Wesley Allsbrook

VR Artist
North Carolina, USA

Wesley Allsbrook was born in Durham, North Carolina. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design. She has been recognized by The Art Directors Club, The Society of Publication Designers, The Society of Illustrators, American Illustration, Communication Arts, Sundance Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival, the Television Academy and The Peabody Awards. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Her VR credits are Dear Angelica, Quill, The Sunladies and 12 Seconds of Gunfire, The True Story of a School Shooting (Washington Post, 2019). She writes, makes digital art, VR art and installation, and comics. She hopes she can use her work to create better legal and financial working conditions for artists and women in tech.

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Cansu Canca

Founder and Director @ AI Ethics Lab
Boston / Istanbul

Cansu is a philosopher and the founder/director of the AI Ethics Lab, where she leads teams of computer scientists and legal scholars to provide ethics analysis and guidance to researchers and practitioners. She has a Ph.D. in philosophy specializing in applied ethics. She works on ethics of technology and population-level bioethics with an interest in policy questions. Prior to the AI Ethics Lab, she was a lecturer at the University of Hong Kong, and a researcher at the Harvard Law School, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, Osaka University, and the World Health Organization.

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Ann Cavoukian

Founder and CEO @ Global Privacy & Security by Design
Toronto, CAN

Ann Cavoukian is recognized as one of the world’s leading privacy experts. As the Information & Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada, she created ‘Privacy by Design’, a framework that seeks to proactively embed privacy into the design specifications of information technologies, networked infrastructure and business practices. In 2010, International Privacy Regulators unanimously passed a Resolution recognizing ‘Privacy by Design’ as an International Standard. In 2018, the framework was included in a new EU law: the General Data Protection Regulation. Dr. Cavoukian is now the Executive Director of the Global Privacy & Security by Design Centre. She is also a Senior Fellow of the Ted Rogers Leadership Centre at Ryerson University, and a Faculty Fellow of the Center for Law, Science & Innovation at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.

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Jerry M. Chow

Senior Manager @ Quantum System Technology
New York, USA

Jerry M. Chow is the Senior Manager of the Quantum System Technology group at IBM and a Distinguished Research Staff Member. His technical expertise is in the area of design, measurement, and integration of superconducting qubit quantum computing systems. Chow graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in physics and M.S. in applied mathematics from Harvard University (2005) and subsequently a Ph.D in physics from Yale University (2010). He was awarded a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for his study at Yale, where he worked on implementing the first quantum processor with superconducting qubits in Prof. Rob Schoelkopf’s group. He joined IBM Research as a Research Staff Member in 2010. In 2012 he was recognized in the Forbes 30 under 30 Technology list. Jerry is the Primary Investigator for the IBM team on the IARPA Logical Qubits program since 2015. In 2016 he co-lead the IBM Quantum Experience project, placing a real quantum processor accessible to anyone over the Cloud, which recently was awarded the 2019 Gold Edison Award in the Next Gen Computing category.

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Lina Dencik

Founder Data Justice Lab
Cardiff, UK

Lina Dencik is Reader at Cardiff's School of Journalism, Media and Culture and Co-Founder/Director of the Data Justice Lab. Her research concerns the interplay between media developments and social and political change, with a particular focus on resistance and globalisation. Recently, she has moved into the areas of digital surveillance and the politics of data and worked on the ESRC-funded project Digital Citizenship and Surveillance Society and the project Managing Threats: Social Media Uses for Policing Domestic Extremism and Disorder funded by the Media Democracy Fund, Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations. Lina has recently been awarded a Starting Grant from the European Research Council and is Principal Investigator on the project DATAJUSTICE. With the Data Justice Lab, she has also worked on two further projects, Data Scores as Governance funded by the Open Society Fondations and Data Policies funded by IDRC India (in collaboration with IT for Change), and is currently working on a new two-year project Towards Democratic Auditing funded by the Open Society Foundations.

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Diana Derval

Chair and Research Director @ DervalResearch
Shanghai, CHN

Diana Derval, PhD, EMBA, is Chair and Research Director of DervalResearch, global research firm specializing in human behavior and preferences. Harvard Business Review contributor, Jury for CES Asia Innovation Awards, patented inventor of the Hormonal Quotient® (HQ) nominated for the Edison Awards and of the Derval Color Test® taken by 10 million+ people. Member of the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology, and author of the books “Designing Luxury Brands”, "Hormones, Talent, and Career", and “The Right Sensory Mix”-finalist of the Berry-AMA Award for best marketing book and recommended by Philip Kotler- Diana turns fascinating neuroscientific breakthroughs into powerful business frameworks to identify, understand, and predict human traits, motivations, and behavior. She has accelerated the development of Fortune 500 firms including Sephora, Michelin, Sofitel, Ubisoft, Philips, and L'Oréal. Diana Derval teaches Innovation, Luxury, Design Thinking and Neurosciences at Sorbonne Business School, IFA, Fudan/MIT and Donghua University. Over 25,000 professionals enjoyed her inspirational lectures, TEDx talks, and workshops from Paris to Shanghai.

