobs to the UK space industry.

 

Christine has dedicated her career to making ag innovation more open and collaborative. She created Thought For Food to inspire young people to get involved in developing the solutions their future depends on. Christine holds an MPA in Science & Technology Policy from Columbia University. She sits on the Board of Young Professionals in Ag Development and is a Founding Member of the Ashoka Changemakers League of Intrapreneurs.

Simon is a Senior Innovation Fellow at the University of Oxford, in collaboration with the Satellite Applications Catapult, where he brings together researchers, businesses and government organisations to develop programmes and initiatives using satellite and other geospatial data to address business and societal challenges. He has developed collaborations bringing AI/machine learning and physical modelling researchers together with space companies to develop solutions for flood risk management and early warning systems, drought prediction, oil pollution and deforestation. Other applications for Oxford technology include adaptive optics for telescopes, novel materials for spacecraft and socio-economic analyses of environmental impacts monitored from space. Simon has been in Oxford for 20 years, with a 5-year period as Head of Innovation for the government’s environmental research funder in the UK, the Natural Environment Research Council. In addition to enabling new innovations with businesses, he has taken 3 spin-out companies through development from the University and government bodies. His earlier career was a biochemist in the pharmaceutical industry in research and development for new products.

Claire is the CEO of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, heading up a global team based in five countries.  She was previously Managing Director of the Overseas Development Institute, and in 2014, she worked in the office of the UN Secretary General, writing the report of the Independent Expert Advisory Group on the Data Revolution, “A World That Counts”.  Claire is based in London, has worked for a number of international NGOs and taught at the University of London and the Open University.

Will is the Co-Founder and CEO of Planet. He leads overall strategy for commercialising new geospatial tools and analytics that are disrupting agriculture, mapping, energy, the environment, and other vertical markets. Prior to Planet, Will was a Scientist at NASA/USRA where he worked on missions “LADEE” and “LCROSS”, served as Co-Principal Investigator on PhoneSat, and was the technical lead on research projects in space debris remediation. Will received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Oxford and his Masters in Physics with Space Science and Technology from the University of Leicester. Will was a Postdoctoral Fellow at George Washington University and Harvard.

Candace Johnson is a serial satellite entrepreneur and angel investor. She is the Founder/Co-Founder of SES ASTRA and the chief architect of SES Global. She is also the Founder/Co-Founder of Loral-Teleport Europe, Europe's first private satellite telecommunications company and Europe Online, the world's first online Internet Service Provider and the world's first Satellite Broadband Internet company. She was also Vice President World wide of Iridium. Currently she is founder and Member of the Board of Oceania Women's Network Satellite, which is a large shareholder in KAcific, where Ms. Johnson has also been a Member of the Board as well as Vice Chair Europe of NorthStar, and a strategic investor in Planetary Resources and Laser Light as well as being a founding member of EBAN Space and President Emeritus of EBAN. Ms. Johnson has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women in Aerospace Europe and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Global Telecommunications Awards, as well as being decorated as a Commander of Merit from Luxembourg, Officer of the Order of Merit of Germany and Officer of the Oak Leaf Crown of Luxembourg. She holds an honorary doctorate from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Masters degrees from Stanford University an the Sorbonne and Bachelors degree from Vassar College.

Heike is an IBM Fellow and Director of IoT Technology and AI Solutions at IBM Research. She is responsible for a research agenda, which aims to create scientific and technological breakthroughs to differentiate IBM’s IoT technology and solutions. This comprises the science and technology for cognitive analytics and IoT, end-to-end IoT solutions as well as AI-based solutions for Industry 4.0. She is a distinguished expert in nanotechnology and nanosciences and focuses her research on advancing the frontiers of information technology through the physical sciences. Her research has contributed to advancements in OLED display technology, molecular electronics and semiconductor nanoscale materials and devices. Her recent research interests include topological states of compound semiconductor nanowires for quantum information processing. In 2013, Heike Riel was named IBM Fellow, the company's highest technical distinction, and inducted into IBM’s Academy of Technology. She was thus recognized for her seminal contributions to and fundamental achievements in the science and technology of nanoscale electronics, in particular the exploration and development of semiconducting nanowires for applications in future electronic devices, molecular electronics for future nanoscale switches and memory applications, and organic light-emitting diodes for display applications. She has authored more than 120 peer-reviewed publications and filed more than 50 patents. She studied physics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany) and received a PhD from the University of Bayreuth (Germany) in 2003 for her work on optimizing multilayer organic light-emitting devices performed at IBM Research. In 2011, Heike graduated with an MBA from Henley Business School.

