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CEO of Clever Cloud Engineer, developer, lecturer and multi-entrepreneur, Quentin Adam has established himself as a major figure in the French digital industry, internationally recognised by the community of creators of digital tools and services. He founded Clever Cloud in 2010, anticipating the massive shift in computing to the cloud and the search by developers and decision-makers for simplified and optimised hosting solutions, allowing them to be deployed and maintained in operational conditions in a totally automated manner. With customers in more than 120 countries, Quentin Adam has built Clever Cloud into a brand that is recognised for its technological excellence, and a fast-growing company. In March 2020, when the Covid-19 crisis emerged in Europe, he co-founded the MakAir project, for which he brought together and coordinated more than 300 talents from all different trades to design and build the first open source software-driven artificial respirator in just a few weeks, meeting the demanding industrial standards of health safety, and the requirements of decentralised, low-cost manufacturing worldwide. Committed to the conquest of European digital sovereignty, he chairs the Open Internet Project association, which fights against the abuse of dominant positions in the European digital market. Director of the Technical Secretariat at BAIDATA Association Jesús is a Telecommunications Engineer and holds an MBA from Ramon Llull University in Barcelona. He joined Innovalia in 2018 and since then he is responsible for the IDSA Hub Spain. He is currently the director of the technical secretariat of the BAIDATA Association, an initiative promoted by IDSA Hub Spain to promote the data economy in the Iberian Peninsula. Head of Project Management Office, ELIXIR Juan is the Head of the Project Management Office at ELIXIR, the European infrastructure for bioinformatics and life-science data, based in Hinxton, UK. With a computer Science background, he worked at Accenture for twelve years, leading ICT projects for global leaders in their market and contributing to the establishment of the Spain Delivery centre in Malaga. PhD and Vice-President Technology & Research Dawex Frédéric Bellaiche is a PhD and Vice President of Technology and Research at Dawex. He is responsible for the strategic development and integration of the most advanced technologies within the Dawex organization and product architecture. Software Engineer, Tecnalia Gorka Benguria Elguezabal is a Software Engineer from the University of Deusto. Gorka has worked since 1998 in the execution and direction of research projects related to information and communication technologies. During this period he has covered various research areas including processes and quality models, development and migration to service-based solutions and, in recent years, migration of complex systems to cloud and edge infrastructures. He has been involved in the application of these technologies in diverse vertical domains such as Health, Energy and Public Administration. Chief Membership Officer of Eclipse Foundation Since 2002, Gael has accumulated specialized experience with Open Source communities. In 2010, he joined the Eclipse ecosystem as the manager of OPEES, a European project that resulted in the creation of PolarSys, the Eclipse Working Group dedicated to Open Source tools for Embedded Systems. He has primarily worked in the Telecommunications, IT, and Embedded Systems industries since starting in the software industry in 1996. Since 2013, he has contributed to the Eclipse ecosystem development in Europe, and he is the Conference chair of EclipseCon France. CEO of Gaia-X TU Berlin team leader Gaia-X 4 PLC-AAD (Gaia-X 4 Future Mobility) CEO of Riddle&Code AI for Decarbonization Technical Leader, Atos Cloud and Orchestator Leader Associate Professor, Deputy Vice-rector for Research & Transfer at Universitat de Lleida Senior Business Consultant CTO of Gaia-X Software Engineer, Distributed Ledger Technologies and Privacy Enhancing Technologies for Tecnalia Research Associate German Aerospace Center I am a research associate at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) – Institute of Transportation Systems. I have a master’s degree in computer science and I am currently doing my PhD at DLR. I started in the railroad domain in testing, verification and validation of train control systems. Currently, I am researching in the automotive domain in the area of virtual verification and validation using real data. I am working in the GAIAX 4 future mobility PLC-AAD project as an internal project leader and researcher for a data-driven verification and validation approach for ADAS/AD systems. CTO FIWARE Juanjo Hierro (m) holds the CTO position within FIWARE Foundation where he effectively moved as full employee on January 1st, 2017. He obtained a degree in Computer Science in 1990 from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM) and owns a certificate of research proficiency. In 1990, Juanjo joined Telefónica I+D where he stayed until he joined FIWARE Foundation. During his career at Telefónica, Juanjo had different management responsibilities in the development of mission-critical systems for Telefónica as well as several R&D projects. In April 2011, he became the Chief Architect of the FIWARE programme combining this role with the one of the CTO of the IoT Division at Telefónica R&D since November 2013. Besides his CTO position at FIWARE Foundation, Juanjo also plays the role of Chairman of the Technical Steering Committee which drives the technical direction of the FIWARE open source platform. Senior Researcher in Tecnalia Research & Innnovation. Urtza Iturraspe BSc in Computer Engineering from Deusto University. Bilbao – Spain. 