Prof Subra Suresh

Regius Professor of Computer Science
University of Southampton

Subra Suresh is President and Distinguished University Professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore where he is also a Senior Advisor to Temasek International. He has previously served as: the Dean of MIT’s School of Engineering; Director of the National Science Foundation, a position to which he was nominated by the President of the United States and unanimously confirmed by the US Senate; and President of Carnegie Mellon University. He is an elected member of all three branches of the US National Academies – Engineering, Sciences, and Medicine. He has also been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Inventors and ten other academies based in Europe and Asia, and has been awarded 15 honorary doctorate degrees. He has authored three books, 300 research articles and 25 patents, and has co-founded a technology startup which was acquired in 2006. He has been widely recognized for his research into the properties of engineered and biological materials and their implications for human diseases. His recent honors include: the 2015 Industrial Research Institute Medal; the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Materials Science; the 2012 Timoshenko Medal and the 2011 Nadai Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; the 2011 Padma Shri award, one of the highest civilian honours from the President of India; and the 2007 Gold Medal of the Federation of European Materials Societies. As Director of the National Science Foundation, Prof Suresh launched the Global Research Council, the Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide (GROW) program, and the NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program in 2011. The NSF I-Corps program was created by Prof Suresh with the goal of translating research discoveries into industrial practice, which was praised by Harvard Business Review for using “lean start-up techniques to turn scientists into entrepreneurs”. This program has now been replicated by a number of organizations in the US and abroad to assist scientists to become innovators and entrepreneurs. He is an independent Director of the Board of HP Inc. in Palo Alto and a member of the Science, Technology and Innovation Council – created as an advisory body to the CEO and Management Board of Siemens AG, Munich, Germany.

Steve Leonard

Founding CEO
SGInnovate

Mr Steve Leonard is a technology-industry leader with a wide range of experience, having played key roles in building several global companies in areas such as Software, Hardware and Services. Although born in the US, Mr Leonard considers himself a member of the larger global community, having lived and worked outside the US for more than 25 years.

In his current role as the Founding Chief Executive Officer of SGInnovate – a private limited company wholly owned by the Singapore Government – Mr Leonard has been chartered to lead an organisation that builds ‘deep-tech’ companies. Capitalising on the science and technology research for which Singapore has gained a global reputation, Mr Leonard’s team works with local and international partners, including universities, venture capitalists, and major corporations to help technical founders imagine, start and scale globally-relevant earlystage technology companies from Singapore.

Prior to his role as the CEO of SGInnovate, Mr Leonard served three years as the Executive Deputy Chairman of the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), a government statutory board under the purview of Singapore’s Ministry of Communications and Information. In that role, he had executive responsibility at the national level for various aspects of the information technology and telecommunications industries in Singapore.

Mr Leonard serves on the advisory boards of a range of universities and organisations in Singapore. Mr Leonard also serves as an Independent Non-Executive Director at Singapore Post Ltd (SingPost), a global leader in e-commerce logistics; and AsiaSat, a Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed commercial operator of communication spacecraft.

Joseph Lubin

Founder, ConsenSys and Co-Founder,
Ethereum

Joseph Lubin is a co-founder of blockchain computing platform Ethereum and the founder of Consensus Systems (ConsenSys), a blockchain venture studio. ConsenSys is one of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the blockchain technology space, building developer tools, decentralized applications, and solutions for enterprises and governments that harness the power of Ethereum. Headquartered in New York, ConsenSys also has a global presence, employing top entrepreneurs, computer scientists, software developers, and experts in enterprise delivery worldwide.

Lubin graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He worked in the Princeton Robotics Lab, at tomandandy music developing an autonomous music composition tool, and at private research firm Vision Applications Inc. building autonomous mobile robots.

As a software engineer and consultant, Lubin worked with eMagine on the Identrus project and was involved in the founding and operation of a hedge fund with a partner. He held positions as Director of the New York office of Blacksmith Software Consulting, and VP of Technology in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs. Through these posts, Lubin focused on the intersection of cryptography, engineering, and finance.

Switching gears, Lubin moved to Kingston, Jamaica to work on projects in the music industry. Two years into his musical endeavors, Lubin co-founded the Ethereum Project and has been working on Ethereum and ConsenSys since January 2014.

Prof Tsuhan Chen

Chief Scientist, AI Singapore and Deputy President (Research and Technology),
National University of Singapore

Professor Chen Tsuhan was appointed Deputy President (Research and Technology) and Distinguished Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) on 1 June 2018. Prof Chen is a renowned expert in pattern recognition, computer vision, and machine learning. He is also the Chief Scientist of AI Singapore, a national programme in artificial intelligence hosted at NUS.

Prof Chen joined NUS from the Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States, where he has been the David E. Burr Professor of Engineering since 2009. From 2015 to 2017, Prof Chen was the Cheng Tsang Man Chair Professor and Dean of the College of Engineering (CoE) at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. From 2009 to 2013, he served as the Director of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell. During his term as director, Prof Chen promoted the School to top ranking positions, and launched several initiatives to encourage innovation and to promote research and teaching excellence. He also directed the Advanced Multimedia Processing Laboratory, which conducts research in areas including computer vision and pattern recognition; multimedia coding and retrieval; as well as biometric authentication.

