GROW Tech that Matters6 & 7 June 2023The Egg, Brussels, Belgium
Digital
23
Supporting partners:
Invest Europe
Plug and Play

Speakers

GREAT NAMES WITH GREAT IDEAS! 
Follow this space for further speaker announcements!

Eva Maydell
Member of the European Parliament

Biography

Eva Maydell MEP (EPP)

Member of the European Parliament

Eva Maydell is Member Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and the Committee’s Rapporteur on the Artificial Intelligence Act.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs and Business Administration from the American University John Cabot in Rome, Italy and a post-graduate qualification in leadership from the Harvard Kennedy School.

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Jan Goetz
CEO & Co-Founder, IQM Quantum Computers

Biography

Jan Goetz

CEO & Co-Founder, IQM Quantum Computers

Jan is a quantum physicist and co-founding CEO of IQM, building next-generation quantum computers. IQM has assembled an exceptional team of international quantum experts developing on-premises systems for HPC and special applications. IQM has raised €128 million in Series A2 funding (in 2022), largest ever funding round raised by a European quantum computing company. Jan did his doctorate on superconducting quantum circuits at TU Munich and worked as a Marie-Curie Fellow in Helsinki at Aalto University, where he holds the title of docent. In 2020, Capital magazine selected him as one of 40 under 40 in Germany and he received an entrepreneurship award from the KAUTE Foundation. Jan is in the Board of the European Innovation Council EIC, the European Quantum Industry Consortium QuIC, and member of the German Federal Economic Senate as well as a Digital Leader and Global Innovator at the WEF.

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Aude Jalabert
Head of Brussels Office, Infineon Technologies

Biography

Aude Jalabert, LL.M., LL.M. Eur. (Munich)

Head of Brussels Office, Infineon Technologies

Aude Jalabert is Head of Office at Infineon Technologies, a world leader in semiconductor solutions that make life easier, safer, and greener.

With more than 8 years of experience in the area of semiconductors, she has led Infineon’s Trade Compliance Team before taking over as head of the Brussels public policy office.

Ms Jalabert holds law degrees from the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas as well as Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich and started her career in the aeronautics industry as a legal counsel.

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Liviu Stirbat
Head of Unit for Industry 5.0
European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation

Biography

Liviu Stirbat

Head of Unit for Industry 5.0
European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation

Liviu Stirbat, from Bucharest, Romania, is Head of Unit for Industry 5.0 in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. Previously, he was Deputy Head of EU Adaptation to Climate Change and also worked on better regulation and innovation in the public sector.

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Christiane Kirketerp
Head of Unit Cybersecurity and Digital Privacy Policy, European Commission DG CNECT

Biography

Christiane Kirketerp

Head of Unit for Cybersecurity and Digital Privacy Policies, European Commission DG CONNECT

Christiane Kirketerp de Viron has been the Head of Unit for Cybersecurity and Digital Privacy policies in the European Commission´s DG CONNECT since July 2022. Prior to this she was Member of Cabinet for the European Commissioner for Budget and Administration, Johannes Hahn, where parts of her responsibilities concerned the digital transformation of the European Commission as well as the cybersecurity of EU Institutions, Bodies and Agencies. During the Juncker Commission, Christiane served as Member of Cabinet for the European Commissioner for Research Innovation and Science, Carlos Moedas.  

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Eric de Montgolfier
CEO, Invest Europe

Biography

Eric de Montgolfier

CEO, Invest Europe 

Eric de Montgolfier is Chief Executive Officer of Invest Europe, the association representing Europe’s private equity, venture capital and infrastructure sectors and their investors.  

Eric joined Invest Europe after a career spanning three decades in leading private equity firms. He was previously CEO of Gimv France, a division of the Brussels-listed mid-market investment firm, where he oversaw strategy and investments in the French market. Prior to that, he was co-founder and co-managing partner of Edmond de Rothschild Capital Partners. He started his private equity career in 1990 at Astorg - where he subsequently became a co-founding partner of Astorg Partners.  

He holds a Master in Management from ESCP Business School in Paris.

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Eugenia Forte
Program Manager, Takeoff Accelerator, Plug and Play

Biography

Eugenia Forte

Program Manager, Takeoff Accelerator, Plug and Play

Eugenia graduated from the Polytechnic of Turin in Mechatronics Engineering with a thesis at the University of San Diego and with a Master in Business Administration at the Collège des Ingénieurs.

