Meet the Speakers

Qualifications:
Diploma in Aesthetic Laser Medicine (D.A.L.M.) – September 2019, Greifswald, Germany
German Board certification in Dermatology and Venerology – October 2016, Hamburg, Germany
German Medical License - December 2012 
MCCEE* - May 2007 
MB BCh BAO (Hons) - May 2006, University College Dublin, Ireland 
Irish Leaving Certificate - June 2000, The Institute of Education, Ireland 
High school degree with GPA of 95.1% - June 1998, FSS, Kuwait
 
Work Experience:
Currently: Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Nia Health
Dermatologist at Neocare Clinic
October 2018 – July 2019: Maternity leave
October 2016 - September 2018: Fellowship in aesthetic laser Medicine, University Greifswald, Germany    
October 2016 - April 2017: Dermatologist – Practice Ossowski, Stodt, Thomsen, Hamburg
May 2016 - October 2016: Resident, Dermatology – Practice, Stodt, Thomsen, Hamburg
October 2015 - April 2016: Maternity leave 
January 2014 - October 2015: Resident, Dermatology – Practice Ossowski, Stodt, Thomsen, Hamburg
October 2011 - November 2013: Resident, Dermatology - Elbe Klinikum Buxtehude 
February 2010 - October 2011: Resident und Researcher, Dermatology - UKSH, Lübeck 
October 2009 - January 2010: Observership, Dermatology - UKE, Hamburg 
January 2009 - July 2009: German language course, level: B2 
January 2008 - December 2008: Assistant Registrar - Dermatology, Farwaniya Hospital, Kuwait 
July 2007 - January 2008: Assistant Registrar – Pediatric Department, Farwaniya Hospital, Kuwait 
Juli 2006 - Juli 2007: Internship under “KIMS” 
 
Memberships:
Kuwait Medical Association
Kuwait Society of Dermatologists
European Academy of Dermatology and Venerology
Medical Board Hamburg 
Work group Pediatric Dermatology, Germany
 
Awards and honors:
Awarded a full scholarship to study Medicine in the Republic of Ireland by the Ministry of Education
Awarded a medal by the Amir for being an elite high school graduate with a GPA of 95.1%
 
Publications:
Association with HLA-DRB1 in Egyptian and German pemphigus vulgaris patients, Tissue Antigens. 2015 Apr;85(4):283-6. doi: 10.1111/tan.12519. Epub 2015 Feb 23, first author
Prospective in Aesthetic Medicine, Comprehensive Clinical Plasma Medicine 2018, 1st edition, Springer Verlag, Co-author 
D.A.L.M: Therapy of Telangiectasia of the nose using 532-KTP-Nd:YAG Laser. Praktische Dermatologie. Feb. 2019 ;2/2019:156, first author 
D.A.L.M.: Laser Epilation of Beard Area Using Alexandrite 755 nm Laser for a patient with Pseudofolliculitis Barbae. Praktische Dermatologie April. 2019 ;3/2019:310, first author
 

Dr. Nabil Alsabah is Head of Artificial Intelligence at Europe’s largest tech association, Bitkom. In this capacity, he promotes the application of AI across the private sector. He is also head of the annual Big-Data.AI Summit which brings together thousands of European professionals, decision-makers and thought-leaders from across the digital industries. In addition, Nabil teaches cognitive science at the Center for Machine Learning and Robotics at the prestigious Free University of Berlin. He writes op-eds on digital issues. And he frequently gives keynotes on AI in German, English and Chinese. Nabil holds a PhD in psychology and a Master’s degree in computer science. He looks back at a ten years’ experience studying, living in and writing on (digital) China. Nabil has also written a book on Chinese decision-making processes.

1984 - 1991 Medical Schoo University Düsseldorf
1991 - 1999 Medical Training (Fellowship) Philippusstift Essen & University Medical School Essen, West German Cancer Centre
1998 Board Certification Internal Medicine
1999 Board Certification Hematology & Medical Oncology
1999 - 2004 Head Clinical Affairs Oncology Janssen-Cilag/Ortho Biotech Germany
2004-2007 Therapeutic Area Director Oncology Janssen-Cilag Germany
2007-2012 European Medical Affairs Director Hematology Janssen-Cilag Europe
2012-2019 Therapeutic Area Director Hematology Janssen-Cilag Germany
since 2019 Therapeutic Area Director Hematology & Solid Tumors Janssen-Cilag Germany

Wrote his first chatbot at age 12. One of the first people to study Natual Language Processing in Germany. PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience: language processing in the human brain. Sold text input technology in 72 languages to NOKIA, shipped in 100m phones. More than 20 patents in the field of language processing. External expert at the Enquete Commission "Artificial Intelligence" of the German Bundestag.

I am Dr. Sabine Auer, entrepreneur and CEO of elena international GmbH that I founded together with Christina Vogel. With our company, we are following the vision to enable renewable power systems for our customers. My study background is Physics and I started my career in solar cell research. Finally, I finished my PhD at Humboldt University and at PIK in power grid stability analysis, at the interface to electrical engineering. I have more than ten years of experience in the field of renewable energy and energy systems analysis. Now, am bringing the concepts and methods that I acquired into practice. In our past projects, we worked with Swiss and German distribution grid operators and utilities as well as companies in the microgrid sector.

Jonathan is a corporate communications leader and storyteller at IBM where he is responsible for telling the world about the Mayflower Autonomous Ship project. Focused on the intersection of technology and society, Jonathan has built his career in the world’s fasting-moving markets - from Nairobi and Johannesburg where he introduced the world to IBM Research-Africa to Beijing where he showcased IBM’s leadership in air pollution management.

Achim Berg represents the largest German mobility platform Flixbus as chairman of the advisory board at Bitkom. Previously, Berg was Chairman of Arvato´s Executive Board and Bertelsmann´s Executive Board, held senior management positions at Microsoft headquarters in Seattle and managed Microsoft´s operations in Germany. Initially as General Manager Microsoft Germany and Area Vice President Microsoft International, he was appointed to the US corporate headquarters as Corporate Vice President for the Windows Phone Division. In this role, he led the Windows Phone business and its associated services, and later became responsible for the Operator Channels division to work with mobile operators, cable and media companies, consumers and businesses of all sizes to deliver innovative solutions.

