TECH DAYS: Virtual Edition

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June 8th, 2021

9 AM - 5 PM (CET)

Roland

Weigert

Roland Weigert is Vice Minister of the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy.

Kyriakos

Pierrakakis

Kyriakos Pierrakakis is the Minister of Digital Governance in the Cabinet of Kyriakos Mitsotakis. He is a Greek computer and political scientist and politician. In 2007 he earned a Master in Public Policy from John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and in 2009 he earned a Master of Science in Technology and Policy from MIT. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Athens University of Economics and Business. He served as Director of Research at Dianeosis, an independent non-profit think tank. He produced an array of research papers with a strong focus on economic growth and understanding the prevail-ing perceptions and beliefs among Greeks. He has also worked on technology policy for various research institutes in Greece and abroad and headed Youth Foundation as president. He was born on 1983 in Athens. He is married with three children. He speaks English and French.

Kenza

Ait Si Abbou

Kenza is Senior Manager for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence at Deutsche Telekom IT. She
was born in Morocco, studied Telecommunications Engineering in Spain. A Master in Project
Management followed in Germany, then Chinese as a foreign language in China. She has a track
record managing big projects, in Hardware and Software development, ICT outsourcing tenders,
agile transformations, or rolling out new network architectures for Deutsche Telekom. In
December 2018 Kenza was awarded with the Digital Female Leader Award in the category
IT/Tech, and in April 2019 with the Engineer Power Women Award from Deutsche Messe, for her
engagement and commitment for more Diversity in the IT and AI world. In August 2020 Kenza
published her first Book „Keine Panik, ist nur Technik“ (in German for now), where she explains
artificial intelligence to the public and pleads for more diversity in AI development.

Dr. Sabine

Leifheit

Dr. Susanne Leifheit heads the Public Affairs and Sustainability Department at the Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles brand.
Dr. Leifheit was born in 1963, she has two children.
After graduating from high school, she initially completed an apprenticeship as a farmer. She completed her studies in chemistry at the Technical University of Darmstadt in 1995 with a doctorate in additives in engine oils.
Since 1996 she has been working in the Volkswagen Group. She began her career in the Group laboratory with the analysis of operating materials. She took over the management of "authorities and regulations" and "CO2Management" at the Volkswagen Passenger Car Brand in Wolfsburg. Since 2014, she has been responsible for Public Affairs and Sustainability at the Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles brand in Hanover. 2005-2007 shewas Head oftheGreen Party in LowerSaxony.

Dr. Joseph

Reger

Dr. Reger is Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Central and Eastern Europe at Fujitsu and a Fujitsu Fellow since 2015.
He is currently focusing on quantum computing, artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies. He began his career in university research (Hunga-ry, Norway, and Germany) and spent three years as a visiting scientist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he conducted interdisciplinary research on complex systems in areas of physics, mathematics, meteorolo-gy, biology, and computer science. Joseph Reger received his PhD from the University of Cologne and his habilitation from the University of Mainz.

Christian

Leicher

Christian Leicher is President and CEO of Rohde & Schwarz GmbH & Co. KG. He has been a member of the Executive Board and Managing Partner since 2005. In July 2016 he assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

He has more than 20 years of international experience in the wireless industry. Prior to joining Rohde & Schwarz, Leicher held positions at Ericsson in Germany, China, Sweden, and the US and at Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications for the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East and Africa).

Mr. Leicher holds a graduate degree in electrical engineering and a postgraduate degree in ergonomics and economics (AWA) from Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Dr. Maike

Stern

Dr.-Ing. Maike Stern is a key expert at ams OSRAM Opto Semiconductors in Regensburg, Germany, where she leads a team dedicated to machine learning research. She received her PhD in 2020 from Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in computer science and was a research asso-ciate at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Systems and Device Technology IISB until 2018. She and her team are working on optimisation methods, causal inference and the combination of both to answer the question of where and how to intervene in a process to achieve an optimal result. Also, they organise the Women in Data Science Regensburg conference as well as a working group on causal inference, which brings together researchers from academia and industry.

Patrick

Stern

Patrick Stern is a research associate in the Human-Technology Interaction research area at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (Fraunhofer IAO) in Stuttgart. As a side-line, he gives lectures at universities and also works as a lecturer at the Stuttgart Region Chamber of Industry and Commerce. He holds a degree in business administration (Dipl.-Wirt.-Ing. (FH)) and can draw on more than 10 years of professional experience in the digital environment.