René Schulte is Director of Global Innovation, Research & Incubation at Valorem creating and leading teams across the globe working on emerging technologies.

He has more than 10 years experience with VR, AR/MR technology and 3D programming, developing for the Microsoft HoloLens since 2015 and was featured on Forbes. He also coded AI deep learning neural networks before it was cool and is an advocate of Blockchain technology. He also created and maintains popular open source libraries like WriteableBitmapEx or the AR library SLARToolKit. He was honored several times for his dev community work with the Microsoft MVP award.

Adina is Earth-i’s Institutional Strategist. She is responsible for delivering strategic advice and guidance to institutional stakeholders and customers in the application of Earth Observation (EO) technology and supporting business units across Earth-i in delivering effective programmes designed to meet their needs. Adina has worked in EO and New Space in the UK for more than 10 years. Before joining Earth-i, she was Head of EO and Science Applications for Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL), where she was responsible for liaising with institutional customers on their applications needs and identifying service providers. She was also responsible for liaising with multiple UK Government Departments to ensure compliance with UK EO regulations, and for product development at SSTL subsidiary, DMC International Imaging. Adina has also been a long-standing advocate for the uptake of EO data and services within UK Government and institutions through her academic work and her previous role as EO specialist in Defra. She has managed various international capacity building initiatives in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Europe. Before joining SSTL, she was responsible for the UK’s operational contributions to the International Charter for Space and Major Disasters. She previously served 5 years on the EO Advisory Committee to the UK Space Agency and chaired the Industrial Advisory Group on Commercial EO Regulations for the UK. She is currently serving on the Satellite Applications Catapult Advisory Group and the Regional Catapult Advisory Board. 

Manuel is Chief Scientist at UNICEF’s Office of Innovation, where he focuses on bridging the gap between Data Science and the most vulnerable, exploring how to apply Big Data, Complex Systems theory, and Artificial Intelligence to help the most deprived and invisible. Fields of application include growing humanitarian problems such as epidemics, natural disasters, and migration as well as transversal issues such as poverty, data representativeness and algorithmic equity. Manuel holds a PhD in computer science from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. He joined UNICEF Innovation in 2014 and has been since working to bring the value of Big Data to UNICEF, leading research at UNICEF’s Office of Innovation and creating collaboration networks and Data Science tools that focus on the problems of the most vulnerable children.

Margaret Project Officer at the European Citizen Science Association on the WeObserve project, which is building an Ecosystem of Citizen Observatories for Environmental Monitoring. ECSA is a non-profit association set up to encourage the growth of the Citizen Science movement in Europe in order to enhance the participation of the general public in scientific processes, mainly by initiating and supporting citizen science projects as well as performing research on citizen science. Margaret combines 10 years in the mobile & web technology sector with 5 years of community building in Citizen Science - engaging the public in the transcription of digitally imaged specimen labels at the Natural History Museum in London, and in scientific research within the Citizen Cyberlab project. Margaret has an MBA from the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, and an Honours BA in International Relations from the University of Windsor in Canada.

Damian is the Director of the Deep Learning Competence Center at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Kaiserslautern, the Principle Investigator of the NVIDIA AI Lab at the DFKI, and founding co-director of Sociovestix Labs, a social enterprise in the area of financial data science. Damian‘s research focuses on large-scale machine learning and in particular deep learning to mine insights from data streams. His work has been awarded by NVIDIA at GTC Europe 2016, the Best Paper Award at ACM ICMR 2012 and the McKinsey Business Technology Award 2011. Damian currently serves as a member of the steering group at the VolkswagenStiftung and the review committee at the Baden-Wurttemberg Stiftung. Damian did his postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley and the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) in Berkeley, where he was involved in big data projects at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He received his PhD from the University of Kaiserslautern and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). During that time, Damian stayed as a visiting researcher at the Digital Video and Multimedia Lab at Columbia University. Starting from September 2018,Damian will be responsible for the chair in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at the University of St. Gallen (HSG). Damian will be responsible to build up a new data and computer science faculty at the University of St. Gallen.