Previously, Achim Berg was a member of T-Com´s Board of Management and since 2002 has been responsible for fixed-network marketing and sales at Europe´s largest telecommunications company. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of T-Mobile and Matav (the largest telecommunications company in Hungary). From 1999 to 2001, Achim Berg held the position of CEO of Fujitsu Siemens Computers GmbH. Between 1995 and 1999, he held senior sales management positions at Dell Deutschland GmbH, most recently as director of the computer manufacturers SME business. Achim Berg made his first career steps between 1989 and 1994 in various sales functions at Bull AG in Cologne. Achim Berg graduated from the University of Applied Sciences Cologne in 1989 with a degree in computer science. He also completed the European Potential Management Program at the European Economic School EAP, Paris, London, Madrid, Rome and Berlin.

He enjoys spending his free time with his family and sports activities such as running and skiing.

Martin Beck is a Manager at BearingPoint Austria and leading the Austrian Data & Analytics practice. With over 6 years of experience in IT and strategy consulting he has cross-industry experience in the areas such as data strategy, data management/architecture, and visual analytics working with Austrian and European companies.

His professional focus is on the conception, design, and implementation of data-driven solutions as an enabler for digitalization.

Marco-Alexander Breit was born in Neunkirchen / Saarland in 1981.
From 2001 to 2008, he studied political science, sociology and medieval and modern history at Heidelberg University and international political economy at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.
From 2008 until 2014 he held various positions in the State Chancellery of Saarland, including head of the office of the Director of the State Chancellery and Minister for the Federation, Culture and Media (2010-2011), and from 2011 was head of the office of Minister-President Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.
In April 2014 he was appointed personal assistant to the Head of the Federal Chancellery and Federal Minister for Special Tasks, Peter Altmaier, in the Federal Chancellery in Berlin.
Breit headed the Division responsible for Principles of Digital Policy Coordination in the Economic Affairs Ministry from April 2018 until July 2019.
Since August 2019 he has headed the Artificial Intelligence Task Force in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

Dr. Anna Christmann has been elected as a member of the German Bundestag in 2017. She is Spokeswoman for Innovation and Technology as well as for Civic Engagement for Alliance 90/The Greens. She earned her doctorate in political science at the University of Bern in 2011. Afterwards, she held a postdoc position at the Center for Democracy Studies of the University of Zurich. Since 2013, she has been engaged as Policy Advisor and Head of the Office of the Minister at the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of Baden-Württemberg in Germany.

Tomas Chroust is Partner at BearingPoint Switzerland. With over 19 years of IT experience, including 12 years of IT strategy and transformation consulting for Swiss and international companies, he has extensive expertise and experience in areas such as data strategy, data architecture, advanced analytics, visual analysis and intelligent agents/artificial intelligence. His focus is on the conception, design and implementation of technology-driven digital transformations.

Susanne Dehmel is Managing Director Law and Security at the Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunication and New Media (Bitkom) since 2014. In her former role she was Head of Department Data Protection since 2010. She is a lawyer and did her studies in Passau, Freiburg and Cardiff. Before taking over the Data Protection Department she was responsible for Copyright Law and Intellectual Property Issues from 2002-2009.

Encouraging trust and security in the digital world and the development of a modern and practicable legal framework for the information society are important aspects of her work.

Helping clients to better understand, scope and develop machine learning potentials and use cases as well as scouting and evaluating machine learning providers.

CEO @ Heldenkombinat Technologies GmbH

Lecturer @ Hamburg School of Business Administration

Mentor @ AI Talents Program

Inspirer @ Hackerschool

I studied physics and astronomy at Radboud University in the Netherlands and did my PhD in Geophysics at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). Afterwards I started as a data scientist at Eucon Digital GmbH and helped developing the first Machine Learning models for the shadow processing of insurance claims. Now, I am leading the data science team and I am responsible for the development and technical implementation of all ML/AI projects at Eucon Digital. This includes the shadow processing of insurance claims, optimization of processes, NLP and text understanding.

Uwe Gäbler heads the Infineon Development Center for Automotive Electronics and Artificial Intelligence Dresden. He has more than two decades of management and project experience as well as technical expertise in semiconductor industry, innovation and applied research. The DC is covering product characterization and design, modelling of complex systems and developing innovative AI-enabled products and systems, focusing on new chip architectures for edge-AI.

Isabelle is co-founder of the Munich-based startup cogniBIT which develops simulation models of human road users for the virtual development and testing of autonomous cars. Prior to founding cogniBIT in 2020, the psychologist and neuroscientist worked as a researcher on human motion perception, attention and modeling of human behavior at the Center for Sensorimotor Research of the LMU Munich.

Judith Gerlach (35), Member of the Bavarian State Parliament, chairs Germany's first State Ministry for Digital Affairs since November 2018. At age 33, the law-school graduate was the youngest-ever appointee as a Bavarian cabinet minister, having become the youngest member ever elected to the Bavarian State Parliament as early as 2013. As State Minister, she is pulling all the strings of the Bavarian digital strategy. In addition to driving forward state-of-the-art technologies such as AI and Blockchain, Minister of State Judith Gerlach sees digital administration as an important element in making the state ready for the digital transformation.

Olivier Girardot is the Head of Data @ Malt.com - He's been working as Big Data Engineer / Architect in France for the last 10 years working for big and small companies like Axa, Sarenza, the LaPoste Group, Carrefour & VIDAL, helping them leverage the power of Data. Now he's working at Malt.com to help more than 200k freelancers find their clients together in the leading freelance platform in Europe.

Rob studied Engineering, Economics and Management degree at Oxford University graduating in 2007 with First Class Honours. Prior to founding Mindful Chef in 2015, he worked as an Interest Rate Options trader at Morgan Stanley where he ran the Exotic Derivatives trading desk in New York. In 2018, he was nominated as one of the top 30 UK entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by Startups.co.uk. In 2020, Mindful Chef was awarded 'SME of the Year' in the National Business Awards.

Since 16 of January 2020 Kilian Gross is Head of Unit A/2 in DG CNECT responsible for policy development and coordination with regard to Artificial Intelligence. His Unit has developed a European approach to Artificial Intelligence and it has prepared together with Member States a Coordinated Plan on Artificial Intelligence. Based on the work of the High-Level Expert Group the Unit has drafted a White Paper on Artificial Intelligence, which presents the options on how to promote the uptake of Artificial Intelligence and how to address at the same time the risk associated with certain uses of this new technology. Based on the results of the Public Consultation on the White Paper his Unit is currently working on the follow-up process.

Prof. Sami Haddadin is Director of the Munich School of Robotics and Machine Intelligence at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and holds the Chair of Robotics and Systems Intelligence. His research interests include robot design and control, robot learning, collective intelligence, human-robot interaction, embodied AI, human neuromechanics, intelligent prosthetics and robot safety. He has published more than 200 scientific articles and won numerous awards for his scientific work, including the IEEE/RAS Early Career Award (2015), the Alfried Krupp Award for Young Professors (2015), the German Future Prize (2017) and the Leibniz Prize (2019). Prof. Haddadin is the founder of Franka Emika GmbH (Munich, 2016). He is a member of the national academy of science and engineering, of the High-Level Expert Group on AI of the European Commission and was part of the Enquete commission AI of the German Parliament. He was recently appointed chairman of the Bavarian AI council.