Sven-Anwar

Bibi

Sven-Anwar Bibi has a history in strategy & innovation consulting and user research in the context of product development of analog and digital products and services. He established and lead the Connected Living Venture within PwC IXDS GmbH between 2015 and 2020 to-gether with a team of designers, innovators and researchers. Accountable for projects and relationships with nationally and internationally operating companies (BSH, BOSCH, Vaillant, Vorwerk, SPIE), consulting in the context of digital transformation, he helped companies to thrive on business and cultural level during their challenges to master digital transformation.
Since 2002 Sven has been involved in teaching / academic research and gained experience in the DACH region and abroad, (lectureships, seminars, workshops). At PwC IXDS he lead a consortium of 3 SMEs and 2 Universities during a three year research project on “Prototyp-ing for Innovation” (ProFI), funded by BMBF/DLR.

Tom

Klein

Tom Klein, born in 1988, studied information technology and industrial engineering in Zwickau. Both in his university research and in his professional life at SyroCon, he drives innovative projects in the area of automotive with his extensive expertise. The focus is on the development of Engine Control Unit (ECU) components for autono-mous driving as well as in the field of e-mobility. In innovative sensor development projects for autonomous driving, he evaluates new technologies in the field of artifi-cial intelligence, machine learning and computer vision and brings these solutions with his team into the market.

Dr. Ilana

Wisby

Dr Ilana Wisby is the Founding CEO of Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), the UK’s premier player in the quantum revolution. At OQC, Ilana and her team have built the UK’s most ad-vanced quantum computer, the only one commercially available in the country. OQC’s missi-on is to put quantum in the hands of humanity and at the fingertips of our most brilliant minds to help solve some of the world’s most challenging problems.Ilana is also an advisor to the WEF’s new Future Council on Quantum and a champion for women in technology and lea-dership. Ilana envisions a brighter future for everyone, enabled by quantum.

Dr. Liliane

Ableitner

Liliane Ableitner emphasized the use of digital technologies in the energy transition during her doctoral studies in information systems at ETH Zurich. After the success of her research project, she founded the startup Exnaton, which rethinks the energy sector and uses data and apps in a targeted way to achieve the climate goals of our society. The startup has won several awards and Liliane Ableitner was listed as a successful young entrepreneur on DACH Forbes' 30 UNDER 30 list.

Stefan

Ulm

Stefan Ulm serves as Senior Project Manager Embedded System Development at AKKA. As part of the company's own research department named AKKA Research in the German Business Unit, the physicist is working with his team on three research projects regarding the development of control electronics for quantum experiments.

Smadar

David

Smadar David (co-Founder and CEO):
Holding a B.Sc.& M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering as well as an MBA, all from Tel-Aviv University.
Served for more than 6 years in the technological unit of the intelligence corps (81), leading the execution of full cycle from conceptualization to field implementation of high precision opto-electronic mechanisms and systems.
Following the army service, Smadar joined Innoviz Technologies (a successful Israeli startup developing Lidar for Autonomous Vehicles, raised over $250M) as the first employee. Smadar established and managed the MEMS and mechanical group, a diversified group of more than 20 professionals. The group was in charge of the development of a cutting-edge MEMS scanning module from concept to serial production, utilizing technologies that had never been commercialized before.

Prof. Andreas

Riener

Andreas Riener is professor for Human-Machine Interaction and Virtual Reality at Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt with co-appointment at the CARISSMA Institute of Automated Driving. He is heading the interdisciplinary “Human-Computer Interaction Group” (https://hcig.thi.de) at THI. Riener conducts hypotheses-driven, experimental research in the area of driver and driving sup-port systems. His research interests include HF/ergonomics, driver state assessment, and trust/acceptance/ethics in automated driving. Furthermore, he is working with AR/MR/VR technol-ogy and developing novel interaction concepts. Riener’s research has yielded more than 200 publi-cations. He is holding IEEE, ACM, HFES Europe memberships. Andreas Riener is steering committee co-chair of ACM AutomotiveUI and chair of the German ACM SIGCHI.

