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Speakers
Empowering Global Data Spaces, Shaping Tomorrow’s Cloud Infrastructure
Summit 2024 Speakers
Kuldar Aas
Data Governance Programme Lead, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications for Estonia
Ulrich Ahle
Gaia-X, CEO
Ulrich is a reputed executive in the IT sector, formerly Vice President and leader of the Manufacturing and Industrie 4.0 System Integration business at Atos in Germany. He is also founder and member of the Board of the International Data Spaces Association in Germany and served 16 years on the Board of the prostep IVIP organization until April 2018. After an apprenticeship as toolmaker at Hella KG, he studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Paderborn. In his career, Ahle hea ld several positions as development engineer, Director of PLM services, sales director and Vice President. He has been part of Nixdorf a Computer AG, Siemens and Atos. From January 2017 to November 2023 Ulrich Ahle was Chief Executive Officer of the FIWARE Foundation headquartered in Berlin, Germany.
Tanja Alemany Sánchez de León
Deputy Director-General for Innovation Policy and Digital Economy, Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Germany
Benjamin Brake
Director General, Digital and Data Policy, German Federal Ministry of Digital Affairs and Transport
Roland Fadrany
Chief Operating Officer, Gaia-X
Roland is the COO of Gaia-X from May 2022 onwards. He establishes effective policies, processes and organisations that promote the Gaia-X vision and mission. With over 20 years of international management and consulting experience in the IT industry, he brings strong leadership and digitalisation knowledge to the team. He has led a global service line, successfully delivered complex, critical programs, and managed multinational development-, delivery- and partner organisations at companies like EDS, HP, A1 Telekom Austria, Microsoft and Detecon. Roland oversaw comprehensive innovation and transformation initiatives in various industries in Europe and the USA. He holds a master’s degree in “Engineering Management” from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. He speaks English and German and lives in Vienna.
Ana García Robles
Secretary General, BDVA
CT Professional with a strong background in engineering, network design, service design, and technology strategy with working knowledge in Telecommunications, Mobile Technologies, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Smart Cities, and Living Labs. Experience in Research to Market implementation and technology application in several business sectors including Urban Innovation, Healthcare, Smart Manufacturing, AgriFood, Mobility, Education, Public Sector, etc. The professional experience developed over 20 years partly in the Telecom Industry and partly managing research and innovation communities, projects, and programmes as well as technology roadmaps with industry, research and policy makers at the European level. Experience both in the private sector and in public-private environments. Over 15 years working in international and multicultural environments, with experience managing technical, multidisciplinary and distributed teams. Extensive experience building strategic alliances with technology vendors and providers, SMEs, research institutions and public authorities (mainly municipal and regional governments) and policymakers. Speaker at public events and conferences. The impact and value of ICT technologies (in particular Data, AI and Mobile technologies) in business and society and innovation ecosystems are strong interests of mine. I would define myself as a Connector and an Implementer. Technology Strategy is my professional passion.
Pierre Gronlier
Chief Innovation Officer, Gaia-X
Pierre Gronlier has been working in the IT industry for the last twelve years, with a particular focus on operationalising and scaling systems in the field of real-time communication and cloud services. With a penchant for science and an academic background in embedded real-time systems and applied mathematics in signal processing and machine learning, he started as a research engineer in video compression before joining Skype and Microsoft in Estonia. He then moved to OVHcloud in France as a Cloud Solution Architect.
Dr Robert Habeck
Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Federal Republic of Germany
Catherine Jestin
BoD Chairwoman, Gaia-X; Executive Vice President Digital and Information Management, Airbus
Executive Vice President Digital and Information Management at Airbus since 1 July 2021 and member of the Company’s Executive Committee. Catherine has previously held the position of Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Airbus since March 2020. In this role, she drove state-of-the-art Information Technology systems and solutions supporting Airbus employees, customers and suppliers. Prior to this position, Catherine was Chief Information Officer at Airbus Helicopters, a role she held from July 2013 to February 2020. Before joining Airbus, Catherine held various positions, between 2007 and 2013, at Rio Tinto in Montreal, Canada, in Information Systems & Technology (IS&T). Catherine also spent 17 years at Accenture and was nominated Partner in 2002, a position she held for five years.
Petteri Kivimäki
CTO, Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions
Petteri Kivimäki is one of Europe’s leading technical experts in digital government and interoperability solutions. His career spans from software development to crafting complex cloud and technology architectures for both companies and public administrations. Petteri has worked as the technical lead responsible for implementing the X-Road data exchange layer as the national interoperability solution in Finland. He also coordinated the joint open-source software development of X-Road between Finland and Estonia. Before joining the Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS) as its Chief Technology Officer in 2018, Petteri worked as a technology architect in a leading global consultancy. Petteri earned a Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering from Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Finland. He is also a certified cloud and technology architect, holding multiple certificates from renowned entities like AWS, Microsoft, and Google. An active participant in the tech community, Petteri has authored several articles on topics such as open-source software and APIs. He is also a regular contributor to technical working groups and a sought-after speaker at software conferences.