A strong supporter and driver of collaborative research, Prof Chen pioneered several support schemes at the NTU CoE to encourage inter-school multidisciplinary programmes aligned with the domain areas identified in RIE2020. These new initiatives included the Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering Centre, the Innovative Centre for Flexible Devices, and the Data Science & Artificial Intelligence Research Centre. Under his leadership, the NTU CoE also sealed partnerships to set up joint laboratories focusing on cyber-physical systems research with Taiwan’s Delta Electronics, and rail transport capabilities with Singapore’s SMRT Corporation.

From 1997 to 2008, Prof Chen was a professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the US. He served as the Associate Department Head from 2007 to 2008. Prof Chen founded and served as Director of the “ITRI Lab @ CMU,” a collaborative research laboratory sponsored by Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). He was also the Director of the International Collaboration on Advanced Security Technology at CyLab CMU, sponsored by Taiwan’s National Science Council.

From 1993 to 1997, Prof Chen was with AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey in the US. He received the MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, in 1990 and 1993, respectively, and the Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the National Taiwan University in 1987.

Prof Chen founded the Technical Committee on Multimedia Signal Processing, and the Multimedia Signal Processing Workshop, both in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Signal Processing Society. His endeavour later evolved into the founding of the IEEE Transactions on Multimedia and the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, both joining the efforts of multiple IEEE societies. Prof Chen was appointed the Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Transactions on Multimedia in 2002-2004, championing the growth of the journal in both frequencies and page numbers.

Prof Chen also served on the Editorial Board of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine and as Associate Editor for IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, IEEE Trans. on Image Processing, IEEE Trans. on Signal Processing, and IEEE Trans. on Multimedia. He co-edited a book titled Multimedia Systems, Standards, and Networks.

Prof Chen received the Charles Wilts Prize for outstanding independent research in Electrical Engineering leading to a PhD degree at the California Institute of Technology in 1993. He was a recipient of the US National Science Foundation CAREER Award, titled “Multimodal and Multimedia Signal Processing,” from 2000 to 2003. He received the Benjamin Richard Teare Teaching Award in 2006, the Eta Kappa Nu Award for Outstanding Faculty Teaching in 2007, both at the Carnegie Mellon University, and the Michael Tien Teaching Award in 2014 at the Cornell University.

Prof Chen has published more than 300 technical papers and holds 29 US patents. He was elected to the Board of Governors, 2007-2009, and a Distinguished Lecturer, 2007-2008, both with the IEEE Signal Processing Society. He served as Vice President in 2012-2013, and as President in 2013-2014, of the ECE Department Head Association and received the Robert M Janowiak Outstanding Leadership and Service Award in 2017. He is a member of the Phi Tau

Kathrine Myhre

CEO,
Norway Health Tech

Kathrine Myhre established the health cluster Norway Health Tech (previously named Oslo Medtech) in 2009 and has since then been the CEO of the organization. The cluster is organized as a non-for-profit member organization, focusing on innovation, business creation and international scaling of health companies. Norway Health Tech was awarded the NCE-status (Norwegian Centre of Expertise) by Innovation Norway’s cluster program in 2015 and received Gold Label-status by the European cluster organization in 2016,

Kathrine Myhre has a bachelor degree from the University of Oslo in political science and a Master degree in Political Science from the University of Reading, UK in 2001. She then went on to working with innovation strategies and business creation based on novel research from the University of Oslo (UiO) until 2008 - from 2004 until 2008 as the Director of Innovation at Birkeland Innovation (now Inven2), the technology transfer office at University of Oslo.

From 2008 she held the position as Director of Innovation at the company IT Fornebu. It was from this position the concept of Norway Health Tech was formed and launched in 2009.

Kathrine Myhre has initiated and led numerous strategic and innovative processes and projects, within a broad spectrum: conduction of creative processes, market analysis, business creation, handling of IPR, marketing and sales and facilitating financing of key projects and businesses.

Kathrine Myhre has over the years built a solid network in the health sector, nationally and globally, and is a renowned speaker in the field of health innovation and technology.

Prof Hiroaki Kitano

President & CEO,
Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc.

Prof Hiroaki Kitano is a President & CEO at Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc., Tokyo, a Corporate Executive at Sony Corporation, Tokyo, a President at The Systems Biology Institute, Tokyo, and a Professor at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Okinawa. He received a B.A. in physics from the International Christian University, Tokyo, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Kyoto University. Since 1988, he has been a visiting researcher at the Center for Machine Translation at Carnegie Mellon University. His research career includes a Project Director at Kitano Symbiotic Systems Project, ERATO, Japan Science and Technology Corporation followed by a Project Director at Kitano Symbiotic Systems Project, ERATO-SORST, Japan Science and Technology Agency, a Group Director of Laboratory for Disease Systems Modeling at RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences, and so on.