She has worked several years in CNH Industrial where she was involved in Industry 4.0, Agile development and Open Innovation strategies, managing relationships between startups and corporates in the Digital area.

Given her passion for the startup ecosystem, she took on the role of mentor and advisor at several entrepreneurial entities, becoming Business Developer at a social impact startup accelerator before joining Plug and Play with the role of Program Manager at Takeoff Accelerator.

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Gabriele Mazzini
Team Leader on the Artificial Intelligence Act
European Commission, DG CNECT

Biography

Gabriele Mazzini

Team Leader on the Artificial Intelligence Act
European Commission, DG CNECT

Gabriele Mazzini is the Team Leader on the Artificial Intelligence Act at the European Commission. He designed and led the writing of the proposal and is currently focusing on the negotiation of the AI Act with the Parliament and the Council. Before joining the European Commission Gabriele held several positions in the private sector in New York and served in the European Parliament and the Court of Justice. He holds a LLM from Harvard Law School, a PhD in Italian and Comparative Criminal Law from the University of Pavia and a Law Degree from the Catholic University in Milan. He is qualified to practice law in Italy and New York.

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Kirsi Nuotto
Chief Human Resources Officer, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Biography

Kirsi Nuotto

Chief Human Resources Officer, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Kirsi Nuotto is passionate about enhancing cultural transformation, international talent acquisition, leadership and developing people and well-being in organizations. Currently she is leading the strategic programme New Work at VTT, paving the way for the Future of Work and building the world’s most meaningful place to work. She is also a regular speaker on Future of Work, on leadership and well-being. In addition to her CHRO role at VTT she is a member of the board and chair of the people committee at Fintraffic and a member of Auntie advisory board. Kirsi is a graduate from the University of Helsinki, Finland with Master of Arts (French & Spanish philology and Communications).

She is the CHRO and Executive Leadership Team member at VTT, one of the leading technological research centers in Europe. Prior to joining VTT Kirsi has extensive experience in leading people agenda and transformation in various global companies and industries. Previously she has served as CHRO at Cargotec and Outotec and in a senior HR role at GlaxoSmithKline and as a board member at Posti.

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Prof. Eric Tschirhart
Special Advisor to the rector 'UNIVERSEH | European University'

Biography

Prof. Eric Tschirhart, PhD, MBA

Special Advisor to the rector "UNIVERSEH | European University" and "Université de la Grande Région"

Eric Tschirhart is full professor of physiology at the University of Luxembourg, special advisor to the rector, coordinating ‘UNIVERSEH European University’ and ‘Université de la Grande Région’. UNIVERSEH is an alliance of five universities, from five European countries, selected in July 2020 to conduct a new way of collaboration in the field of Space within the new “European Universities” initiative promoted by the European Commission. Prof. Tschirhart has a PhD in Pharmacology and an MBA. Having worked in the pharmaceutical industry and public research institutions, he joined the University of Luxembourg in 2002, participated in the expansion of Life Sciences in Luxembourg, before taking serial managerial positions at the University of Luxembourg, in research, finance & administration, technology transfer, fundraising, and academic organization as vice-president.

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Dan Bogdanov
Chief Scientific Officer, Cybernetica

Biography

Dan Bogdanov

Chief Scientific Officer / Director of the Information Security Research Institute
Cybernetica

Dr. Dan Bogdanov met his first significant privacy challenges while working with the data collection systems of the Estonian Genome Foundation. This pain inspired him to start researching cryptographic solutions for privacy problems. He is the inventor of Sharemind, a secure multi-party computation system for collecting, sharing and processing private data. Sharemind is a new kind of computer that analyses digital data without seeing the individual values. This achieves beyond-the-state-of-the-art data protection, as has been demonstrated in various applications processing tax, education, genomic and financial data. He has a deep and practical experience in understanding the power of data along with the importance of individual and corporate privacy, governmental data security and integrity. He is now working on digital identities as the Chief Scientific Officer at Estonian cybersecurity company Cybernetica.

