Authors

Authors

Hans Akkermans (w4ra.org and University for Development Studies UDS, Ghana)

Hans Akkermans is Professor Emeritus of Business Informatics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and professor at the University for Development Studies UDS in Ghana. He is the Founding Director of the interdisciplinary Network Institute in Amsterdam that studies the interaction between digital technology and society, in which researchers from the faculties of social sciences, humanities, law, economics, and informatics participate.  He has worked for many years in knowledge engineering & management, information systems and innovative e-business modelling, with for example applications and innovations in smart electricity distribution networks and the sustainable energy transition that have been internationally field-deployed and are now in industrial and commercial use. His current research interests focus on the interdisciplinary research, education and community service program W4RA (Web alliance for Regreening in Africa). He is co-chair of DigHum’s Curriculum Working Group. He holds a cum laude PhD in theoretical physics in the field of nuclear reactions from the University of Groningen.

Contribution: Return to Freedom: Governance of Fair Innovation Ecosystems


André Baart (Bolesian BV, The Netherlands)

André Baart is a researcher and professional in the field of ICT for Development and Artificial Intelligence. He obtained a master’s in Information Science at VU Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He worked as an ICT4D researcher at the University of Amsterdam and as a guest lecturer at VU Amsterdam. In his research he carried out various field-based technology innovation projects for communities in West (Mali, Burkina Faso) and East Africa (Rwanda). As an independent consultant he is involved in the design and deployment of decentralized Fair-ecosystem voice-based trading platforms in local African languages. He is specialized in design of information systems for low resource environments. He was the chief developer of “Kasadaka”, a decentralized, voice-based ICT platform for African farmers, for which he received the Amsterdam High Potential Innovation Prize in 2018.

Contribution: Decolonizing Technology and Society: A Perspective from the Global South


Ricardo Baeza-Yates (Northeastern University, USA)

Ricardo Baeza-Yates is the Director of Research at the Institute for Experiential AI of Northeastern University. He is also a part-time professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona and Universidad de Chile in Santiago. Before, he was CTO at NTENT from 2016 to 2020 and VP of Research at Yahoo Labs, first based in Barcelona, Spain, and later in Sunnyvale, California, from 2006 to 2016. He is co-author of the best-seller Modern Information Retrieval textbook published by Addison-Wesley in 1999 and 2011 (2nd ed), that won the ASIST 2012 Book of the Year award. From 2002 to 2004 he was elected to the Board of Governors of the IEEE Computer Society and between 2012 and 2016 was elected to the ACM Council. Since 2010 is a founding member of the Chilean Academy of Engineering. In 2009 he was named ACM Fellow and in 2011 IEEE Fellow, among other awards and distinctions. He obtained a Ph.D. in CS from the University of Waterloo, Canada,  and holds a BSE and a MEng in Electrical Engineering as well as a BSc and a MSc in Computer Science. His areas of expertise are web search and data mining, information retrieval, bias and ethics on AI, data science and algorithms in general.

Contribution: The Attention Economy and the Impact of AI


(c) Pia Clodi

Clara Blume (Head of Open Austria Art + Tech Lab)

Clara Blume, Ph.D. works as a European cultural diplomat and artist in Silicon Valley, heading the Open Austria Art + Tech Lab to explore the interplay of human and artificial creativity. Set out as a laboratory for open and interdisciplinary collaboration, Blume curates, commissions, and promotes art projects that redefine what it means to be human in the age of artificial intelligence. In concert with Austria’s efforts in tech diplomacy, the Art + Tech Lab is working with policy makers from Europe and the US to advocate for a new digital humanism in tech. As President of the EU National Institutes for Culture Cluster in the Bay Area (EUNIC Silicon Valley) in 2019 and 2020, Blume co-founded and is president of art + tech + policy network The Grid (Art Powers Technology), supported with funding by the European Commission and Salesforce. Prior to her new role in cultural diplomacy, she worked as a professional musician, songwriter, and internationally touring recording artist. Blume studied music composition and fine arts at Academia de Bellas Artes, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). She holds a M.A. in comparative literature and a Ph.D. in cultural studies and history from the University of Vienna. Blume is a regular conference speaker and a published author.

Contribution: How to Be A Digital Humanist in International Relations: Cultural Tech Diplomacy Challenges Silicon Valley


Anna Bon (w4ra.org, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Anna Bon is researcher and lecturer in Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Maastricht University, and senior project manager at VU Amsterdam’s International Office (CIS Centre for International Cooperation). She directs the interdisciplinary research, education and community service program W4RA (Web alliance for Regreening in Africa, https://w4ra.org). Her interdisciplinary research centres around how innovative context-aware technologies can be developed in a co-creative way to support local value chains and improve food security, serving especially smallholder farmers and communities in Africa’s Sahellian drylands.  Her international projects include digital voice-service support  for local cereal seeds value networks in West Africa (Mali); ICT4D Community Service Learning in rural Sarawak, Malaysia; Sustainability and Ethics in Digital Development; AI for Sustainable Development, and the Amsterdam Digital Divide. Anna Bon is a Senior Editor of the Electronic Journal for Information Systems in Developing Countries.

Contributions: Return to Freedom: Governance of Fair Innovation Ecosystems ; Decolonizing Technology and Society: A Perspective from the Global South


Robert Masua Bwana (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Robert Masua Bwana is a PhD researcher at the Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He obtained a BSc in Computer Science from Monash University South Africa followed by a MSc in Computing Science from the University of Groningen. His current research focuses on the field of ICT for Development and AI for Good in combination with the study of International Business and their responsible behavior. Under the Crowdsourcing App for Responsible Production in Africa (CARPA) project, he focuses on researching and developing an app to promote and facilitate stakeholder discourse regarding the impact of companies’ global value chains in sub-Saharan African countries. His work with CARPA has earned the inclusion into the Clinton Global Initiative University program in 2021.

Contribution: Decolonizing Technology and Society: A Perspective from the Global South


Robin Burke (University of Colorado, Boulder, USA)

Robin Burke is Professor and Chair of the Department of Information Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He conducts research in personalized recommender systems, a field he helped found and develop. His most recent projects explore fairness, accountability and transparency in recommendation through the integration of objectives from diverse stakeholders. He joined the Department of Information Science in 2019 from the School of Computing at DePaul University. Dr Burke obtained his PhD in Computer Science from Northwestern University in 1993 and a BS in Computer Science from Harvey Mudd College in 1986. Professor Burke is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in various areas of artificial intelligence including recommender systems, machine learning and information retrieval. His work has received support from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Commission and the MacArthur Foundation, among others.