Dr. Jörg

Eßlinger

Dr. Jörg Eßlinger is director Materials Engineering and Component Testing at MTU Aero Engines in Munich, Germany. He studied physics and holds a PhD from the University of Stuttgart.

Michael

Braun

After his training as a mechanic Michael Braun studied agricultural sciences at the Fachhochschule Freising-Weihenstephan. In 2008, he graduated as a certified agriculturist. In 2008, Michael Braun started working for HORSCH and at first was responsible for agronomic tests
and trials. In 2012, he joined the HORSCH product marketing team for tillage and seed drills. Due to the intensive contact to different markets and climate zones he gathered comprehensive experiences in international arable farming.
Since the middle of 2020 Michael Braun has been in charge of the sectors sales support and marketing. In addition to the long activity for HORSCH he runs the parental farm with a focus on arable farming and cattle keeping.

David

Heberling

David Heberling, Founder & CEO of Table of Visions, is an expert in digital innovation management and a pioneer in crowdfunding. Together with David Holetzeck, he founded pling, one of the first German crowdfunding platforms for creative projects, and was able to successfully establish the topic on the German market.

Heberling is a jury member of the Slush Startup Competition and a startup crowdfunding advisor at the European University Viadrina.He is co-founder of the Corporate Crowdfunding Days and recently founded the Lab Research Unit Predictify.
As a sought-after speaker and lecturer, David Heberling often shares his knowledge at conferences such as re:publica, Zukunft Personal, IFA or the Hasso Plattner Institute.
Table of Visions develops innovation and financing processes with the help of the crowd. Its customers include small and medium-sized companies as well as corporations that are leaders in their industries in Germany or even worldwide, such as Tchibo.
or even global leaders in their industry, such as Tchibo, psd Bank, Wikimedia, Finanzportal, Total, Desussa Sparkassen Finanzportal or Vaillant Group. He lives and works in Berlin.

Rob

Price

Rob is a Director at Alchemmy, a boutique UK based Management Consultancy. He was previously Deputy CEO at Worldline UK, Chief Digital Officer at Atos UK, and Consulting Partner helping organisations on their Digital Transformation. He led the definition of Digital for the Management Consultancy Associatoins's Year of Digital in 2015, was one of the World’s Top 50 influencers on Digital Transformation in 2016 and was co-founder of the concept of Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) in 2017, whilst leading a research stream on the impact of Digital on Society in a global thinktank led by Thierry Breton, then Chairman of Atos and now EU Commissioner introducing the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act. He runs the blog http://corporatedigitalresponsibility.net and associated Podcast series, “A New Digital Responsibility”, connecting the dots on the people and organisations involved in CDR globally.

Peter

Merz

Peter is currently leading the Standardization & Research unit in Nokia. The unit is responsible for developing holistic concepts and innovations for Access and Core networks as well as automation breakthroughs in network and service automation and driving them accordingly into external standardization bodies and fora.

Peter received his Master of Science degree on electrical Engineering in 1995 from the University Stuttgart, Germany. In 1996 he joined the Siemens Mobile Networks division and started to work on GSM technology. He has a proven strong background in wireless research and he was part of the Siemens's pioneering activities in WCDMA and LTE. In 2004 he became manager of the unit responsible for radio access research and standardization.
In 2007 he took over the position of Head of Radio Systems research in Nokia Siemens Network and later Nokia Networks. The research performed in this unit has substantially contributed to the evolution of WCDMA, HSPA and LTE/LTE-A and 5G technologies and systems that today and the future provide unparalleled connectivity on a global base.

He is a proven leader and manager, capable of executing defined strategies by leading successfully projects & programs at multi-cultural organizations. Peter co-initiated/founded the industry consortium on CPRI (Common Public Radio Interface) together with Ericsson, NEC, Nortel, Siemens and Huawei. He was involved in the set up of several collaborative research projects and bring up of various mobile generations like LTE and 5G moreover he holds several international patents. He is active in Digital Hub Mobility in Munich as well as a member of the VDE and in the board of “Münchner Kreis”.

