Rise of AI Conference 2023

Fabian J. G. Westerheide, CEO of AI for Humans, is an international expert on Artificial Intelligence strategy, entrepreneur and venture capitalist

Hans Uszkoreit is Scientific Director at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Berlin. He is co initiator and Steering Board Member of LEAM.AI as well as Founder and Scientific Advisor at UNICEPTA Corporate Intelligence (formerly GIANCE).  Uszkoreit has worked in AI for more than 35 years as professor, research leader and entrepreneur. He has authored/co-authored more than 250 publications in AI and computational linguistics and he is Member of the European Academy of Sciences. He has coordinated many national and international confederated projects and an international masters program in language and communication technologies . For his work on language understanding, he received two Google Research Awards. 

Prof. Dr. Sabina Jeschke is a manager, founder and scientist. After more than 3 years as a board member for Digitization and Technology at Deutsche Bahn AG and a 12-year career as a university professor (Berlin, Stuttgart, Aachen), she founded the start-up Quantagonia GmbH (Quantum Computing) in December 2021. Since 10/2021 she is acting CEO of the start-up accelerator KI Park e.V. in Berlin. Since June 2021 she is supporting Deloitte Germany as a Scientific Senior Advisor in technology consulting. At the same time, she founded the StartUp Arctic Brains AB in Jämtland/Sweden in April 2021 with a focus on AI consulting and development. Sabina Jeschke is an experienced member of the supervisory board, most recently she accepted the mandate for Vitesco (carve-out from Continental) in 09/2021. She holds an honorary professorship at the TU Berlin and a CxO professorship at the FAU (Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg).

Axel Voss (CDU) - born in 1963 - studied law at the Universities of Trier, Freiburg and Munich. Since 1994, he is working as a lawyer. From 1994 to 2000, he was a civil advisor at the EU Commission's representation in Germany. Afterwards, he worked for nine years as lecturer for European Affairs at the RheinAhrCampus of the College of Koblenz. He became a Member of the European Parliament in 2009, where he represents the Mittelrhein area, which includes the cities of Cologne, Bonn and Leverkusen and the districts Rhein-Sieg and Rhein-Erft. Axel Voss is EPP-coordinator for the Committee on Legal Affairs as well as deputy member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and from 2020 to 2022 member and rapporteur in the special Committee on Artificial Intelligence. Besides questions of European Law, his main area of expertise is the digitization of our daily life. For the European People’s Party group, he was among others (shadow-)rapporteur for the new Copyright Directive, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Passenger Name Record Directive (PNR) as well as for the updated Eurojust Regulation. At the moment, he is (shadow-)rapporteur for the AI Act and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. Axel Voss is also CDU chair of the regional section Mittelrhein, regional chair of the Europe Union Bonn/Rhein-Sieg and Vice President of the Mérite Européen Friendship and Assistance Association, Germany. More information: www.axel-voss-europa.de

Vanessa Cann is Managing Director of the German AI Association (KI Bundesverband e.V.). Previously, she managed the plattforms Artificial Intelligence and Future Mobility at the German Startups Association e.V., where she brought startups together with established companies and investors. Vanessa Cann developed her interest in Artificial Intelligence in political consulting, where she advised Fortune 500 companies on their digital policies. She is also a mentor for startups and an advisor to Women in AI.

Aleph Alpha Founder & CEO Jonas Andrulis is a serial entrepreneur and former AI R&D manager at Apple’s Special Projects Division (SPG). For several years, Jonas has been at the forefront of the development towards transformative AI. His experience ranges from innovative academic experiments to building and operating petabyte machine learning pipelines for computer vision and language processing.

