European AI Alliance

Pekka Ala-Pietilä is the Chairman of the Board of packaging company Huhtamaki, media company Sanoma and Netcompany as well as a member of the Supervisory Board of SAP. In addition, he operates in several expert groups, for example as the Chairman of the steering group that prepares for artificial intelligence in Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment. Pekka Ala-Pietilä acts as a mentor for many young future experts and decision makers. Pekka Ala-Pietilä was a Co-founder and CEO of Blyk Services Oy during 2006-2011. In 1984-2005 Pekka Ala-Pietilä worked in several different positions in Nokia Oyj. From 1992 onwards, he was a member of Nokia Oyj’s Group Executive Board. During 1992-1998, he was the President of the Mobile Phones segment and during 1999-2005 the President of Nokia Oyj.

As Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering, Prof. Dr. Bauer is leading a research organization with about 650 employees. He is in charge of research and implementation projects in the fields of innovation research, technology management, live and work in the future, Smarter Cities. As a member of various committees, he advises government and industry. As an author, he has over 350 scientific and technical publications to his name. He is an associate lecturer at the Universities of Stuttgart and Hanover. In 2012, Prof. Dr. Bauer received the honour of the State of Baden-Württemberg as "Tomorrow Makers".

As a research lead, Urs Bergmann pushes the limits of machine learning at Zalando Research – a unit within Zalando SE that covers diverse AI topics ranging from Natural Language Processing, Reinforcement Learning, Recommender Systems to Fashion Image Analysis and Manipulation. As one of Zalando’s research and data scientists, he gathered experience in business fields ranging from logistics to size recommendation, and selected contributions have been published at top-tier conferences in the field. Learning systems have been his focus since his diploma thesis on Reinforcement Learning with Neural Networks at the University of Heidelberg. During his Ph.D. at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies and a following postdoc position at the Humboldt University of Berlin, he further deepened his machine learning experience into timing-based learning, probabilistic and Bayesian modelling.

Maria Bielikova is a full professor in program and information systems at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava (STU). She is a head of User Experience and Interaction Research Centre at the same university. She has more than 30 years background in artificial intelligence and software engineering (starting in 1987 working as a student on the project of developing an expert system in the domain of agriculture), teaching and research. Maria currently acts as the dean of the Faculty of Informatics and Information Techno­logies STU. She is active in several professional bodies, in particular she is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, senior member of the Association for Computing Machinery (currently serving as a vicechair of the Slovakia Chapter), registered as Chartered Engineer in Engineering Council UK. For 13 years she served as a member of the executive board of the Slovak Society for Computer Science. She was a member of the Accreditation Commission established by the government of the Slovak Republic as its advisory body.

Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl is currently the Director General of DIGITALEUROPE, the leading association for the digital technology industry in Europe. Prior to becoming DIGITALEUROPE’s Director General, Cecilia was an Executive Board Member and a member of the high-level Digital Advisory Council of DIGITALEUROPE. Previously, Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl has served as a board member for the Danish Chamber of Commerce and Chairman of the Board of the Danish ICT association (ITB), where she developed policy positions on digitalisation of businesses, ICT security, disruptive business models, telecoms and education. Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl has held international positions at IBM and Oracle, as well as building SME businesses across Europe and China. Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl has more than 20 years of experience in the ICT industry.

An engineer by training, Yann Bonnet began his career as a consultant. He joined the French Digital Council in 2013 as General Rapporteur, before becoming Secretary General in 2015 and until may 2018. He was in charge of steering the national consultation on digital transformations, which was launched by the Prime Minister in 2014. This initiative eventually led to the Law for a Digital Republic. Yann Bonnet was also in charge of multiple reports, including taxation in the digital age, the digital dimension of the negotiations between the United States and the European Union and online platforms fairness. In 2017, he accompanied Cédric Villani (MP and mathematician - fields medal 2010) in his mission on artificial intelligence entrusted by the Prime Minister. The report of the mission "For a meaningful artificial intelligence" #AiForHumanity served as the basis to define France's strategy on AI presented in march 2018 by the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron with notably 1.5 billion euros of investment.

Loubna Bouarfa is a machine learning expert with a deep expertise in implementing and commercialising AI systems for regulated environments such as healthcare, foster care and finance. Loubna obtained a PhD from Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) in 2012 and has held an academic position at Imperial College’s Hamlyn Centre until 2014. She then worked for numerous companies in the AI and health space. In her professional career Loubna has used her academic knowledge to launch machine learning platforms to uplift human outcomes in the health and medicine space. She achieves this by combining in depth expertise in machine learning, an excellent understanding of the industry potential and knowledge of the real world data constraints. As High-level Expert on Artificial Intelligence at the European Commission, Loubna’s main objective is to implement regulations and policies that allow for effective development and production of AI systems to effectively impact health, safety and freedom of the wider society.

