Speakers

Jesús Benedicto is a Systems Analyst/Software Architect at ATOS Research and Innovation with over 15+ years of technological experience in software design and integration in industrial markets, with a specialization in Big Data, IIoT & Edge Computing. He focuses on innovation in digital transformation and Smart automation in the manufacturing sector.

Pierre-Yves Danet is head of cooperative Research Europe at Orange Lab, he represents Orange in several ICT associations and board such as NEM, AIOTI, 5GIA, ETNO. He is also involved in NGI as ambassador and French representative and also leading an initiative to create a network of smart connectivity eDIH (5G, IOT, cybersec and AI) on behalf of the 5GIA and AIOTI.

Stefano de Panfilis is Founder and COO of the FIWARE Foundation.
Since July 2016 he holds the COO position within the FIWARE Foundation where he effectively moved starting 1st January 2017. Since 1993, he has supported Engineering to receive the ISO-9001 compliance certificate and he is currently involved in the CMM assessment process. In April 1994, he started his involvement in European Union funded R&D projects where he coordinated several of them. In 2004 he became the Director of the R&D Department leading a team of about 100 researchers in Italy and Europe. He actively participated from its beginning to the creation and setting up of the NESSI ETP of which he was the Technical Director and the Coordinator of the Strategic Research Agenda Committee till spring 2010. In June 2011 he became the Chief Innovation Officer of the Engineering Group. He actively participated in the Future Internet various initiatives set-up by the European Commission having also served the Future Internet Assembly (FIA) caretakers committee for several FIA editions. In this context he was one of the founders of the Future Internet Public Private Partnership (FI-PPP) now known as the FIWARE initiative. Since the FI-WARE project he is the responsible of FIWARE Lab and from April 2012 till its end, he was a member in the FI-PPP Architecture Board. In 2013 he was elected Chairman of the FI-PPP Steering Board. Author of several scientific papers appeared in international journals and in conferences proceedings, he is member of a number of international conferences Program Committees.

Giovanna Galasso is a Director at PwC with 20 years of significant experience in the management of consultancy and research projects, both for national bodies and European institutions especially in the fields of design, implementation and evaluation of digital policies, technological innovation, digital transformation, eGovernment and Industry 4.0.  She has coordinated for DG CNECT the pilot project to set up a Digital Innovation Hubs Network with a focus on AI and the Smart Factories project to set up a network of Digital Innovation Hubs in New Member States.

Rositsa Georgieva is a Programme Officer at the European Commission, Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content & Technology, unit “Technologies & Systems for Digitising Industry”, where she contributes to the development and coordination of the strategy for Digitising European Industry. In the European Commission's Research and Innovation Programme HORIZON 2020, Rositsa is responsible for the Factories of the Future (FoF) and other industrial platform development projects. Currently, she leads the analysis of existing national initiatives on digitalisation of industry across the EU Member States and follows the relevant policy development in third countries.

Rositsa holds a MA degree in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University.

Sergio Gusmeroli born in Sondrio (Italy) in 1961, he finalized his education at Politecnico di Milano in 1986. After several experiences in different branches of the ICT domain, in June 2000, he was appointed director and operating manager of the International Research & Innovation Unit of TXT e-solutions, an IT company leader in EU for Supply Chain management solutions. In TXT he coordinated diverse FP7 EC funded projects in the ICT for Manufacturing domain: COIN, MSEE, TELLME, FITMAN, OSMOSE. Since 2015, Sergio is a senior consultant for Politecnico di Milano and has been in charge of several H2020 Factories of the Future projects such as PSYMBIOSYS, BEinCPPS, BOOST4.0, MIDIH, QU4LITY and AI REGIO. He is author of more than 30 publications / papers in Italian and International magazines and conferences. His main areas of competence and experience include ICT for manufacturing and specifically Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence for Manufacturing

Antonio J. Jara (CEO), founder of HOP Ubiquitous S.L. (www.hopu.eu), and chair of Data Quality and IoT in IEEE. He did his PhD (Cum Laude) at the University of Murcia (UMU), Spain. He received entrepreneurship awards from ENAE (sponsored by SabadellCAM financial services), emprendeGo (sponsored by Spanish government), IPSO Alliance Award (Sponsored by Google) for its disruptive innovation in the IoT, selected and mentored by the acceleration program FIWARE. Antonio Jara as part of HOPU is focused on the Smart Cities market with solutions for citizens engagements and environmental monitoring (air quality sensors). Antonio Jara has also participated in over 100 international events about Internet of Things as Speaker, over 100 international publications / papers (~5000 citations and impact factor h=37), he holds several patents in the IoT domain and finally he has advised in the IoT domain to companies such as Microsoft and Fujitsu

Susanne Kuehrer has MBA in Intra- and Entrepreneurship and MSc in Human Resources and has made a long career in management posts of various domains. Before starting EU consulting with the ambitious aim of closing the innovation gap, she served in Telekom Austria as their international liaison manager for the Collaborative Research, monitoring also Telekom Austria’s involvement in FP6 and FP7 projects. Since 2013 she has been involved in the innovation ecosystem, screening innovative ideas and supporting on business modelling and getting ideas into the market. She serves also as mentor for different accelerators and organisations such as the Korean Innovation Centre. Currently she has been involved for EIT Digital in different FP7 and H2020 projects, serving for some as project coordinator, in the areas of incubation/acceleration, FIWARE, Digital Innovation Hubs, Big Data and 5G. In addition to that she serves as evaluator and reviewer for the European Commission.

Andoni Laskurain, an industrial Engineer by education, is the Technical Managing Director at NECO, a threading tools manufacturer from Elorrio, Basque Country, Spain. He has entirely developed his career at the tap manufacturing sector for more than 30 years, having performed in positions such as Technical and Quality Manager and Industrial Division Manager.