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Parham Eftekhari

Executive Director @ ICIT
Washington, USA

Parham Eftekhari is the Executive Director of the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT), the nation's leading cybersecurity Think Tank. Combining 16 years of technology experience with a lifelong passion for leadership and community engagement, Parham is privileged to advise executives at some of the world's top public and private sector organizations, build strategic alliances, and create thought leadership programs focused on national security, cybersecurity, and digital transformation. He leads the development and execution of ICIT's content strategy, which includes its Fellows Program, research publications, and executive briefings, and regularly engages with the media on ICIT's behalf. During his career, Parham has contributed to over a dozen publications, developed curriculum for events that have educated thousands of professionals, and has delivered or organized dozens of briefings at institutions including TEDx, Congress, the World Bank, RSA, C-SPAN, and ICIT. Parham is a recipient of the 2017 (ISC)² Government Information Security Leadership Award - Most Valuable Industry Partner, a graduate from the University of Wisconsin Madison's School of Business.

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Madeleine C. Elish

Research Lead @ Data & Society Research Institute
New York, USA

M.C. Elish is a cultural anthropologist whose work examines the social impacts of AI and automation on society. As Research Lead and co-founder of the AI on the Ground Initiative at Data & Society, she works to inform the ethical design, use, and governance of AI systems through the application of social science research and human-centered ethnographic perspectives. Her recent research has focused on how AI technologies affect understandings of equity, values and ethical norms and how professional work lives change in response. She has conducted field work across varied industries and communities, ranging from the Air Force, civilian drone regulation, and commercial aviation to precision agriculture and emergency clinical care. Her research has been published and cited in scholarly journals as well as publications including The New York Times, Slate, Vice, and USA Today. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University and an S.M. in Comparative Media Studies from MIT.

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Dino Flore

Vice President, Technology @ Qualcomm Europe
Barcelona, ESP

Dino Flore is vice president of technology at Qualcomm Europe, Inc., where he is responsible for the leadership, strategy, development and implementation of multiple technologies – with an emphasis on 5G – and driving their adoption across Europe, Middle East and Africa. To achieve this, he is continually working closely with multiple stakeholders across the ecosystem. From September 2016 to September 2018 Flore was appointed director general of the newly formed 5G Automotive Association (5GAA), the goal of which is to bridge the automotive and telecom industries to develop next-generation connected mobility solutions.

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Philip Hausmeier

UI/UX Designer Mixed Reality @ Meshicon
Berlin, GER

Philip Hausmeier received his Diploma in Communication Design from the HS Düsseldorf in 2003 and his M.F.A. from the Slade School of Art London in 2005. Between 2005 and 2015 he worked as an artist internationally with a focus on immersive spatial installations. In 2013 Hausmeier saw the huge potential of VR/AR/MR technologies for design and art and since then has worked with these media exclusively. In 2016, he founded the company Metaphysics as part of an accelerator in Silicon Valley to create structures that bring virtual reality and the arts together. Resulting exhibitions have been shown at Computer History Museum Mountain View, Zabludowicz Collection London and the ZKM Karlsruhe. In 2017 he co-founded the VR art database Radiance VR which currently presents over 90 international VR artworks and exhibits them in cooperation with museums and other partners. He is co-founder and UX designer of Meshicon Software, a mixed reality company that provides industrial interface solutions for the Microsoft HoloLens. In addition he organizes the Virtual Reality Berlin Meetup (VRBLN), one of the largest communities for VR with over 3,000 members.

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Fritz Henglein

Professor @ University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen, DNK

Fritz Henglein is Professor of Programming Languages and Systems at DIKU, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) and Head of Research at Deon Digital AG, a start-up developing secure and scalable digital contract technology for both decentralized (blockchain, distributed ledger) and centralized systems.
His research contributions are in semantic, logical and algorithmic aspects of programming languages, functional programming, domain-specific languages, digital contracts, reporting and analytics, smart contracts and blockchain/distributed ledger systems

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Kensuke Katsuta

Vice President of 5G Business & Innovation department @ Rakuten Mobile
London, UK

Kensuke Katsuta, Vice President of 5G Business & Innovation department which is newly-established in Rakuten Mobile, Inc. He is leading new 5G business and service team in Rakuten Mobile together with technical team, where Rakuten is planning to roll-out world first virtualized cloud 5G network around June, 2020. Mr. Katsuta was a Senior Business Manager for Business Managament Office in Sony Mobile Communication at London prior to joining Rakuten Mobile.