Stéphan Brunessaux is Senior Expert in Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics at Airbus Defence and Space. He has actively contributed to the development of open source intelligence solutions (OSINT) based on advanced information processing techniques such as semantic search, natural language processing, media mining, social media analysis, etc. He has been involved on advanced technology demonstrators for the French MoD and NATO Industrial Advisory Group studies on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. He also coordinated and/or participated to several EU research projects on speaker identification, image and video analysis, internet voting, webpage filtering, etc. He has also been regularly appointed as an expert for the French National Research Agency (ANR) on Big Data and AI. Stéphan started his career as a research engineer in the AI team of LORIA France in 1988 before joining Airbus in 1990. He holds a master degree in Computer Science and a specialized master in Artificial Intelligence.

Raja Chatila is Professor of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Ethics at Sorbonne Université in Paris, France, and director of the Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR). He also leads the SMART Laboratory of Excellence on Human-Machine Interactions. He contributed in several areas of Artificial Intelligence and autonomous and interactive Robotics along his career and published over 150 papers on perception, motion planning, decision-making, human-robot interaction, learning and cognitive architectures. He was President of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society in 2014-2015.  He is member of the Commission on the Ethics of Research on Digital Science and Technology (CERNA) in France and he is chair of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems. He is Fellow of the IEEE and recipient of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Pioneer Award.

Prof. Dr. Mark Coeckelbergh is a full Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Vienna. His expertise focuses on ethics and technology, in particular robotics and artificial intelligence. He is currently a member of various entities that support of policy building in the area of robotics and artificial intelligence, such as the High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence which advices the European Commission and the Robotik-Rat Council – established by the Austrian Government to support policy building in the area of robotics, the Foundation for Responsible Robotics, and the IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems. He is also the President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT), author of 9 philosophy books, and has been involved in interdisciplinary collaborations in the context of the European research projects DREAM (robot-enhanced therapy) and SATORI (ethical impact assessment of research and innovation).

Virginia Dignum is Professor of Social and Ethical Artificial Intelligence at University of Umeå in Sweden and associated with the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the ethical and societal impact of AI. She is a Fellow of the European Artificial Intelligence Association (EURAI), a member of the European Commission High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, and of the Executive Committee of the IEEE Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous Systems. In 2006, she was awarded the prestigious Veni grant from NWO (Dutch Organization for Scientific Research) for her work on computational agent-based organizational frameworks. She a well-known speaker on the social and ethical impacts of Artificial Intelligence, and is member of program committees of all major journals and conferences in AI.

Luciano Floridi is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford, where he directs the Digital Ethics Lab of the Oxford Internet Institute, and is Professorial Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He is also Turing Fellow and Chair of the Data Ethics Group of the Alan Turing Institute. His areas of expertise include digital ethics, the philosophy of technology, and the philosophy of information. Among his recent books, all published by Oxford University Press: The Fourth Revolution - How the infosphere is reshaping human reality (2014), The Ethics of Information (2013), The Philosophy of Information (2011). His most recent book, The Logic of Information, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2019.

Jean-François Gagné is the co-founder and CEO of Element AI, an applied AI research lab creating new software solutions for organizations. A seasoned entrepreneur, he also founded and successfully exited two companies in AI and Operations Research. As CEO of Planora, he led the company efforts to bring to market a highly disruptive SaaS solution in the extremely
competitive Workforce Management space by combining an innovative blend of Machine Learning, Operation Research and User Experience. He then went on to become the youngest global C-Level  Executive of a top-20 Enterprise Software company, as CPO and CIO at JDA Software, where he managed a portfolio of 100+ products and 1,400 developers in more than 20 offices worldwide. He has represented Canada as a Technology Investment Champion Speaker for Global Affairs and has spoken at AI conferences for Top Level management.

Chiara Giovannini works for ANEC since 2002, first as Programme Manager and presently as Senior Manager, Policy & Innovation and Deputy Secretary General. Apart from deputising for the Secretary General, she leads ANEC’s works on Accessibility and Digital Society and is responsible for horizontal and strategic policy issues.

Prior to working for ANEC, Ms. Giovannini worked at Swiss Consumers Organisation. She holds a Master degree in European Law.  

Ms Giovannini represents ANEC at high-level events, committees and research Advisory Boards.

ANEC is the European consumer voice in standardisation. ANEC defends the European consumer interest in the creation of technical standards and European laws and public policies making use of standards.

Joanna Goodey (PhD) has, since 2009, been Head of the Freedoms and Justice Department at the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), Vienna. Her work encompasses information society, privacy and data protection; access to justice and victims of crime; asylum and migration; and the Agency’s EU-wide surveys on different population groups’ experiences of fundamental rights in practice. Her Department recently launched a project on ‘Big Data and Fundamental Rights’, which explores the use of algorithms. She has 25 years’ experience of working in fields related to crime, criminal justice and fundamental rights. Prior to joining the FRA, Joanna was a research fellow at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and was also a consultant to the International Narcotics Control Board. She has published numerous academic journal articles and book chapters on subjects ranging from violence against women through to hate crime, and is the author of the book ‘Victims and Victimology: Research, Policy and Practice’.