Thomas Hahn is since 2011 Chief Expert Software at Siemens AG. After studying computer science at Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen he joined the company in 1986. Thomas Hahn had several responsibilities in the area of manufacturing such as Head of Software Development for Industrial Automation Systems or in the area of mobility such as Head of Development at Traffic Control Systems. In addition to his actual position as Chief Expert Software, he was Head of the Business Analytics and Monitoring from 2011 to August 2013. Beyond his activities at Siemens, Thomas Hahn is a member or board member of various bodies, including Openlab CERN and steering committee Plattform Industrie 4.0. He is vice-president OPC Foundation, Vice Chairman GAIA-X AISBL, chairman of Labs Network Industrie 4.0 and president of Big Data Value Association.

Kevin Holler is a Serial Entrepreneur and Data-Architect. He has worked for a number of Fortune 500 companies and played a key role in building their Modern Data Stack. He has also overseen EMEA expansions at various VC-funded startups, as well as having founded and built his own companies. As Technical Lead for DACH and Benelux, Kevin Holler is currently driving Fivetran's technical expansion in these regions.

Ulrich (Uli) Homann is a Corporate Vice President & Distinguished Architect in the Cloud + AI business at Microsoft. As part of the senior engineering leadership team, he’s responsible for the customer-led innovation efforts across the cloud and enterprise platform portfolio. Previously Homann was the Chief Architect for Microsoft worldwide enterprise services, having formerly played a key role in the business’ newly formed Platforms, Technology and Strategy Group. Prior to joining Microsoft in 1991, he worked for several small consulting companies, where he designed and developed distributed systems and has spent most of his career using well-defined applications and architectures to simplify and streamline the development of business applications. Homann holds a Bachelor of Computer Science from the University of Cologne, Germany.

Marco Huber received his diploma, Ph.D., and habilitation degrees in computer science from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, in 2006, 2009, and 2015, respectively. From June 2009 to May 2011, he was leading the research group “Variable Image Acquisition and Processing” of the Fraunhofer IOSB, Karlsruhe, Germany. Subsequently, he was Senior Researcher with AGT International, Darmstadt, Germany, until March 2015. From April 2015 to September 2018, he was responsible for product development and data science services of the Katana division at USU Software AG, Karlsruhe, Germany. At the same time he was adjunct professor of computer science with the KIT. Since October 2018 he is full professor with the University of Stuttgart. At the same time, he is director of the Center for Cyber Cognitive Intelligence (CCI) and of the Department for Image and Signal Processing with Fraunhofer IPA in Stuttgart, Germany. His research interests include machine learning, planning and decision making, image processing, data analytics, and robotics. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 publications in various high-ranking journals, books, and conferences, and holds two U.S. patents and one EU patent.

Professor Michael Huth is Co-Founder and CTO of Xayn and teaches at Imperial College London. His research focuses on Cybersecurity, Cryptography, Mathematical Modeling, as well as security and privacy in Machine Learning. He served as the technical lead of the Harnessing Economic Value theme at PETRAS IoT Cybersecurity Research Hub in the UK. In 2017, he founded the privacy tech company together with Leif-Nissen Lundbæk and Felix Hahmann. Xayn offers a privacy-protecting search engine that enables users to gain back control over the algorithms and provides them with a smooth user-experience. Winner of the first Porsche Innovation Contest, the Berlin-based AI company has already worked successfully with Porsche, Daimler, Deutsche Bahn, and Siemens.

Melinda Jacobs is a games expert, tech entrepreneur and N7 paragon. She's a geeky nerd who found a way to combine her love of games and her fascination with people's behavior into an award-winning expertise. As the founder of the digital experience agency Subatomic, she’s helped companies and organizations develop interactive experiences that change behavior through play, games, and gamification. Her current role is as a founder and Co-CEO of Perkio where she's on a mission to help companies and employees co-create long-lasting wellbeing using gamification and data science. As an international speaker, she routinely gives talks around the world on playful design, organizational psychology, and technology ethics.

Thomas Jarzombek started an IT service company in 1996 while being a student of Economics, until 2017 he was a partner of the firm. He has been politically active for more than 25 years, for example as a member of the City Council of Düsseldorf as well as member of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia. In 2009, 2013 and 2017 he was elected to the German Bundestag. Thomas Jarzombek is the Chairman of the CDU Düsseldorf and from 2014 until 2018 he was the Spokesperson of the CDU/CSU-parliamentary group in the Digital Agenda Committee of the Bundestag. He also is member of the Committee on Transport and Digital Infrastructure since 2009. Since April 2018 Thomas Jarzombek is the new Federal Government Coordinator of German Aerospace Policy at the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

In addition to this function, Thomas Jarzombek was appointed as the Commissioner for the Digital Industry and Start-ups in August 2019. His work will focus on dialogue with the stakeholders in the digital sector and with start-ups. He aims to make the digital market even more accessible for start-ups and to improve the policy environment for an international market.

Lubomila Jordanova is the founder and CEO of PlanA.Earth, a Berlin-based startup developing an end-to-end platform that enables companies to measure, monitor and reduce their environmental footprint and improve their ESG performance. She is also the co-founder of the Greentech Alliance, a community of 500+ startups which are connected to over 350+ advisors from VC, media and business, who help them monthly with advice and feedback. Prior to Plan A, she worked in investment banking, venture capital and fintech in Asia and Europe. She was recently announced as Marshall Fund Fellow for 2021 and 100 Top Women in Germany 2020.

Viktor Kessler is Sr. Solutions Architect at Dremio since December 2019. Before joining Dremio Viktor spent multiple years working at MongoDB, ERGO, Gothaer and PwC as Solutions Architect on topics of Big Data, DW and digital transformation projects. In this time Viktor gathered experience on such both classical technologies as Mainframe/DB2, Oracle, MSSQL, Informatica IPC, SAS and on modern tech stack as Hadoop, MongoDB, Cassandra and Kafka.

I coordinate Bitkom working groups regarding the issues artificial intelligence, big data & cloud computing. This includes topics like the future European AI regulation & the sovereign cloud & data infrastructure project GAIA-X. I am also interested in the impact of big data and artificial intelligence on society, the future of work, and ethical and legal issues surrounding big data and artificial Intelligence. Furthermore I am interested in policy, especially digital policy, economic and social policy.