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Natalia Olson-Urtecho
Director, Governments, Plug and Play Tech Centre

Biography

Natalia Olson-Urtecho

Director, Governments, Plug and Play Tech Centre

Natalia Olson-Urtecho is a serial entrepreneur, public policy expert & urban planner. She is the Government Director at Plug and Play. Appointed to the U.S. Innovation Advisory Board to advise Congress and the White House on competitiveness and innovation. She served in the Obama Administration as the SBA Regional Administrator.

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Leopold Summerer
Head of Advanced Concepts Team, European Space Agency ESA

Biography

Leopold Summerer

Head of Advanced Concepts Team, European Space Agency ESA

Leopold Summerer is a physicist, who obtained his PhD from the Technical University of Vienna. He has research stays in France, Germany, and Japan, and contributed to more than120 scientific publications.

Currently, Leopold Summerer heads ESA’s Advanced Concepts and Studies Office in the agency’s Technical Directorate, where he is responsible for the Discovery and Preparation element of the ESA Basic Activities.

Daniel Carew
Principal, IQ Capital

Biography

Daniel Carew

Principal, IQ Capital

Daniel joined IQ Capital in 2019 and has deep-tech venture capital experience from several funds. Originally an engineer, he completed a PhD in Chemistry, was in Management Consulting and then moved into venture capital. He enjoys early-stage technology investing in engineering breakthroughs to help change the world for the better.

Daniel’s main areas of interest are within AI, Advanced Engineering (including Space, Quantum, Robotics, Climate, Defence), Industrial Supply Chains (Industry 4.0, IoT, Cyber), Materials (Chemistry, Semiconductor, Electronics). Daniel is responsible for sourcing new deals, deal execution and continuous tracking of the market and relevant trends in deep technology sectors, as well as advising portfolio companies.

He sits on several boards including Oxford Space Systems, Dataswift, NuQuantum, TOffeeAM, Opteran.

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Yongkuk Jeong
Assistant Professor in Production Logistics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Biography

Yongkuk Jeong

Assistant Professor in Production Logistics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Yongkuk Jeong is an assistant professor in production logistics at the Department of Sustainable Production Development in KTH Södertälje. He received his PhD in Engineering (Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering) from Seoul National University in South Korea in 2018. He has experience in production and logistics simulation with various shipbuilding companies in South Korea during his PhD. He developed a modelling method and a simulation program that can simulate production processes and logistics flows together. His research interests are digitalization in production logistics and manufacturing simulation.

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Thomas Neubert
Founder, Transatlantic AI eXchange

Biography

Thomas Neubert

Founder, Transatlantic AI eXchange

Thomas Neubert is driving forward the transatlantic exchanges on AI, particularly supporting start-ups and medium-sized companies in Germany and the USA. He is an entrepreneur and global go-to-market expert who has founded several successful companies, including Transatlantic AI eXchange (TAIX) and WowDAO. TAIX, founded in January 2021, is a platform aimed at improving the global economic, social, and academic exchange between the USA and Germany in the field of AI. WowDAO is the first decentralized autonomous organization for the AI community, providing a blockchain-based, complete ecosystem of AI inventions. In addition to his entrepreneurial projects, Thomas has worked at Intel, Deutsche Telekom, and Logitech, where he was involved in numerous startup initiatives advancing desktop video conferencing, Robotics, VR/AR, Internet of Things and Datacenters. He is also a founding member of GABA, a non-profit business network, and co-founder of SVMC, the Silicon Valley Marathon Club. As an advisor, mentor, and investor, Thomas is committed to help individuals and startups achieve their potential.

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Riccardo Masucci
Director of Security and Technology Policy, Intel

Biography

Riccardo Masucci

Director of Security and Technology Policy, Intel

Riccardo Masucci is Director of Security and Technology Policy at Intel. He currently leads Intel’s advocacy on EU semiconductor and industrial policy and works on public funding to semiconductor manufacturing investments. He is the Chair of working groups on cybersecurity in influential industry associations such as DigitalEurope and the Cyber Coalition. He is also Visiting Scholar in Technology Policy at Duke University (US). He previously held the role of Global Director of Privacy Policy coordinating Intel’s policy work in Europe, India, LatAm and China, and contributed shaping Intel’s AI policy strategy. Prior to Intel, he served as policy advisor on justice, home affairs and environment in the European Parliament. Riccardo enjoys skiing, running and cycling.

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Co-Funded by the European Union