Contribution: Personalization, Fairness and Post-Userism


Brian S. Butler (University of Maryland, College of Information Studies, USA)

Dr. Brian Butler’s research and teaching focuses on developing theories and techniques to enable groups, communities, and organizations to harness the full potential of new technologies.  This includes the design of online communities; the use of information technology to strengthen local food ecosystems;  strategies for leveraging power and politics to support organizational transformation and reduce systemic bias; and development of alternative models to data governance.  Since joining UMD in 2012 as a faculty member, Dr. Butler has also served as Director of the Master of Information Management (MIM) program, Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Communities and Information (CASCI), Interim Dean, Senior Associate Dean, and co-Director of the UMD Social Data Science Center (SoDa).  

Contribution: Responsible Technology Design: Conversations for Success


Cansu Canca (AI Ethics Lab, USA)

Cansu Canca is a moral and political philosopher, with a Ph.D. specializing in applied ethics. She is the founder/director of AI Ethics Lab, which is one of the first initiatives focusing exclusively on the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), advising practitioners and conducting multidisciplinary research. Canca leads teams of computer scientists, philosophers, legal scholars, and other experts in research, development of toolkits, and consulting. She primarily works on ethics of technology, having previously worked on ethics and health.

Formerly, she was a lecturer at the University of Hong Kong, and an ethics researcher at Harvard Law School, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, National University of Singapore, Osaka University, and the World Health Organization. Canca serves as an ethics expert in various ethics, advisory, and editorial boards. In 2018, she was listed among the “30 Influential Women Advancing AI in Boston” and in 2019, among the “100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics”. She has given over 100 keynotes, seminars, talks, and interviews on AI ethics. 

Contribution: Did You Find It on the Internet? Ethical Complexities of Search Engine Rankings


Michael E. Caspersen (It-vest – Networking Universities and Aarhus University, Denmark)

Michael E. Caspersen is Managing Director at It-vest – Networking Universities, and Honorary Professor at the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Aarhus University; his research interests are in the areas of computing education, computational thinking, programming methodology, and object-oriented programming. Michael has published more than 60 papers on computer science education and is co-author of a two-volume textbook on programming and co-editor of “Reflections on the Teaching of Programming” published by Springer-Verlag, 2008.

He is member of the Steering Committee for Informatics for All and was co-chair of the Committee on European Computing Education established jointly by ACM Europe and Informatics Europe. He is member of the Board of Informatics Europe and responsible for the organisation’s educational activities. Since 2008, Michael has been heavily involved in development of the new informatics subject for Danish high school. In 2018, by personal invitation from the Minister of Education, he was co-chair of the expert group developing a new informatics subject for 1st through 9th grade. Michael is a Fellow of the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences and member of The Digital Council; and he is recognised as Distinguished Member of ACM.

Contribution: Informatics as a Fundamental Discipline in General Education – The Danish Perspective


WaiShiang Cheah (University Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia)

WaiShiang Cheah is senior lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of computer science and information technology of the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), in Malaysia. He holds a PhD in software engineering from The Melbourne University, Australia. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher on intelligent agent simulation and sustainable business and value modeling, at VU Amsterdam and Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He is a certified educator of the e3value methodology for sustainability and business analysis. His current research is centered around agent-oriented modelling and simulation and blockchain technologies in a context of ICT for Development and Community Service Learning.

Contribution: Decolonizing Technology and Society: A Perspective from the Global South


Cristiano Codagnone (Università degli studi di Milano, Italy)

Cristiano Codagnone is Aggregate Professor at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC, Department of Communication Studies) and Researcher at Università degli studi di Milano (Department of Social and Political Sciences). In the course of his academic career he has served as civil servant at the United Nations (2003-2004) and at the European Union (2009-2011; 2015-2016). Since 2005 he has designed and conducted more than 70s applied policy research studies for international organisations, national and local governments, including experimental and quasi-experimental impact evaluations in varioius policy domains (consumers’ protection, healthcare, industrial policy, R&D policy, social and labour market policies, and in the domain of digital tranformation). His experience in applied policy research is reflected in the two books published in 2018: Scienza in vendita (Egea) and Platform Economics: Reality and Rethoric in the ‘Sharing Economy’ (Emerald Publishing). Codagnone mixed throughout his professional career an interest for high-level social and economic theory, empirical research, and for their practical and concrete applications. He is a public speakers and has been keynote speakers in various high level ministerial conferences and various other accademic and policy events.

Contribution: The Platform Economy after Covid-19: Regulation and the Precautionary Principle


Francis Dittoh (University for Development Studies, Ghana)

Francis Dittoh is researcher at the University for Development Studies (UDS) in Tamale, Ghana and guest lecturer and PhD researcher at VU Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His research in the interdisciplinary field of ICT for Development centers around the design and deployment of context-aware, community-centered information systems for people in low-resource environments. He is involved in the establishment of a new Computer Science department and in the design of a new software engineering curriculum at the University for Development Studies in Ghana. He is a member of the interdisciplinary research program W4RA – the Web alliance for Regreening in Africa. As an ICT professional he is founder and director of the Ghanaian tech firm Faith IT Consult and an ICT Associate of United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS).

Contribution: Decolonizing Technology and Society: A Perspective from the Global South


Anita Eichinger (Vienna City Library, Austria)

Anita Eichinger, Librarian, Philosopher, has been Director of the Vienna City Library since 2019. Before that she was head of “Digital Services” and started retrodigitisation projects and established the Digital Library www.digital.wienbibliothek.at, she also played a key role in setting up the Wien Geschichte Wiki in 2013. In her postgradual master thesis “Smart City – Smart Library” (2016) she argues that a Smart City like Vienna needs culture in its strategy. Since 2016, she has been a member of the Smart City Vienna Arbeitskreis. She published several articles on Cultural Heritage, Libraries and Digitalization. Her latest publication is “Digitale Bibliothek und Wien Geschichte Wiki. Strategien zur Digitalisierung an der Wienbibliothek”, in: Gregor Neuböck (Hg.) Digitalisierung in Bibliotheken. Viel mehr als nur Bücher scannen. De Gruyter, 2018, 41–50

Contribution: We Are Needed More Than Ever: Cultural Heritage, Libraries and Archives


Usama M. Fayyad (Northeastern University, USA & Open Insights)

Usama Fayad is Chairman at Open Insights focusing on AI, BigData strategy, and new business models for Data. He is the Inaugural Executive Director of the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University where he is also professor of computer science. He was Global Chief Data Officer at Barclays Bank in London (2013-2016) after launching a key tech startup accelerator in MENA (2010-2013) as Executive Chairman of Oasis500. He was Chairman/CEO/CTO at several Seattle/Silicon Valley tech startups and the first person to hold the title: Chief Data Officer when Yahoo! acquired his 2nd startup in 2004. He held leadership roles at Microsoft (1996-2000) and founded the Machine Learning Systems group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (1989-1996) where he was awarded Caltech’s top Excellence in Research award & a U.S. Government medal from NASA. Usama published over 100 technical articles, holds over 30 patents, is a Fellow of both AAAI and ACM. He is a recipient of both the ACM SIGKDD Awards for Innovation and for Service. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and holds two BSE’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering, MSE Computer Engineering and M.Sc. in Mathematics.