2000,MSc in “E-Business” from Deusto University. Bilbao-Spain. 2000-2001 , MSC in “Linguistic Technologies” from University of Basque Country in 2007 and Research Sufficiency Degree. In Linguistic Technologies for University of Basque Country in 2007. From September 2000 to July 2001, she worked as teacher in Computer Architecture, Automatic, Electronic and Telecommunications Department of the University of Deusto. Since 2001 she works as a researcher at Tecnalia Research & Innovation, belonging to Digital –High Performance Architecure Area. She has worked on several R&D projects involving different technologies as Linguistic Technologies, Semantic Technologies, Linked Data and no-relational database systems, Machine Learning algorithms, IDS and Gaia-X. Business Development at deltaDAO AG Thomas is a Business Developer at deltaDAO AG, focusing on driving innovation in decentralized data spaces. With a background in industrial engineering, he understands the critical role of data and AI, especially in the mobility and manufacturing sectors. His commitment to deltaDAO aims to promote a decentralized and fair data economy throughout Europe and beyond. deltaDAO has established itself as a pioneer in the European data infrastructure landscape by developing Pontus-X, the first fully decentralized data space and Web3 ecosystem for Gaia-X, in 2021. The company is also responsible for the green GEN-X network, which now hosts several Gaia-X lighthouse projects and is entirely governed by European federators.“ Head of Cybersecurity & Blockchain at Tecnalia Head of Cybersecurity & Blockchain at Tecnalia, Speaker, Professor. Oscar is co-author of several books and regular contributor to the general media (TV, radio, press). Oscar is member of Hyperledger Speakers Bureau, EEA & Alastria, and of the main cybersecurity associations such as the European Cyber Security Organization (ECSO), among others. Oscar participates in UNE/ISO standardisation groups related to blockchain and cybersecurity, as well as advising on blockchain-related policies at the OECD. Director of Innovalia Member of the EMEA Chief Technology Office, Intel Germany Specialist in Blockchain Technology and Self-sovereign Identity Geert Machtelinckx is a specialist in blockchain technology and self-sovereign identity. He has an expertise of over 20 years in the financial industry. CTO Digital Unit in Tecnalia Research & Innovation Co-Founder and Business Lead, deltaDAO AG Kai is the Co-Founder and Business Lead of deltaDAO AG and the Lead of the Gaia-X Open-Source Software (OSS) community. With a background in IT and Economics, he is excited to contribute to the federated and sustainable European data infrastructure the Gaia-X open-source community is bringing to life. deltaDAO is responsible for creating Pontus-X, the first Web3 ecosystem for Gaia-X, in 2021, and the green GEN-X network, which is now the home of several Gaia-X lighthouse projects and entirely run and governed by European federators. Senior Developer Arsys Assistant Professor in the Telematics System Department and a Senior Researcher in the Next Generation Internet Research Group at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Andres Munoz-Arcentales (Santo Domingo – Ecuador, 1989). He graduated as Telematics Engineer (‘13) from (ESPOL, Ecuador), a Master’s Degree in Networking Engineering and Telematic Services from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (‘17) and the Ph.D. Degree in Telematics Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica of Madrid in (‘21). He has worked as Assistant Professor of Telematics Department from 2013 to 2016 at Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral. Currently, He is an Assistant Professor (‘23) in the Telematics System Department and a Senior Researcher in the Next Generation Internet Research Group at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid since October 2017 his research interests are focused on the fields of Smart Spaces, Data Fusion, Data Spaces, Machine Learning, Digital Twins, Cloud and Edge Computing and Big Data infrastructure. BoD Member Gaia-X Prof. Boris Otto (born in Hamburg, Germany in 1971) became the executive director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering ISST in Dortmund on January 1, 2017. Since September of 2013, he has held the Chair for Industrial Information Management (until August 31, 2018 the Audi Foundation Chair for Supply Net Order Management) at the LogistikCampus of TU Dortmund. He is also a member of the boards of directors of the Gaia-X, European Association for Data and Cloud, AISBL and the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA). After studying industrial