He is also an Editor-in-Chief of npj Systems Biology and Applications, and a Founding President of The RoboCup Federation. Kitano received The Computers and Thought Award from the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence in 1993, Prix Ars Electronica 2000, Japan Design Culture Award 2001, Good Design Award 2001, and Nature’s 2009 Japan Mid-career Award for Creative Mentoring in Science, as well as being an invited artist for Biennale di Venezia 2000 and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York in 2001.

Don Tapscott

Founder and Executive Chairman,
Blockchain Research Institute

Don Tapscott, Executive Chairman of the Blockchain Research Institute, is one of the world’s leading authorities on the impact of technology on business and society. He has authored 16 books, including Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, which has been translated into over 25 languages.

Don’s most recent and ambitious book was co-authored with his son, Alex Tapscott, a globally recognized investor, advisor and speaker on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies is Changing the World was published in May 2016 and is, according to Harvard Business School’s Clay Christensen, “the book, literally, on how to survive and thrive in this next wave of technology-driven disruption.” The paperback version of the book, updated with new material covering recent developments in the blockchain industry, was published in June 2018.

In 2017, Don and Alex co-founded the Blockchain Research Institute, whose 80+ projects are the definitive investigation into blockchain strategy, use-cases, implementation challenges and organizational transformations.

Don is a member of the Order of Canada and is ranked the 2nd most influential Management Thinker and the top Digital Thinker in the world by Thinkers50. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Rotman School of Management and Chancellor of Trent University in Ontario. It is hard to imagine anyone who has been more prolific, profound, and influential in explaining today’s technological revolutions and their impact on the world.

Dr Bicky Bhangu

President, Southeast Asia, Pacific and South Korea,
Rolls-Royce

Dr Bicky Bhangu is President – South East Asia, Pacific and South Korea at Rolls-Royce where he is responsible for the regional strategy, external relations, and governance of the operational activities across the company’s key business sectors in the region – Civil Aerospace, Defence and Power Systems. He was previously Country Director for Singapore.

Bicky is the President of the Singapore British Chamber of Commerce. He is serving as Vice President for the Euro Chambers of Commerce Singapore, and as member of the Board Executive Committee. He served as the Chairman for Aerospace Industry Skills and Training Council (ISTC) supporting Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) to oversee the skills development for the aerospace industry (2013 – 2015) and served the Singapore Maritime Port Authority (MPA) as select committee member for R&D investment in green port technologies (2016 – 2018).

Bicky is an Adjunct Professor at the Nanyang Technological University, He has a BEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Nottingham, an MSc in Control Systems, PhD in Advanced Machines and Drives from the University of Sheffield and an MBA in Technology Management. He is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Engineering Technology (IET), Fellow of Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) and served as Chairman for IET Singapore Network and the steering committee for the IET Aerospace Technical Professional Network, UK (2015 – 17).

Dr Ben Goertzel

CEO, SingularityNET and Chief Scientist,
Hanson Robotics

Dr Ben Goertzel is one of the world’s foremost experts in Artificial General Intelligence, a subfield of AI oriented toward creating thinking machines with general cognitive capability at the human level and beyond. He also has decades of expertise applying AI to practical problems in areas ranging from natural language processing and data mining to robotics, video gaming, national security and bioinformatics. He has published nearly 20 scientific books and 140+ scientific research papers, and is the main architect and designer of the OpenCog system and associated design for human-level general intelligence.

Ben is the CEO of SingularityNET (a blockchain based AI platform company), and the Chief Scientist of Hanson Robotics, a robotics company that creates the world’s most advanced humanoid robots. Ben also serves as Chairman of the Artificial General Intelligence Society, which hosts the annual AGI research conference series, and the OpenCog Foundation.

Before relocating to Hong Kong in 2011, Dr. Goertzel held executive roles at AI consulting and product development firms in Washington DC (CEO, Chairman and Chief Scientist at Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC) and New York City (CTO at Webmind Inc.). Prior to that, he served as faculty in mathematics at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, in cognitive science as the University of Western Australia, and in computer science at Waikato University in New Zealand, at the City University of New York and at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Dr. Goertzel holds a PhD degree in mathematics from Temple University, Philadelphia, USA.

Dr Ayesha Khanna

Co-Founder and CEO,
ADDO AI

Dr Ayesha Khanna is Co-Founder and CEO of ADDO AI, an artificial intelligence (AI) advisory firm and incubator. She has been a strategic advisor on artificial intelligence, smart cities and fintech to clients such as SMRT, Singapore's largest public transport company, SOMPO, Japan's largest insurance firm, and Smart Dubai, the government agency tasked to transform Dubai into a leading smart city. In 2017, ADDO AI was featured in Forbes magazine as one of four leading artificial intelligence companies in Asia and Ayesha was named one of South East Asia's groundbreaking female entrepreneurs by Forbes magazine in 2018. Ayesha is also the Founder of 21C GIRLS, a charity that teaches coding and artificial intelligence to girls in Singapore. Ayesha has a BA in Economics from Harvard University, an MS in Operations Research from Columbia University and a PhD in Information Systems and Innovation from the London School of Economics.