Andreas Klug cofounded the German AI software specialist ITyX and is a leading Evangelist for digital transformation. As President of the working group "Artificial Intelligence" in Bitkom, he is the author of numerous publications around AI and Intelligent Automation and Host of the KI-Board Podcast.

Two years ago I joined Tableau Solution Engineering Team and since then I help Tableau enterprise customers across Europe to see and understand their data. Before joining Tableau I spent six years working in Telekom and E-commerce industry as a System Analyst on Data Warhouse Development projects. My Tableau story started when company I worked for at that time chose Tableau as a self-service BI instrument on top of DWH I was responsible for. Long story short, i started using Tableau and saw in action all benefits it can bring to a company. I feel like being ex-Tableau customer allows me to relate to our customers and their Tableau needs and help them in a best possible way.

Since 03/2919 Head of Voice & Conversation, 05/2017-03/2019 Project Manager Innovation Management, 10/2015-05/2017 Executive Assistant ERGO International, 06/2012-10/2015 IT-Strategist ITERGO, Academic Background: B.Sc. Information Science for Business, currently working on my M.Sc. for Data Science, Technology and Innovation

Malte Kosub is co-founder and managing director of Parloa. The Berlin-based software company developed a SaaS enterprise-solution for the automation of customer communication based on artificial intelligence. He is also co-founder of Future of Voice, one of the leading agencies for Conversational AI in Europe. Malte is a faculty member of the Futur/io Institute and Fellow of the Kairos Society. He completed his business studies at the University of Hamburg, at Harvard and MIT.

Before joining Tableau, Bea spent five years working in Marketing and Events at Fiat and Jägermeister. Bea always had the need to work with data, but not always the right access or tools to do so. Because of her passion for data Bea started her Master studies in Strategic Information Management while working full-time. That's where she was first introduced to Tableau and immediately fell in love with the tool. For the past two years, Bea has worked as a Solution Engineer at Tableau and helps people see and understand their data every single day.

Heiko Lenzing has 30+ years experience in the software business, focusing on Data Management, Advanced Analytics and AI. He held various positions in Sales, TechSales, Services and Consulting in his career.

Besides his profound knowledge of Analytics, Heiko is an SME in the field of Data Governance and related fields like Data Privacy and Data Security and holds a certification as Compliance Manager.

He worked with clients globally and across diverse industries in various projects driving successful outcomes.

Christian “Mio” Loclair, creative director at Waltz Binaire, is a new media artist, computer scientist and choreographer from Berlin, Germany. He explores the friction of nature colliding with data and digital procedures. Using cutting edge technology and artificial intelligences in interactive installations, audio-visual experiences, visual narratives and dance performances, he continuously explores the harmony and tension of the encounter of humans and machines. Mio is publishing his work on digital installations, unexpected galleries and theatre stages around the world for commercial and independent projects.

Leif-Nissen Lundbæk (Ph.D) is Co-Founder and CEO of Xayn and specialises in privacy-preserving AI. He studied Mathematics and Software Engineering in Berlin, Heidelberg, and Oxford. He received his Ph.D. at Imperial College London.

Lena Maier-Hein received a Diploma (2005) and PhD degree (2009) with distinction from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and conducted her postdoctoral at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and at the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery at Imperial College London. During her time as junior group leader at the DKFZ (2011-2016), she finished her Habilitation (2013) at the University of Heidelberg. As DKFZ division head she is now working in the field of biomedical image analysis with a specific focus on surgical data science, computational biophotonics and validation of machine learning algorithms. Lena Maier-Hein is fellow of the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) society and of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) and has been distinguished with several science awards including the 2013 Heinz Maier Leibnitz Award of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the 2017/18 Berlin-Brandenburg Academy Prize. She has received a European Research Council (ERC) starting grant (2015-2020) and consolidator grant (2021-2026).

Leo Marose is CEO and Co-Founder of StackFuel, Germany's leading training provider for online based upskill courses and reskill programs in data literacy, data science and AI. Born in 1988 near Frankfurt am Main, he completed his Bachelor's degree in Business Administration at the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden and studied Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Bond University in Queensland, Australia. He started his startup career as Entrepreneur in Residence at Hanse Ventures and worked as senior strategy consultant for a short period. In 2012, he co-founded the world's leading online magazine for CrossFit BOXROX with Co-Founder and CTO Stefan Berntheisel. Later on, he advised various German and foreign start-ups in the field of web and data analytics, traffic acquisition, and lead generation as a freelance performance marketing consultant and growth hacker. In 2017, Leo Marose and Stefan Berntheisel founded their second startup StackFuel. StackFuel helps companies master the digital transformation and upcoming skill gap by supporting an effective transformation of their workforce into future job roles. The innovative online learning platform provides a modern self-paced and flexible learning experience that includes an interactive and cloud-based programming environment in which participants develop algorithms with industry data sets and benefit from real world projects.

Trained in geometry and physics, held several positions in risk and portfolio management in Commerzbank and is now mainly interested in creating and understanding Trustworthy AI solutions.

Jason Matheny is Deputy Director for National Security at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Previously he was the Founding Director of Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), Assistant Director of National Intelligence, and Director of IARPA, responsible for the development of technologies for the U.S. intelligence community. Before IARPA, he worked at Oxford University, the World Bank, the Applied Physics Laboratory, the Center for Biosecurity, and Princeton University, and was the co-founder of two biotechnology companies.

Lukáš is Head of Data & Information Competence Center at Raiffeisenbank. He has been involved with Data Warehousing for more than 15 years. Lately, Lukáš found a new passion for making IT and business departments work together and search for new opportunities hidden in data. Lukáš holds a master's degree in System Engineering from Mendel's University, Brno.

Shaun McGirr has over 15 years of experience working with data as a practitioner across multiple industries, including doctorate-level training in applied statistics, consulting, and automotive. In his role as AI Evangelist at Dataiku, he is focused on helping customers maximise value on their paths to Enterprise AI, while coaching and advising teams internally. Prior to joining Dataiku, McGirr served as Head of Data Science & Business Intelligence at Cox Automotive UK from 2016, where he led a team helping customers access, understand, and engage with data to improve decision-making. Prior to this, he was also a Data Scientist at Optimal Business Intelligence. His data journey began at Statistics NZ, and continued through a PhD in Political Science at the University of Michigan, where he worked on data collection and analysis for projects on politicians' support of foreign aid projects, and measuring varieties of democracy, and also taught introductory and upper-level comparative politics. Shaun is also co-host of the Half Stack Data Science podcast. He lives in London, United Kingdom.

Jörg Meiners is a Data Architect and provides consulting services to companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland on data management and data integration in heterogeneous landscapes with a particular focus on the practical benefits and agility of integration architectures.

