Speakers

International and national speakers from science, economy and politics will give a speech at AiCon2022.
Please check this page for constant updates.

Andreas Barraud

Member of the Government of the Canton Schwyz

Andreas Barraud is Member of the Government of Canton Schwyz and Head of the Department for Economic Affairs.

Dr. Mira Wolf-Bauwens

Research Innovation Leader and IBM Quantum Distinguished Ambassador

Dr. Mira Wolf-Bauwens is Research Innovation Leader and IBM Quantum Distinguished Ambassador at the IBM Client Center Think Lab Europe at IBM Research Europe. She is responsible for working with clients on Quantum Computing and also covers the industries Healthcare & Life Sciences, Chemicals & Petroleum, Energy & Utilities as well as Media & Entertainment.

Peter Blank

Senior Manager Process Intelligence, PwC Switzerland

Peter Blank is a Senior Manager leading the Swiss Center of Excellence for Process Intelligence. He has focused on Process Intelligence for more than eight years and led a multitude of complex, international engagements focused on data driven insight discovery. With his team, Peter has successfully implemented more than 200 process intelligence projects over the past five year, working for clients across all industries.

Selçuk Boydak

Entrepreneur and investor, including AI Business School, Global AI Hub, 10million.AI

Selçuk Boydak builds innovative companies in the field of digital technologies – currently mainly startups in the field of artificial intelligence. These include companies in Switzerland such as “AI Business School”, a digital innovation and collaboration platform for large companies and a provider of digital training programs, or “Global AI Hub”, a global community for top digital talent, but also “10million.AI”, a global non-profit project to provide 10 million people worldwide, especially women, with free access to first-class education.

Lise Crettaz

Sales Leader, Technology Software, IBM Switzerland

Lise is leading the Data & AI and Automation team at IBM Switzerland. She is engaged in a broad range of industries from Financial Services to Life Sciences passing through Consumer Goods and Government entities. Her strength is to understand the current stage of an organistion, its wishes and needs to bring the technology that will support its evolution.

Urs Durrer

Head of Office for Economy, Canton Schwyz

Urs Durrer has been in charge of the Office of Economic Affairs of the Canton of Schwyz since 2010 and he is the initiator of the AiCon series. He implements the liberal economic policy of the Canton of Schwyz, which generates qualified jobs and creates the framework conditions for producing in an environmentally friendly manner and with high added value. The Canton of Schwyz promotes innovation, knowledge and technology transfer around digitalization.

Martin Flisek

Senior Manager, Digital Transformation Expert, PwC Switzerland

Martin Flisek is Senior Manager at PwC Switzerland in the Data & Analytics team. Martin has been leading various successful digital transformations in the Swiss financial industry for many years now. Currently, his focus is on compliance and trading surveillance at banks, regulators and financial service providers.

Prof. Luca Maria Gambardella

Co-founder of Artificialy

Luca Maria Gambardella is one of the co-founders of Artificialy and has a 35 years of experience in AI. He is Vice-Rector for Innovation and relationship with Companies at USI – Università della Svizzera Italiana, Full Professor at the Faculty of Informatics USI and Professor at IDSIA – “Dalle Molle” Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research, the institute he directed for 25 years, until 2020. He has successfully designed, conducted and delivered AI and ML projects with Swiss and international companies. He has published more than 300 AI-related scientific articles. He has been recently named by Bilanz magazine among the top 100 Digital Shapers in Switzerland both in 2020 and 2021.

Dr. Titus Haas

Innovation Manager at Bystronic Laser AG

Dr. Titus Haas has been Innovation Manager at Bystronic since March 2021, a company he joined in 2018. In this position, he strengthens the Bystronic’s global technology and innovation community and directly reports to the Chief Technology Officer. Prior to the current position, he was a system engineer at Bystronic and a scientific researcher at inspire AG/ETH Zurich. During the Master and Doctoral Studies at ETH Zurich, Dr. Titus Haas gained a lot of experience in industrial engineering, especially in software-based machine tool optimization.

PD Dr. Alexander Ilic

Executive Director and a co-founder of the ETH AI Center

PD Dr. Alexander Ilic is the Executive Director and a co-founder of the ETH AI Center. He completed his habilitation at University of St. Gallen (HSG), holds a PhD from ETH Zurich, and a MSc from TU Munich. Alex is a Swiss-German deep tech entrepreneur, researcher, and investor. He co-founded the computer vision start-up Dacuda which he successfully sold to the Augmented Reality pioneer Magic Leap in 2017. He served as head of Magic Leap Switzerland from Feb 2017 to August 2020 where he built up the R&D Center of Excellence for Computer Vision & Deep Learning in Zurich and a R&D Center of Excellence for Advanced Photonics in Lausanne. He was named twice “Entrepreneur of the Year” (2011 by HSG, 2012 by EY) and won several entrepreneurship prizes including the Swiss Economic Award.