engineering in Hamburg, Otto did his doctorate at the University of Stuttgart under Prof. Hans-Jörg Bullinger, former president of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. He habilitated at the University of St. Gallen’s Institute of Information Management, where he founded and managed the Corporate Data Quality competence center. His career path also included PricewaterhouseCoopers, SAP, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO. Furthermore, Otto was a Research Fellow at the Center for Digital Strategies, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA. He joined Fraunhofer ISST in 2014 with the founding of the Fraunhofer Innovation Center for Logistics and IT (FILIT). Research Assistant and Teaching Collaborator in the Next Generation Internet Group at UPM Alejandro Pozo Huertas received the M.Sc. Degree in Telecommunication Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in 2017 and subsequently completed his PhD in the telematic systems engineering program from Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Telecomunicación in 2022. The doctoral thesis was graded “cum laude” and received international mention by carrying out a three-month international stay at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, Switzerland. The main research area during the PhD was Identity Management and Access Controls Systems, particularly delegated authentication on devices, electronic Identification and Data Usage Control. Meanwhile, he works as Research Assistant and Teaching Collaborator in the Next Generation Internet Group at UPM. As a result of his research, he published several papers in high-rated international journals and conferences such as IEEE Access or Sensors. He also participated in several high-impact European projects such as FIWARE, eID-FIWARE, eID4U, Boost 4.0 and YODA, among others. Through the projects, he becomes one of the main collaborators in various European open-source software from the FIWARE foundation. Then from 2021 to 2022, he reconciled his work in the research group with a Spanish start-up for designing and developing a remote simultaneous interpreting tool. He gained extensive knowledge regarding videoconference technologies and a different perspective of academia which can be useful in bringing ideas from design into production. In terms of university teaching, has been involved in various tasks and gained experience. First of all, he has passed several teaching courses that contribute to enriching his work as a teacher. He collaborated in several subjects in areas such as databases, programming, cloud computing and blockchain. He has also supervised final degree and master projects that obtained high-rated grades. Finally, He has also participated in several educational innovation projects that seek to improve education in the classroom. These projects propose new techniques (including, for example, gamification) to improve the student experience and knowledge acquisition.” Researcher Data Ecosystems at TNO CTO of iSHARE Foundation I am a versatile technologist, evangelist and design thinker who is passionate about developing meaningful digital solutions to solve real-world problems. I have successfully created strategic visions and roadmaps and lead their execution. With my varied experience and ability to persuade both technical and business sides, I help lots of organizations in their digital transformation journey to become data-driven organizations. Having exposure and experience developing solutions within organizations as well as within and across sectors gives me the unique ability to create solutions that can cater to various needs. A good example of my success is the iSHARE framework where it stands today. Co-founder and CTO of LEANEA Gmbh Hossein Rafieekhah, a highly skilled technology leader, currently serves as the Co-founder and CTO of LEANEA GmbH and Development Team Leader for the Gaia-X Workflow Engine (GX-WFE). With a strong background in implementing digital workspaces and leading development teams, Hossein possesses extensive knowledge of web3 and blockchain technologies, bringing valuable expertise to the Gaia-X community. Throughout his career as a CTO, he has successfully completed numerous projects in software development, IT infrastructure, workspace management, and identity and access management. Hossein’s research interests include the Internet of Things and cloud technologies. As a dedicated educator, he has mentored students and formed a talented team with whom he has tackled various IT challenges for over 12 years. Passionate about continuous learning, Hossein is committed to sharing his knowledge and empowering others in the dynamic world of information technology. Innovator at Purpose Alliance, General Manager Gaia-X Spain Francisca Rubio has just been selected as general manager of Gaia X – Spain. Francisca is electronic engineer with master in Photovoltaic Energy (PV) and Business (MBA). She has always worked as R&D and Innovation director of different companies in different sectors. · In Automotive Industry by Valeo Lighting in France and Spain and Hella in Germany · Solar Energy Industry by Soitec (Germany) and by ISFOC (Spain), · Electrical Industry by Cuerva (Spain) · Smart lighting