Vinay Jammu

Vice President - Software and Analytics,
GE Global Research Centre

Vinay Jammu is Vice President, Software and Analytics in Digital Research Organization in GE Global Research. He is responsible for labs located in Bangalore and Schenectady, NY that are focused on driving domain-based analytics and software to differentiate GE’s Industrial Internet Solutions. In addition, Vinay serves as focal point for 400-member analytics teams across GE India Technology Centers in Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

Vinay obtained his doctoral degree from University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1996 in Mechanical Engineering with specialization in applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for machine diagnosis. After a brief stint at Mechanical Technology Inc, NY, he joined GE Global Research, Schenectady, NY in 1997 as Diagnostics Engineer where he focused on developing predictive analytics for failure and life prediction of industrial assets. Vinay relocated to Bangalore in 2002 and held multiple roles as Lab Manager and Technology Leader in Aero-Thermal and Mechanical Systems organization in GE Global Research. Vinay is a certified master black belt, has 38 patents applications, and 60+ internal and external publications.

Frank Bignone

Digital Transformation Leader,
Asia Pacific, Airbus

Frank is the Digital Transformation Leader for the Asia Pacific Region at Airbus Group and leads the company’s efforts to transform its businesses to embrace the accelerating pace of technological and business model evolution required in the era of digitization. Prior to the role, Frank served as the VIP Customer Care Senior Manager for Airbus Defense and Space, Product Line Sales Director - GeoSpatial Processing Systems and Asia / Pacific Business Development Senior Manager at Astrium Geo-Information Services, Asia / Pacific Operation Manager at EADS Astrium, and R&D Deputy Director at ISTAR (EADS Astrium Group). Frank obtained his bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics at University of Nice, and his master’s degree in Computer Vision & Optronics & Artificial Intelligence at University of Nice Sophia Antipolis.

Dr Andy Cheadle

Engineering Director,
McLaren Applied Technologies

Andy is the Engineering Director for McLaren Applied Technologies where he heads up the functional engineering departments encompassing Systems Engineering, Hardware, Software, Simulation and Decision Science. He is responsible for the research and development of a range of embedded and distributed cloud-based technology platforms, and solutions that span sensing, actuation and batch and stream-based analytics across the market sectors of Motorsport, Automotive, Healthcare, and Public Transport. Andy’s current focus, driven by prior work on national-scale Cyber Security solutions, is on converging processing systems for national-scale data sets with advanced simulation and model execution. Prior to joining McLaren Applied Technologies, Andy has held a variety of senior research, engineering, and architecture roles within FTSE 100 Telecoms and Defence companies and also within Enterprise software start-ups. He holds MEng and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Imperial College London, and has held research posts within its Faculty of Engineering.

Dr Ethan Chu

Founder and CEO,
Xjera Labs Pte Ltd

Dr. Ethan Chu is the CEO and Co-founder of the start-up company Xjera labs Pte Ltd. He and his team won the Video Analytic Tech Challenge in 2015 hosted by IDA and Video Analytics Challenge in 2017 by Changi Airport Group.

Prior to Xjera, he held research and development and management positions in Qualcomm, HP Labs in the US and also a visiting researcher at UC Berkeley. He was awarded A*STAR Overseas Graduate Scholarship in 2009. He earned his Masters and PhD degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2014 under supervision of Prof. Thomas S. Huang, a world pioneer in computer vision, image processing and machine learning. Dr. Chu has published 10+ research works in top venues in CVPR, AAAI, MICCAI, NIPS and AISTATS and is the author of two patents. Dr. Chu was a principal investigator of a few AI projects and also an adjunct research scientist at the Advanced Digital Sciences Center.

Emma Cui

CEO,
LongHash Singapore

Emma Cui is currently LongHash Singapore CEO, Ex-McKinsey consultant/Digital McKinsey specializing in digital strategy & transformation for South East Asia based companies, particularly for Financial institutions; She has a decade of banking industry experience with in-depth knowledge of securities, corporate banking and commercial banking across Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and China. Master of Science from Singapore MIT Alliance and full scholarship from Nanyang Technology University in Singapore.

Niall Dennehy

COO,
AID:Tech

Niall is the Co-Founder and Chief Operations Officer of AID:Tech.

AID:Tech’s mission is to bring social and financial inclusion to the world’s undocumented and underserved populations using digital identity based on blockchain technology.

AID:Tech was the first company in the world to deliver humanitarian aid using blockchain technology in a completely transparent manner.

Prior to his work in AID:Tech, Niall founded a number of other companies and help senior technology positions in organisations like HP, Ericsson, LG & Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Soeren Duvier

Managing Director - Asia,
Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA)

Soeren Duvier joined Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA) in May of 2018 to head up the efforts of the alliance in the Asia-Pacific region. BiTA aims to set standards in the blockchain technology for the transport and logistic industry as well as to build the eco-system for it. Soeren was previously covering various transportation issues in shipping, oil and finance industries with companies like Maersk, ICAP, Sumitomo and Nordea Bank. Soeren joined the A.P. Moeller – Maersk leadership program “MISE” year 1993.