Pascal Kaufmann

Founder of Starmind, President of the Mindfire Foundation

Pascal is a neuroscientist-turned-entrepreneur pushing the limits of the unknown, devoted to the creation of human level Artificial Intelligence for empowering humans. Having received his Master’s Degree in Neuroscience and Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and Northwestern University in Evanston, IL (USA), he continued more in-depth studies at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Working at the interface between brains and machines he tackles the secrets of neural networks and brain activity. Pascal is one of the Founders of Starmind, a tech company connecting employees and turning them into powerful problem-solving networks. In 2017, Kaufmann initiated the non-profit Mindfire foundation dedicated to progressing AI openly, responsibly and ethically. Ultimately, to use the power of human level AI to solve our most pressing global challenges.

Matthias Leybold

Data & Analytics Leader, PwC Switzerland

Matthias leads the Data & Analytics team of PwC Switzerland, an integral part of PwC’s Digital Intelligence practice. A computational linguist by trade, his particular area of expertise is the design and implementation of NLP and search driven solutions which unlock the value of unstructured big data, from within and outside the enterprise and which enable intelligent automation of business processes.
Matthias has 20+ years of management consulting experience and has led complex analytics projects – both strategy and implementation – with clients from across different industries such as Pharma and Life Sciences, Financial Services and Manufacturing.

Christian Müller, SIX Group

Head Surveillance & Enforcement at SIX Exchange Regulation AG (SER)

Christian leads the team responsible for surveilling the SIX Exchanges (SIX, SDX and CO:RE) to ensure that any insider trading, price and market manipulation and other irregular activities and regulatory breaches are detected. He joined SER in 2018 as a member of the management team and has worked for international banks e.g. Credit Suisse, Julius Baer Group etc. mainly in the area of Compliance Trading for more than 20 years. Furthermore he is a speaker and provides lectures at the University of Zurich and the Lucerne University of applied Sciences and arts.

Dr. Heike Riel

Dr. Heike Riel is IBM Fellow, Head of Science & Technology and Lead of IBM Research Quantum Europe & Africa

IBM Fellow, Head of Science & Technology and Lead of IBM Research Quantum Europe & Africa. She leads the research agenda and operation of the Science & Technology department aiming to create scientific and technological breakthroughs in Quantum Computing and Technologies, Physics of Artificial Intelligence, Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and to explore new directions to computing.

Daniel Scheiber

Group Head of Conversational AI at CREALOGIX

Daniel Scheiber is Group Head of Conversational AI at CREALOGIX, a digital banking software provider. In his role he drives said strategic business unit forward on a global scale. Having held various positions in CREALOGIX, he has a wide understanding of key stakeholders such as Sales and Product Management. Daniel has an extensive knowledge and many years of experience in the IT industry and digitalization.

Dr. Sabrina Schiele

Group Data Strategy Lead at Merck

Sabrina leads the team driving and coordinating the implementation, tracking and development of the Group Data Strategy in the Merck Data Office. She joined Merck in July 2021 as the Group Data Strategy Lead, bringing experience as Head of Data & Analytics in various companies and as a consultant in different industries to the role. She holds a Computer Science degree from RWTH Aachen, a PhD in Information Systems from University of Cologne (both Germany).

Philipp Schmid

Head Research and Business Development Industry 4.0 & Machine Learning, CSEM

Philipp Schmid is Head Research and Business Development for Industry 4.0 & Machine Learning at CSEM Regional Centers. He holds an engineering degree in Microtechnology (Dipl. Ing. FH) focused in Mechatronics, Automation and Robotics and a MAS in Management, Technology and Economics from ETH Zürich. Before joining the CSEM in 2006 he worked in several industrial companies including Roche and spent one year as research fellow at the ICT Robotics group (QCAT/CSIRO) in Australia. From his experience as Senior R&D engineer and project manager he gained a profound expertise in delivery of advanced solutions in robotics and machine learning to industry. Now he manages the research, development and industrialization of new technologies for automation applications.

Dr. Anika Schumann

Research Manager Artificial Intelligence for Industries at IBM Research

Dr. Anika Schumann is an internationally recognized expert for Artificial Intelligence Diagnosis and a member of the OECD expert group on task automatability. At IBM Research –Zurich she leads IBM’s internal and external Artificial Intelligence Research partnerships in Europe.

