Our speakers represent 10 countries. The lineup of speakers alphabetically (based on last-name) is as follows:
Aadeel Akhtar
United States
Dr. Aadeel Akhtar, CEO of PSYONIC, founded the company to create advanced, accessible bionic limbs after meeting a young girl missing a limb in Pakistan. PSYONIC’s bionic Ability Hand is the fastest on the market, impact-resistant, and the first to provide a sense of touch. It is also covered by Medicare and is being used by humans and robotics companies globally, including NASA, Meta, Mercedes, and Google. Dr. Akhtar earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience and an M.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois, along with a B.S. in Biology and an M.S. in Computer Science from Loyola University Chicago. He’s been recognized by MIT Technology Review and Newsweek and secured a 3-shark deal on Shark Tank.
Dr. Joao Bimbo
Portugal
Joao Bimbo is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Informatics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon. His research interests lie in the fields of robot grasping and manipulation, mobile robots, teleoperation and haptics.
Hon Weng Chong
Australia
Hon Weng Chong is the CEO and founder of Cortical Labs. Prior to Cortical Labs, Hon was also the CTO and founder at CliniCloud, a medtech company building Internet connected medical devices. Hon is also a medical doctor having trained at The University of Melbourne and Johns Hopkins University. He is also a software engineer and has also worked in the Machine Learning space.
David Cleaves
Germany / Netherlands
David Cleaves is Head of Creative, EMEA at argodesign, based in argo’s Munich and Amsterdam studios. David moved to Europe in 2013 to work at frogdesign in its German home studio. While Executive Creative Director at frog, he established long-term client relationships with a range of European companies, including Porsche, Volkswagen, Audi, and Montblanc. He left frog to join BMW Group Design, where he led the department responsible for Advanced User Experience Design, including concept cars, apps, series vehicles, self-driving systems, and BMW’s in-car intelligent agent. In the year between his BA and MFA at the University of Texas at Austin, David taught American language and literature in Germany on a Fulbright fellowship. In his spare time, David enjoys writing fiction and learning European languages. He speaks German, Spanish, and French and is learning Italian.
Prof. Gad El-Qady
Egypt
Prof. Gad El-Qady, is a Professor of Applied Geophysics working in the area of application of Geophysical techniques for, but not limited to, Environmental investigations, archaeological, geotechnical, groundwater, geothermal investigations. Prof. El-Qady was working as a president of the National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics (NRIAG) Jan 2019 till March 2024. Between July 2018 till Jan 2019, he was appointed as Vice President of NRIAG. During 2017 he was the acting president of the National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries (NIOF), Egypt. While during 2013-2014 he was coordinator of the international relations of E-JUST. He also was the science and culture attaché of Egypt in Japan from 2010 to 2013.
Katrin Jiewei
Switzerland
Katrin is a the CEO of the Swiss Future Institute. She is a five times Board Member and Chair of the AI Future Council. Katrin lectures at four Universities such as for the Business University of Applied Sciences Zürich. Katrin is an influential AI Community Builder, an Executive and a passionate entertaining Speaker. She was featured as Top 100 Future Women and Leaders of the New Era in Media, AI Future Council Member and Jury such as for Bilanz, Handelszeitung, Female Leadership, F10, BlueNews, OeTV24 and Newsweek. Katrin is honoured to be one of the highly recognized female AI Keynote Speakers such as for the United Nations.
Andra Keay
United States
Andra Keay is the Director of Silicon Valley Robotics and the Robotics Fellow at Singularity University. She has delivered keynotes at major tech conferences around the world, speaking about robots and startups, the commercialization and promise of robotics, the potential impact of robotics on society, career journeys in the emerging deep tech sector, human-robot interaction and ethics, and on creating intentional innovation communities to maximize our potential.
Dr. Panagiotis Koustoumpardis
Greece
Dr. Panagiotis N. Koustoumpardis is an Assistant Professor at the Mechanical Engineering & Aeronautics Dept., University of Patras, Greece. He is the founder and scientific director of the educational robotics voluntary action Robots@UP at the University of Patras. He is a judge and coach in educational robotics competitions. Founding member and scientific supervisor of the Robotics Club. He is area coordinator of the organizing and scientific committee of the Open Technologies in Education (Open Technologies Alliance), and coordinator of the Open Design/Hardware/WiFi working group.