Stein Eggan

CEO,
NTNU Technology Transfer AS

Stein Eggan is the CEO of NTNU Technology Transfer which main objective is to create value out of research and ideas from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the Central Norway Regional Health Authority. The company works with researchers wanting to develop their ideas, technologies and inventions into opportunities that are attractive to industry, investors and the society at large. Prior to joining NTNU Technology Transfer Mr. Eggan has over 20 years of international experience from the Oil & Gas sector, and has held various executive positions as well as being an entrepreneur.

Dr Joe Fitzsimons

Principal Investigator,
Centre for Quantum Technologies

Joe Fitzsimons is a Principal Investigator at the Centre for Quantum Technologies and an Assistant Professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design. By background, Joe is a theoretical physicist with interests in all areas of quantum mechanics and quantum information theory. At present, his research focuses on quantum computation, and on using quantum phenomena to enable new secure computing functionality. He holds a BSc in theoretical physics from University College Dublin, and a DPhil from the University of Oxford. In 2016, Joe was named to MIT Technology Review’s TR35 Innovators Under 35 Asia list.

Luis Gonzalez

Manufacturing & Industrial Lead, ASEAN Principal Director,
Element AI

Luis leads our ASEAN operations as well as Element AI’s Manufacturing and industrial vertical. He has 20 years experience in Digital Transformation of industrial enterprises and has been involved with over 40 Customers in Heavy Industries (Power, Oil & Gas, Chemical, Mining and Manufacturing) advising on developing and executing their software solutions roadmap within Asia Pacific, North/ South America, Europe and the Middle East. Prior to joining Element, Luis was the a VP & Chief Customer Success GE Digital responsible for delivery of all GE Digital Projects in APAC and formerly the GE Power VP Chief Digital Officer, responsible for Power Digital PNL in Asia. Before that he spent 15 years working in the SAP Industrial solutions environment for Energy and Resources practices 10 of those years in Digital advisory for Accenture and Deloitte.

Luis has a graduate diploma from MIT with a double major undergrad from University of Victoria in Commerce and Computer Science as well as an specialization in Pacific Asian studies from Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Prof Dean Ho

Provost’s Chair Professor and Director, SINAPSE,
National University of Singapore

Prof Dean Ho is currently Provost’s Chair Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Pharmacology, and Director of the Singapore Institute for Neurotechnology (SINAPSE) at the National University of Singapore.

Prof Ho and collaborators successfully developed and validated CURATE.AI, a powerful artificial intelligence technology platform based on the field of Phenotypic Personalized Medicine (PPM) to optimize clinical efficacy and safety for several combination therapy indications. He co-led the first in-human trial to personalize and optimize combination therapy for the entire duration of care, an unprecedented achievement. Specifically, his team partnered with leading surgeons to dynamically administer immunosuppressive therapies to prevent liver transplant rejection using CURATE.AI. CURATE.AI-treated patients dramatically outperformed control arm patients across every metric of comparison and were discharged nearly one month earlier compared to control patients (Science Translational Medicine, 2016). He also pioneered the development of nanodiamond platforms for the marked enhancement of efficacy and safety of drug delivery and imaging (Science Translational Medicine, 2011, 2013). Recently, Prof Ho initiated a first in-human clinical trial to validate a nanodiamond-biomaterial device for wound healing applications. Currently, Prof Ho is co-leading multiple oncologic combination therapy studies to dynamically modulate multi-drug regimens with CURATE.AI. These trials have resulted in completely halted disease progression and durable patient responses that far outperformed standard of care approaches.

Prof Ho has appeared on the National Geographic Channel Program “Known Universe” to discuss his discoveries in nanodiamond drug delivery and imaging. His discoveries have been featured on CNN, The Economist, Forbes, Washington Post, NPR and other international news outlets. Prof Ho has served as the President of the Board of Directors of the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS), a 26,000+ member global drug development organization comprised of senior executives from the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors, as well as academic visionaries.

Prof Ho was recently named a Fulbright Scholar. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening. He is also a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, Wallace H. Coulter Foundation Translational Research Award, V Foundation for Cancer Research V Scholar Award, IADR William J. Gies Award, IADR Young Investigator Award, and Distinguished Young Alumnus award of the UCLA School of Engineering. Prof Ho is a co-founder of KYAN Therapeutics, and has previously advised venture funds and companies and in the areas of AI, digital medicine, and nanomedicine, among others.

Dr Ettikan Karuppiah

Director, Developers Ecosystem, Enterprise Business, SEA Region,
NVIDIA Singapore

Dr Ettikan Kandasamy Karuppiah, Director of Developers Ecosystem at Nvidia, South East Asia assists innovators, researchers and techno-entrepreneurs to accelerate GPU adaptation for their R&D and software solutioning needs. He has direct experience and passionate in accelerated computing/software research/deep learning, design and development covering end-to-end needs. He also has published numerous publications, patents and software libraries from his past work.