by Zemper (Spain) · Recently, she was the general manager by Ricardo Valle Institute in Málaga (Spain). She has a lot of experience in the development of new products or services with top technologies (first LEDs headlamps, world record PV systems, IoT in smart building, etc). She also has experience in the establishment of new R&D centres, like ISFOC or Ricardo Valle Institute. Now, she has the new mission of boosting the development of Gaia X – Spain. DLT/Blockchain integration leader, FIWARE Member of the board and CTO of Alastria Blockchain Ecosystem, participates in the Technical Governance of EBSI (European Blockchain Services Infrastructure from European Commission and Member States), and in LACChain (blockchain network promoted by the Inter-American Development Bank). He inspired the Public-Permissioned model followed by those networks, where decentralized governance and SSI are critical components. Vice-President Confindustria He is Vice President of Cisco Southern Europe with responsibility for Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Malta and Israel. He is on the board of trustees of the Cisco Foundation He held the positions of CEO of Cisco Italy, and SAP Italy and Vice President & Enterprise Sales Director of HP Italy. Until 2017 he was President of Assinform and from October 2021 President of Confindustria Digitale. Associated Professor at ETSI Telecomunicación from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid Joaquin Salvachua is associated professor at ETSI Telecomunicación from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid since 1994. He has participated in several European research projects with several publications at international magazines, books and conferences. (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7269-8079) . Also have participated in several standardization activities, including been coauthor one RFC ( RFC 8802), ETSI and W3C, among others. Has been involved in the FIWARE initiative since the beginning and is responsible for several generic enablers. Is the UPM representative at GAIA-X and member of the steering committee for Gaia-X Spanish Hub. His research focuses today on WebRTC, Cloud infrastructure, social graphs and recommendation, agile cloud infrastructures, P2P, DHT (Distributed HashTables), IOT, Non SQL Data Bases, Big data processing architectures, Identity Management and BlockChain distributed agreement algorithms. Research Associate at Fraunhofer Institute for Transportation and Infrastructure Systems IVI German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action Senior IT Architect in Public Sector, T-Systems Senior IT Architect in Public Sector, T-Systems – Working for T-Systems International as Senior IT Architect in Public Sector Scientist, Cooperative Digital Technologies at the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology Dr Veronika Siska is a scientist at the Competence Unit “Cooperative Digital Technologies” at the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology. She studied Physics (BSc at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics) and Complex Systems Science (MSc at the University of Gothenburg and the University of Warwick). After receiving her PhD degree in Computational Biology from the University of Cambridge in 2018, she spent 3.5 years working in the IT industry as an IT consultant and later also as manager of her company’s Hungarian branch. She returned to research and joined AIT in 2022, where her research focuses on the technical aspects of sovereign data exchange and dataspaces, as well as IT systems regarding the environment, climate change and disaster response. Technical Lead and Architect at the FIWARE Foundation Tim Smyth (m) is a Technical Lead and Architect at the FIWARE Foundation. Tim holds a Master’s degree in Engineering&Computing and wrote his master’s thesis about security in distributed energy systems. Afterwards, he worked in several companies on Smart Energy topics and became increasingly interested in renewable power sources and their intelligent usage. Chief Technology Officer, International Data Spaces Association Sebastian Steinbuß is CTO and lead architect at International Data Spaces Association IDSA, where he leads the technical developments of the Association and coordinates the IDSA Working Groups on Data Space Architecture, Certification and the IDSA Rulebook. In his work he focusses on design principles for data spaces and data sovereignty in innovative data sharing scenarios. Sebastian studied applied computer science and mechanical engineering at the technical university of Dortmund. He worked for nine years at the Fraunhofer-Institute for Software and Systems Engineering as Scientist in the context of Cloud Computing, Big Data and IoT. CEO Spherity GmbH Dr. Carsten Stöcker is the founder of Spherity GmbH. Spherity is a scalable, decentralized identity cloud platform that develops secure identity solutions between the physical, biological and digital spheres. Carsten works on decentralized identity solutions for cyber-physical systems and Industry 4.0 compliance solutions, built on W3C and industry standards. Spherity is an active participant in identity ecosystem projects such as the US Open Credentialing