Dr. Wolfgang

Kellerer

Wolfgang Kellerer is full professor and head of the Chair of Communication Networks in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Technical University of Munich (TUM), Munich, Germany. His research area covers methods and systems for wireless as well as fixed communication networks. Focus of his work is on network dynamics and flexibility based on Software Defined Networking and Network (Function) Virtualization for various emerging systems including 5G and 6G infrastructure as well as industrial communication. In the area of wireless communication his research is targeting machine-to-machine communication for low-delay, high reliability, control-aware wireless network resource management in 5G and 6G networks.

Before he joined TUM, Wolfgang Kellerer pursued an industrial career being more than ten years with DOCOMO Communications Laboratories Europe GmbH, NTT DOCOMO's European research institute in Munich, Germany. His last position was head of the research department for wireless communication and networking, contributing to research and standardization of LTE-A and 5G technologies. In 2001 he was a visiting researcher at the Information Systems Laboratory of Stanford University, California, US.

He received his Dr.-Ing. degree (Ph.D.) and his Dipl.-Ing. degree (Master) from TUM, in 1995 and 2002, respectively. He has published more than 200 papers in respective journals, conferences and workshops and is inventor of more than 40 patents and patent applications in this area. In 2015, he has been awarded with an ERC Consolidator Grant from the European Commission for his research project FlexNets "Quantifying Flexibility in Communication Networks". He is a member of ACM, VDE ITG and a Senior Member of IEEE.

Patricia

La Torre

Paddy brings over 5 years of experience in the automotive industry to Humanising Autonomy, having previously worked at Bosch in Europe and North America. In her former roles she coordinated business development, funding acquisition, public private partnerships, and policy across the global mobility industry. She holds a Bachelor of the Arts from James Madison College at Michigan State University and a Master of the Arts from the University of Bath. In her current role, Paddy works to engage international partners and customers in achieving Humanising Autonomy’s mission to become the global standard for human interaction with automated systems.

Dr. Panagiotis

Demestrichas

Prof. Panagiotis Demestichas is a Professor at the University of Piraeus, School of ICT, Department of Digital Systems, Greece. He is also a co-owner of WINGS ICT Solutions (www.wings-ict-solutions.eu) and of its spin-out Incelligent (www.incelligent.net). WINGS focuses on AI-powered solutions for the environment (air quality), networks and infrastructures (water, energy, gas, transportation, construction), production and manufacturing (food security and safety, industry 4.0, logistics), service sectors (health, defense). Incelligent focuses on products for banking, the public sector and telecommunication infrastructures. Panagiotis conducts research on 5G, cloud and IoT, big data and artificial intelligence, orchestration / diagnostics and intent-oriented mechanisms. He holds a Diploma and a Ph.D. degree on Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He holds patents and has published numerous articles and research papers.

Christopher

Schneider

Christopher Schneider (31) grew up in Regensburg and graduated with a bachelor's degree in engineering in "Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency" and a master's degree in applied research at the OTH Regensburg in 2015. He gained relevant experiences as a project manager for a new building area with an intelligent supply concept (electricity, local heating and fiber optics). In 2017, he joined the team of Stadtwerk Haßfurt GmbH and worked on R&D projects as a manager for more than 3 years, driving the development of the company. Since December 2020, he has contributed to the company's utilization of the results of numerous completed R&D projects into the company's divisions energy economy, sales and R&D as a division manager, ensuring the company's sustainability and further renewable development.

Daniel

Schröder

Daniel Schröder is currently working as a research associate at the chair for automotive technologies at TU Munich. As part of the MCube Strategy Team, he was substantially involved in the formation of “MCube – Munich Cluster for the future of Mobility in Metropolitan Regions” that is part of the BMBF clusters4future initiative. He is a former consultant with experience in automated, shared and electrified vehicles as well as innovative and integrated urban transport solutions.

Dr. Albrecht

Schmidt

Albrecht Schmidt is a professor of computer science at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, where he holds a chair for Human-Centered Ubiquitous Media. His teaching and research interests are in human-centered artificial intelligence, intelligent interactive systems, ubiquitous computing, multimodal user interfaces, and digital media technologies. He studied computer science in Ulm and Manchester and received a PhD from Lancaster University. Albrecht is the scientific speaker of ZD.B and the scientific co-director of the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM) and he is the co-founder of the ACM conferences TEI and Automotive User interfaces. In 2018 I was inducted into the ACM SIGCHI Academy and in 2020 he was elected into Leopoldina, the Germany academy of science.