Wolfgang Wahlster is the Director and CEO of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and a Professor of Computer Science at Saarland University. He has published more than 200 technical papers and 12 books on user modeling, spoken dialog systems, mobile and multimodal user interfaces, the semantic web, as well as the internet of things and services. He is a Fellow of AAAI, ECCAI, and GI. In 2001, the President of Germany presented the German Future Prize to Professor Wahlster for his work on intelligent user interfaces, the highest personal scientific award in Germany. He was elected Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Nobel Prize Academy of Sciences in Stockholm and Full Member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina that was founded in 1652. He has been awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class of Germany.  He holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Darmstadt, Linkoeping and Maastricht. He serves on the Executive Boards of the International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley and EIT Digital. He is the editor of Springer’s LNAI series and on the editorial board of various top international CS journals. In 2013, Wolfgang Wahlster received the IJCAI Donald E. Walker award for his substantial contributions, as well as his extensive service to the field of Artificial Intelligence throughout his career.

A mathematics undergraduate in his native Australia, Rodney received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford in 1981. From 1984 to 2010, he was on the MIT faculty, and completed his service as a Professor of Robotics. He was also the founding Director of the Institute’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and served in that role until 2007. In 1990, he co-founded iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT), where he served variously as CTO, Chairman and board member until 2011. Rodney has been honored by election to the National Academy of Engineering, and has been elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of Computing Machinery, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Graduated from Telecom Paris Tech (M.Sc. in Engineering) and holder of a PhD in signal and image processing (Telecom Paris Tech), Karine Gosse started her career as research engineer at Motorola Labs France, on cellular communication systems (1997–1999). She was leading a multi-antenna wireless-communications R&D team (2000–2004) and in charge of strategic R&D partnership on heterogeneous communications networks (2005–2006). Between 2007 and 2008 she headed the R&D program on fifth-generation broadband wireless communications networks. In 2009, Karine Gosse joined CEA LIST institute as Communicating and Interactive Systems Program manager and then became head of the Ambient Intelligence and Interactive Systems Department (2010-2012). In the mean time she validated her MBA (HEC) in 2011. She became Director of the CEA LIST Institute in 2012. On October 2015, she joined the Fives Group as Digital Development and Industry of the Future Director.

Karine Gosse is also member of  Orange Scientific Board, Member of the Factory of the Future Steering Committee for the Mechanical Industries Federation and Administrator of the CETIM, CEntre Technique des Industries Mécaniques.
She received in October 2013 the insignia of “Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite”.

After graduation in Aeronautical and Aerospace Technology Dieter Wegener worked as scientist at „Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR)“. After four years as consultant for McKinsey he joined Siemens in 1996 as Head of Gasturbine Engineering at “Power Generation”.

During his career within Siemens he had different responsibilities: personal Assistant for an Executive Board Member, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Division “Industry Solutions” and Vice President “Advanced Technologies & Standards (ATS)” for Industry Sector.

Today he is Head of External Cooperation at Siemens Corporate Technology. Additionally he is         (1) Speaker of „Führungskreis Industrie 4.0“ for ZVEI and (2) Speaker of „Beraterkreis Technologie“ for  VDE/DKE and (3) Executive Board Member at Digital Europe.

The Schaeffler Group is a leading global integrated automotive and industrial supplier. With around 84,000 employees, Schaeffler is one of the world’s largest family companies and, with approximately 170 locations in 50 countries, has a worldwide network of manufacturing locations, research and development facilities, and sales companies. The technology company generated sales of approximately EUR 12.1 billion in 2014. As a global development partner and supplier, Schaeffler maintains stable long-term relationships with its customers and suppliers.

Kalman Tiboldi is the Chief Business Innovation Officer of TVH Group, worldwide market leader in replacement parts and accessories for material handling and industrial vehicles, and has over 35 year experience in using information technology for business process innovation.
Kalman merged IT and Business in a new department called Business Innovation through IT (BI²T) and managed to promote the collaboration between IT and Business as driving force behind innovation.  With his team he has successfully implemented a flawless IT infrastructure with flexible applications, based on service-oriented architecture, using DevOps, turning TVH into a real-time, extended enterprise.
Providing the leadership and direction towards the development and implementation of information systems, Kalman is taking advantage from Cloud-based Services, Big Data and Internet of Things and strongly support Open Source solutions.
Kalman holds a Civil engineer polytechnician degree from Military Technical Academy of Bucharest and a Master of Mathematics and Computer Science degree from University of Bucharest.
He was named IT Manager of the Year’ – Large Organizations in 2004 and 2011 by Leading European Trade Publication, Data News.

Lin Nease is the Chief Technologist for HP Enterprise’s IoT activi-ties.  In this role, He is responsible for setting strategy, building a technology plan, and driving innovation with key enterprise customers/partners of HP.  He also established HP’s member-ship in the Industrial Internet Consortium and has led multiple ac-tivities in working groups and testbeds for the Consortium.

In his 25+ years with HP, he has been a Chief Technologist and Director of strategy for multiple business units, including HP’s Business Critical Servers and Networking businesses, has been a Chief Technologist and General Manager for multiple global accounts (GE, UPS), driven multiple M&A activities and cross-business initiatives, led numerous successful commercial prod-ucts, including the industry’s first blade solution and HP’s long-lived Superdome platform, and holds several patents in soft-ware-defined networking.

Nease received his BS in Computer Science at Arizona State University in 1986 and his MBA from California State University Sacramento in 1994. He also served as a computer operator in the United States Air Force.

Dr. Alexander Lautz is currently in charge of the Business Unit M2M at Deutsche Telekom AG. In this role, he is responsible for developing innovative machine-to-machine products and solutions.
Mr. Lautz joined T-Mobile Deutschland GmbH in 2002, first as Head of Business Marketing, before taking over as Head of Consumer Marketing in 2004. When Deutsche Telekom launched congstar as its second brand in Germany in 2007, Mr. Lautz took over as Managing Director of the company. In 2011, he moved to the growth initiative Connected Car, where he was responsible for Marketing, Services and Technology.
Before his career at Deutsche Telekom, Mr. Lautz held different management positions at CNI GmbH and Mannesmann Arcor AG and was Managing Director of an IP provider for business customers.

Education
After completing his apprenticeship with Deutsche Bank in 1988, Mr. Lautz studied Economics at the University of St. Gallen, where he graduated with a Ph.D. in 1995.

Personal interests
Besides reading and playing tennis on a weekly basis, Mr. Lautz enjoys traveling and experiencing foreign cultures. Above all, he likes to spend time with his family and his two kids.