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 Science and Systems Intelligence. He is considered one of the world's leading researchers in the field of robotics and machine intelligence. His research interests include intelligent robot design, robot learning, collective intelligence, human-robot Interaction, nonlinear control, real-time planning, optimal control, human neuromechanics and robot safety. The engineer and computer scientist has written more than 130 scientific articles and received numerous prestigious international prizes and awards from the scientific community. Among other things, Sami Haddadin received the IEEE/RAS Early Career Award, the Alfried Krupp Prize and the German Future Prize of the German President.

Gry Hasselbalch is a researcher and independent data ethics advisor. She is cofounder of the politically independent thinkdotank DataEthics.eu established in 2015 in Denmark with an European outreach. In 2016 she co-published the book Data Ethics – The New Competitive Advantage (Hasselbalch, Tranberg, 2016) combining broad trend analyses with some of the first case studies of companies using data ethics as a competitive parameter, and arguing that an ethical use of data is instrumental in securing the trust of citizens in the digital age. Gry has been tasked by international institutions on multiple occasions to act as an independent data ethics expert, reviewer and advisor. Most recently, she was appointed by the Danish Government to become a member of the Danish Expert Group on Data Ethics, which has the objective of providing the Danish government with recommendations on issues related to data ethics and the implementation of national practices. Gry is also since 2017 the elected Vice Chair of the IEEE standardization project P7006.

Dr. Fredrik Heintz is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Linköping University, Sweden. He leads the Stream Reasoning group within the Division of Artificial Intelligence and Integrated Systems (AIICS) in the Department of Computer Science. His research focus is artificial Intelligence especially autonomous systems, stream reasoning and the intersection between knowledge representation and machine learning. He is the Director of the Graduate School for the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP), the President of the Swedish AI Society and the Local Arrangements Chair for IJCAI-ECAI-18 in Stockholm. He is also very active in education activities both at the university level and in promoting computer science and computational thinking in primary and secondary education.

Fanny Hidvegi is Access Now’s European Policy Manager based in Brussels. Previously, Fanny was International Privacy Fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. where she focused on E.U.-U.S. data transfers. For three years Fanny led the Freedom of Information and Data Protection Program of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union where she engaged in strategic litigation with journalists and other NGOs, participated in the fight against the national data retention law in Hungary, and promoted privacy enhancing technologies. There, she gained experience on how to operate as a human rights advocate in a restrictive environment. Fanny also worked as a consumer protection lawyer both in the public and the private sector. She has a law degree from Eötvös Loránd University Budapest and she spent one academic year at the University of Florence.

Eric Andreas Hilgendorf is professor of criminal law, criminal procedure and legal philosophy. He currently works at the University of Würzburg, Germany and is the Chair of the Department of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Legal Theory, and Information and Computer Science Law. He was Dean of the Faculty of Law in Konstanz in the years 1999 and 2000. Since 2001 he has taught at the Julius-Maximillians University of Wurzburg and was given the Chair of the Department of Criminal Law, Criminal Justice, Legal Theory, Information and Computer Science Law. From 2010 to 2012, he was Dean of the Law Faculty. Eric's main areas of work are computer- and internet criminal law, artificial intelligence and law, medical law, comparative law and the law of criminal procedure. He is also active in more theoretical legal research including work in the subfields of legal philosophy, legal theory, technology and law, bioethics, history of legal thought, the history of criminal law, and human dignity. He belongs to the Pioneers of E-Learning in Jurisprudence and from 2005 to 2009 was a member of the Commission on Virtual Higher-Education in Bavaria.

Klaus Höckner is member of  the board of the Austrian Association Supporting the Blind and Visually Impaired (Hilfsgemeinschaft der Blinden und Sehschwachen Österreichs) based in Vienna. Having more than 4400 members, the Hilfsgemeinschaft is the leading organisation representing and helping visually impaired persons in Austria. He is also member of the board of the Austrian Disabilty Forum - an umbrella organisation for Austrian organisations working in the field of Disablilty - and vice president of the Austrian Computer Society. Klaus studied at the University of Economics in Vienna and has a degree in WebAccessiblity and Fundraising. He is also member in the International Association of Accessibilty Professionals (IAAP) and is Certified Web Accessiblity Expert (CWAE), a certificate issued in Austria by Incite. He is member of the organising board of the m-enabeling.

Mari-Noelle Jégo-Laveissière was promoted as Deputy CEO Chief Technology and Innovation Officer of Orange, after being Executive Vice President of Innovation, Marketing and Technologies. She is part of the Executive Committee of the Orange Group.  She held various executive positions since she joined the Group in 1996: Senior Vice President of International & Backbone Network Factory, Senior Vice President for Research and Development, Vice President for the Home marketing Division of Orange France, Head of a French region where she was in charge of technical & commercial entities for mass markets and business clients.  Mari-Noëlle obtained an engineering degree from the Ecole des Mines de Paris. She is post graduate in Quantum Chemistry with a doctor’s degree from the University of Paris XI-Waterloo University and from the Ecole Normale Supérieure. She is a Board member of Engie and Valeo, she is a member of the National Council Education Economy (CNEE) and president of the school council chair of Telecom ParisTech.