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Véronique Larcher

Director AMBEO Immersive Audio @ Sennheiser
Zurich, CH

Véronique Larcher holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Finance from the Paris Institute of Political Studies and a PhD in 3D Audio for Virtual Reality from Ircam, France. In 2001, Dr Larcher joined Creative Labs in Santa Cruz (USA) as a 3D Audio Scientist and worked for four years on audio effects for consumer soundcards. She went on to join Sennheiser in 2005 to found and manage the company’s Strategic Innovation office in San Francisco, California, a research entity responsible for incubating and developing new digital technologies and disruptive concepts. Now in Switzerland, Véronique is responsible for AMBEO Immersive Audio at Sennheiser where, among others, she developed a partnership with Magic Leap to develop the tools and accessories enabling innovative mixed reality music experiences.

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Haoyuan Li

Founder, Chairman, CTO @ Alluxio
California, USA

Haoyuan Li is founder and CEO of Alluxio Inc.(formerly Tachyon Nexus). Before founding the company, he was working on his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley AMPLab, where he co-created Alluxio, a memory-speed virtual distributed storage. Haoyuan is also a founding committer of Apache Spark. Before the AMPLab, he worked at Conviva and Google. Haoyuan has an MS from Cornell University and a BS from Peking University.

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Shalev Lifshitz

AI Researcher & Entrepreneur @ UWaterloo & SickKids
Toronto, CAN

16 years old, Canadian, and striving to develop the future of technology. Shalev Lifshitz is one of the world’s youngest AI researchers and entrepreneurs who has spoken at various conferences inspiring many to explore and think about the future of AI as well as what questions we need to ask in order to be prepared for human-level artificial intelligence. Shalev Lifshitz is developing a neural network that aims to behave more like the human brain and is working to create solutions for some of Canada’s top hospitals such as using AI to expedite diagnostic and drug discovery processes and creating remote assistance systems for stay-at-home patients. His goal is to spark the next wave of human innovation and help humanity reach a new evolutionary step.

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Ganesh Padmanabhan

Chief Revenue Officer @ Molecula Corp.
Texas, USA

Ganesh Padmanabhan is the Chief Revenue Officer and Co-Founder at Molecula Corp a Data virtualization company that makes Enterprise data AI-Ready. Previously, he was the Vice President of Global Business & Market Development at CognitiveScale, an Enterprise AI company that has multiple Fortune 500 clients.
He is passionate about bringing disruptive technologies to market and has established a track record of driving growth through corporate strategy, product and business development as well as marketing and sales for startups and Fortune 50 companies.

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Tian Qiu

Cyber Valley Research Group Leader @ University of Stuttgart
Stuttgart, GER

Experienced Researcher with a demonstrated history of working in the scientific research in close collaboration with the industry. Skilled in Microfabrication, Microfluidics, Mechanical Engineering, Programming, Biomedical Devices, and Data Analysis. Strong research professional with a PhD focused in Microdevices and Biomedical Engineering from Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne.

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Philipp Sandner

Professor @ Frankfurt School of Finance & Management
Frankfurt, GER

Prof. Dr. Philipp Sandner is head of the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center (FSBC) at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. In 2018, he was ranked as one of the “Top 30” economists by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), a major newspaper in Germany. Further, he belongs to the “Top 40 under 40” – a ranking by the German business magazine Capital. The expertise of Prof. Sandner in particular includes blockchain technology, crypto assets, distributed ledger technology (DLT), Euro-on-Ledger, initial coin offerings (ICOs), security tokens (STOs), digital transformation and entrepreneurship.

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Takashi Sato

Managing Director @ Unipos
Berlin, GER

Takashi is the Managing Director at Unipos – the fastest growing HR tech startup born in Tokyo, Japan. Prior to Unipos, Takashi was in charge of country expansions and business development at HelloFresh HQ, and company-wide restructuring projects at Adidas HQ within the Global Strategy team. Currently in love studying about employee engagement, motivation drivers at work, and the future of work.

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Joachim Sauter

Professor @ Berlin University of the Arts
Berlin, GER

After graduating from the academy of fine arts in Berlin, Joachim Sauter studied at the 'German Academy for Film and Television', Berlin. Since mid of the 1980s, he has been working as a media artist and designer. From the beginning, he has focussed on digital technologies and is experimenting how they can be used to express content, form, and narration. Fueled by this interest, Joachim founded ART+COM in 1988 together with other artists, designers, scientists, hackers and technicians. Today, he leads the interdisciplinary group’s innovative experiments, using new technologies to convey complex topics while exploring their potential for spatial communication and art.
Since 1991 he is full professor for "New Media Art and Design" at the 'University of the Arts' Berlin and since 2001 adjunct professor at UCLA, Los Angeles.