The physicist began his IT career in 1994 with positions at SAP, Sun Microsystems and Oracle. During his professional career, he held positions in software development, project implementation and management.

Digital business models have always been in the center of Volker Meise's path in business. Today he is responsible to foster digital claim management for insurance companies with data driven services including AI at Eucon Digital in Münster. Before joining Eucon as Head of Portfoliomanagement and New Products he led the German business of global social data intelligence specialist Linkfluence. Former stations have been Legal and Business Information company LexiNexis and Germany's large content house Bertelsmann. Volker holds a PhD in Information Systems from WWU Münster.

Dr. Dirk Michelsen is Executive Consultant in the German MVP team and responsible for supporting clients concerning Watson, Data Science & Artificial Intelligence. He did his PhD in Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics and is (co-) author of multiples articles, whitepapers and books on these topics and represents IBM at national and international conferences.

Carina Mieth is working as executive assistant to the Managing Director R+D at TRUMPF Machine Tools. Previously, she was the product owner in TRUMPF’s Smart Factory Simulation & Analytics team, where she led the development of simulation model libraries & frameworks and coordinated simulation projects for customers. She is also a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering at the TU Dortmund University, where she is an associated member in the DFG-funded research training group adaption intelligence of factories in a dynamic and complex environment. Her research focuses on cyber-physical production systems and simulation input modelling for manufacturing simulation. In 2017, she received her M.Sc. in electrical engineering and information technology with a specialization in control engineering from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. In her master's thesis, she focused on optimization problems in energy networks.

John Miller is Senior Vice President for Policy and General Counsel at the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), the preeminent global information technology (IT) trade association. Mr. Miller founded and leads ITI’s Trust, Data and Technology policy team, driving the organization’s global strategy and advocacy on privacy and data protection, cybersecurity and supply chain security, government access to data and encryption, artificial intelligence, 5G, Internet of Things, export controls, cloud computing, digital platforms and other technology, internet and data policy issues. As General Counsel (GC) Mr. Miller serves as ITI’s chief legal advisor and manages ITI’s global legal and regulatory strategy and engagement with policymakers and courts on complex issues of law and policy, ensuring the coherency of ITI’s substantive legal and regulatory policy positions at the global, federal, and U.S. state levels.

A recognized global expert on cybersecurity, supply chain security, privacy, artificial intelligence, data governance and other technology policy matters, Mr. Miller has testified before the U.S. Congress and participated as a keynote speaker or panelist on these topics at major events in the U.S. and global markets including India, Brazil, the EU, China and Japan.

A proven IT industry leader, Mr. Miller co-chairs the Information and Communications Technology Supply Chain Risk Management Task Force along with leaders from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and communications sector, is the current Vice Chair of the Information Technology Sector Coordinating Council, the principal IT sector partner to the Department of Homeland Security on critical infrastructure protection and cybersecurity policy, and participates in the Future of Privacy Forum Expert Group on International Data Transfers and Protection.

Prior to ITI, Mr. Miller worked for nearly a decade in the Global Public Policy organization at Intel Corporation, most recently serving as the company’s Director of Government Relations and Cybersecurity Policy; and Managing Counsel.

Daniel Neuhäuser works as Head of ERP core solutions in the corporate IT of Villeroy & Boch. Next to his main field of working to manage applications and projects around the business core processes, he is driving the RPA implementation – including the integration of AI services.

Prof. Thomas Neumuth is an engineer and computer scientist. His research interests focus on model-based medicine, smart biomedical technology, and situation-aware medical information systems. He is Chief Technology Officer and Deputy Director of the Innovation Center Computer Assisted Surgery (ICCAS) at the Universität Leipzig. He is heading the research division Model-based medicine of ICCAS. He is active in several professional organizations such as the European Expert Panel for Medical Devices and InVitro-Diagnostics, the ORNET user association for medical device interoperability, the expert committee “Model-based personalized medical technology” of the German Society for Biomedical Technology and the working group “Healthcare, Medical Technology and Care” of Acatech’s “Platform Lernende Systeme”.

Bernhard Niedermayer is leading the business area of Emerging Technologies at Cloudflight. He has been working in AI for almost 15 years. The starting point was in academic research where Bernhard focused on Machine Learning-based audio processing for his PhD thesis until 2012. Since then he has been building up a team of AI professionals at Cloudflight and leading numerous AI projects in various industries ranging from Proof-of-Concept implementations to multi-million Euro AI applications.

Kim is an Astrophysics PhD, MBA and Entrepreneur. She is the Chair & Co-Founder of Pivigo; supporting organisations to innovate with data by connecting them with a global community of the best and brightest freelancing data scientists. She is passionate about people, data and connecting the two.

As a Solution Engineer at Talend Arne Ottens is responsible for Talend customers with a focus on Data Management, Big Data and Cloud technologies. Having a history as an architect and developer, he has a natural passion for complex challenges, elegant solutions and innovative technologies.

Martin Peuker studied business engineering in Berlin, Germany. After completing his degree, he spent the formative years of his career as a senior manager with Siemens AG and Mummert Consulting AG. From the beginning, his focus has been IT development in the health care sector. In 2006, after several years as a consultant, he moved to Charité Universitaetsmedizin Berlin, heading their IT division as Deputy CIO.  He oversaw all operational IT processes for administration, research & teaching as well as the development of a holistic sustainability strategy.  In 2017, Martin Peuker became CIO of Charité.  As CIO his priorities are the continuous further development and improvement of IT structures in Health Care, both at Charité and at BIH (Berlin Institute of Health). Further priorities also include the promotion of Research and Teaching, as well as Health Technology, which are of crucial importance to him. In addition to his duties as CIO, Martin Peuker takes on responsibility as a project manager and site spokesman representing Berlin in the HiGHmed consortium and is member of the IT committee of the Association of University Clinics (Verband der Universitätsklinika e.V.). He is also elected member of the Charité Faculty Board. Martin Peuker has been rewarded CIO of the year 2020 by the leading CIO magazine in Germany. 

Born in 1960 in Seelscheid, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

After a banking apprenticeship, he studied macroeconomics and business economics at the University of Münster and the University of Bonn from where he obtained his doctoral degree in 1991, with a thesis supervised by Professor Horst Albach. Subsequently, Professor Pinkwart ran the office of the FDP's (Free Democratic Party) leader of the parliamentary group in the German Bundestag from 1991 to 1994. In 1994 he became a professor for economics and business administration in Düsseldorf from where he later moved to the University of Siegen to accept a chair for business economics. Being on a sabbatical leave from 2002 to 2011, Professor Pinkwart was a Member of the German Bundestag (2002 - 2005) and Minister for Innovation, Science, Research and Technology as well as Deputy Prime Minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (2005 - 2010). In 2011 Professor Pinkwart has been appointed as Dean of HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management and ever since holds the Stiftungsfonds Deutsche Bank Chair for Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship.