Dr. Leo Kärkkäinen is Bell Labs Fellow, Leader of Deep Learning Research Group in Nokia Bell Labs and a part time professor of embedded systems in biomechanical technologies in Aalto University. He is also a co-Chief AI Officer of Nokia. Leo has Ph.D. in theoretical physics from University of Helsinki."

Sabine T. Koeszegi is a Full Professor of Labour Science and Organisation at the TU Wien and holds a PhD in social sciences and economics from the University of Vienna. Her research interests are in the intersection of technology, work and organisation. Currently, she co-leads the doctoral college on „Trust in Robots“ and is involved in a research project on „Integrative Social Robotics" at the University of Aarhus.  She is also involved in several projects on new ways of working and Industry 4.0. Since August 2017, Sabine T. Koeszegi chairs the Austrian Council for Robotics and AI.

Robert Kroplewski is a solicitor being convergence long term practician and specialist in the law of new technologies, electronic media and social communication services. Since 2016 Robert Kroplewski has been entrusted with the function of the Representative of the Minister for Digitalisation of the Information Society in Poland, where he was a co-author of concept of Strategy called Industry+, and that subject is just Data-based Economy (including data flows, cyber trust in global competition, and growth in the future new technologies developed to AI). He also performs social functions as an expert of the Sobieski Institute since 2005 in the area of new technologies. Within the past years 2006-2011, he was an expert of the President of UKE, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Parliamentary Committee for Culture and Social Communication. Since 2004 he has also been performing the function of the arbitrator of the Arbitration Court for internet domains at the Polish Chamber of Information Technology and Telecommunications, and then since 2006 at the National Chamber of Commerce.

Elisabeth Ling is Managing Director, Researcher Products and Research Metrics at Elsevier. In this role, she oversees the development of digital products for researchers, with a special focus on Reading, Evaluation, and Editorial workflows. Her expertise is in developing digital products leveraging data science approaches, iterative data-driven product management techniques and user research. Prior to that, Elisabeth was SVP Analytics for Research Products at Elsevier for 3 years leading a team of data scientists and digital product analysts. She has worked for over 20 years in the digital industry, including over 5 years with PayPal and eBay.

In parallel, she is member of the Board of Directors of Project COUNTER, a body which provides the standard that enables the knowledge community to count the use of electronic resources, and an advisor to Ometria, an AI-driven customer marketing platform for retailers. She has an MSc Maths from Ecole des Ponts - Paris Tech, and an MA Marketing from ESSEC Business school.

Pierre Lucas is Manager at Orgalime, the European Technology Industries Association, since 2009. He is in charge of coordinating the association’s industrial policy and digitisation activities, including on Artificial Intelligence, supporting the Director General and the dedicated working group set up end 2014 to push the EU to develop and implement an industrial policy that integrates all other EU policies of relevance, and to ensure that the EU’s digitisation strategy includes all manufacturing sectors. In this function, he is actively monitoring the EU Digital Agenda legislative and policy programme and the European Commission’s work on “Digitising European Industry”,  He is also the Secretary General of Europump (European Association of Pump Manufacturers), of Pneurop (European Association of Manufacturers of Compressors and Vacuum Pumps), and of EIA (European Irrigation Association), providing each association with strategic guidance, advocacy advice and daily management. A French and Belgian national, Pierre holds a Degree in Political Sciences from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Paris, a Certificate in Political Sciences of the Free University of Berlin, and a Master in European Policy Studies from the College of Europe in Bruges.

Ieva Martinkenaite is a Vice-President at Telenor Group, and one of the leaders of Telenor-NTNU AI-Lab – a national powerhouse for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Norway. Her work involves research and advisory to Telenor executives and business leaders on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), innovation strategy and digital partnerships. Ieva is among key figures in Telenor contributing to building the AI research and innovation ecosystem in Norway. Ieva holds a doctorate degree (PhD) in Business and Economics from BI Norwegian Business School and a Master in European Public Administration from K.U. Leuven. Ieva has more than 15 years of experience in business research and advisory work, teaching and academic management. She published and presented her research in top-tier journals and conferences. Ieva is a frequent speaker at business conferences and other events on topics, such as AI, IoT, innovation in multinational corporations and digital partnerships. Her passion lies in building collaborative communities for the digital age and promoting women and young girls in tech.

Thomas Metzinger is currently Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and an Adjunct Fellow and Director of the MIND Group at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Study (FIAS). In the AI HLEG, he representes the European University Association.

Metzinger is past president of the German Cognitive Science Society (2005-2007) and of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (2009-2011). His focus of research lies in analytical philosophy of mind and cognitive science, as well as in connections between ethics, philosophy of mind and anthropology; he received several awards and Fellowships, the last one being a 5-year GRC Fellowship by the Gutenberg Research College (2014-2019). In the English language, he has edited two collections on consciousness (“Conscious Experience”, Paderborn: mentis & Thorverton, UK: Imprint Academic, 1995; “Neural Correlates of Consciousness”, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000) and published one major scientific monograph developing a comprehensive, interdisciplinary theory about consciousness, the phenomenal self, and the first-person perspective (“Being No One – The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity”, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).