Initiative, EU Digital Wallet, IDunion, Open Wallet Foundation and Gaia-X. Spherity’s market development activities focus on compliance use cases and secure supply chain ecosystems in regulated industrial domains such as Pharma, Food, Automotive or the Energy Sector. Carsten is a physicist by training and holds a PhD from the University of Aachen. He is a member of the ‘Global Future Network’ and the ‘Crypto Impact & Sustainability Accelerator’ of the World Economic Forum. Before founding Spherity GmbH, Carsten worked for DLR, Accenture, RWE and innogy SE. Software Architect at Project Manager, TeraLab Benoit Tabutiaux is technical project manager for TeraLab. Engineer, PhD in Computer Science, with a Master in Research Management and AI, he started his career in a startup specialized in the Man-Machine dialogue, for which he is in charge of the R&D department. He then put his expertise and versatility in the financing and management of innovation projects. Since 2016, he focuses more exclusively on managing R&D projects related to data processing and AI as well as building partnerships at an international level. Within the TeraLab team, Benoit’s role is to assist you and monitor your projects while ensuring the interface with the Teralab technical team. Data & AI Platform Director, TeraLab Director of TeraLab since 2015, Anne-Sophie Taillandier is a graduate of Supélec (Centrale Supelec) and holds a PHD in Machine Learning from ENS Paris Saclay. She has extensive experience in software publishing and in industry. She will help you to specify your use-cases and identify the right partners in the TeraLab ecosystem. In addition, she is an expert for Cap Digital since 2013. Anne-Sophie Taillandier has been the Director of TeraLab at IMT since 2015. TeraLab’s objective is to support companies in the adoption of new data and AI technologies by implementing an ecosystem of researchers, innovative companies and Startups and by providing sovereign, neutral and secure technologies. She is a founding member of Gaia X, and coordinator of the development of federated services of Gaia X. Previously, she had a diverse professional experience within software publishers such as Dassault Systèmes for 10 years but also as CTO of LTU Technologies in recognition of images, the qualified member of the Board of Directors of Cap Digital. Anne-Sophie has been an academician of technologies since 2022. Software Engineer at Tecnalia Borja Urkizu is an seasoned computer engineer with 20 years of experience in cybersecurity. He holds a degree in Computer Engineering and a Master in Information Security from the University of Deusto. Throughout his career, he has worked on a wide variety of projects and has developed expertise in multiple programming languages and technologies. He has worked as a software engineer and architect as well as managing small teams trying to improve the software development process and in the techniques and procedures related to continuous improvement and optimization. Always in touch with the new and emerging technologies. He has also been an entrepreneur founding a startup related to the world of Video Games acquiring significant experience in the software development process and in the techniques and procedures related to continuous improvement and optimization. In Tecnalia he has participated in products related to cybersecurity always focused on the product approach. Currently he is focused on technologies for the enhancement of the privacy of data exploitation. Innovation Manager at AMS-IX As an innovation manager at AMS-IX, one of the world’s largest internet exchanges, I run many proofs of concepts with unproven and upcoming technologies. The key is to find out what technologies can support AMS-IX’s mission for a better society through a better internet. We live in a fast-changing digital world. However, technologies take a long time to mature. Once they do, the way they can be implemented cause an explosion of new projects and companies. To judge the value of new developments, it is crucial to look back and study the history of our society, the ideas we value, the ideas we reject and how these ideas play a role in the social, economic, and technological developments of our world. Yves-Marie has been architect at Capgemini for 10 years on some innovative projects (1st big migration of a company to Google Apps…) and CTO of Parkeon/Flowbird for 7 years (worldwide leader of parking meters, strong player in transit systems and mobile parking payments, IA to predict parking pressure…). Experienced Telecommunications Engineer with special focus on Multimedia Services and Data Analytics. Advanced knowledge and extensive experience in Business Strategy, Business Development, Technical Support and deployment of Video Platforms acquired during 20 years in leading companies in the business segments TELCO (Telefónica) and Technology Providers (Alcatel-Lucent). In 2015 I joined the newly created consulting company Aspekte Technologies, whose main objective is to provide technology and business consulting in the field of telecommunications services. In this company I accepted the challenge of being in charge of preparing technical proposals, project supervision and all negotiations with clients.