Dr. Juxi Leitner
Australia
Juxi Leitner is a roboticist with global impact and recognition. For more than 20 years Juxi has designed, developed, and deployed smart robotic systems. He has been active as an entrepreneur with a particular focus on transferring fundamental research (deeptech) into fundamentally useful products. He is CTO and co-founder of LYRO Robotics. Dr Leitner is a Senior Lecturer, Monash University, Australia. Before starting LYRO, Juxi led the robotic manipulation efforts of the Australian Centre of Excellence on Robotic Vision (ACRV) in Brisbane, Australia. Juxi has been awarded a PhD from USI (Università della Svizzera Italiana) for his work at the Swiss AI Lab (IDSIA) on the iCub humanoid robot.
Assoc. Prof. Minas Liarokapis
Greece / New Zealand
Minas Liarokapis is the CEO/CTO of Acumino (www.acumino.ai), an Honorary Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Auckland, and Director of the New Dexterity group (www.newdexterity.org). Previously, he was a Lecturer / Senior Lecturer in the same Department and a Postdoctoral Associate in the GRAB Lab at Yale University. He is the founder of the Open Bionics (www.openbionics.org) initiative and a co-founder of Open Robot Hardware (www.openrobothardware.org) and Hand Corpus (www.handcorpus.org). His research has received multiple prestigious awards in international conferences and competitions.
Calliope Limneos-Papakosta
Greece
Adam Norton
United States
Adam Norton is the Co-Director of the New England Robotics Validation and Experimentation (NERVE) Center at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Adam is the community facilitator for the COMPARE Ecosystem (https://www.robot-manipulation.org/), chair of ASTM F45 Committee on Robotics, Automation, and Autonomous Systems, and a voting member and developer of standards on ASTM E54.09 Committee on Homeland Security Applications: Subcommittee on Response Robots and ASTM F48 Committee on Exoskeletons and Exosuits. He also serves as a director on the ASTM Board of Directors for the 2024-2026 term.
Stefanie Manzinger
Germany
Stefanie Manzinger is a Senior Solutions Architect for Automotive and Manufacturing at NVIDIA. In her role, she helps customers accelerate physical AI development with NVIDIA Cosmos and drives the adoption of generative AI for industrial applications. Previously, as a Development Engineer at MAN Truck & Bus SE, she focused on developing autonomous driving solutions. Stefanie holds a Ph.D. from the Technical University of Munich, where her doctoral research specialized in decision-making and trajectory planning for autonomous vehicles. She is passionate about supporting developers in adopting and improving physical AI systems, driven by her interest in the evolving role of foundation models within industrial AI and robotics.
Prof. Luis Sentis
United States
Luis Sentis is a Professor in Aerospace Engineering at UT Austin. He earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University. At UT, he leads the Human Centered Robotics Laboratory, focusing on design of humanoid robots, human factors, and space robots. His research has been funded by ONR, NASA, NSF, USARMY, AFRL, DARPA, USSF, and top companies in the high tech sector. He is also a co-founder and innovation advisor for Apptronik Systems, a company building humanoid robots for industry and home applicatons
David Vivancos
Spain
David Vivancos (www.vivancos.com). Science, Art & Technology Serial Entrepreneur. With pioneering activities since 1995 in fields as Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Neurotechnologies, Brain Computer Interfaces, and Deep Learning, including starting up 5 ventures and dozens of initiatives in these fields. Keynote Speaker and Author of 5 books with more than 400 conferences, seminars and workshops lectured in Europe & US. Associate lecturer in several universities, business schools & corporations. Advisor to 35+ boards & CEOs from Fortune500s to innovative startups in the journey from the digital world to the fully automated world. Kickstarted the Artificiology field. Qubic Scientific advisor. Brain explorer at MindBigData, built the largest open data of multimodal brain signals for Machine Learning.