Contribution: The Attention Economy and the Impact of AI


Alfonso Fuggetta (Cefriel – Politecnico di Milano, Italy)

Alfonso Fuggetta is a Full Professor of Computer Science at Politecnico di Milano and CEO of Cefriel, a technology transfer and innovation center established in 1988 in Milan to promote the cooperation among academia, industries, and public administrations. He has been a visiting researcher and professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the Institute for Software Researcher at the University of California, Irvine. He has also been a member of different national and international bodies established to discuss public policies to promote research and innovation in the Information and Communication Technology sector. In 2020, He was part of the task force of the Italian Government who selected the Immuni app for contact tracing at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Contribution: Lessons Learned from the Covid-19 Pandemic


Carlo Ghezzi (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)

Carlo Ghezzi is an Emeritus Professor at Politecnico di Milano (Italy), where he has been teaching and doing research for over 40 years. He is an ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, member of Academia Europaea, and member of the Italian Academy of Sciences (Istituto Lombardo). He has been awarded the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award and the Distinguished Service Award, and the IEEE TCSE Distinguished Education Award. He received the Honorary Doctorate from TU Wien. He has been President of Informatics Europe. He has been Program Co-Chair, General Chair, and program committee member of numerous international conferences. He has been Editor in Chief of the ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Associate Editor of Communications of the ACM, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Science of Computer Programming.

He has done research on programming languages and software engineering. He has published over 200 papers in international journals and conferences and co-authored 7 books. He is interested in the ethical implications of research in computer science. He is currently chairing the Ethics Committee at Politecnico di Milano.

Contribution: Rethinking Research in the Light of Digital Humanism


Jaap Gordijn (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and
The Value Engineers BV, The Netherlands)

Jaap Gordijn (jaap@thevalueengineers.nl) is founder and managing partner of The Value Engineers (https://www.thevalueengineers.nl), a company designing peer-to-peer business models for technologies such as blockchain. Also, he is an associate professor of innovative e-business at the VUA, Amsterdam. He is the key developer of, and has internationally published on, the e3-value methodology, which comprises a graphical technique to design and evaluate networked business models (www.e3value.com). Earlier, he was a member of Cisco’s International Internet Business Solutions Group. As such, he was active as an e-business strategy consultant in the banking, insurance, and digital content industries for Fortune 500 companies.

Contribution: Return to Freedom: Governance of Fair Innovation Ecosystems


Nathalie Hauk (Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS), Germany)

Dr. Nathalie Hauk studied psychology at the University of Vienna, Austria, and received her PhD from the Free University Berlin, Germany. The focus of her research is on human-technology interaction. Her master thesis focused on emotional reactivity to real vs. virtual stimuli when using virtual reality technologies in psychological treatment. Her dissertation examined the role of age in determinants of technology acceptance, as well as technology-related stress, and coping behaviors. Since May 2020, she has been working as an advisor to the directors at the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS), where she is concerned with the institute’s strategic topics of artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and sustainability.

Contribution: Navigating Through Changes of a Digital World


Lynda Hardman (CWI, Amsterdam & University of Utrecht, The Netherlands)

Lynda Hardman 哈琳达 is Manager Research & Strategy at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI, https://www.cwi.nl), the Dutch national research centre for Mathematics and Computer Science based in Amsterdam. She is full professor of Multimedia Discourse Interaction at Utrecht University. She is the European director of LIAMA, a research collaboration since 1997 between INRIA (France), CWI and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She is the director of Amsterdam Data Science, a partner organization whose mission is to strengthen the Data Science and AI ecosystem that spans academia, industry and society in the Amsterdam region. She represents the Netherlands as a member of the EU COST scientific committee. She was the president of Informatics Europe (2016-2017), a European association of computer science departments to foster the development of quality research and teaching in computer science within Europe. During her 4-year period in the IE board she founded the Women in Informatics Research & Education working group. She was named ACM Distinguished Scientist in 2014 and is a Fellow of the British Computer Society.

Contribution: Cultural Influences on AI along the New Silk Road


Manfred Hauswirth (Technical University of Berlin & Weizenbaum Institute, Germany)

Manfred Hauswirth is the managing director (CEO) of the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS) and a full professor for “Open Distributed Systems” at the Technical University Berlin. Before he had been deputy director of the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI, now DSI) and a professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His research is on distributed information systems, Internet of Things, data stream processing and Linked Data, semantics and AI. He has won several international awards for his work in these areas and is active in many scientific and political committees around digitization.

He is a director and principal investigator in the Weizenbaum Institute, the German Internet Institute, and a principal investigator in the Einstein Center Digital Future (ECDF), in the Berlin Big Data Center (BBDC) and in the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD). Manfred Hauswirth is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Services Computing and of the ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, a member of the IEEE Computer Society Conference Advisory Committee, partner in the Web Science Trust Network of Laboratories (WSTNet), and speaker of the competency network quantum computing of Fraunhofer, a director of the Fraunhofer Academy.

Contribution: Navigating Through Changes of a Digital World


Walter Hötzendorfer (Research Institute AG & Co KG, Austria)

Walter Hötzendorfer is a Senior Researcher at the Research Institute – Digital Human Rights Center in Vienna. He studied business information systems at the Vienna University of Technology and law at the Universities of Vienna and Sheffield. After working in legal consulting and software engineering, he was a Researcher at the University of Vienna Centre for Computers and Law from 2011 to 2016, where he worked in several national and international research projects and did a PhD on Data Protection and Privacy by Design in Federated Identity Management. Dr. Hötzendorfer advises various types of organisations on the implementation of the GDPR, is a university lecturer in Austria and abroad and the author of numerous publications on data protection law, privacy by design, privacy engineering, network and information security (NIS) and related topics. He is a member of the Austrian Data Protection Council and board member of the Austrian Computer Society (OCG). As a permanent advisor of the Austrian Red Cross on data protection he is involved in developing and maintaining of the Austrian Stop Corona App with a special focus on privacy by design.