Richard Koh

CTO,
Microsoft Singapore

Richard Koh is the chief technology officer of Microsoft Singapore. In this role, he is responsible for engaging with key executive leaders across government, industry and academia; bringing in the macro technology landscape; and helping customers leverage technology innovations for their digital transformation. His focus areas include guiding technology policies, standards, legal and regulatory matters, as well as security, privacy and compliance decisions.

Always passionate about the promises that the Internet and cloud computing can bring, and with a keen eye on business strategies, product development and marketing, Richard’s professional experience spans the Asia and North America regions, as well as multiple functional areas including research & development, IT, product management, marketing, business development and sales operations.

Prior to joining Microsoft, he was the senior director for Emerging Businesses & Strategy under Group Enterprise at Singtel. There, he led a team of intrapreneurs, products managers, product marketers, architects, and engineers to catalyse new businesses, products and platforms in Cloud services, the Internet of Things, machine to machine, education and healthcare.

Earlier on in his career, Richard spearheaded Emerging Markets strategy for Microsoft Operations as the operations team unit lead based in Singapore. And in Redmond, Washington, he led product teams as director of technical product management in Microsoft’s Office, Servers & Tools, as well as telecommunication solutions businesses, which led him to be part of the founding product team for Microsoft’s flagship productivity suite – Office 365.

Richard also spent close to 12 years at Hewlett-Packard, with stints at the company in Singapore and in Cupertino/Palo Alto, California, where he gained wide experience in R&D, business development and marketing of emerging Internet/web-services and telecommunications technologies, as well as people and organisation management.

Richard graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Science & Information Systems. Richard is married with two children. He loves to work with passionate people who wants to change the world for the better, and enjoys running, skiing/snowboarding, reading, indie movies and tinkering with tech gadgets.

Philip Kowalczyk

Head of Business Development & Strategy,
Johnson & Johnson Medical Asia Pacific

Philip Kowalczyk is in charge of New Business Development and Strategy for Johnson & Johnson Medical Asia Pacific. As a member of the Regional Leadership Team, Phil focuses on developing and executing the medical device licensing & acquisition strategy in the region.

Phil started his career at Johnson & Johnson in 2008 and has transitioned through positions of increasing responsibility, including involvement in a number of significant transactions within Medical Devices.

Phil holds a Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Michigan. He, his wife Meredith, and his children Graham and Claire are based in Singapore.

Prof Leong Tze Yun

Director of AI Technology,
AI Singapore

Leong Tze Yun is Director of AI Technology at AI Singapore. She is Professor of Practice of Computer Science at the School of Computing, National University of Singapore. She is an elected Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) and a founding Member of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI).

Tze Yun received her SB, SM, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA. Her research interests include decision-theoretic artificial intelligence, cognitive modelling, machine learning, adaptive computing and biomedical and health informatics. She has served on editorial boards and program committees of leading international journals and conferences in artificial intelligence and biomedical informatics. She has contributed to panels and committees that advise on the R&D directions and education in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Biomedical and Health Informatics in Singapore and abroad. She is also a technopreneur and participates in the technology start-ups ecosystem.

Anders Lier

Chairman,
Nordic Impact

Anders H. Lier is chairman of Nordic Impact. Nordic Impact is a leading international impact investor group, a leader in the field of innovation and technology. Anders is also chairman and co-founder of Katapult, which invests in startups based around technology with a mission to have a positive impact on society and environment. Our goal is to make impact investing mainstream. We work to nourish and increase the impact and tech startup ecosystem globally. We are strong believers that disruptive technology is a driving force in changing finance, business and culture so that impact and purpose becomes the standard. Our mission is to change the culture and mindset of humanity to go into the next level – the collaborative and trust society.

Martin Lim

Co-Founder and COO,
Electrify

Martin Lim has over 20 years of experience in the mass communications industry, having served as both a creative and strategic lead for a diverse range of clients ranging from SMEs to MNCs. The last decade provided a great deal of exposure with business startups and regional business development. He was headhunted to a regional sales role for InMobi, currently the world’s largest mobile Internet ad platform, and his interests in energy and water led him to subsequently co- found a company to develop water treatment systems for disaster relief. As the main business driver for this business, and other clients, he led in virtually all strategic areas including planning, business development and consolidation.

Phil Morle

Partner,
Main Sequence Ventures

Phil Morle is a Partner at the CSIRO's venture capital fund - Main Sequence Ventures. Here he invests in deep tech founders who are building unimaginable new companies with a strong connection to research. Before this he was the founder of Australia’s first Silicon Valley style incubator, Pollenizer, where Phil played an instrumental role in developing the startup ecosystem across Asia Pacific and advised some of the world’s biggest organisations on practical ways to deliver new growth and the cultural change that is required to get there.