Tech-X Speakers
Quentin Adam
Jesus Alonso
Juan Arenas Marquez
While running his own SME providing ICT and project management services, he participated in startups and research projects with the University of Malaga and University Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) before taking on a CTO position for the University of Sheffield, leading ICT components of biomedical imaging research projects on dementia and musculoskeletal domains as well as in the technical development of generic federated cloud infrastructure for researchers across fields.
Since joining ELIXIR, he has been acting as Head of PMO and Financial Manager, contributing to growing the ELIXIR Portfolio from €40M to €340M. He contributes to the development of the B1MG and the GDI proposal, where he will support the development, rollout and operations of the 1+MG infrastructure across 18 countries.
Frédéric Bellaiche
Prior to joining Dawex, Frédéric served for 14 years as a Technical Expert for a leading digital services company where he led innovation in the areas of Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Edge Computing, Blockchain, Security and Quantum Computing. Prior to that, Frédéric also served as CTO and co-founder of a start-up that specialized in securing financial flows for 7 years.
During his career, Frédéric has conducted research at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the field of high energy physics, at CERN and at the Université Claude Bernard. Holding a PhD. in particle physics and a DEA in nuclear and particle physics, Frédéric is a member of the Blockchain working group at Numeum and contributes to the OWASP project.
Gorka Benguria Elguezabal
Gaël Blondelle
Francesco Bonfiglio
Francesco Bonfiglio joined GAIA-X in March 2021 as the new CEO.
With more than 30 years’ experience in the business of consulting and information technology, Francesco brings into Gaia-X his knowledge of the cloud and data market needs, and his vision on how the Association should revolutionise the Digital Economy. As an Independent Advisor since 2020, his executive career was built from the ground up in many Italian and Multinational contexts. A former Chief Executive Officer for ENGINEERING D.HUB (Hybrid Cloud and Digital Transformation company within the largest Italian System Integrator Group), a Vice President for Technology Services at AVANADE and a Managing Director within the ACCENTURE Group, Chief Technology Officer for HEWLETT-PACKARD EMEA, SW Factory Director at UNISYS, Technical Director, and Methodology Evangelist at RATIONAL SOFTWARE amongst his positions.
With a background in Electronics Engineering, he started his career in the late 80s as a HW/SW Engineer working on some of the most advanced R&D projects, from the Sonar System for the Italian Navy (ANSQQ14IT) prized during the Gulf war for the mine-hunting performances, to the Eurofighter Fighter Aircraft (EFA), still one of the most advanced examples of technology in the Military field. Francesco has held a bottom-up career, covering all roles within the IT, from developer to top-executive, from R&D to business units’ leader. An early supporter of the need for continuous innovation, he is a big fan of the startup ecosystem, active member of evaluation commissions, and a board member and co-founder of FOOLFARM.com, the first example of Startup Studio in Italy. Amongst other roles, Francesco has represented the IT world and then became Vice President of Confindustria (Italian Trade Association) for Valle D’Aosta. Living in Italy, in the countryside out of Milan, he is happily married and a father of three sons, he loves music and has played in several independent live and record productions since the 80s. Francesco believes in the power of collective intelligence, lateral thinking, and teamwork, as a propeller for transformation, in the business as well as in the whole life!
Maria Borges
Maria Borges joined the ISE research group at the TU Berlin in 2018 after finishing her masters in Information Systems Management. She leads the TU Berlin team for the project Gaia-X 4 PLC-AAD since 2022. Before joining the Gaia-X 4 Future Mobility project, she worked as a teaching associate at the university. Maria’s research revolves around cloud-native architectures and the software engineering practices involved in maintaining these complex systems.
John Calian
Successful and passionate innovation leader, entrepreneur & product developer; CEO, Riddle&Code; Founder, RDDL Network; formerly SVP, Deutsche Telekom, & Head of T-Labs in Berlin; formerly Co-founder, CEO of trust2core, a blockchain infrastructure start-up; Previously held numerous tech leadership roles (at Amdocs and Synchronoss) and was the founder and COO of multiple startup software firms, incl Movaya and Kopo Kopo; MBA in Tech Management @UW in Seattle, and a BA @UC Boulder.