Ralf Herbrich leads the group on Artificial Intelligence and Sustainability at the Hasso-Plattner Institute in Potsdam since May 2022. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President, Builder Platform & Artificial Intelligence at Zalando (2020 – 2022), Managing Director of the Amazon Development Center in Germany with its locations in Berlin, Dresden, Aachen and Tübingen and was Director of Machine Learning at Amazon in Berlin from (2013 – 2020). Prior to these roles at Amazon, he led Facebook’s Unified Ranking and Allocation team in 2011. From 2000 to 2011, he served as Director of Microsoft's Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Lab UK and worked for nine years at Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge, UK.

In 2022 Tina Klüwer was appointed to the Future Council of the Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz. She is also head of the Research Transfer Working Group the German AI Association, member of the Board of AI Grid, and member of the Board of Directors of the KI-Park. Tina Klüwer was chairwoman of the Technological Sovereignty Advisory Council of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), an expert member of the German Bundestag's two-year Enquete Commission on Artificial Intelligence, a member of the advisory board `Young Digital Economy` of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), and part of the coordination group of the AI standardization roadmap of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) and DIN, as well as a member of the board of the German AI Association.

Co-founder of QAI Ventures, a company focused on investment and acceleration of Quantum and AI startups. She is leading the investment activities and is also heading the company. In the QuantumBasel project, out of which the company was born, she was responsible for the strategy development as well as building the startup ecosystem. A geoscientist by training with advanced education in business and leadership she has worked in her professional career for both startups, SMEs and government. She was founder of her own company in Berlin in the field of renewable energy and is author of the book: "Bossing it- The future belongs to the bold." She is driven by the conviction that technology is a key to solving many global challenges and that ecosystems must replace the traditional ego-systems.

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 a consultant, mentor, and investor, Thomas is committed to help individuals and startups achieve their potential.

Dr. Katharina von Knop is the founder and CEO of Digital Trust Analytics GmbH. This service company builds trusted business models and optimizes the decision-making processes of Humans, Organizations, and AI machines. The company was founded based on her scientific work on the topic 'Building Digital Trust' She wrote her Ph.D. thesis on decision-making in security politics. After a period of applied research and the co-foundation of her first company, the Institute for Applied Computer Science, she changed to strategy consulting to optimize banks risk management during the financial crisis, and then to develop new digital business models in a leading position for a 60,000-strong group. Her volunteer work includes being a Member of the Board Of Advisors at the German Scholar Organization and at the X-Health Data Loft, a Member of the Sounding Board at the Max Planck Academy, and a Mentor at the Startup IT-Accelerator CyberLab.

Florian Dohmann is Co-Founder and Chief Creative of Birds on Mars, a new generation consultancy and AI agency where he and his team help organizations to explore the in-betweens of human creativity, machine intelligence and organizational identity. Florian is an expert for data, artificial intelligence & digital change, Intelligence Architect and creative. He is a computer scientist, IBM disciple, keynote speaker, guest lecturer at various universities and co-inventor of the artificial muse. In 2019 he kickstarted a lecture series on “AI & Creativity” at Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe (HFG) and in 2020 at Universität der Künste Berlin (UDK) where he is still teaching. Florian is also part of the artist collective YQP LA/Berlin. In their artistic work, they explore the human value in our digital world and merge technology with interactive storytelling.

Fabian J. G. Westerheide, CEO of AI for Humans, is an international expert on Artificial Intelligence strategy, entrepreneur and venture capitalist

Shaun is driven by a love for exploration and innovation which has led him to co-found Trueface in 2012. Trueface was acquired by Pangiam in May of 2021 and he currently serves as the Chief AI Officer of Pangiam. Pangiam was founded by former senior US Department of Homeland Security officials and is a leading provider of customized identity management, biometrics, and advanced analytics software and consulting solutions to federal government and commercial customers. Trueface prided itself on being founding on three core principles: 1. Humanity First 2. Data Security 3. Total Transparency. Shaun's work has been featured in Forbes, CBS, Fox Business, WSJ, Financial Times, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, CNet, and others. His journey to create Trueface began in 2012, leaving Merrill Lynch in Chicago and booking a one-way ticket to Casablanca, Morocco to pursue his entrepreneurial vision: make technology accessible, personal, and trustworthy. Shaun's work has been shaped by living on four continents and regularly participating in international communities for the advancement of global entrepreneurship. He currently holds two patents in the computer vision space, was named a semi-finalist for Ernst and Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award in LA 2019 and 2020, and was named Analytics Insight 40 under 40 Innovators in 2019. Trueface won first place for Best Innovation at the World Aviation Festival 2020 and Best Innovation in Computer Vision at the CogX Festival. He enjoys guest lecturing at top universities across the US. Shaun is a contributor to the World Economic Forum's Responsible Use of Facial Recognition for the Air Travel industry and he serves as a faculty member for the AI-Business School in Switzerland.