Susan Oh

Chair of AI, Blockchain for Impact (BFI) United Nations General Assembly and CEO,
MKR AI

Susan Oh is Founder & CEO of MKR AI, and Co-Chair of AI, Blockchain For Impact UN GA. Her focus is on AI and blockchain integration to advocate for human-centric technology, especially in service to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. She is also advisor to the Global Bank of Small States, Toda.network, and the Hoboken Smart City Project, among others.

Pierre Robinet

Founder,
Live with AI

Pierre Robinet is a senior consultant with extensive experience in conceiving, structuring and selling marketing, digital and business transformation strategies, breaking the rules of traditional marketing and catalyzing innovation-led and data-driven mindsets for his clients.

Pierre has supported global brands for man than 15 years in their business transformation at global level acting as an innovation catalyst, running innovative lean start up strategies and agile working processes. Passionate with entrepreneurship, open-innovation and new technology, he co-founded in July 2016 the Viva Technology conference gathering in Paris 5000 start-up and tech leaders from the world. Pierre joined Ogilvy Consulting (www.ogilvyconsulting.com) in 2016 as Senior Partner for the APAC region. He leads both the Innovation and the Health & Wellness practice for the APAC region.

Pierre founded in 2016 the FrenchTech Singapore community gathering French entrepreneurs, technology leaders & innovation players from Singapore. He is also the founder of the LIVE WITH AI (LWAI) non profit organization, Singapore-based, gathering 100 though leaders, start-up owners, academics, from France & Singapore, leading working groups and research on the positive impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to our society (www.livewithai.org). The LWAI foundation is the first bridge between France & Singapore on AI working on applied recommendations to better live with AI.

Shanker V Selvadurai

CTO of Cloud, Data & Artificial Intelligence Solutions,
IBM Asia Pacific

Shanker V Selvadurai is currently the CTO of Cloud, Data & Artificial Intelligence (AI) Solutions for IBM Asia Pacific where he leads the technical organization that helps clients across Asia Pacific to explore and co-create cloud based solutions that leverage data and AI capabilities to deliver better decisions and outcomes.

Prior to joining IBM in 2006, Shanker held key leadership positions in areas of research, development, consulting, sales and marketing with technology companies like AT&T, NCR and Fujitsu as well as start-up BlueGill Technologies. While leading teams varying in size from 6 to over 1,000 across North America, Europe and Asia, he amassed extensive experience and honed deep skills in building and applying technology enabled capabilities that transform businesses and organizations.

Shanker holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Nottingham, UK. He is also an Open Group Master Certified Architect. Besides having published international patents/papers, Shanker actively contributed in international technology standards committees that include the IFX Forum, OFX Consortium and the Microsoft Advisory Council. As adjunct lecturer at the Singapore Management University, he taught courses related to Services Science and Advanced Business Technology.

Humayun Sheikh

CEO,
Fetch.AI

Humayun Sheikh is the founder, backer and CEO of Fetch.AI. Fetch.ai is a next-generation protocol, invented by leading AI experts, that enables a digital world where Autonomous Economic Agents can perform proactive economic activity. Fetch.ai have built this protocol on the world’s first adaptive, self-organising ‘smart ledger’ which delivers unrivalled performance and scalability.

IFetch is the missing critical infrastructure for tomorrow’s digital economy, providing the tools for emerging and future marketplaces, where tasks, such delivering data or providing services, are rewarded with digital currency.

Fetch.ai is Humayun’s fourth major venture. His first venture brought an entirely new way of thinking to the steel recycling sector, building his company from start-up to £40m in six years. He also has a long history in the artificial intelligence space. As one of the first investors in DeepMind, Humayun had the vision to provide early-stage support to AI & deep neural network technology.

Cesare Tagliaferri

CTO,
Poseidon Foundation

Cesare Tagliaferri brings 18 years of experience from the financial and technology sectors to Poseidon, specialising in automation, user experience and security. During this time he set up his own business, ran teams of quantitative analysts at a major Australian bank while building their new global markets pricing and risk management platform, and established the APAC customer delivery team for an international software vendor.

Ivy Teh

Global Managing Director, EIU Healthcare and Managing Director,
Clearstate

Ivy co-founded Clearstate and serves as Managing Director, heading a team of 40 healthcare consultants across the globe. She has over 17 years of healthcare consulting experience across medical technology, pharmaceutical and healthcare services sectors in emerging markets.

Ivy’s areas of expertise include commercial and operational strategy development, business model evaluation and innovation, capabilities assessment, market entry and growth strategy, greenfield exploration and commercial due diligence. She has extensive experience in pharma and medical devices market intelligence and strategic commercial advisory and currently manages key healthcare accounts such as Janssen, Roche Diagnostics, Cardinal Health and Philips Healthcare.

Key past clients include Health Promotion Board (Singapore), Spring Singapore, Singapore Tourism Board (Medical Travel Division), Abbott Laboratories, Beckman Coulter, Becton Dickinson, GE Healthcare & Life Sciences, Genzyme, Johnson & Johnson, Philips Healthcare, Pfizer, Roche Diagnostics, among others.