In 2017 he became Minister of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia

Digital enthusiast and 24/7 customer advocate. Always on duty to serve customers in a better and faster way by combining the best of digitalization and personal service.

Dr. Nora Reich joined KfW Bankengruppe in 2018 in order to foster the use of advanced analytics and automation techniques at KfW's customer touchpoints and internal processes. Current projects include automated E-Mail classification, process automation, fraud detection and forecasting. Dr. Reich has extensive professional experience in using data and analytics as basis for business decisions and solutions, which she also gained from earlier positions at DHL Parcel Germany and mm customer strategy. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of Hamburg.

Carsten Riggelsen leads AllCloud's Data/AI unit in DACH. He previously received several research grants in applied machine learning in academia. At the United Nations Comprehensive Nuclear Test-ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), he pioneered automatic detection of nuclear detonations using ML techniques, IoT, and edge technology. He then served as Practice Lead for Data at Pivotal Labs and led global research and development efforts at MeteoGroup, now part of DTN. Most recently, Riggelsen was responsible for Deutsche Bahn's data strategy.

Robin is the co-founder and CEO of Apheris, a platform for federated and privacy preserving data science to unlock value from private data. Apheris fundamentally changes how organizations come together to analyse data securely while keeping proprietary information private. Robin drives the vision, strategy and culture of Apheris. His work and leadership are inspired by a diverse academic background in mathematics, medicine and philosophy and his passion to solve the greatest challenges of our times. Before co-founding Apheris, Robin worked in strategy consulting and global investment banking.

Lisa Sammer is product and project manager for SAP Data Intelligence, SAP’s platform for AI and Big Data technologies. In numerous customer engagements, she has guided the customer from discovering the potential of data to a tangible use case and its realization into software products. Ms. Sammer has a long SAP background and brings 16 years of extensive experience in SAP Product Management, Consulting, Project Management as well as Design Thinking methodologies. Ms. Sammer graduated in mathematics and computer sciences at the University of Bayreuth, Germany.

Director for IT, Digitalization, Innovation & Research at BMU since 2020, driving implementation and development of the Digital Policy Agenda for the Environment. Worked previously for the parliamentary group of the Social Democrats (SPD), the administration of the federal parliament (Bundestag) and the University of Erfurt. Political scientist by training, educated in Munich, Paris and Cambridge, Mass.

Antonia’s focus is on achieving a digitized and modern public administration on federal, state and local government level. She has worked as a management consultant advising the public sector, with Bitkom as Head of Public Sector and now leads the Public Sector practice of a large tech company. Antonia holds a Master Degree from Stockholm School of Economics and a Bachelor Degree from WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management. She regularly moderates conferences and panel discussions.

Dominik Schmidt-Kiefer studied economics in Germany before starting his career in the field of risk management. He brings over 20 years of business experience especially leading complex projects including IT projects and applications. Despite expertise in market, credit and liquidity risk management he also gained insights in the usage of public and on-prem cloud technologies. In 2010 he joined Commerzbank as head of counterparty & issuer risk in Group Market Risk Management. After various positions in Group Market Risk Management he was heading the division from 2018 until 2020. In 2020 Dominik Schmidt-Kiefer became head of the Big Data & Advanced Analytics division at Commerzbank AG.

Dr Thomas Schneider is in charge of Research and Development at TRUMPF Machine Tools. Born in Ludwigshafen, he studied mechanical engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and did his doctorate in the field of materials for electrical engineering. Before joining the company TRUMPF as Head of Lifecycle Engineering / Product Quality and Production Platforms, he held various positions in the industry, such as at Airbus, Liebherr Aerospace and McKinsey.

Leonie Schneiderhöhn is International Communications Manager at Bitkom Servicegesellschaft and responsible for the promotion of international events such Big-Data.AI, hub.berlin, and the Digital Finance Conference. Before joining Bitkom, she worked as Marketing and Business Development Assistant in an online publishing start-up in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz, Germany, as well as a Master's Degree with Distinction in "Brands, Communication and Culture" from Goldsmith's University of London, UK.

Stephan Schnieber is the Sales Leader for IBM Cloud Pak for Data at IBM DACH. The generation of new knowledge out of and from data is not a new topic for Stephan Schnieber. After many years in the services environment, in which he has actively worked with customers on these challenges, he is now active as a sales leader for the collaborative AI platform Cloud Pak for Data, helping companies to develop and implement an end-to-end AI system. Artificial intelligence was already his focus during his studies and the fact that many things are possible today that were only treated theoretically in his studies motivates him to bring AI further in the direction to a company-wide benefit.

As co-founder and CEO of audEERING, Dagmar Schuller is responsible for the corporate strategy, business development and operations. She is an expert in digital strategy and innovation. For more than 10 years, she has been working with (emotional) artificial intelligence, machine learning and Big Data. With a lot of passion, she has led audEERING to a million-dollar company with currently 60 employees at two locations in Munich and Berlin. For her, the benefits of intelligent audio analysis for people are always in the foreground. That is why she and her team are constantly developing applications for new areas, from medicine to automotive to smart personal assistants. Schuller has more than 20 years of professional experience in the field of digitalisation and disruptive technology innovations. Before co-founding audEERING, she worked internationally for eight years as Senior Vice President, Operations Europe, for an investment of Hubert Burda Media. Before that, she advised international corporations on the implementation of their digital strategies as a management consultant at Ernst & Young in Vienna and in New York and was part of the global strategy team at Ernst & Young LLP. She studied economics with a focus on business informatics and international management as well as law with a focus on IT law. Dagmar Schuller is also a keynote speaker at national and international conferences on applied AI. As a (co-)author, she has already published around 20 scientific publications (h-index 8) on the topic of applied AI and digitalisation. In addition, Schuller is the deputy state director for Bavaria of the KI Bundesverband e.V. In her free time, Dagmar Schuller is passionate about playing the piano and saxophone and practises Tae Kwon Do.

Max Schultze is a data engineering manager working on building a data lake at Zalando, Europe’s biggest online platform for fashion. His focus lies on building data pipelines at petabytes scale and productionizing Spark and Presto on Delta Lake inside the company. He is a public advocate of the Data Mesh paradigm, contributing to its development through conference appearances and online trainings. Max originally graduated from the Humboldt University of Berlin, actively taking part in the university’s initial development of Apache Flink.