As a former London City Asset manager, Gary draws experience from beyond the tech ecosystem to optimize Codepan’s business development, and an acute understanding of strategy, company structure, and sales makes him the ideal candidate to plot a course for scalability and growth.

"As founder of Boston Consulting Group’s Spend AI, a patented AI-solution to categorize and classify SG&A spend, Ronny Fehling leads one of BCG GAMMA’s ‘Big Bets’ disrupting spend analytics. Ronny focuses on AI@scale and building AI solutions across multiple industries. In that capacity, he worked with MIT-Sloan and the BCG Henderson Institute and co-authored the research paper “Winning with AI."" Ronny is also BCG’s scientific advisor for natural language processing (NLP), one of the biggest growth areas in AI.

Ronny works with clients aligning business strategy and AI to drive growth and transformation at scale. He has worked with many large companies to spearhead and drive digital transformation, leveraging artificial intelligence, data science and cognitive computing, quantum computing, and blockchain, and has built several advanced analytics organizations.

Ronny has over 20 years of experience in artificial intelligence, data science, database innovation, sensor networks, and IoT and cloud. After working in the field of database innovation and sensor networks, he joined Airbus as Vice President for Artificial Intelligence, leading and driving the group’s strategic roadmaps and projects. He is the author of many technical publications and the holder of a patent for “Method of and System for Managing Data in a Sensor Network."

I lead a team of technical Experts and Sellers. We are supporting Clients and Partners in their Journey to AI and Multi-hybrid cloud.
On the same time we are searching for Partners who are willing to work with us in AI, Big Data and Open Source.
But the most important thing is for me to be a great role model as Leader! Great leaders follow there big five of live and work with people on their big five of life!

For me it is important, that Clients gets the best technical support and guidance in choosing the best solution for their business.
I've been fascinated by technology from an early age. I'm focused on Artificial intelligence , Big Data, Openshift and Open Source.

Get in contact regarding news on AI, Big Data and Open Source, and also in all belongings of Leadership.

Baran Avinc joined SVA as a Data Scientist in September 2019. After studying physics, he gained his first work experience in data analysis with Apache Spark. At SVA, he was able to deepen his expertise in Deep Learning and Data Engineering. His main focus includes the application of neural networks to natural language.

Marian is the CEO of brighter AI and is responsible for steering business strategy, technology alignment, and investor relations. Before founding the company in 2017, he worked as an intrapreneur for the German automotive supplier HELLA. Marian holds a master’s degree in IT Management & Consulting from Hamburg University and previously worked as a software developer at the Techstars startup Occipital Inc. in San Francisco. He was a consultant for companies such as Lufthansa Systems and worked as an IT project manager for the digital agency SinnerSchrader. Marian is an active member of the German AI association (“KI Bundesverband”), where he is the spokesperson for data privacy. He is also the spokesperson for artificial intelligence at German Start-up Association (BVDS).

Dr. Feiyu Xu is Senior Vice President and Global Head of AI at SAP. Dr. Xu heads the "Artificial Intelligence" division and is responsible for the software group's global AI strategy. To enable enterprises to optimize, automate and re-imagine their business processes, SAP is implementing AI as an essential component of all software solutions.