A master of laws by training, Catelijne Muller began her career in 1997 as a Dutch qualified lawyer. In 2012, Catelijne joined the Dutch Trade Union Confederation for Professionals (VCP) as an EU Policy Advisor, where she started putting the societal impact of artificial intelligence on the (inter)national agenda. She was Rapporteur of the EESC opinion on Artificial Intelligence and Society that was adopted on May 31, 2017 and heads the EESC Thematic Study Group on AI. She is a member of the Global Council on Extended Intelligence that was launched on June 21, 2018. Together with Aimee van Wynsberghe and Virginia Dignum, both other Dutch members of the EU High Level Group on AI, she founded ALLAI Netherlands, the Dutch multi-stakeholder Alliance on Artificial Intelligence. Catelijne is a member of the Committee on European Affairs of the Dutch Social and Economic Council (SER) and was a member of the ad-hoc SER TTIP-committee from 2015 to 2016. She is the director of Muller AI, a consulting and strategy firm on "Responsible AI".

Dr. Markus Noga is Senior Vice President of Machine Learning at SAP. His vision is to enable the intelligent enterprise by making enterprise applications intelligent. Markus leads teams building machine learning applications and bringing machine learning services to the SAP Cloud Platform. They are based in in Germany, France, Israel, Singapore and the United States and form part of the New Ventures & Technologies. Markus previously served SAP as VP for New Business & Portfolio, where he drove the launch of the HANA Enterprise Cloud and the continuous renewal of SAP’s global R&D portfolio. Before joining SAP, Markus was a principal with management consultancy Booz & Company, now Strategy & PWC. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from University of Karlsruhe, now Karlsruhe Institute of Tech­nology, where he focused on the optimization of document processing.

Professor O'Sullivan holds the Chair of Constraint Programming at the Department of Computer Science at University College Cork, Ireland, and is an Adjunct Professor at Monash University in Australia. He is a founding director of the Insight Centre for Data Analytics and a founding principal investigator of the Confirm Centre for Smart Manufacturing, both funded by Science Foundation Ireland. Professor O'Sullivan is a Fellow and the Deputy President of the European Artificial Intelligence Association which has over 4500 members across 30 countries. He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Ursula Pachl has worked at BEUC, the European Consumer Organisation, since October 1997, first as Legal Advisor, then as Senior Policy Advisor and presently as Deputy Director General. Ursula leads BEUC’s work on the Digital Single Market, on consumer rights, redress and enforcement. She is also responsible for horizontal and strategic policy issues and represents BEUC in the European Commission’s REFIT platform and in the stakeholder group of EU’s Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA). She also co-ordinates BEUC’s law enforcement activities.  BEUC represents 43 independent national consumer associations from 32 European countries. The primary task of BEUC is to act as a strong consumer voice in Brussels and to try to ensure that consumer interests are given their proper weight in the development of all Community policies.

Nicolas Petit is Professor of Law at Liege University, Belgium and a Research Professor at the School of Law of the University of South Australia in Adelaide (UniSA). Nicolas’ research focuses on antitrust law, intellectual property, and law in a context of technological change. His recent written works deal with the legal challenges created by the introduction of artificial intelligence and robotics in society. He is also working on a book on technology platforms’ competition. He holds a PhD from the University of Liege (Belgium), an LL.M from the College of Europe (Bruges), a Master’s degree from the University of Paris II and an LLB from the University of Paris V. He practiced law with a leading US law firm in Brussels and he also served as a Clerk at the Commercial Chamber of the French Supreme Court. In 2005 he attended Harvard Law School’s Visiting Researchers Programme. In 2018, he was Visiting Scholar at Stanford University Hoover Institution.

Dr. Christoph Peylo is Global Head of Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence (BCAI) with locations in Sunnyvale, Bangalore and Renningen. Prior to joining Robert Bosch GmbH in 2017 he was VP at Deutsche Telekom Laboratories in Berlin, where he worked in the area of AI, (Cyber-) Security, Industrie 4.0, and IoT. Before joining Deutsche Telekom in 2006 he worked in various positions from software engineer to managing director of a software company. Christoph Peylo has studied Computer Science, Computational Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence and acquired his Ph.D. at the University of Osnabrück in the field of AI.

Iris Plöger is a member of the Executive Board at the Federation of German industries (BDI), where she is responsible for digitalisation, innovation, healthcare, law, competition and consumer policy. Until 2017, she headed the department for digitalisation, innovation and healthcare at BDI. Beforehand, she worked as an expert for industrial property rights, data protection, competition and state aid law in BDI’s law department. Iris Plöger started her career in an international corporate law firm. Throughout the years, she acquired a broad international working experience e. g. in Hong Kong, New York, Los Angeles, Sydney and Brussels.