Costas is managing the Foundations of Cognitive Computing group at IBM Research-Zurich. He received B. Eng., Msc and PhD diplomas, all from the Computer Engineering & Informatics Department, University of Patras, Greece, in 1998, 2001 and 2003 respectively, working under the supervsion of E. Gallopoulos. Between 2003-2005, he worked as a postdoctoral associate with Prof. Yousef Saad at the Computer Science & Engineering Department, University of Minnesota, USA. He has been with IBM since September 2005. Costas's main research interests span Scalable systems for AI and Knowledge Ingestion, HPC and new computing paradigms. Costas is a recipient of the PRACE 2012 award and the ACM Gordon Bell 2013 and 2015 prizes.

Jaan works as a professor at Aalto University, Finland. His background is in microwave Earth Observation and small satellites. His expertise areas are advanced SAR technologies such as interferometry ad polarimetry and also CubeSats. With his students he built the first Finnish satellite missions and works already on several new missions.  He leads research team which is part of Finnish Centre of Excellence in Research of Sustainable Space Science and Technology. Several New Space start-ups have started from his group. Jaan Praks is also known as an inspiring public speaker who promotes small satellite technology and sustainable space utilization. 

Jean-Michel is Vice-President, head of Intelligence Services Growth in Airbus Defence and Space. Born in France, Jean-Michel graduated at Sup’Aero  (Aeronautics & Space engineering) and then at CPA (MBA). He started his career in Matra as satellite operations engineer, and took over the management of  satellite operations activities after some years. In the mid 80s, he created an Artificial Intelligence team, as a kind of internal startup inside Matra, aiming at developing AI applications and services for space. In this context, he implemented a local representation in Silicon Valley. Then, all along the 90s, Jean-Michel had a variety of management positions in Matra Marconi Space: software innovation, CAD/PDM/Information Systems, satellite control centers/test systems/simulators. In the early 2000s, he joined Spot Image as COO, before becoming Infoterra CEO, and then Spot Image CEO, all those companies acting in Geoinformation Services business. When those companies were merged within Airbus as Airbus GEO, then Airbus Intelligence, in 2011, he took the lead of Intelligence Services development, with as priorities, Digital Services and Value-Added Solutions for various vertical markets. In that context, he is strongly involved in many hackathons and challenges.

James is the founder and CEO of Trillium Technologies - a technology contractor that specializes in the application of emerging technologies to grand challenges, such as climate change, prevention strategies for cancer and obesity, deforestation mitigation, climate resilience and planetary defense from asteroids. He is also Director of FDL Europe an AI research accelerator running in partnership with ESA and also founder of the Open Space Agency (OSA) - which is dedicated to democratization of space exploration though citizen science and open hardware. 

After a long career in science and consulting focussing on hydrological modelling and flood forecasting Jaap Schellekens joined VanderSat to work on the commercial application of satellite derived soil moisture in water resources management. His earlier work on global water resources and the application of remote sensing data in hydrological applications (www.earth2observe.eu and  SERVIR Mekong) showed that although science has embraced EO data commercial applications are trailing behind.

Born in 1980 in Slovenia, he studied Physics and co-founded Cosylab inc. at age 21, a company developing control systems for particle accelerators and large experiments in physics. In 2008 Grega moved to become CEO and co-founder of Sinergise, specialising in software for advanced geospatial applications, helping Europe to efficiently manage and control agriculture policy and introducing land administration systems to developing countries in Africa. With his colleagues they have recognised the potential of open Copernicus earth observation data early but soon hit a wall trying to use existing technologies to work with these large datasets. Deciding to do something about it, Sentinel Hub was born. A Copernicus Masters award winning service for processing and distribution of satellite data is exploiting AWS Open Public Datasets. After working with governmental clients in Balkan, Western Europe, Asia and Africa, Grega is now engulfed in building a global Internet business. 