Contribution: Contact Tracing Apps: A Lesson in Societal Aspects of Technological Development


Paola Inverardi (Università dell’Aquila, Italy)

Paola Inverardi is Professor of Computer Science at University of L’Aquila. She was Rector of University of L’Aquila from October 2013 to September 2019. Paola Inverardi’s research area is in the application of rigorous methods to software production in order to improve software quality. In the last decade her research interests concentrated in the field of software architectures, mobile applications and adaptive and autonomous systems. Currently she leads a project to develop software solutions to protect users’ ethics in the interaction with autonomous technologies. Inverardi served in the editorial boards of IEEE, ACM, Springer and Elsevier Journals. She has been general chair or program chair of leading conferences in software technology (e.g. ASE, ICSE, ESEC/FSE) and chair of the ICSE and ESEC Steering Committees. She has been member of the ACM Europe Council and she is vice-chair of ACM EUTPC. She is member of Academia Europaea. She is the Italian National Delegate for the European H2020-ICT Committee and the Italian representative in the Eurohpc Governing Board. She is 2021- G20 sherpa for the Italian Ministry of University and Research. She has received a Honorary Doctorate at Mälardalen University Sweden and a Honorary doctorate at Shibaura University, Tokyo Japan, she has received the 2013 IEEE TCSE Distinguished Service Award http://www.cs-tcse.org/awards

Contribution: The Challenge of Human Dignity in the Era of Autonomous Systems


Peter Knees (TU Wien, Austria)

Peter Knees is an Associate Professor of the Faculty of Informatics of TU Wien in Vienna, Austria. For almost two decades he has been an active member of the music information retrieval community, reaching out to the related areas of multimedia, text information retrieval, and recommender systems. His research activities focus on questions of digital media access and the implications of these technologies for users. In the music domain, this concerns music listeners as users of music recommender systems, as well as music creators, when applying AI in the process of music composition and production. Currently he is investigating the role of different stakeholders in music recommendation, definitions of fairness for these stakeholders, and possible strategies towards neutral recommender systems. Peter is one of the main proponents of the Digital Humanism initiative of the Faculty of Informatics and a co-author of the Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism.

Contribution: Scaling Up Broken Systems? Considerations from the Area of Music Streaming


Narayanan Kulathuramaiyer (University Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia)

Narayanan Kulathuramaiyer is Director of the Institute of Social Informatics and Technological Innovations (ISITI) and Professor of Computer Science at the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS). He received his PhD in Computer Science from the Graz University of Technology, Austria.  His research covers areas of Intelligent systems, Indigenous Knowledge Management and Technology-enhanced Learning. Particularly impactful has been his work with remote rural communities across the country, innovating technology-based learning to serve marginalized rural communities in Malaysia and South East Asia. In recognition of his work, he has won numerous awards at the national and international levels including the coveted “Anugerah Tokoh Akademik” and the Vice-Chancellor’s innovation award.

Contribution: Decolonizing Technology and Society: A Perspective from the Global South


James Larus (EPFL, Switzerland)

James Larus is Professor and Dean of the School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC) at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) in Lausanne, Switzerland. Prior to joining IC in 2013, Larus was a researcher, manager, and director in Microsoft Research for over 16 years and an assistant and associate professor in the Computer Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Larus has been an active contributor to numerous communities. He published over 100 papers (with 9 best and most influential paper awards), received over 40 US patents. Larus received a National Science Foundation Young Investigator award in 1993 and became an ACM Fellow in 2006. Larus received his MS and PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989, and an AB in Applied Mathematics from Harvard in 1980.

Contribution: The Curation Chokepoint


Edward A. Lee (University of California at Berkeley, USA)

Edward A. Lee has been working on embedded software systems for 40 years. After studying and working at Yale, MIT, and Bell Labs, he landed at Berkeley, where he is now Professor of the Graduate School in EECS. His research is focused on cyber-physical systems. He is the lead author of the open-source software system Ptolemy II, author of textbooks on embedded systems and digital communications, and has recently been writing books on philosophical and social implications of technology. His current research is focused on a polyglot coordination language for distributed real-time systems called Lingua Franca that combines features of discrete-event modeling, synchronous languages, and actors. His recent books are The Coevolution: The Entwined Futures and Humans and Machines (2020), Plato and the Nerd: The Creative Partnership of Humans and Technology (2017), and Introduction to Embedded Systems: A Cyber-Physical System Approach (2017, with Sanjit Seshia).

Contribution: Are We Losing Control?


Gossa Lô (Bolesian BV, The Netherlands)

Gossa Lô is specialist and professional in Artificial Intelligence. She obtained a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence at VU Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She has a longstanding experience in Socially Aware Computing and ICT for Development, for which she conducted trans-disciplinary projects in Ghana and Mali as a member of the Web Alliance for Regreening in Africa research group (W4RA). The focus of her research was on translating information needs of rural farmers into practical and easy-to-use Artificial Intelligence tools. One of the AI tools she developed is DigiVet, an application for diagnosis of animal health, contextualized to the rural African environment.  Gossa works for the Dutch tech firm Bolesian.ai where she focuses on Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing and ‘AI4Good’. She passionately applies AI in a wide variety of contexts, while tuned to the rapidly changing scientific, organizational and global developments of ethical AI and inclusion in the AI community. She is personally committed to creating algorithms that positively contribute to the world, be it in West Africa or Europe.

Contribution: Decolonizing Technology and Society: A Perspective from the Global South


Ciaran Martin (University of Oxford, UK)

Professor Ciaran Martin, CB is Professor of Practice in the Management of Public Organisations at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. He is also an adviser to Paladin Capital in the United States, and Garrison Technologies in the UK. From 2013 to 2020 he founded and then led the National Cyber Security Centre in the UK, part of the intelligence agency GCHQ.

Contribution: Geo-Politics and Digital Sovereignty


Sunimal Mendis (Tilburg University, The Netherlands)

Sunimal Mendis is an Assistant Professor in Intellectual Property Law at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT) of the Tilburg University, The Netherlands. She holds a PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich (awarded by the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich) and was a Fellow of the 2020 Research Sprint on AI and Platform Governance organized by the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin. Her research explores issues at the interface of intellectual property (IP) law, the digital economy and digital culture and focuses on the need to calibrate current legal, regulatory and policy frameworks in order to render IP law a more effective tool for optimizing social and economic value creation within the new digital environment. 