After many years of research at the German Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) as Principal Researcher, Dr. Xu led Lenovo Group's AI Lab as Vice President from 2017 to 2020.

In 2013, she received a Google Focused Research Award for her contributions in the field of NLP. A year later, she was honored to become a DFKI Research Fellow. In 2019, Dr. Xu was named Top 50 Women in Technology by Forbes China.

Dr. Xu studied "Technical Translation" at Tongji University, Shanghai, and computational linguistics at Saarland University. After her dissertation in the field of applied natural language processing, Dr. Xu habilitated on the topic of Big Data text analytics.

Dr.-Ing. Susan Wegner is Managing Director at Deloitte Digital with a focus on Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics. She has more than 15 years of experience especially in the areas of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Platform/Software Design e.g. at Lufthansa Industry Solutions, Deutsche Telekom , T-Systems, Robert Bosch. In addition, she has held various positions at Motionlogic since 2013 (Mobility Analytics): Founder, CEO, Chairwoman and member of the Advisory Board. As a computer scientist and mathematician - she studied in Berlin and North Carolina (USA) - she had the privilege to be an early adopter of Artificial Intelligence, which led to her PhD.

Elisa Czerski is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and economist. Drawing from her academic research exploring the connection of AI, robotics, neuroscience, and ethics, she founded N Robotics in 2021. N Robotics is a full-stack robotics company that provides academic institutions and industry partners with customized robotics solutions for their specific application needs. The idea behind N Robotics is to provide fair and good access to high-end technologies and robots so that everyone can participate in the digital transformation. Previously, she founded the Rethink Ethics & Tech initiative with the goal of taking a new practical approach to philosophy and applying those academic skills to the question of how to develop, design, and use technologies that benefit all of the society and thus provide new practical solutions

Responsible for Strategy, Products and Business Development at Gestalt Robotics a berlin-based technology startup in the field of industry grade computer vision, AI & (5G) connectivity for mobile and stationary robotics.

Interdisciplinaily educated industrial engineer with a focus on renewable energy technologies and strategic management. Highest interest in technology driven start-ups and business models. Furthermore part-time entrepreneur as the founder of Riot Gin, a double gold awarded craft Gin, bringing Gin back to its roots.

Mirko Ross, born 1972, is an internationally recognized activist, expert, speaker, publicist and researcher in the field of Cyber Security and the Internet of Things. At the age of 14, he began investigating vulnerabilities in IT systems. Instead of a career as a hacker, he decided to turn to the bright sight of cybersecurity. Mirko has been member of the Expert Group on Internet Security of Things of the European Cyber Security Agency ENISA and advises the EU Commission as an expert. He is also active in international committees and research projects in the field of AI cyber security. Mirko is still closely associated with the positive hacker attitude and maker movement and promotes non-profit projects in the field of Open Data and IT education. In 2018 he founded asvin.io, with the aim of increasing cyber security in AI and software supply chains. asvin is providing software solutions for this purpose, leading to the best Cybersecurity Start-up in Germany by 2020 rated by it-sa and 2022 KI Champion. Mirko lives in the countryside and works in Stuttgart.

Dr. Sandro Gaycken is the director of the Digital Society Institute Berlin, founder and CLO of Monarch and founder and Chief Scientist at Hensoldt Cyber GmbH.

He is a Fellow at Oxford University's Martin School, an advisor in Harvard Kennedy School's AI Initiative, a project co-lead and research director at Le CNAM Paris, lecturer for cyberwarfare at the NATO Defense College, a director on cybersecurity and cyberdefense strategy in the NATO SPS program and has been named a key innovator within the Vulcan ecosystem of US Special Operations.

The main focus of his research and development activities is on cybersecurity, cyberwarfare, hacking, privacy, AI, and the deep tech information society. He is a strong advocate of disruptive innovation and disruptive regulation and has developed a number of cybersecurity technologies ranging from operating systems to hardware to offensive technologies.