Oscar Lazaro is Managing Director of Innovalia Association, the Associated Research Lab founded by the Innovalia Alliance. Dr. Oscar Lazaro has more than 20 years of experience in the digital and manufacturing field. Oscar Lazaro is also Visiting Professor at the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department of the University of Strathclyde in the area of wireless & mobile communications. He is permanent representative of Innovalia in EFFRA and BDVA and he has also served to the Future Internet Advisory Board and the Sherpa Group on 5G Action Plan.

Dr Oscar Lazaro has been one of the 3 expert in the high level group supporting the EC in the analysis of the 15 national initiatives in Digitising European Industry (DEI). He is supporting the activities of the I4MS (ICT Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs) Programme since its very beginning and leads the establishment of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Advanced Manufacturing HUB (AMHUB) in the Basque Country and the development of the IDSA Hub Spain ecosystem. He is board member of the EIT Digital Spanish CLC. He is also part of the Smart Industry Committee of the FIWARE Foundation, board member of the ECSEL joint undertaking Industry4.E LIASE (Lighthouse Initiative Advisory Service) and representative of Innovalia at 5TONIC, the Spanish experimental facility for 5G communications. Since January 2018 he is coordinating the European lighthouse initiative BOOST 4.0 on Big Data Platforms for Industry 4.0 setting up the foundations for a common European industrial data space.

Rosamaria Maniaci graduated as Doctor with laude in Modern Language with a Master degree in Technology for Language Teaching from the University of Palermo. She works in the R&D Department at ENGINEERING as Communication Specialist in the context of European funded projects related to Smart Industry and Social Software. She has been involved in several European research projects, such as: MIDIH (MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY DIGI-TAL INNOVATION HUBS) OEDIPUS (Operate European Digital Industry with Products and Services), A4BLUE (Adaptive Automation in Assembly For BLUE collar workers satisfaction in Evolvable context), VINCENTE (A Virtual collective INtelligenCe ENvironment to develop sustainable Technology Entrepreneurship ecosystems), and others.

Angelo Marguglio, graduated as Doctor with laude in Computer Engineering from the University of Palermo, has been working in the R&D Lab for Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. since 2006 where he has established solid backgrounds on Italian and European research projects and initiatives. Now he is the head of the "Smart Industry and Agrifood" Unit within the “Industry and Security Technologies, Research and Innovation” (IS3) Lab. His role as Research Area Manager mainly concerns with coordinating a group of more than 20 researchers (based on Palermo, Rome, Lecce, Naples, Siena, Trento) using state-of-the-art PM methodologies (e.g. PMP, PRINCE2 and Agile/SCRUM); defining the strategic roadmap and the operational plans of the Unit; coordinating several research projects and collaborating with the Industry Business Unit of the Engineering Group. The main application fields are Internet of Things, Big Data, Advanced Manufacturing, Enterprise Social Software and Digital Workplace, Supply Chain Management, Smart Farming, Operational Intelligence, Food Safety and Biometric Security.

Julien Mascolo is a senior researcher and project manager in the Factory Innovation department of CRF.

His areas of work in FCA regard the optimisation of industrial processes (Manufacturing, Logistics, Product Development Process). He is involved both in European research projects and in internal projects within FCA, in the area of design and operations of supply chains and manufacturing processes.

Nicola Plantamura graduated in computer science and is a member of the national council of UNIMATICA which brings together ICT companies associated to the CONFAPI system. Confapi is an association of small and medium-sized Italian companies and represents about 80,000 companies with more than 800,000 employees, Confapi has about 55 territorial and district offices.

Anna Puig Centelles received her degree in computer engineering in 2004 from the Universitat Jaume I (Spain) and the M.Sc. from the Vrije Universiteit (The Netherlands) on medical protocols. Anna obtained her European Ph.D. on computer graphics in 2010 after doing a research internship in Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid, Spain) and Université de Limoges (France). After working in Academia for many years, Anna started working as project and programme manager at an R&D company focused on neuroscience and satellite technology, where she contributed and managed FP7 and H2020 projects, as well as supporting and improving business development activities within the company. Anna joined the European Commission in 2018 as programme officer in DG CNECT/A2. Her current responsibilities include working as project officer for H2020 projects and also working in policy, in particular for Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) and the digital transformation of SMEs.

Nadia Scandelli received her M. Sc. in Telecommunication Engineering from Politecnico, Milan, Italy, in December 2004. Since February 2005, she collaborates with CEFRIEL and she currently holds the position of Head of Smart Factory Unit of Cefriel, being responsible of Industry 4.0 projects and activities of Cefriel. 

She has been Project Manager of international and national projects, responsible for the ideation, design, development and delivery of innovative solutions.

Since 2017 he is a member of the scientific committee of A&T - Automation & Testing. From 2019 she is a member of the Technical Scientific Committee of the "MADE" Competence Center, and a member of the GTT3 Steering Committee, "Systems for the valorization of people in factories" within the "Intelligent Factory" National Cluster.

Sebastian Steinbuß is a CTO und Lead Architect at International Data Spaces Association, where he leads the technical developments of the Association and coordinates the IDSA Working Groups and Task Forces. He is part of the GAIA-X Architecture Board and the Expert Team of the Data Sharing Coalition. His personal interests are in data sharing, Cloud Computing, Big Data and (I)IoT where he is involved in several projects.

Nenad Stojanovic is CEO of Nissatech. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from KIT, Germany. Working in the domain of AI and data-driven systems for more than 25 years. Huge expertise in the manufacturing, eHealth and wellbeing context. Currently working on the new generation of cognitive industrial systems, focusing on cognitive digital twins.