Contribution: Democratic Discourse in the Digital Public Sphere: Re-imagining Copyright Enforcement on Online Social Media Platforms


George Metakides (Digital Enlightenment Forum)

Born in Thessaloniki, Greece, George Metakides received his Ph.D. in Mathematical Logic from Cornell University in 1971. He pursued an academic career at MIT, Cornell and Rochester University until 1978, when he returned to Greece after being elected to the Chair of Logic at the University of Patras. Since 1984 he has held senior positions with responsibility for Research Development policy, funding and international co-operation in European institutions. He established and headed the department for Basic Research and International Scientific Relations in Information Technologies at the European Commission from 1988 to 1993. He was the Director of the ESPRIT (European Strategic Program for Information Technologies), from 1993 until its completion in 1998, followed by the Information Society Technologies (IST) Program (1998-2002). In 2002 he returned to his professorship at Patras until his retirement in 2012.

He has contributed to the establishment of international institutions (including the launch of the World Wide Web consortium in 1993), has received a number of awards and honorary degrees and is a corresponding member of several National Academies. He is currently visiting professor at the University of Southampton, Adjunct Professor at the European University of Cyprus, President of the Digital Enlightenment Forum, and Advisor to several international organizations. He is involved in the analysis of the economic, political and social impact of digitization, related cybersecurity, data protection and regulatory issues and the promotion of international cooperation towards a digital ecosystem respecting shared human values.

Contribution: A Crucial Decade for European Digital Sovereignty


Enrico Nardelli (Università di Roma “Tor Vergata”, Italy)

Enrico Nardelli is full professor of Informatics at University of Rome “Tor Vergata” and the President of Informatics Europe, the association representing Informatics university departments and research labs in Europe. He is member of the ACM Europe Council and represents his university in the Management Board of CINI (National Interuniversity Consortium in Informatics). Since 2014 he coordinates “Programma il Futuro”, a project run by CINI, in accordance with the Italian Ministry of Education, to introduce in Italian schools the basic concepts of Informatics as a scientific discipline. He is the director of the national laboratory “Informatics and School” of CINI and member of the Steering Committee of the “Informatics for All” coalition, advocating the introduction of Informatics as component of fundamental education in all schools in Europe.

His current research activity is Informatics Education and interdisciplinary study of Informatics systems and their social impact, within the Link&Think Research Lab and the CINI National laboratory “Informatics and Society”. Previously he did research in various fields of Informatics, from algorithms to databases, from geographical information systems to man-machine interaction and cooperative information systems. He also carries out dissemination activity towards the general public regarding Informatics education and the role of Informatics in the digital society. Website of Enrico Nardelli.

Contribution: The Unbearable Disembodiedness of Cognitive Machines


Julia Neidhardt (TU Wien, Austria)

Julia Neidhardt is a researcher at the Research Unit E-Commerce at TU Wien, Austria. She has a background in mathematics and computer science. Her main research areas are user modeling, recommender systems and network science. In 2013 and 2014 she was visiting scholar at Northwestern University, USA. Since 2019, she is a guest researcher at the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and co-principal investigator of several interdisciplinary projects. She was in the program committee of numerous conferences and is Associate Editor of the Journal of Information Technology & Tourism as well as in the Editorial Board of Recommender Systems of Frontiers in Big Data. Julia Neidhardt was research track co-chair of ENTER 2020 and ENTER 2019 conference and a co-organizer of a number of workshops and conferences. She is part of the Digital Humanism Initiative at TU Wien.

Contribution: It is Simple, It is Complicated


(Picture © Diane von Schoen)

Julian Nida-Rümelin (Ludwig Maximilians Universität Munich, Germany)

Julian Nida-Rümelin is professor of philosophy and political theory at the University of Munich (LMU). He studied physics, mathematics, philosophy and political science, he has a PhD and habilitation in philosophy. He was president of the German Philosophical Association and stateminister for culture in the national german government under chancellor Gerhard Schröder. His main fields of research are theory of rationality, ethics, and political philosophy. 

Contribution: Digital Humanism and the Limits of AI


Helga Nowotny (Former President of the European Research Council)

Helga Nowotny is Professor emerita of Science and Technology Studies, ETH Zurich and former President of the European Research Council. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University, New York, and a doctorate in jurisprudence, University of Vienna. She has held teaching and research positions at universities and research institutions in several countries in Europe and has been actively engaged in research and innovation policy at European and international level during her entire professional career. Among other, she is currently a member of the Austrian Council for Research and Technology Development and Visiting Professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; member of the Board of Trustees of the Falling Walls Foundation, Berlin; and Vice-President of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. She has received numerous awards such as the rarely awarded Gold Medal of the Academia Europaea, the Leibniz-Medaille of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and the British Academy President’s Medal. Helga Nowotny is the recipient of many honorary doctorates, among them from the University of Oxford and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. 

She has published widely in science and technology studies, STS, and on social time. Her latest publications include “The Cunning of Uncertainty” (2015), “An Orderly Mess” (2017) and „In AI we trust. Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms“ (2021).

Contribution: Digital Humanism – Navigating the Tensions Ahead


Hubert Österle (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland)

Hubert Osterle has been full professor of business and information systems engineering at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He founded the Institute of Information Management and initiated the executive MBA program “Business Engineering” at the University of St. Gallen. Osterle was editor-in-chief of Electronic Markets and a member of the editorial board of other journals. In March 2015 Osterle received an honorary doctorate from the Wroclaw University of Economics.

Besides his academic achievements, he founded the consultancy companies “The Information Management Group” (1989) and “Business Engineering Institute St. Gallen” (2003). In addition, Osterle is founder (2008) and a member of the supervisory board of CDQ AG.

Contribution: Ethics or Quality of Life?


Geoffrey G. Parker (Dartmouth College, USA)

Geoffrey Parker is a professor of engineering at Dartmouth College. He is also a research fellow at MIT’s Initiative for the Digital Economy where he leads platform industry research studies and co-chairs the annual MIT Platform Strategy Summit. Parker has made significant contributions to the field of network economics and strategy as co-developer of the theory of “two-sided” markets. He is co-author of the book “Platform Revolution,” published in ten languages. Parker won the Thinkers50 2019 Digital Thinking Award, along with Marshall Van Alstyne, for the concepts of the inverted firm, two-sided markets, and how firms can adapt and thrive in a platform economy. In Spring 2020, he was elected as a Fellow of the Production and Operations Management Society. In Fall 2020 he joined the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Advanced Manufacturing and Production. Parker is a frequent keynote speaker and advises senior leaders on their organizations’ platform strategies. He received a B.S.E. from Princeton and M.S. and Ph.D. from MIT.