Stefano Quintarelli is Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Italian Digital Agency and a member of the leadership council of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. As a serial entrepreneur and former Professor of Information systems, Network services and security, he has played a pivotal role in the development of the Italian internet ecosystem. He has been awarded the Computer Scientist of the year award in 2009 by the Italian Computer scientists association and has been recognized by Corriere della Sera as one the 30 most innovative italian entrepreneurs. He was member of the Italian Parliament, member of the Commission of Internet rights of the Chamber of Deputies, and leader of the Parliamentary intergroup for Technological Innovation. 

Andrea Renda is an Italian social scientist, whose research lies at the crossroads between economics, law, technology and public policy. He is Senior Research Fellow and Head of Global Governance, Regulation, Innovation and the Digital Economy at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS). From September 2017, he holds the Chair for Digital Innovation at the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium) where he has also leading the course “Regulatory Impact Assessment for Business” since 2007. He is also a non-resident fellow at Duke University's Kenan Institute for Ethics. Over the past two decades, he has provided academic advice to several institutions. An expert in technology policy and better regulation, he is a member of the ESIR (Economic and Social Impacts of Research) expert group of the European Commission; and a member of the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Law and Economics awarded by the Erasmus University of Rotterdam

Francesca Rossi is the AI Ethics Global Leader and a Distinguished Research Staff Member at IBM Research AI, and a professor of computer science at the University of Padova, Italy, currently on leave.
Her research interests focus on artificial intelligence, specifically constraint reasoning, preferences, multi-agent systems, computational social choice, and collective decision making. She is also interested in ethical issues in the development and behaviour of AI systems, in particular for decision support systems for group decision making. She co-chaired the AAAI committee on AI and ethics and she is a member of the scientific advisory board of the Future of Life Institute and of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. She is in the executive committee of the IEEE global initiative on ethical considerations on the development of autonomous and intelligent systems and she belongs to the World Economic Forum Council on AI and robotics. She is a member of the board of directors of the Partnership on AI, where she represents IBM as one of the founding partners.

Cristina San José joined Santander Group in 2015 as Chief Data Strategist, where she focuses on deploying the latest techniques in Machine Learning to develop personalised customer experiences, while also increasing operational excellence. In addition, Cristina works with the countries and businesses in the Group to help build their local data science capabilities. Prior to that, Cristina worked at McKinsey & Company since 2001, where she was the Partner founding and leading the Firm’s Global Machine Learning Hub. She served clients throughout 15 countries in a variety of topics such as risk, marketing and operations. Cristina holds a BS in Mathematics (Universidad de Zaragoza) and a MBA with specialization in Finance (NYU Stern).

Dr George Sharkov is an Adviser to the Minister of Defense and served as a National Cyber Security Coordinator for the Bulgarian Government 2014-2017, also Adviser to the Prime Minister in 2017. He was leading the development of the National Cyber Security Strategy of Bulgaria, adopted in 2016. He has PhD in Artificial Intelligence (AI), with specialization in applied informatics, thermography and genetics, intelligent systems. Since 1994 he was managing international software teams for financial systems, e-business and innovative e-markets. Since 2003 he is the Executive Director of the European Software Institute – Center Eastern Europe, with the Lab on Cyber Resiliency. Since 2016 he is also Head of the Cybersecurity Lab at Sofia Tech Park. He is trainer and appraiser for software engineering quality management, cybersecurity and resilience (SEI/CERT RMM), lecturing software quality, cybersecurity and business resilience at 3 leading universities. Pioneer in digital ecosystems development, cyber and AI research, startups support, digital SMEs competitiveness.

Philipp Slusallek is Scientific Director at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), where he heads the research area on Agents and Simulated Reality. At Saarland University he has been a professor for Computer Graphics since 1999, a principle investigator at the German Excellence-Cluster on “Multimodal Computing and Interaction” since 2007, and Director for Research at the Intel Visual Computing Institute since 2009. Before coming to Saarland University, he was a visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford University. He originally studied physics in Frankfurt and Tübingen (Diploma/M.Sc.) and got his PhD in Computer Science from Erlangen University. He is a Fellow of the Eurographics Assiciation and Associate Editor of Computer Graphics Forum. His research covers a wide range of topics including artificial intelligence, simulated/digital reality, real-time realistic graphics, high-performance computing, motion synthesis, novel programming models, computational sciences, 3D-Internet technology, and others.

Françoise Soulié Fogelman has over 40 years’ experience in AI (neural networks), machine learning, social network analysis and big data both in academia and industry. A former graduate from École Normale Supérieure, she holds a PhD from University of Grenoble. She was Professor at the University of Paris 11-Orsay, where she was advisor to 20 PhDs (neural networks, deep learning). She then funded a startup (Mimetics to develop a neural-network based OCR product) to later join Atos (as head of a data mining – data warehouse group) and Business & Décision (as Partner) where she created and headed the CRM business unit. At KXEN, she has been Vice President Innovation until the company was bought out by SAP. She then joined Institut Mines Télécom where she worked for the Big Data platform TeraLab. Finally she joined the School of Computer Software at Tianjin University (China), where she was a professor, head of the Data Science team. She is now back to her consulting company in Data Mining / ​AI.