Stephan Sigrist

Founder and Head of W.I.R.E.

The founder and head of the W.I.R.E. think tank has spent many years analysing interdisciplinary developments in business and society, focusing on the implications of digitisation in the life sciences, financial services, media, infrastructure and mobility. He is the publisher of the ABSTRAKT book series, author of a number of publications and a keynote speaker at international conferences. With W.I.R.E., he advises desicion-makers on the development of long-term strategies, innovation projects and supports companies in the redesign of future-oriented spaces for employees and the exchange with clients. After studying biochemistry at the ETH Zurich, he initially joined Hoffman-La Roche’s medical research team. He subsequently went on to work at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants as a management consultant and at the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute. Stephan is a member of the Governing Board of the aha! Swiss Allergy Centre and was member of the Innovation Council of Innosuisse, the federal agency concerned with promoting science-based innovation.

Dr. Noam Slonim

Project Debater, Principal Investigator and Distinguished Engineer at IBM Research (Haifa)

Noam Slonim is a Distinguished Engineer at IBM Research AI. He received his doctorate from the Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation at the Hebrew University and held a post-doc position at the Genomics Institute at Princeton University. During his PhD, Noam received the best paper award in UAI and ECIR, and the best presentation award at SIGIR. Noam joined IBM Research – Haifa in 2007, and in 2011 he proposed to develop Project Debater. He has been serving as the Principal Investigator of the project since then. Noam published around 60 peer reviewed articles, focusing on the last few years on advancing the emerging field of Computational Argumentation. Finally, Noam used to have a secondary career as a TV script writer. Coincidentally, or not, in a sitcom he co-created back in 1998, the last episode was focused on competitive debates.

Fabian Streiff

Head of Economic Development at Amt für Wirtschaft und Arbeit, Kanton Zürich

Fabian Streiff is in charge of economic development for the Canton of Zurich and, together with his team, is committed to a strong, competitive and attractive business and innovation location. This includes, among other things, the sandbox for artificial intelligence, bringing together business, science and administration.

Raphael von Thiessen

Project manager for artificial intelligence at the Canton of Zurich

Raphael von Thiessen delivers projects in technology and innovation. As an editor for the think tank W.I.R.E., he published multiple books such as Decoding Artificial Intelligence (NZZ Libro 2020). In his current roles as a project lead of the innovation-sandbox for artificial intelligence, he enables the public administration to develop competencies in regulation, data management and innovation.

Nadja Walti

Manager Process Intelligence, PwC Switzerland

Nadja is a Manager with 6+ years of data analytics and process mining experience. She is leading the integration of process analytics into the lean six sigma process improvement framework. She specializes in process mining and intelligence with data from standard and non-standard ERP systems. Apart from her operational work on client projects, she is also heavily involved in the development of improved and more detailed transformation and processing scripts.

Dr. Stefan Woerner

IBM Quantum Applications Research & Software Lead and a Principal Research Staff Member in the Quantum Technologies group of the Science & Technology department at IBM Research

Dr. Stefan Woerner is the IBM Quantum Applications Research & Software Lead and a Principal Research Staff Member in the Quantum Technologies group of the Science & Technology department at IBM Research – Zurich. The focus of his research is the development and analysis of quantum algorithms for optimization, simulation, and machine learning as well as their practical applications, particularly in finance or supply chain management.

Prof. Marco Zaffalon

Chief Scientist, Artificialy

Marco Zaffalon is Professor at SUPSI, Scientific Director at IDSIA and Chief Scientist at Artificialy that he cofounded in 2020. Marco has published more than 150 scientific articles and has taken part to the main AI and ML conferences worldwide; based on the quality of his published research, he has been listed among top 2% scientist worldwide in a index compiled at Stanford University. He mostly focuses on explainable, robust and causal methods. He has cumulatively been granted over 15 millions Swiss francs from research projects and direct mandates from companies. He has worked with UBS, Novartis, Mastercard, and several other among world’s largest companies.

Melanie Zeilinger

Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering at ETH Zurich

Melanie Zeilinger is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering at ETH Zurich, Switzerland where she leads the Intelligent Control Systems group. She received the Diploma degree in Engineering Cybernetics from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, in 2006, and the Ph.D. degree with honors in electrical engineering from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in 2011. From 2011 to 2012 she was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. She was a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany until 2015 and with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, CA, USA, from 2012 to 2014. From 2018 to 2019 she was a professor at the University of Freiburg, Germany. She is one of the organizers of the new Conference on Learning for Dynamics and Control (L4DC). Her research interests include learning-based control with applications to robotics and human-in-the-loop control.

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