Contribution: Business Model Innovation and the Rise of Technology Giants


Mónica Pini (Universidad San Martín, Argentina)

Mónica Pini is Professor of Education, Culture and Society at the University of San Martin (UNSAM) in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Education, Culture and Society at the School of Humanities, at UNSAM. She studied public administration and educational sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and holds a PhD in Educational Thought and Sociocultural Studies. Her specialization is in the field of educational policy in relationship with cultural, social and technological transformation. As a postdoctoral researcher she did a study on Critical Discourse Analysis at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, in Barcelona, Spain. At UNSAM she designed the master curriculum in Education, Languages and Media, of which she is course director.

Contribution: Decolonizing Technology and Society: A Perspective from the Global South


Nikolas Popper (TU Wien, Austria)

Nikolas “Niki” Popper studied Mathematics/Computer Science in Vienna, Barcelona (Catalonia) and Moscow/Idaho (US) and received his PhD in Mathematics at TU Wien. He is coordinator of COCOS “Centre for Computational Complex Systems” at TU Wien as well as chairman of DEXHELPP (Decision Support for Health Policy and Planning), which is dedicated to decision making in health systems. Main research interests are theory and applications of modelling & simulation of dynamic systems, comparative modelling & simulation; model coupling and comparison; implementation, parametrization, calibration and validation concepts. Niki Popper is founding president of ISPOR Austria Chapter, member of the ASIM Board and Secretary of EUROSIM. In 2020 he is member of the COVID19 Advisory Board to the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health and Member of the Austrian COVID19 Prognosis Consortium. Recent keynotes include the Wittgenstein Centre Conference at the Austrian Academy of Sciences 2020 or ETFA 2020 – IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation. He co-founded two successful companies, the drahtwarenhandlung for scientific films & data journalism and the R&D company dwh GmbH for technical solutions and simulation services, dedicated to develop pipelines from the basic idea for a data driven analysis up to a ready for market solution.

Contribution: Data, Models & Decisions: How We can Shape our World by Not Predicting the Future


Katharina Prager (Vienna City Library, Austria)

Katharina Prager, Historian and Cultural Scientist, is currently in charge of research cooperations, digital humanities and the Wien Geschichte Wiki (which she has just recently taken over from Anita Eichinger) at the Vienna City Library. She is also leading the FWF-funded project “Intertextuality in the Legal Papers of Karl Kraus. A Scholarly Digital Edition” in cooperation with the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society. From 2012 to 2018 she worked as a researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography and the Vienna City Library, reorganizing the Karl Kraus-Archive and developing an Online-Biography of Karl Kraus (kraus.wienbibliothek.at). She published widely on Life writing, Vienna 1900, Exile, Gender, Archives and Digitalization. Among her latest publications are: Doing Gender in Exile. Geschlechterverhältnisse, Konstruktionen und Netzwerke in Bewegung, edited with Irene Messinger [2019] and »Adelheid Popps (fest-)geschriebenes Leben«, in: Sibylle Hamann (Hg.): Adelheid Popp: Die Jugend einer Arbeiterin. Wien: Picus 2019, 15–32; a „Karl Kraus Handbuch“ (edited with Simon Ganahl, Metzler 2021) will be released soon (https://www.springer.com/de/book/9783476058034).

Contribution: We Are Needed More Than Ever: Cultural Heritage, Libraries and Archives


Erich Prem (Eutema & TU Wien, Austria)

DDr. Erich Prem is chief RTI strategy advisor and CEO of eutema GmbH. He is an internationally renowned expert in research and innovation strategy with more than two decades of work experience in research and innovation management and RTDI policy. Erich Prem is a certified managerial economist and works scientifically in artificial intelligence, research politics, innovation research and epistemology. He was a guest researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked at the Austrian Research Institute of AI. He received his Dr. phil. (epistemology) from the University of Vienna, his Dr.tech. from TU Vienna where he also completed his master’s in computer science (Dipl.Ing). He was a lecturer at TU Vienna’s Informatics Innovation Center. He received his MBA in General Management from Donau University.

Contribution: Our Digital Mirror


(c) Nadine Schach

Martin Rauchbauer (Austrian Tech Ambassador, Open Austria)

Martin Rauchbauer is the first Austrian Tech Ambassador in Silicon Valley and Co-Founder of Open Austria. As an Austrian diplomat, Martin was sent to San Francisco in 2016 in order to open and establish his country’s first innovation outpost in Silicon Valley. Martin’s office helps Austrian entrepreneurs, scientists, researchers, and creative minds to connect with the biggest innovation ecosystem in the world. Martin has served in many capacities due to his passion for tech and cultural diplomacy, holding the local San Francisco chair of the European Union in 2018. Before coming to San Francisco, Martin was Deputy Director of the Business Support Service and Head of the UNESCO unit at the Austrian Foreign Ministry in Vienna. In 2014, he became CEO at the Österreich Institut GmbH, a cultural and language institute headquartered in Vienna with branches in 9 countries. Between 2011 and 2014 he served as Director of Deutsches Haus at NYU in New York City. From 2007 until January 2011 he was the Deputy Director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York. Martin also served as Director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in Mexico City. Martin received his M.A. in International Relations and International Economics from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at the Johns Hopkins University in Bologna, Italy and Washington D.C. He also holds a degree in Philosophy and German Studies from the University of Vienna.

Contribution: How to Be A Digital Humanist in International Relations: Cultural Tech Diplomacy Challenges Silicon Valley


Elissa M. Redmiles (Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, Germany)

Dr. Elissa M. Redmiles is a faculty member and research group leader of the Safety & Society group at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems. She is also CEO of Human Computing Associates, a bespoke research consulting firm, and has served as a consultant and researcher at multiple institutions, including Microsoft Research, Facebook, the World Bank, the Center for Democracy and Technology and the University of Zurich. Dr. Redmiles uses computational, economic, and social science methods to understand users’ digital safety-related decision-making processes. Her work has been featured in popular press publications such as the New York Times, Scientific American, Wired, Business Insider, Schneier on Security, and CNET and has been recognized with multiple Distinguished Paper Awards at USENIX Security and research awards including a Facebook Research Award and the John Karat Usable Privacy and Security Research Award. Dr. Redmiles received her B.S. (Cum Laude), M.S., and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.

Contribution: The Need for Respectful Technologies: Going Beyond Privacy


Stuart Russell (University of California, Berkeley, USA)

Stuart Russell is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley, holder of the Smith-Zadeh Chair in Engineering, and Director of the Center for Human-Compatible AI. He is a recipient of the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award and from 2012 to 2014 held the Chaire Blaise Pascal in Paris. He is an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His book “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach” (with Peter Norvig) is the standard text in AI, used in over 1500 universities in 134 countries. His research covers a wide range of topics in artificial intelligence, with an emphasis on the long-term future of artificial intelligence and its relation to humanity. He has developed a new global seismic monitoring system for the nuclear-test-ban treaty and is currently working to ban lethal autonomous weapons.