As a policy advisor, Sandro consults international security institutions, policy-making bodies and companies in the fields of defense and IT. He served as a strategist in the first design of a German Foreign and Security Policy on IT, testified as a subject-matter expert in hearings in the Bundestag and a range of ministries, provides strategic advice to NATO, UNO, EU, IAEA, and a few other governments. He has served as a principal expert witness in international court cases concerned with military cyber espionage, took part in the "Weissbuch Prozess" of the German Ministry of Defense, appearing with Minister of Defense Ursula von der Leyen, and he was the moderator of the interdepartmental dialogues between the German MoD and the MoI.

As an industrial advisor, Mr Gaycken advises large enterprises in insurance, banking, production and defense and investment funds in the fields of IT, IT-sec, defense, intelligence, AI and other deep tech topics on a board level. He developed buyer guides and investment methodologies for deep tech topics. Bridging government and industry, he was instrumental in the German-Chinese "No-Spy"-Agreement and assisted in the White House USTR’s effort to mitigate industrial espionage.

Devoted to an open discourse and public enlightenment, he published more than 60 scientific monographs and papers, writes frequent op-eds in leading German newspapers like Handelsblatt, FAZ, Süddeutsche, and DIE ZEIT, and comments regularly on intelligence and deep tech matters on mainstream media outlets such as Tagesschau, Heute, NTV

Rana Gujral is an entrepreneur and CEO at Behavioral Signals, an enterprise software company that unravels behavioral signals from speech data with its acoustics based deep learning technology.

As a thought-leader in the AI/technology space, Rana often leads keynote sessions and joins panel discussions at industry events such as World Government Summit, VOICE Summit, The Next Web Conference, Collision, and The Web Summit. His bylines are featured in publications such as Hacker Noon, Voicebot.ai, SpeechTechMagazine, and is a contributing columnist at TechCrunch and Forbes. He’s been recognized as among 'Top 40 Voice AI Influencers to Follow' by SoundHound, ‘Entrepreneur of the Month’ by CIO Magazine, awarded ‘US-China Pioneer’ by IEIE, listed as a Top 10 Entrepreneur to follow in 2017 by Huffington Post and an AI Entrepreneur to Watch in Inc Magazine. In 2020 he won “Contributor of the Year: Chatbots” in Hacker Noon’s Noonie’s Awards.

Anna Ott is VP People and responsible for ESG initiatives at HV Capital, one of the leading VC funds in Europe. She has more than two decades of experience in HR, focussing on start-ups. She's worked with venture builders, incubators, and venture capitalists portfolios. At HV, she shares advice on, e.g. organizational design, hiring, DEI, growth and leadership. Before HV Capital, Anna worked as an independent consultant. Her clients spanned corporates, SMBs and start-ups. She also advised various European HR Tech start-ups. Anna is part of Capital Magazine's Top 40 under 40. She is also acknowledged as an HR Influencer by various leading magazines in this space.

Jessica Fritz is Digital Technology Manager for Trusted Information, Disinformation, AI-disinformation technologies and Cybersecurity and has been with VDE since 2013. She imparts knowledge in dealing with disinformation from a regulatory, psychological, and information technology perspective. AI-manipulated disinformation, Deep Fakes, Bots and their negative impact on democracy, justice and the economy are her primary focus here.

From Munich to Peking to San Francisco to Berlin! My background is in data science and product management. I have operational experience in developing formal data valuation models, building data platforms and building & shipping B2B SaaS products.

As a professional question asker and passionate learner, Natalie found that the intersection of AI, code, and security sparks joy. She is an OpenAI Developer Ambassador, a Google Developer Expert for Go and consulting companies that want to make the best of AI. In addition to being a university lecturer teaching DevOps, she is also a public speaker and conference and community organizer in Berlin. Throughout her career, she has worked on four different continents as an engineering manager, software and hardware engineer, developer advocate, and co-founder of a mobile start-up.