Before building and leading the Professional Services organization in EMEA at Confluent Mark was leading the Services organisations at Red Hat and HP. He is advising technology leaders on how to accelerate business transformation through setting data in motion in enterprise companies all over Europe.

Don Scott is the CTO of MarineAI - the company building the autonomous systems (aka ‘AI Captain’) for the Mayflower Autonomous Ship. Don is a pioneer in the world of ocean engineering, with a passion for pushing the boundaries of technical innovation in his field. His primary focus is on the design of autonomous systems for the US Navy.

Kristin Shi-Kupfer is Professor for Sinology at the University of Trier and a Senior Associate Fellow at MERICS. She is an expert on China’s digital society and politics, media policy, civil society and human rights. From 2013 until September 2020, Shi-Kupfer headed MERICS’ research area on Public Policy and Society. She previously worked as a research associate at the University of Freiburg’s Institute for Sinology. She earned her PhD from Ruhr University Bochum with a thesis on spiritual and religious groups in China after 1978. From 2007 to 2011 she was based in Beijing covering China for various German-speaking media like the Austrian magazine Profil, the German Protestant Press Agency epd or the public radio station Deutsche Welle. Since 2019 she is a member of the Sino-German Working Group on Digital Business Models initiated by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

As Practice Lead, I am responsible for providing advanced analytics services to the Manufacturing and Hi-tech clients of Infosys. These services are primarily predictive solutions built on machine learning, AI and advanced insights and visualization. They include customer analytics, after market analytics, AI based forecasting & inventory optimization and other use cases across the entire value chain. My customers include some of the largest manufacturing companies in the world, and the most prominent AI OEMs. I have led large scale AI-led business transformation programs for our clients. I have used the power of the cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) in delivering neural networks and NLP solutions that result in high business performance.

Johannes Sommer is CEO of the Berlin-based tech company Retresco, where he is responsible for strategic positioning and market orientation. Together with founder and CEO Alexander Siebert and Retresco's team of around 75 employees, he designs and implements cross-industry automation projects for the data-based creation of text using artificial intelligence, so-called natural language generation. With many years of experience in the media sector, Johannes Sommer is a recognized expert on digitization topics in the publishing & media industry, where he held leading positions before joining Retresco. Johannes Sommer studied Business Communication and Media Management (MBA) in Berlin and Hamburg.

Martin Spindler is Professor for Statistics, Data Science and Machine Learning at the University of Hamburg. His field of research is Machine Learning with applications in Economics and Business Administration and in particular the combination of Machine Learning and Causal Inference. He has been visiting scholar at MIT, Columbia University and Singapore Management University. His work has been published in leading journals. Together with international researchers, he founded Economic AI to support companies in the application and development of AI and to secure a competitive advantage through tailor-made research-based solutions. They have conducted projects in Dynamic Pricing, Marketing, Production Optimization and Finance & Risk Management at leading companies worldwide.

Christian Stapel has been responsible for CIO Advisory and Information Technology as Partner of the Consulting Services Cluster Data & Technology at MHP Management und IT-Beratung since 2016. Mr. Stapel studied Business Engineering at the University of Applied Science Würzburg-Schweinfurt. He joined MHP in 1999 and focused in his early years on SAP Transformation and Template Strategies. In the course of his career, he signed responsible for System Landscape Optimization later on also for the Business Collaboration & Integration portfolio. Currently his consulting focus and passion is on Digital Transformation, Agile Custom Development, Data Strategy and Emerging Technologies. As an enabler he supports colleagues by developing fascinating digital services in the manner of corporate startups within MHP.

Dr. Thomas Thiele has been with Deutsche Bahn since 2018. His areas of expertise include the development and implementation of AI-relevant topics within the company as a whole. He coordinates the House of AI of Deutsche Bahn and the company wide AI Governance. Prior to this, Mr. Thiele worked at the Cybernetics Lab at RWTH Aachen University as Head of the Production Technology Research Group.

Michael Thüne is the Business Analytics Lead at FREE NOW and has been with the company since 2019. After joining as the marketing analytics lead, his area of responsibility expanded and now includes the marketing, operations and sales analytics teams as well as the analytics enablement team. Prior to FREE NOW, he has been working in e-commerce and marketing analytics functions in different companies such as Tchibo, Stage Entertainment and arvato mobile (former Bertelsmann company, now: mondia media).

Christian Umbach is co-founder and CEO of Xapix, one of the leading platforms for data integration, orchestration and enterprise AI. His mission is to drive digitalization in the German market. His expertise lies in APIs, building digital platforms and ecosystems, and in creating new, disruptive business models. In recent years, he has successfully executed integration and AI/ML projects in the US and Europe with Amazon, Bosch, Goodyear, Deutsche Bahn and Daimler Trucks, among others.

In the last years, Anja Vedder has applied her organisational skills and sales talent in providing the process industry with state-of-the-art condition monitoring solutions for condition-based maintenance and performance optimisation. She has more than 10 years experience, in the end as Head of Operations Europe, in sales and aftersales for turbomachinery at a renowned manufacturer of large rotating equipment such as compressors and turbines.

Christina Vogel is co-founder and CEO of elena international GmbH. She holds an M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and Management from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and has been active in the start-up community since 2010. She built her expertise in technology transfer and entrepreneurship by founding an association for the transfer of sustainable technologies into practice. She worked in projects in India, France, Taiwan, China, Morocco and Tanzania in the fields of engineering, culture and sustainability. In elena international, which was selected into the top 50 start-ups of Germany 2019, she brings in her passion for sustainability and technology in the energy sector.

Axel Voss is a trained lawyer, lecturer and current MEP. As a members of the JURI committee he became Coordinator for the EPP Group in JURI in January 2017. He is also a member and rapporteur of the AIDA committee and substitute member in the LIBE Committee; furthermore he was appointed Vice-Chair of the Delegation for Relations with Australia and New Zealand. The European Data Protection Package and the Copyright Reform were crucial elements of his parliamentary work. He further focuses on the PNR dossiers, digitalisation and artificial intelligence.

Kai Waehner is a Field CTO and Technology Evangelist at Confluent. His focus is on Big Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Messaging, Integration, Microservices, Internet of Things, Stream Processing and Blockchain. He is also the author of technical articles, speaks at international conferences and reports on his blog (www.kai-waehner.de/blog) about experiences with new technologies.

Laura Wamprecht is the Managing Director at Flying Health and oversees there the Partnership Program, which defines the framework for collaboration with partner companies. The biochemist joined the company as the first employee back in 2015 and during this time gained a strong understanding and broad market knowledge in the still emerging branch of digital health in Germany and Europe. Through close collaboration with the leading players in the healthcare industry and the startup-world, she developed & accompanied numerous market entry strategies for digital health products. As one of the leading digital health experts in Germany, she has contributed her knowledge in various publications and is a regularly requested expert for keynote speeches and panel discussions.