Contribution: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control


Daniel K. Samaan (International Labour Organization, Switzerland)

Daniel Samaan is an Economist and Senior Researcher at the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva. He is an expert in the analysis of global labour market trends, specialized in the links with globalization, new technologies/AI, sustainable development, and a new work culture. He has been an author and part of the core teams of several ILO reports. His research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and he is a regular public speaker on various labor market topics and on the Future of Work. Daniel previously worked at the economic policy research center, SCEPA, and in the consulting industry in New York City. He holds a PhD in economics from the New School for Social Research in New York and a master’s degree in economics and business administration from the University of Passau in Germany.

Contribution: Work Without Jobs


Viola Schiaffonati (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)

Viola Schiaffonati is associate professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria. She holds a PhD in Philosophy of Science from Università di Genova. She has been visiting scholar at the Department of Philosophy of the University of California at Berkeley and visiting researcher at the Suppes Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Science and Technology of the Stanford University. Viola Schiaffonati is Director of the CINI National Laboratory on Informatics & Society (IeS) and Editor-in-Chief of Mondo Digitale, a magazine published by AICA (Italian Association of Computing).

Her research interests are in the philosophy of AI and robotics, the epistemology and methodology of experiments in computer engineering and autonomous robotics, the ethical issues of intelligent and autonomous systems.

Contribution: Explorative Experiments and Digital Humanism: Adding an Epistemic Dimension to the Ethical Debate


Johann Seibt (Aarhus University, Denmark)

Johanna Seibt is professor for philosophy at the Department for Philosphy and the History of Ideas at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her current research interests are in process ontology and philosophy of technology with focus on the ontology of social robotics. She is the founder and director of the Research Unit for Robophilosophy and Integrative Social Robotics (RISR, www.robophilosophy.org), as well as founder and main (co-)organizer (with Marco Nørskov) of the biennial Robophilosophy Conference Series. At RISR a team of 11 local and 18 associated researchers from 11 disciplines and 9 countries conducts HRI research using the approach of “Integrative Social Robotics” (ISR). ISR is a new ‘paradigm’ for the organization of R&D processes in social robotics that centrally includes Humanities expertise. The ISR-approach is primarily geared to create culturally sustainable (‘responsible’) social robotics applications but can be extended to other technologies that directly interfere with human social reality. In the course of a new subsidiary education (45 ECTS) in “Humanistic Technology Development” for BA students in the Humanities, researchers at RISR currently collect first insights on how to construct new educational modules, in order to generate those competences that future professionals from computer science/engineering and various social sciences and humanities disciplines will need in order to participate in interdisciplinary developer teams as prescribed by ISR.

Contribution: Educational Requirements for Positive Social Robotics


Allison Stanger (Middlebury College, USA)

Allison Stanger is 2020-21 SAGE Sara Miller McCune Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University; Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the Library of Congress; Russell Leng ’60 Professor of International Politics and Economics at Middlebury College, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. She is the author of Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington to Trump (Chinese edition under contract) and One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy, both with Yale University Press. She is the co-editor (with W. Brian Arthur and Eric Beinhocker) of Complexity Economics (SFI Press). Stanger’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post. She has been called to testify before Congress on five occasions and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Stanger received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University.

Contribution: The Real Cost of Surveillance Capitalism: Digital Humanism in the US and Europe


Michael Stampfer (Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF), Austria)

Michael Stampfer is Managing Director of the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF), a private non-profit funding organisation for scientific research in Vienna (www.wwtf.at). WWTF funds larger projects and group leader positions in Vienna in fields like Life Sciences, ICT, Cognitive Sciences or Environmental Systems Research.

He holds a doctoral degree of the faculty of law of the University of Vienna and has a long-time experience in the field of Austrian and international research and technology policy. Michael has done work on research policy, funding and university governance in a number of national, EU and OECD projects.

Contribution: Why Don’t You Do Something to Help Me? Digital Humanism: A Call for Cities to Act


Oliviero Stock (Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy)

Oliviero Stock is an FBK Distinguished Fellow. He has been at FBK-irst, Trento, since 1988 and has been its director from 1997 to 2001. His activity is in artificial intelligence, mainly natural language processing, intelligent user interfaces, cognitive technologies, technology for cultural heritage appreciation, computational humor, ethics. He is the author of over two hundred and seventy peer-reviewed papers and author or editor of twelve volumes, has been a member of the editorial board of a dozen scientific journals, and a keynote speaker at over eighty conferences.  O.S. has been Chairman of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI, now EURAI), President of the Association for Computational Linguistics and President of AI*IA, the Italian AI Association. Member of the Committee for the Best European Artificial Intelligence Dissertation Award, established by ECCAI (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015), Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of DFKI, the German Research Institute for AI, (2004-2019). He is an EURAI Fellow, a AAAI Fellow and a DFKI Fellow. In 2019 he received a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Haifa.

Contribution: Humanism and the Great Opportunity of Intelligent User Interfaces for Cultural Heritage


Guglielmo Tamburrini (Università di Napoli Federico II, Italy)

Guglielmo Tamburrini is Philosophy of Science and Technology Professor at Università di Napoli Federico II in Italy (Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology). His main research interests include the ethics of human interactions with robotic and AI systems. 

He was coordinator of the first European project on the ethics of robotics (CA ETHICBOTS, 2005-2008, VI FP). In 2014, he was awarded the Giulio Preti International Prize by the Regional Parliament of Tuscany for his research and teaching on ethical implications of ICT and robotic technologies. He is member of ICRAC (International Committee for Robot Arms Control).

Contribution: Digital Humanism and Global Issues in AI Ethics


Nadia Magnenat Thalmann (MIRALab, University of Geneva, Switzerland)

Professor Nadia Magnenat Thalmann is Director of MIRALab at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, a ground- breaking interdisciplinary research Institute she founded in 1989. In her early career, she has pioneered the field of 3D realistic Virtual Humans. Her film, Rendez-vous in Montreal, (1987), simulating 3D legendary stars has received international recognition. Nadia Thalmann has been nominated Woman of the Year in 1987 in Montreal for her exceptional contribution to Sciences. Professor Nadia Magnenat Thalmann has pioneered research in 3D physical modeling of clothes and early facial animation models. She has initiated fundamental research in VR/AR/MR showing Mixed Reality scenes in Pompeii and in cultural applications. Her work in 3D simulation of medical articulations, visualizing the hip’s cartilage of classical ballerinas while dancing was highly recognized.  