Thierry Caminel
Thierry Caminel is a Distinguished Expert and member of Atos Scientific Community. He had several roles as senior architect, innovation leader, technical director, AI global community leader,… He is currently in charge of AI and Data Analytics developments for the Atos Digital Decarbonization Platforms.
Manuel Escuin
Manuel Escuin has more than 36 years of experience in the ICT sector, both in the national and international markets.
His main area of activity has been to develop and implement emerging technologies, thus, in the 90s he pioneered the introduction of the Internet in Spanish & European markets.
In the 2000s, he designed and built mission-critical data center infrastructures, designed to support high energy densities and very high availability, including Walhalla, the first DC with the Tier IV classification in Spain and which was awarded as the best medium-sized DC built in Europe in 2012.
Currently his interest is focused on the development of clouds with holistic and intelligent management technologies, to build DC Federations, energetically sustainable, based on new ideas of distributed cloud.
Roberto García González
Roberto García is Associate Professor and Deputy Vice-rector for Research & Transfer at Universitat de Lleida, Spain. Roberto has more than 20 years of experience in research and innovation applying semantic technologies in different domains, especially in connection with knowledge and media management. More recently, he is exploring Web 3, as a combination of semantic and decentralization technologies like blockchain. For instance, applying Web 3 to facilitate social media monetization using Non-Fungible Tokens whose terms are modelled using a copyright ontology. Or applying Web3 to guarantee data sovereignty through data spaces, especially in the agriculture domain.
Michael A. Gerber
Michael Gerber studied media informatics in his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree, after completing vocational training in applied informatics. Alongside his studies, he worked as a research assistant, developed and managed web applications as a freelancer (GBR), and was employed as a full-stack developer. While abroad, Michael wrote his doctoral thesis at the Queensland University of Technology in the field of human-machine interaction for automated vehicles.
Today, Michael works as a business consultant for msg systems AG on various projects, including GAIA-X 4 Future Mobility – Product-Lifecycle Across Automated Driving. In this project, he focuses on the sovereign exchange of data, creation, and maintenance of decentralized digital twins, as well as analytics and simulation for use cases in the automotive industry.
Pierre Gronlier
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.
Iván Gutiérrez
Iván is a cryptography and cybersecurity enthusiast, and a software engineer with a master’s degree in Software Engineering and Intelligent Systems. His work in R&D projects and cutting-edge technologies led him to apply his experience in Distributed Ledger Technologies and Privacy Enhancing Technologies for TECNALIA. Iván has developed technical skills through cooperation with the two main blockchain organizations in the world (Hyperledger and Enterprise Ethereum Alliance) and the Spanish network for the distributed digital economy (Alastria). Iván is external lecturer for the ESIC, Business & Marketing School, member of the Hyperledger Speakers Bureau, and a peer reviewer for IEEE Access, SN Computer Science and IJCDS journals.
Fin Heuer
Juan Jose Hierro
Urtza Iturraspe Barturen
Early Life and Background:
Urtza Iturraspe was born on July 28, 1976, in Bermeo, a town in the province of Biscay in the Basque Country, Spain.
Professional Career:
Thomas Komenda
Oscar Lage Serrano
Oscar Lazaro
Dr. Oscar Lazaro is Director of Innovalia. He supported the EC DIH I4MS Programme set up and leads the WEF Advanced Manufacturing HUB (AMHUB), IDSA Hub in Spain. He is board member of the BAIDATA, EIT Digital Spanish CLC and actively engaged with the Data Space Support Centre (DSSC) and Digital Factory Alliance (DFA) activities, from where he led the set-up of the Data Space 4.0 initiative. He is representative of Innovalia in EFFRA, GAIA-X and BDVA. He led EU OpenDEI Think Tank on multilateral Digital Value Chains (DVC).
Markus Leberecht
Markus Leberecht has spent his career at Intel holding a variety of individual and managerial roles in technical sales since joining the company in June 2006. He is member of the EMEA Chief Technology Office as a specialist in cloud service provider infrastructure and its security. He holds a doctorate degree from the University of Technology, Munich, Germany, an MSEE from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, and furthermore is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and a Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect. Markus also leads Intel’s Gaia-X engagement.