Bianca is the Cluster Manager of iTech Transilvania by ARIES T, Executive Director of the Romanian Association of Software and Electronic Industry and founder and vice-president of Transilvania Creative Cluster. Bianca specialized in cluster policies and cluster management and in 2016 she successfully presented her doctoral thesis in Management at the Babeş-Bolyai University, entitled "Excellence in Cluster Management in IT". Since 2002, Bianca has been involved in the elaboration of various development regional and sectorial strategies: Transylvania 2007-2013 Development Strategy, Public Sector Recommendation Policy Papers, thus contributing to the Strategy of Development for the ICT Sector in Romania, promotion and SME Mobilization for FP7. Bianca is operating as a “bridger” in the Cluj ICT ecosystem and was awarded the Innovation Luminary Award in 2017 as the young innovation during the Open Innovation event of the European Commission.

Javier is CEO of CARTO. Over the past 10 years, he has been working on the field of biodiversity Informatics. During this time he gained strong experience in the social and technical aspects of data sharing while mobilizing vast amounts of Biodiversity on Internet. He is a recognized expert on biodiversity standards, and is well known on the geospatial community, and in particular on Open Source. He is frequently invited to speak on topics including biodiversity, data visualization, conservation, citizen science, open data and web GIS and has presented at Geoweb, FOSS4G and TDWG. Javier has a strong interest in the distribution and conservation of species on Earth and how we can help to conserve them through the use of technology and collaboration over Internet. Javier studied Agriculture Engineer in the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Freie Universität Berlin. He is a professor at the Master on Global Environmental Change at the IE University on Data Analysis and Data Visualization.

Monica Valli is Program management Director at D-Orbit. She holds a MsC degree in Space Engineering and a PhD in Aerospace Engineering and has spent several years working as researcher and specialist consultant with the most important space companies in Europe, such as Arianespace, Deimos Imaging, Altran Italia and ELV. After having followed the development of the Company from the very beginning as a consultant, in 2015 Monica joined D-Orbit to start working full-time as Program Director, performing budget management and strategic analysis for all Company programs while ensuring project activities aligned with business objectives

Sarah is Managing Director at Hello Tomorrow non-profit, an organisation aimed at accelerating the transfer of breakthrough technologies to solve the world’s toughest challenges. After helping social business grow at The Boston Consulting Group, she joined Hello Tomorrow to support the transfer of deep technologies all the way from the lab to the market and help turning scientific and technological breakthroughs into real solutions. 

Tarry is CEO, Founder and AI Neuroscience Researcher of an AI startup deepkapha.ai focussing on models and frameworks around deep learning for the future, building AI Solutions for corporate customers and AI Philanthropy initiative “givebackAI" to train the world that cannot afford expensive education. The startup works with organizations (Re:coded, Think.iT, United Nations and HultPrize.org Foundation that is funded and backed by U.S President Bill Clinton Foundation) that help disaffected youth in war-torn or ignored areas such as Syria, Tunisia, Iraq, Jordan etc. deepkapha.ai is collaborating with IBM to work on building a holistic framework to unify various deep learning frameworks. This was announced by IBM in its global Think even in Las Vegas on 20th March 2018. Tarry has over 17 years of experience working with data and has advised CxOs of global organizations to setup data-driven organizations from scratch. He speaks regularly at global AI leadership summits worldwide and conducts workshops on a regular basis with his TAs who are currently PhDs in various disciplines such as NLP, Computer Vision, Robotics and other Artificial Intelligence disciplines.

Genevieve is an innovative and agile Fintech executive with a deep understanding of identity, technology transformation and treasury management. Having held senior roles across established businesses – JPM Chase, HP, GE and RBS – Genevieve ventures in the start-up realm as CEO of an innovative crypto-currency and blockchain toolkit company that builds simple solutions for customers. She has more than 25 years’ experience in banking & financial supply chain dealing with large corporations and banks. Possesses a deep understanding of the moving parts and pain points in the financial sector.

Prasolov is a serial entrepreneur, investing in technological companies before finding Neuromation in 2016. Coming to Neuromation, he brings his penchant for CGI and multimedia production and a career of experience that spans more than 50 animated commercials, 3D movies, and computer games. This expertise and the passion behind it inspired Neuromation’s scientific team to develop algorithms with 3D synthetic data.

Petr is an entrepreneur, consultant and software architect. As the CEO of Klokan Technologies GmbH in Switzerland, he drives a team of programmers towards innovation in the mapping applications and he disrupts the world of cartography. He and his team work on the MapTiler mapping platform and have developed software tools and online services such as OpenMapTiles, GDAL2Tiles, EPSG.io, OldMapsOnline or Georeferencer used by millions of people around the planet.