In NTU, Singapore, she revolutionized social robotics by unveiling the first realistic social robot Nadine that can show mood and emotions and remember people and actions. Besides having bachelor’s and master’s degrees in several disciplines, Professor Thalmann completed her PhD in quantum physics at the University of Geneva. She has received honorary doctorates from Leibniz University of Hannover and the University of Ottawa and several other prestigious Awards. She is a life Member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences. Wikipedia Nadia Thalmann

Contribution: Social Robots:Their History and What They Can Do For Us


Paul Timmers (University of Oxford, UK and European University Cyprus)

Prof Dr Paul Timmers is research associate at the University of Oxford (Oxford Internet Institute), professor at European University Cyprus and co-founder of the cybersecurity expertise centre Cyber.Cerides. He is also a visiting professor at Rijeka University, senior advisor to EPC Brussels, board member of Digital Enlightenment Forum and supervisory board member of the Estonian eGovernance Academy.

He has been Director at the European Commission dealing with EU legislation and funding for cybersecurity, e-ID, digital privacy, digital health, smart cities, e-government. He was also cabinet member of European Commissioner Liikanen and until recently advisor to the European Commission, DG SANTE on digital health. H worked as manager in a large ICT company and co-founded an ICT start-up. Paul holds a physics PhD from Nijmegen University, MBA from Warwick University, was awarded an EU fellowship at UNC Chapel Hill, and obtained cybersecurity qualification at Harvard.

Contribution: The Technological Construction of Sovereignty


Moshe Y. Vardi (Rice University, USA)

Moshe Y. Vardi is University Professor and the George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering at Rice University. He is the recipient of several awards, including the ACM SIGACT Goedel Prize, the ACM Kanellakis Award, the ACM SIGMOD Codd Award, the Blaise Pascal Medal, the IEEE Computer Society Goode Award, and the EATCS Distinguished Achievements Award. He is the author and co-author of over 650 papers, as well as two books. He is a Guggenheim Fellows as well as fellow of several societies, and a member of several academies, including the US National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Science. He holds seven honorary doctorates. He is a Senior Editor of the Communications of the ACM, the premier publication in computing.

Contribution: Efficiency vs. Resilience: Lessons from COVID-19


Nathalie Weidenfeld, Germany

Nathalie Weidenfeld was born in France and grew up in France and Germany. She lived in the United States for several years and received her PhD in American cultural history at the Free University Berlin. She has since then published fictional and non-fictional work and taught creative writing and film studies at the University of  Munich. Together with philosopher Julian Nida-Rümelin she published the book “Digital Humanism” (Digitaler Humanismus: Eine Ethik für das Zeitalter der Künstlichen Intelligenz) in 2018, where they advocate a realistic assessement of AI and the use of digital technology for humanistic means.

Contribution: Fictionalizing the Robot and Artificial Intelligence


Hannes Werthner (TU Wien, Austria)

Hannes Werthner is a retired Professor for E-Commerce at the TU Wien. From 2016 to 2019 he served also as the dean of the Faculty Prior to joining TU Wien, he had professorships at Austrian and international Universities. His research is in E-Commerce and E-Tourism, Recommender Systems, and in Network Analysis. Besides research and teaching he was and is active in starting new initiatives, such as the Vienna PhD School of Informatics. the i2c (Informatics Innovation Center), the initiative to support refugees welcome.TU.code, and recently, the Digital Humanism Initiative. Since 2011 the International Federation for IT and Tourism (IFITT) grants the “Hannes Werthner Tourism and Technology Lifetime Achievement Award” to outstanding academics and/or professionals in the field.

Contributions: It is Simple, It is Complicated
Geopolitics, Digital Sovereignty…What’s in a Word?


Susan J. Winter (University of Maryland, College of Information Studies, USA)

Dr. Susan Winter, Associate Dean for Research, College of Information Studies, the University of Maryland.

Dr. Winter studies the co-evolution of technology and work practices, and the organization of work. She has recently focused on ethical issues surrounding civic technologies and smart cities, the social and organizational challenges of data reuse, and collaboration among information workers and scientists acting within highly institutionalized sociotechnical systems.  Her work has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. She was previously a Science Advisor in the Directorate for Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences, a Program Director, and Acting Deputy Director of the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation supporting distributed, interdisciplinary scientific collaboration for complex data-driven and computational science.  She received her PhD from the University of Arizona, her MA from the Claremont Graduate University, and her BA from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Contribution: Responsible Technology Design: Conversations for Success


Stefan Woltran (TU Wien, Austria)

Stefan Woltran is full professor of Foundations of Artificial Intelligence at TU Wien and head of the research unit Databases and AI. His research focuses on problems in the area of knowledge representation and reasoning, argumentation, complexity analysis in AI and logic programming. In the winter term 2013, he held a deputy professorship at Leipzig University. In 2013, he also received the prestigious START award from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). He acted as PC Chair for the 10th International Symposium on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems (FoIKS’18) and for the 15th International Conference on Logic Programming and Non-monotonic Reasoning (LPNMR’19). He has lead several research projects funded by FWF and Vienna Science and Technology Fund. Since 2018 he is a fellow of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence. Since 2020 he serves as Vicedean of Academic Affairs of the Faculty of Informatics at TU Wien.

Contribution: It is Simple, It is Complicated


Sally Wyatt (Maastricht University, The Netherlands)

Sally Wyatt is Professor of Digital Cultures at Maastricht University (https://sallywyatt.nl). She is also one of the national coordinators of the Dutch Digital Society programme that involves all Dutch universities and includes researchers from across the disciplines (https://www.thedigitalsociety.info). Wyatt originally studied economics, but then moved into the more interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). She has worked in various universities in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and has held visiting positions in Canada, Austria, France and Norway. Wyatt has conducted research about the digital divide and what digital technologies might mean for the work of humanities and social science scholars. She is currently working on a project about the use of artificial intelligence in image-based clinical decision making. Together with Anna Harris and Susan Kelly, she is co-author of the award-winning book, CyberGenetics, Health Genetics and New Media (2016, Routledge).

Contribution: Interdisciplinarity: Models and Values for Digital Humanism


George Zarkadakis (Atlantic Council)

George Zarkadakis is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He has over 25 years’ experience in management consulting, media, marketing and communications; as well as in digital strategy and innovation as a founder, advisor, and investor in technology startups. He holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and is the author of “In Our Own Image: will Artificial Intelligence Save Us or Destroy Us?” (Rider Books, 2015). His new book “Cyber Republic: reinventing democracy in the age of intelligent machines” is published by MIT Press (2020). For his international work on the public understanding of science George has been awarded a knighthood by France.

Contribution: The Internet is Dead. Long Live the Internet