Saskia Steinacker was named Head of Digital Excellence in February 2017 at Bayer. In this capacity, she leads Bayer’s digital transformation in close collaboration with the Digital Excellence Council and the Board of Management. Together with the divisions and functions she developed the company’s Digital Agenda with a focus on new business models to accelerate new growth. The Digital Agenda enables the organization through a shift of mindset and culture, optimized technology including AI, rapid processes and expert knowledge on data. She also serves as an Advisory Board Member of the Rutgers Big Data Program. From 2013-2016 she lead the global digital IT function for Bayer and prior to this the Bayer North America Marketing & Sales IT unit. In both roles she successfully optimized the technology portfolio of the company to enable business strategies efficiently and reduced the time to market significantly. She graduated from Ecosign Academy with a degree in Communication Design and holds a Master in Business Administration from Liverpool University.

Jaan Tallinn is a founding engineer of Skype and Kazaa. He is a co-founder of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (cser.org), Future of Life Institute (futureoflife.org), and philanthropically supports other existential risk research organisations. Jaan is on the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (thebulletin.org) and has served on the Estonian President's Academic Advisory Board. He is also an active angel investor, a partner at Ambient Sound Investments (asi.ee), and a former investor in and director of the AI company DeepMind (deepmind.com).

Thierry Tingaud, President of STMicroelectronics France, is also the Corporate Vice President in charge of Sales and Marketing for West Europe, and heads the European Public Affairs outreach to the European Commission for ST’s technology programs.

In 1985, Thierry Tingaud joined Thomson Semiconductors, a predecessor company to STMicroelectronics and was appointed as Telecom Marketing Manager for the Bipolar Integrated Circuits Division. Thierry was elected in December 2015, Vice-President of ESIA (European Semiconductor Industry Association) and is the Chairman of the Joint Steering Committee (JSTC) delegation of the World Semiconductor Council (WSC) for the GAMS meetings. He is representing STMicroelectronics as the Sherpa of the President and CEO of STMicroelectronics, at the ERT (European Round Table of Industrialists), at the European Commission’s High Level Group KET’s, at the Electronics Level Group (ELG). Born in Paris (France) in 1959, Thierry Tingaud graduated with a degree in Electronic Engineering from INSA Lyon and with a Master of Business Administration from ESSEC Paris.

Jakob Uszkoreit is currently an AI Researcher in the Google Brain team working on artificial neural networks and related research topics. He previously led teams working on AI research and technology in the Google Research and Assistant / Search groups. There he worked on the core technology behind AI-centric products such as Google Translate and the Google Assistant. Before joining Google, Mr Uszkoreit graduated from the Technical University Berlin.

Aimee van Wynsberghe has been working in ICT and robotics since 2004. She began her career as part of a research team investigating the network variables related to surgical robots in Canada at the CSTAR (Canadian Surgical Technologies and Advance Robotics) Institute. She is Assistant Professor in Ethics and Technology and the TU Delft. She is co-founder and co-director of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics and on the board of the Institute for Accountability in a Digital Age. She serves as a member of the Advisory board for the AI & Intelligent Automation Network and is head of the 4TU Center for Ethics and Technology robotics task force.  Aimee has been named one of the Netherlands top 400 influential women under 38 by VIVA and was named one of the 25 ‘women in robotics you need to know about’. She is author of the book Healthcare Robots: Ethics, Design, and Implementation and has been awarded an NWO personal research grant to study how we can responsibly design service robots. She has been interviewed by BBC, Quartz, Financial Times, and other International news media on the topic of ethics and robots, and is invited to speak at International conferences and summits.   

Dr. Cécile Wendling is Group Head of Foresight at AXA. With more than 15-year-experience in long term thinking, her role is to anticipate trends and disruptions that will impact the way people live and work in the future. She has worked on the Future of Artificial Intelligence, Ethics of Algorithms, potential development of the blockchain, Future of Trust, Future of Work, Driverless cars, among others. She has a PhD from the European University Institute, is Associate Researcher at the Centre de sociologie des organisations (CNRS-Sciences Po Paris), and teaches Foresight methods at Polytechnique and the Digital transformation of the firm at Sciences Po Paris.

Karen Yeung is Interdisciplinary Professorial Fellow in Law, Ethics and Informatics at the University of Birmingham in the School of Law and the School of Computer Science.  Together with Andrew Howes and Ganna Pogrebna, she leads an interdisciplinary research stream involving over 90 researchers from a range of disciplines under the theme of ‘Responsible Artificial Intelligence’ from across the University of Birmingham. She is currently a member and rapporteur for the Council of Europe’s Expert Committee on human rights dimensions of automated data processing and different forms of artificial intelligence (MSI-AUT) and joint author of the Royal Society-British Academy report ‘Data Management and Use: Governance in the 21st Century’ (2017).  She is also Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Party on Genome Editing and Human Reproduction, Ethics advisor and member of the Expert Advisory Panel on Digital Medicine for the Topol Independent Technology Review for the NHS and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Biotechnology. She is admitted to practice as a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria, having completed a brief stint in professional legal practice and is on the editorial boards of Big Data & Society and Public Law.