Noboru Koshizuka
Professor, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, The University of Tokyo
He received the D.S. degrees in computer science in 1994 from Graduate School of Science, the University of Tokyo.
After working as an assistant professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo, he has been a professor since 2009.
He leads research in various fields, including Chairman of Data Society Alliance, Smart City Sociel Implementation Consortium, Green x Digital Consortium, Weather x Business Consortium, and so on.
With a focus on computer science, he has recently been involved in research on IoT, data infrastructure, and smart cities.
Sven Loeffler
Head of Dataspaces and Data Products, T-Systems International
Sven Löffler is a high-level expert in business intelligence and the data economy, with over 25 years of experience in the field. He currently serves as Tribe & Chapter Lead for the Telekom Data Intelligence Hub (DIH), where he is pioneering the development of sovereign, trustful, and user friendly end-to-end data sharing services to enable real-life usage of dataspace technologies.
Lars Nagel
CEO, IDSA
Lars Nagel is CEO of the International Data Spaces Association since its foundation in 2016. He is also a member of the Executive Board of Digital Hub Management GmbH, where he manages innovation and technology transfer. He has been a member of the first board of directors of Gaia-X and held the role of COO of Gaia-X AISBL in the first year. Previously, Lars founded and led GlobalGate, a provider of learning environments for industrial and research institutions. Lars studied Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Dortmund and graduated with a diploma in Engineering.
Pearse O’Donohue
Director, Future Networks Directorate, DG CNECT, European Commission
Pearse O’Donohue is Director for the Future Networks Directorate of DG CONNECT, European Commission, dealing with policy development and research as regards 5G networks, IoT, cloud and data flows, service platforms and next generation Internet.
Boris Otto
Professor for Industrial Information Management, TU Dortmund University; Director, Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering
Klaus Ottradovetz
Distinguished Expert, Member of the Eviden Scientific community at Eviden International Germany GmbH
Alberto Palomo
Chief Strategy Officer, Gaia-X
Originally from Madrid, he obtained a PhD in Mathematical Physics, prior to working at an R+D lab in Canada developing numerical simulations for artificial neural networks. Alberto then spent the following 5 years coordinating the technical development of Data Science applications for a large electric utility company in the USA. In 2021, he was appointed Chief Data Officer for the Government of Spain, a novel technopolitical role aimed at prescribing data innovation policy, more so than the management of datasets. Under his lead, the Spanish National Data Office closely followed the innovative developments around European cloud and data, and with that assembled an architectural and governance model for the deployment of data spaces in Spain. Nationally, they also coordinated several WGs across Spanish ministries, federal agencies and industrial stakeholders, as well as promoted a series of normalisation standards for data management and governance.
Alessandra Perna
Senior Market Adoption Manager, Gaia-X
Alessandra Perna is Senior Market Adoption Manager at Gaia-X. She has joined Gaia-X since its beginning, heading the coordination of Gaia-X communities, including Gaia-X Hubs and industry ecosystems. She leads Gaia-X Endorsement Program, supporting projects and business initiatives to advance Gaia-X adoption in the market. She also oversees the Gaia-X Data Spaces Business Committee and manages the operations of the Data Spaces Business Alliance. Alessandra previously worked on program management in International Associations of different sectors. She holds a degree cum laude in Philosophy, a master’s degree cum laude in Neuroethics and a Master’s in European Project Management. She speaks English, Italian and French and has a beginner’s level of Hungarian.
Catherine Simonnin
Tech lead Trust, Design Architecture & Innovation Governance, ORANGE/OBS/CTIO/DA/Emerging Technology & Incubation
Ville Sirviö
BoD Member, Gaia-X; Coordinator, Gaia-X Hub Finland; CEO, Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS)
Ville Sirviö leads the Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS), overseeing the development of the X-Road® open-source software, which has hundreds of millions of end users worldwide. He also contributes his expertise as a board member of the Gaia-X European Association for Data and Cloud, advancing the development of European data spaces. With a diverse background ranging from startups to listed companies, Sirviö brings a wealth of experience in digital transformation. He has led organisations specialising in software development, digital commerce, digital government, interoperability, and open-source software. Throughout his career, he has been a frequent speaker and panellist at various technology conferences and events.
Hubert Tardieu
Independent Board Member, Gaia-X
After 27 years in Sema then SchlumbergerSema then Atos in various positions on Executive Committee including EVP for Global Telecom, Global Finance, Global Consulting& Systems Integration, Hubert Tardieu has been the advisor of Atos CEO helping him to form the vision of what will be our world in 5 years ahead. To help him in this task he formed the Atos Scientific Community in June 2009 which he chaired until October 2020. He is now consultant with his own company. Hubert Tardieu is the author of several books on Information System Design Methodology Merise and in March 2020: “Deliberately Digital: Rewriting Enterprise DNA for enduring success” Tardieu and all. Springer ed Hubert Tardieu has been successively, in 2020 the Interim CEO then in 2021 the Chairman of the Board of the Gaia-X AISBL until June 7. He is currently Independent Board Member in charge of relationships with governments.
