contributors

Director General for Digital Society, Digitization of the Administration and Information Technology at the Federal Ministry of Interior, Building and Community, Germany.

Peter Batt was born in 1955 in Dusseldorf. He is a fully qualified lawyer and until his move to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, for construction and homeland in 2009, head of the organization and IT services department of the German Pension Insurance Association. In the Federal Ministry of the Interior, for construction and homeland he was responsible for the subdivision IT I (digital society, IT control, IT strategy, office of the IT planning council). Since May 2016 he is head of the IT department; His duties as IT director include IT I, as well as IT II (IT and cyber security, secure information technology). He is u.a. Chairman of the Advisory Board of “Deutschland sicher im Netz” and member of the Presidential Committee Focus.ICT at DIN. “

Lukas Roffel is CTO of Thales Nederland, the Dutch branch of the international Thales Group. The company has about 2,000 employees working at branches in Hengelo (HQ), Huizen, Delft, Enschede and Eindhoven. Lukas is a seasoned high tech systems executive and leader with very broad interests. His knowledge in high technology and complex systems is applicable in many fields.

Thales Nederland specializes in designing and producing high tech electronics for defence and security applications, such as radar and communication systems.
In the development of complex systems Thales is using AI for more than 2 decades. The proliferation of the digital transformation in it’s full force brings about new challenges for Thales. Since our systems are in use from air planes, trains, space and military platforms, we need TrUE AI systems. Transparent, Understandable and Ethical AI that can be trusted with humans at the center of the decisions.

Dr. Tatjana Welzer is a a full Professor at University of Maribor, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Her research work covers many research areas, ranging from database technology to cross-cultural communication and problems in media communications.

She is national coordinator for two EU Erasmus projects (PRAXIS and SALEIE), member of faculty senate and national delegate for IFIP TC 11. She is or was a team leader of several international projects (such as bilateral projects with Spain, Portugal, Poland, Czech Republic, Serbia, ZDA, Turkey, Finland, and United Kingdom).

Dr. Welzer has been involved in a great number of projects (national and international), seminars and workshops, performed and/or organized by Institute of Informatics and other partners. Currently she is national coordinator for two EU Erasmus projects, PRAXIS and SALEIE, where she is also a WP leader. Her bibliography contains over 350 bibliographic units that appeared in different scientific journals including top publications with the JCR IF and professional journals, several books as well as with many international conferences. She is also active as reviewer for scientific conferences and journals including top journals indexed by the Web of Knowledge.

She has organized and co-organized numerous international conferences in Maribor (ADBIS, CBMS, KMO, EJC, JCKBSE, and EAEEIE) and has held many invited sessions at various conferences all around the world

Christina is CEO & Co-founder of Autheos, a technology platform that applies machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to optimize the video experience for consumers.

The innovation of her technology company has been recognized by national publications such as Emerce, Financiele Telegraaf, RTL-Z and Quote, and garnered distinction as a top ‘European startup disrupting media’.Recently named by Inspiring Fifty as one of the Netherlands’ most inspiring women in tech, Christina is invited to speak at international conferences on topics such as marketing innovation, media personalization and video intelligence.

Alongside Autheos, Christina serves as an advisor to multiple startups. She draws from her 10+ years Executive experience in finance and e-commerce companies across New York, London and Amsterdam in order to guide leaders of cutting edge Artificial Intelligence companies to define and grow their propositions.

Holger H. Hoos is Professor of Machine Learning at Universiteit Leiden (the Netherlands) and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia (Canada), where he also holds an appointment as Faculty Associate at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies.

He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and past president of the Canadian Association for Artificial Intelligence / Association pour l’intelligence artificielle au Canada (CAIAC).

Holger’s research interests span artificial intelligence, empirical algorithmics, bioinformatics and computer music. He is known for his work on machine learning and optimisation methods for the automated design of high-performance algorithms and for his work on stochastic local search. Based on a broad view of machine learning, he has developed – and vigorously pursues – the paradigm of programming by optimisation (PbO); he is also one of the originators of the concept of automated machine learning (AutoML). Holger has a penchant for work at the boundaries between computing science and other disciplines, and much of his work is inspired by real-world applications.

In 2018, together with Morten Irgens (Oslo Metropolitan University) and Philipp Slusallek (German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence), Holger launched CLAIRE, an initiative by the European AI community that seeks to strengthen European excellence in AI research and innovation (claire-ai.org). CLAIRE promotes excellence across all of AI, for all of Europe, with a human-centred focus and aims to achieve an impact similar to that of CERN. The initiative has attracted major media coverage in many European countries and garnered broad support by more than 1000 AI experts, more than one hundred fellows of various scientific AI associations, many editors of scientific AI journals, national AI societies, top AI institutes and key stakeholders in industry and other organisations (for details, see claire-ai.org).