Former Member (June 2018 to August 2019)

Thiébaut Weber is a former trade unionist and student activist from France. He was elected as ETUC Confederal Secretary at the Paris Congress in 2015. His ETUC responsibilities include digitalisation, new forms of work, and online platforms. One of his main priorities is to find trade union solutions to tackle the challenges of new technological developments and the platform economy. His mandate coverd young workers, education and training, public services, and social cohesion, among other topics. He is a member of the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail, and in 2007 started work with the CFDT as a youth delegate, then in 2014 as political advisor on issues including international and European affairs. Between 2011 and 2013 he was President of the ETUC Youth Committee.  He studied history at the University of Haute-Alsace, where he became President of the Federative Association of Upper Rhine Students in 2005, then of the Federation of General Student Unions (FAGE) in 2006. Thiébaut now works for the French Public Agency on Preventing and Fighting Poverty.

Former Member (June 2018 to January 2019)

Nozha Boujemaa is a Senior Research Scientist at Inria (the French National Institute for computer science and applied mathematics), Director of DATAIA Institute (Data Sciences, Artificial Intelligence & Society) and Project leader of TransAlgo scientific platform for algorithmic systems transparency and accountability. Nozha is Knight of the National Order of Merit. She is elected Member of the Board of Directors of Big Data Value Association. Nozha is International Advisor for Japanese Science and Technology Agency Program “Advanced Core Technologies for Big Data Integration”, Senior Scientific Advisor for “The AI Initiative“ (Harvard Kennedy School). Previously: Advisor to the Chairman and CEO of Inria in Data Science with concern to the socio-economic impact; Director of Inria Saclay Research Center for 5 years (2010-2015) and Scientific Head of IMEDIA Research Group (Large Scale Visual Content Search) for more than 10 years. Nozha has served as Scientific Coordinator of Network of Excellence, Integrated Project and Coordinations Actions including gap-analysis & road-mapping for the EU Commission.

Former Member (June 2018 to December 2018)

Raoul Mallart completed his PhD in Physics in 1991 while working at Philips Research where he was involved in Medical Ultrasonic Imaging. In 1995 his research focus changed to Multimedia Systems, Internet and real-time 3D graphics. During this period, Raoul was involved in the standardization efforts that led to the definition of the MPEG-4 standard. From 1997 to 2000, Raoul was posted in Silicon Valley where he interacted with the start-up ecosystem working on a new paradigm for interactive TV leveraging both Internet and broadcast connectivity. Upon his return to Paris, he led a research department at Philips Research France involved in Multimedia applications over wireless networks. More recently, Raoul was leading the product innovation team of Philips Software then at Archos, a French vendor of Android Tablets and Mobile phones. In 2014 Raoul joined Sigfox to take in charge the Technology Innovation department, before being appointed CTO in 2017. For the past years at Sigfox, Raoul has launched research & development activities focused on IoT Artificial Intelligence aiming at creating value from the IoT big data collected by Sigfox global network.

Former Member (June 2018 to October 2018)

Lorena is the executive director of AlgorithmWatch, a non-profit organisation to evaluate and shed light on algorithmic and automatization processes that have a social relevance. Her work focuses on philosophy of law and ethics of automatization and digitization. Lorena has been appointed by the Spanish government as a member of the Council of the Wise on Artificial Intelligence and Data Politics. 2018 she was elected by the Cotec Foundation as a member of its 100 experts for social change and innovation for her work on automatization and ethics. Lorena is a Bucerius Fellow of the Zeit Stiftung. She is a founder of the Dynamic Coalition on Publicness of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum. She also serves as the head of the secretariat of the German Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and on the expert advisory board of the Code Red initiative against mass surveillance. She has been consulted by international institutions, governments and corporations and testified before several governmental committees in diverse countries. Lorena has co-authored several books on Internet Governance and lectures and writes regularly on data protection, privacy, discrimination and the public sphere.

Former Member (June 2018 to September 2018)

Reinhard Stolle has been Vice President for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at BMW Group since 2016. His organization focuses on developing self-driving cars using AI techniques. Stolle holds a PhD from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he worked on heterogeneous reasoning techniques for the task of automatically building models of physical systems. From 1999 until 2000, Stolle was a postdoctoral fellow at the Knowledge Systems Lab at Stanford University, contributing to research on model-enabled planning and control. From 2000 until 2004, he was a Research Scientist at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, California, where he led a research project on automated text understanding, combining techniques from computational linguistics and model-based reasoning. In 2004, Stolle joined BMW Car IT GmbH in Munich, leading a software innovation team in the infotainment area. In 2008, he founded the central department for „Software Architecture and Development“ at the BMW Group. From 2012 until 2016, Stolle served as Managing Director of BMW Car IT GmbH in Ulm, building up software expert teams in the areas of infotainment, driver assistance, and autonomous driving.