Ivy has published several white papers and articles on current healthcare topics; examples include Southeast Asia: The New Emerging Healthcare Market, Understanding China’s Emerging Private Healthcare Sector, Mega-healthcare trends reshaping Pharma and Medtech sectors. She has also published in trade magazines such as the Asia Pacific Biotech News and the BioSpectrum.

Ivy holds an MBA from Schulich School of Business, York University (Canada) and BSc (Hons) in Medical Physics from McMaster University (Canada). Prior to co-founding Clearstate, Ivy headed the Singapore and Malaysia operations of Synovate Business Consulting (now Ipsos) and was also the healthcare practice lead for Synovate in APAC.

Joachim Vandaele

Founding Partner,
FutureLabs Ventures

Joachim has been building businesses for over 15 years in the financial services, family office, technology and new media space. He acts as a Venture Builder and an Operating Partner to growth businesses, and has navigated companies out of dangerous waters, and into new geographies and unexplored fields of knowledge.

Joachim is a Founding Partner of FutureLabs Ventures, a tech VC and Venture Builder focused on long-term digital mega-trends that are reshaping the world.

Joachim serves as Venture partner with B-Hive - a global FinTech ecosystem out of Brussels, is a board member of Trusted Family – a high profile growth business providing technology and advisory solutions for business owning families, and previously served as MD of Found. – a leading network of innovation studios in ASEAN.

He is also the founder of Zephyr Ventures, an entrepreneurial vehicle set up to invest in start-ups as well as cash generative businesses, predominantly in tech, finance and new media space in Benelux and South East Asian markets.

Joachim is a seasoned financial risk professional experienced in the development and validation of advanced prediction models. In his role as consultant & project manager he led multiple implementations of third-party software platforms with major banking organisations.

He holds a Masters in Commercial & Investment Sciences from HUBrussels; a Masters in Banking & Finance from Ghent University. He obtained an MBA from INSEAD, where he also serves an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, jury member and a guest lecturer on the topic of business acquisitions & buy-ins.

Meeta Vouk

Director, Singapore Research Center IBM

Meeta Vouk, PhD, is the Director of the Singapore Research Center, and is responsible for establishing and executing on the technical agenda of the IBM research center in Singapore.

Previous to that she was the Chief Data Officer for Blockchain Technologies at IBM. Meeta led the data group for Blockchain and was responsible for managing the business unit's global data and establishing data governance policies, operationalizing IBM’s Blockchain offerings, understanding market insights, developing customer engagement strategy, and creating business value from data. As a product officer, Meeta led the delivery of industry leading IBM Blockchain Platform to the market (Gartner). Her work on Blockchain earned her a spot in the top 5 data officers of 2016 by Innovation Enterprise Magazine.

Previously, Meeta was the Chief Technology Officer of Innovation for IBM Middleware where she led the Emerging Technology Institute. Her work involved incubating business ideas, working on business acquisitions and delivering innovative technology MVPs internally and to customers (Enterprise IoT, High Performance Messaging Appliances, Business Hub, Blockchain).

Meeta is the founder of Garage Inc., an idea incubator geared towards teaching kids to be social entrepreneurs. Meeta is an adjunct professor at North Carolina State University and has been teaching advanced graduate computer chip design courses for 12 years. Her course has been adopted by 27 universities across the world and her students are leading hardware verification and design at many of the technology fortune 100 companies.

Jonathan Weber

Global Industry Editor, Technology,
Thomson Reuters

Jonathan Weber is Global Industry Editor for Technology at Reuters, overseeing a broad range of business and technology coverage from Reuters’ Asia headquarters in Singapore. Previously he ran tech coverage from San Francisco, and before that served as West Coast Bureau Chief for the news agency, overseeing news bureaus in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle. A veteran reporter, editor and journalism entrepreneur, he was previously the founding editor of The Bay Citizen, a non-profit news organization serving the San Francisco Bay Area. Before that he was the founder and CEO of New West Publishing, a new media company serving the Rocky Mountain West. He was the co-founder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard, the highly regarded newsweekly that chronicled the first Internet boom, and prior to that was a writer and editor at the Los Angeles Times. He holds a B.A. in philosophy from Wesleyan University.

Dr Sidney Yee

CEO, Diagnostics Development Hub & Executive Vice President, Incubation & Startup Management,
ETPL

Dr Sidney Yee is CEO of Diagnostics Development (DxD) Hub and Executive Vice President of Incubation and Startup Management (ISM) division at ETPL. Her team of diagnostics and medical device specialists in DxD Hub focuses on accelerating productisation of innovative diagnostic technologies. Sidney leads ISM to strategize and support start-up activities related to technologies and innovations, including setting up A*STARTCentral, a pioneering deep tech open innovation lab.

A serial entrepreneur with extensive experience in R&D, starting companies and investments prior to joining A*STAR, Sidney continues to be actively involved in med-tech and innovation activities. She is non-executive board member of several medtech companies and serves as a reviewer on various diagnostics and medtech funding schemes.

Sidney was a researcher with A*STAR’s Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, and a research scholar at The Scripps Research Institute.