Dr. Léa Steinacker is an award-winning journalist, entrepreneur, and social scientist with a PhD in the social dimensions of artificially intelligent systems (AI). Her work focuses on how technology interacts with people, practices, and the planet. She has published on topics like automated facial recognition, synthetic voice generation, quantum computing, and her original framework of Code Capital. With her expertise in emerging technologies and their wide-ranging effects, she is a Lecturer at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, teaching courses such as ""Social and Economic Impacts of Artificial Intelligence"". In 2018, Léa co-founded and is now the Chief Innovation Officer of ada learning, a learning and development community that equips leaders from diverse organizations for the future through content, live experiences, and practical innovation projects. Since its inception, ada has connected and worked with thousands of fellows from DAX organzations, SMEs, governments and NGOs. Previously, Léa served as the Chief Innovation Officer of WirtschaftsWoche, Germany's leading business magazine, where she covered the future of work and socio-technological change. Prior to joining Handelsblatt Media Group, she worked with social justice NGOs in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was selected as a Forbes 30 Under 30 leader, one of Medium Magazine’s Top 30 Under 30 journalists, a BCG Thought Leader, and an Atlantik Brücke Young Leader. In 2011, she was awarded the Henry Richardson Labouisse Prize. Léa holds degrees from Princeton University (A.B.), the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (MPP), and the University of St. Gallen (PhD).

In the founding roles of CMO and Chief Impact Manager, he helped to grow Omdena to the world´s largest platform for impact-driven AI development. Omdena has more than 90 local chapters across the world and completed 300 projects with impact-driven companies, startups, and civil society.

Dr. Andreas Liebl is Managing Director of the appliedAI Initiative and the appliedAI Institute for Europe with the goal to Shape Europe's innovative power in AI by working on advancing organizations to highest levels of AI maturity and by creating state of the art AI applications. He is Steering Committee member in the Global Partnership on AI and serves as expert regarding innovation and commercialization next to other advisory roles. He previously was one of the Managing Directors of UnternehmerTUM, worked for McKinsey and did his PhD at the Technical University of Munich.

Founder of Hub France IA and ALEIA, Antoine is fully invested to make European AI a chance for European tech. Previously, Antoine founded 2 start ups in AI & mobility and cloud services. Antoine graduated from MSc at Centrale Lyon and an MBA at Paris Sorbonne

Dr Christian Temath has been managing director of the competence platform KI.NRW since September 2020. KI.NRW is the central contact point for artificial intelligence (AI) in North Rhine-Westphalia. At the Fraunhofer IAIS in Sankt Augustin, he and his team are working on establishing the "AI made in NRW" brand and strengthening the technological sovereignty of North Rhine-Westphalia. A PhD in Business Informatics, he has many years of experience in management consulting in the field of technology as well as in the practical application of AI technologies at an international e-commerce company.

Dr. Ursula Feindor-Schmidt, LL.M. is senior partner at the specialized Media Law boutique Lausen Rechtsanwaelte. She has a doctorate and a master’s degree in IP law and a specialised lawyers degree for copyright and media law. She is consulting national and international clients with regard to their digital strategies and is entrusted with high level test cases on platform liability and copyright compliance. She is also a specialist in the developing field of artificial intelligence, in deploying AI for legal tech and in AI regulation. She is a regular lecturer and expert speaker at national and international events, eg for Akademie der deutschen Medien, the International Publishers Association or the Fordham IP Conference.

Steffen Wittenauer is considered one of the most renowned experts in the field of the solution IBM Planning Analytics (TM1) worldwide. As an Executive Consultant and Executive Solution Specialist at IBM, he designs global planning and reporting solutions for corporations and medium-sized customers, which are used in a wide variety of departments, sometimes with thousands of users. In addition to classic planning, the topic of sustainability planning is currently in his focus. Here, not only the consideration of the past is relevant, but above all the planning, simulation and optimization of the company's future including linked financial aspects towards a holistic corporate strategy is of great importance.