Geert Machtelinckx
He is one of the key architects in the creation of the globe’s first fully decentralised, endlessly scalable and neutral cloud infrastructure, for cloud in all its dimensions (Threefold Tech). He designed systems that are fit for federation, with a deep focus on privacy by design and end-to-end security, with compute, network and storage interacting at the lowest possible level, in a Linux-based, peer-to-peer operating system, able to run any IT workload. Geert knows how to build systems that meet the demand for decentralisation within the data economy, both in terms of geography (able to run at the edge), data ownership and information privacy.
Since 2022, he is main architect with Fujitsu to create sustainable blockchain-based solutions, such as a cross-company ESG data platform for sharing and reporting on trusted sustainability data, and also guides several projects and startups in the blockchain space.
Jesus Maria Santamaria
Jesus is Chief Technology Officer of the Digital Unit in TECNALIA Research & Innovation, and member of the Board of Directors of Gaia-X Spain. With over 35 years of R&D international projects management experience, Jesus has participated in more than 50 European projects in the last EC Framework Programmes (FP7, H2020 and Horizon Europe) leading the TECNALIA working teams related to future internet, digital platforms, and ICT enabling technologies (as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and DLT, cloud-edge-IoT or extended reality) for digital solutions. From 2020 Jesus was one of the initial members of the supporting group for the adoption of Gaia-X in Spain, and currently he is leading the Technology Working Group of the Spanish hub, where the data and service ecosystem is fostering the implementation of use cases and data spaces in different application domains (tourism, mobility, industry, agrifood, health).
Kai Meinke
Head of the Gaia-X Open-Source Software community (OSS)
Mario Petruzzella Malagón
During my career development I have been involved in several fields, mainly as an analyst and web developer (back/frontend) in different languages and systems for different companies. I joined Arsys Lab department a year ago, where we intend to boost the company’s innovation capacities by means of exchanging ideas, generating knowledge and carrying out pilot projects, with the goal of applying different technologies to Arsys’ products and services and creating new solutions to help our clients in their digital transformation.
At Arsys Lab, we mainly explore and test new technologies, but we also look for synergies to collaborate in R&D projects and generate training as well as information.
Andres Munoz
Boris Otto
Otto’s research focuses on the fields of industrial information management, business and logistics networks, and methods for the design of digital business solutions.
Alejandro Pozo Huertas
Matthijs Punter
Matthijs Punter is a consultant and researcher within the Data Science department of TNO, focusing on large-scale interoperability and data sharing. He has worked in several industries to achieve agreements on the technologies and standards to be used for new data-driven initiatives, including e-government, logistics and industry.
In his research, the key focus is on achieving controlled data sharing, based on the principle of data sovereignty: allowing every organization to retain full control over the sharing and use of their data. At the same time, his focus is on enabling data sharing to become a commodity: low entry barriers, low costs and large-scale adoption.
He has been working for several years within the International Data Spaces Association to achieve standardization in this field. Within The Netherlands, he is a contributor to several Smart Industry digital innovation hubs on the topic of data sharing.
Rajiv Rajani
I am an expert in Enterprise Architecture, Application Integrations technologies, distributed & decentralized identity access and authorization and usage methods.
I believe that we are at the beginning of the digital age and we should make it right while we are still setting the future for the human race. Sharing data has been an enabler for this digital age that we have all embarked upon and there is no going back from here. However, sharing data comes with its own risks. Now is the time for us to make things right in sharing data such that we enable people and companies in sharing data with sovereignty!
Hossein Raifeekhah
Francisca Rubio
Jesus Ruiz
Agostino Santoni
Joaquín Salvachúa
Lorenz Sebastian
Marco Schuldt
Steffen Schulze
– Main Working Area is Software Engineering, SSI and Cloud
– Since almost 3 Years Co-Lead for GXFS-DE Workpackage IDM&Trust
Veronika Siska
Tim Smyth
Sebastien Steinbuss
Carsten Stöcker
Ronny Stritzke
Product Engineer at Accenture Song
Self-employed work as an architect for the State of Hessen, Fresenius, vbw and many others
Employed technical project management for clients like Volkswagen, Siemens etc.
Benoit Tabutiaux
Anne-Sophie Taillandier
Jan van Boesschoten
Now Yves-Marie is contributing to GAIA-X and GXFS-FR behalf Docaposte among his responsibilities as an Architect in Technical Direction of the group.
Javier Esteve Pradera