Helmut Wasserbacher is the Head of Digital Finance Operations at Novartis. He is leading the efforts to implement the digital strategy in Finance, including deployment of artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive analytics. He heads the global business planning group and digital data science hub in Barcelona. Since joining Novartis, he had different roles of increasing responsibility in country, regional and global entities across different businesses. Prior to joining Novartis, Helmut worked at McKinsey & Company and KPMG. Helmut holds a Master in International Business Administration from the University of Vienna and obtained his MBA from INSEAD. He is also a CFA Charterholder.

Dr.-Ing. Susan Wegner is responsible for Artificial Intelligence & Data Analytics at Lufthansa Industry Solutions. She has more than 15 years of experience especially in the fields of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Platform/Software Design at Deutsche Telekom and other companies e.g. Robert Bosch, T-Systems. In addition, since 2013 she has held different positions within Motionlogic a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom Group: Founder, CEO, chairperson and now member of the advisory board. Furthermore, since 2015, Susan have been a board member of the Bitkom Big Data Group, since November 2018 Member of the European Commission Expert Group on Business-to-Government (B2G) Data Sharing and judge/in the council of experts for e.g. The European Data Science & AI Awards or Bikom Big-Data&AI Summit. As a computer scientist and mathematician - studying in Berlin and North Carolina (USA) - she had the privilege to be an early adopter of Artificial Intelligence leading to her PhD.

Lina has 9+ years of industry experience in developing scalable machine learning models and bringing them into production. She currently works as the Machine Learning Lead Engineer in the data science group of the German online bank DKB. She previously worked at Zalando, one of Europe’s biggest online fashion retailers, where she developed real-time, deep learning personalization models for more than 32M users.

Andreas Welsch defines and executes SAP’s strategy of embedding intelligent automation into end-to-end business processes within SAP S/4HANA. Together with his global team of product managers, he partners with SAP's customers to identify and prove out high-value/high-impact use cases for intelligent automation and helps customers to adopt them. Andreas has been a trusted innovation advisor to C-level executives, senior management, and domain experts across lines of business and industries. Throughout the past 19 years in the software industry, Andreas has held several roles spanning solution management for machine learning, corporate strategy and M&A, board office staff, new business incubation, and IT project management. Andreas holds an MBA from Europäische Fernhochschule Hamburg and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Wilhelm Büchner Hochschule in Germany.

Arif Wider is a professor of software engineering in Berlin, Germany, and a principal technology consultant with ThoughtWorks, where he served as Head of Data & AI before moving back to academia. At ThoughtWorks he has been working with Zhamak Dehghani who coined the term Data Mesh in 2019. As a vital part of research, teaching, and consulting, he is passionate about distilling and distributing great ideas and concepts that emerge in the software engineering community.

In this role, he is responsible for development teams in four European and Asian locations. In addition, he is a key spokesperson for AI and member of SAP’s AI ethics steering board which provides company-wide guidelines on how to apply AI in a human-centric way. 

Sebastian is member of the Enquete Commission on AI of the German Bundestag, board member at Bitkom’s AI working group, member of the steering board of the EU-project SHERPA, which conducts research on ethical questions in regard to the use of AI, and serves as an academic expert and reviewer for the European Commission and the German Ministry of Education and Research. 

In previous positions at SAP, Sebastian coordinated all startup engagement activities of the SAP Innovation Center Network, including the scouting of companies for partnering and M&A, the mentoring of startups at accelerators like TechStars, Startupbootcamp, Seedcamp and SAP.io, as well as representing SAP at the German Startups Association. 

While at SAP Research, Sebastian managed EU-funded research projects and led the "Application Engineering Group". During this time, he was an organizer and member of various scientific program committees for peer-reviewed conferences and workshops, conducting lectures on Web Engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt, and published numerous papers on software engineering.

September 2019 - European Commission, Representation in Germany – Berlin Head of the European Commission’s Representation in Germany

2015 - European Commission, Representation in Austria – Vienna Head of the European Commission’s Representation in Austria

2010 - European Union Delegation for Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain – Riyadh

2004 - Embassy Counsellor

2002 - European Commission - European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) - Brussels Spokesperson

2000 - Daily newspaper Der Standard - Brussels EU and NATO Correspondent Daily newspaper Der Standard - Vienna Editor Foreign Policy

1998 - Higher Regional Court District - Karlsruhe Trainee lawyer Education

1999 - Second State Exam in Law / Baden-Württemberg

1997 – 1998 - Doctorate in Law

1997 - Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel, Walther-Schücking-Institute for International Law Doctoral Studies

1991 – 1997 - First State Exam in Law / Bavaria

1993 – 1994 - University of Passau Law Studies

1990 - University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Erasmus - Law and International Relations

High-School Diploma - Michael Gymnasium, Munich

Prof. Dr. Stefan Wrobel is Professor of Computer Science at University of Bonn and Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS.

He studied Computer Science and Artificial intelligence in Bonn and Atlanta, Georgia/USA (M.S., Georgia Institute of Technology) and obtained his PhD at the University of Dortmund. After holding positions in Berlin and Sankt Augustin he was appointed Professor of Practical Computer Science at Magdeburg University, before taking up his current position in 2002. In addition, he is the managing director of the Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology (b-it) and one of the two spokespersons of the Competence Center Machine Learning Rhine-Ruhr (ML2R).

Professor Wrobel’s work is focused on questions of the digital revolution, in particular intelligent algorithms and systems for the large-scale analysis of data and the influence of Big Data/Smart Data on the use of information in companies and society. He is the author of a large number of publications on Data Mining and Machine Learning, is on the Editorial Board of several leading academic journals in his field, and is an elected founding member of the “International Machine Learning Society”. He was honored by the Gesellschaft für Informatik as one of the formative minds in German AI history.

As chairman of the “Fraunhofer Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Alliance”, director of the “Fraunhofer Center for Machine Learning”, vice-spokesman of the “Fraunhofer Information and Communication Technology Group“ as well as spokesman of the “Fachgruppe Knowledge Discovery, Data Mining und Maschinelles Lernen”, a Special Interest Group of the German Computer Science Society, he is engaged nationally and internationally in pushing forward the benefits of Digitalization, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence.

PhD Leibniz University Hannover Germany about automatic mapping, remote sensing data and machine learning

Since 2014 Development Section at Mapping Agency Lower Saxony in Germany

Since 2020 Innovation Department