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Robert Sparrow

Professor @ Monash University
Melbourne, AUS

Robert Sparrow is a professor in the philosophy program, a chief investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, and an adjunct professor in the Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University, where he works on ethical issues raised by new technologies. He is the author of some seventy-five refereed papers and book chapters on topics as diverse as the ethics of military robotics, aged-care robotics, just war theory, human enhancement, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and nanotechnology. He is a co-chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Robot Ethics and was one of the founding members of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control.

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Brendon Stead

Senior Vice President of Product Development & Engineering @ Sound United
California, USA

Brendon oversees product development, engineering and design across all eight Sound United brands, including Denon/HEOS, Marantz, Polk Audio, & Definitive Technology. He has 20 years experience in consumer electronic global product innovation, development and management. Prior to Sound United, Brendon spent 12 years at Harman, most recently as VP of Product Engineering. Aside from delivering amazing sound performance, Brendon’s experience gives him a unique view on how experiential products tie into wider electronics industry trends, including voice integration, IoT and virtual reality.

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Christopher Steiner

Entrepreneur in Residence @ Northwestern University Chicago, USA

Christopher Steiner is a New York Times Bestselling Author of two books, including Automate This, How Algorithms Came To Rule Our World. An engineer, a writer and a dedicated tinkerer, his TED talk on algorithms has been viewed 160,000 times. He has written for Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The New York Times, Outside, and MIT Technology Review, among others. Steiner, an alumnus of Silicon Valley technology accelerator Y Combinator, cofounded Aisle50, which offered consumers subscriptions to products at brick and mortar stores, in 2010. Groupon acquired Aisle50 in 2015. Steiner now serves as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Northwestern University and a principal at Liberty Advisor Group, a technology consultancy. He loves to ski and built ZRankings.com, which uses more than 40 data points per mountain to help people plan ski trips according where the snow will be best.

Mark Surman

Executive Director @ Mozilla
Toronto, CAN

Mark is Executive Director of Mozilla Foundation, the global nonprofit that does everything from making Firefox to standing up for issues like online privacy. Mark is focused on fueling the broader internet health movement by working with citizens, technologists and civic leaders around the world. Mark is a prominent thinker and thought leader — his analysis and opinions have been featured in The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, Fast Company and dozens of other publications. A seasoned and charismatic speaker, Mark has delivered keynotes on five continents at major global events as diverse as Mobile World Congress, Personal Democracy Forum, TEDx Kids, World Innovation Summit on Education and the O’Reilly Open Source Summit.

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Shermin Voshmgir

Founder of BlockchainHub
Vienna, AT

Shermin Voshmgir is the Author of the Book “Token Economy“ which has become a best seller in the first two weeks of its release. She is the director of the Research Institute for Cryptoconomics at the Vienna University of Economics, and the founder of BlockchainHub Berlin. In the past, she was a curator of TheDAO, and advisor to various startups like Jolocom, Wunder and the Estonian E-residency program. In addition to her studies at the Vienna University of Economics, she studied film and drama in Madrid. Her past work experience ranges from Internet startups, research & art. She is Austrian, with Iranian roots, and lives between Vienna and Berlin.

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Carsten Waldeck

Founder and CEO @ SHIFT GmbH
Falkenberg, GER

Carsten Waldeck a designer, philosopher and inventor from Hessen/Germany. He is also the founder and visionary behind the SHIFTPHONE and other sustainable Technologies. He received his Diploma in Communication Design from the HS Darmstadt (hda) in 1999 with his thesis "iWorld", that set the path for Smartphones, Social Networks and mobile Internet as we know it today. He also studied computer science and philosophy in Marburg and worked as a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute in Darmstadt in the area of "Mobile Information Visualization" and wrote scientific publications about his Invention "Liquid Browsing" and other Interaction Innovations. Today Carsten and his Brother Samuel Waldeck are leading SHIFT and introduced "Universal Computing" as the next revolution of mobile computing and the SHIFT6mq as the most modular and sustainable smartphone ever built. Their main goal is to maximize purpose and values, not profit. To do as much good as possible, while doing as little harm as possible on the way.

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Pak-Hang Wong

Research Associate @ Universität Hamburg
Hamburg, GER

Pak-Hang Wong earned his M.Phil at the University of Hong Kong, and later moved to the Netherlands and completed his PhD at the Department of Philosophy, University of Twente. Afterwards he joined the University of Oxford as a Research Fellow on Climate Geoengineering Governance, and then as a Lecturer in Hang Seng Management College. In 2017, he joined the Research Group for Ethics in Information Technology at the Department of Informatics, Universität Hamburg as a PostDoc Research Associate. Pak's research focuses on philosophy of technology, ethics of information technology, engineering ethics and geoengineering in particular.

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