HELI KOSKIMÄKI Ph.D.

Head of Future Physiology @Oura Health

Heli Koskimäki works as Head of Future Physiology at Oura. Since joining the Oura Science Team in 2016 she has contributed to several core feature development projects from nocturnal heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) studies to sleep staging, chronotype detection, and period prediction, to name a few. Currently, she is responsible for Oura's long-term roadmap planning from a physiological features perspective. Heli has a Ph. D. in Computer Science from the University of Oulu, where she specialises in data mining, especially regarding wearable sensor data and human-centric applications. Outside of her work, Heli is always up for challenges, and you can spot her kite skiing at Oulu Sea or attending trail running events around Finland.

MARGARITA CHLI Ph.D.

Professor of Robotic Vision, Director of the Vision @ University of Cyprus and @ ETH Zurich

Margarita is a Professor of Robotic Vision and the director of the Vision for Robotics Lab, at the University of Cyprus and ETH Zurich. Her work has contributed to the first vision-based autonomous flight of a small drone and the first demonstration of collaborative monocular SLAM for a small drone swarm. She has given invited keynotes at top venues (e.g. WEF in Davos, TEDx) and she was featured in Robohub's 2016 list of "25 women in Robotics you need to know about". In 2023, she won the ERC Consolidator Grant, one of the most prestigious grants in Europe for blue-sky research.

MICHELLE CHEN HÜBSCHER

Staff Software Engineer @ Google

Michelle Chen Hübscher is a seasoned software engineer at Google with 17 years of experience. Her work spans mobile applications like Google Maps and Calendar, search quality initiatives, and cutting-edge research focused on teaching machines human-like search and research capabilities.

LAURA SKYLAKI Ph.D.

Director Applied AI Research @ Thomson Reuters Labs

Laura Skylaki is a Director of Applied Research at Thomson Reuters Labs, where she leads advanced machine learning projects in Legal and Tax AI. With a career spanning more than a decade at the intersection of research and practical application, she has contributed technical expertise in diverse fields such as bioinformatics and stem cell biology, image processing and natural language processing. She holds a doctorate in stem cell bioinformatics from the University of Edinburgh UK, and has been publishing on machine learning applications in leading academic journals since 2012. 

GABRIELA AZNAR SIGUAN Ph.D.

Scientific Weather Business Applications Developer @ Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, MeteoSwiss

Gabriela Aznar Siguan works at the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, where she is responsible for machine learning integration. A current focus of her work is bridging the gap between research and operations in machine learning applications. With a background in mathematics and a Ph.D. in computational and applied physics, she has previously worked on implementing satellite data processing algorithms, assessing weather and climate risks, and developing machine learning-based weather forecasting applications to support informed decision-making.

AAMNA NAJMI

Senior Machine Learning and Data Engineer @ Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Aamna is a Senior Data Scientist with over 8+ years of industry experience currently working at AWS, leading customer-facing projects in the Machine Learning and Data space. She is originally from Kolkata, India residing in Munich, Germany where she moved to pursue her Masters in Computer Science at Technical University Munich, 7 years ago.

In recent years, Aamna has become a trusted advisor for Generative AI and an ambassador for AI and data governance. Aamna is a subject matter expert for the Healthcare and Life Sciences industry and has led projects encompassing topics like modern data strategy, data and ML platforms for scale and operations and natural language processing using transformer architectures. Additionally, she brings with her several years of experience in developing solutions in the cloud through containerized and serverless solutions. In addition to her day-to-day work, Aamna leads two initiatives for Women@AWS empowering women and underrepresented groups to develop their professional careers through mentoring and expanding their network globally. Additionally, Aamna is an active member of various initiatives run by Women Who Code - Data Science, Coding Black Females, FrauenLoop and GHC mentoring and coaching women from diverse groups. Aamna is also an active speaker in the tech space speaking externally at multiple events related to Data and AIML topics.

IOANA GIURGIU, Ph.D.

Senior Research Scientist @ IBM Research

Ioana Giurgiu is a Senior Research Scientist at IBM Research with over a decade of experience, driving research efforts on anomaly detection and visual prompting for automated visual inspection and contributing these capabilities to IBM products, such as Maximo Visual Inspection and Watsonx. Previously, she has worked extensively on the explainability and transparency of AI models applied in predictive maintenance. She earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from ETH Zürich and her Engineer degree from UTC-N, Romania.

PATRICIA FERREIRO

Cloud Solutions Architect @ Microsoft

Patricia works as a Data and AI Cloud Solutions Architect at Microsoft, where she supports Financial Services customers in their journey toward becoming data-driven organizations. In the past she worked at Databricks and IBM in various roles, focusing on Big Data, Cloud Computing, and Ethical AI, and participating as a speaker at international conferences. Patricia is a Telecommunications Engineer by training and holds an MSc in Data Science.

MARIA GRANDURY

Founder @SomosNLP, Hugging Face Fellow

María Grandury is a Machine Learning Research Engineer focused on responsible, inclusive, open-source AI, especially in Spanish. She holds a Double Degree in Mathematics and Physics. She is the founder of SomosNLP, an international community that aims to give Spanish a fair representation in AI by promoting the creation of open resources. She is a HuggingFace Fellow and has participated in several international NLP research projects, in addition to actively collaborating with various women-in-AI initiatives. Previously, she worked at Clibrain as part of the Labs team, aspiring to create models that respect the rich linguistic nuances of Spanish. She also worked at neurocat, a Berlin-based startup, where she developed explainability methods (XAI) and adversarial attacks to assess the security of ML models.

AYISHA PIOTTI

Managing Partner, RegHorizon; Head of AI Policy Summit @ ETHZ

Ayisha Piotti is Managing Partner at the Swiss-based firm RegHorizon and the visionary behind creating Switzerland's largest Global AI Policy discussion platform the annual “AI Policy Summit“ in collaboration with the Center for Law and Economics of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich. She is a frequent speaker and contributor on AI Policy at global AI events and also the host of a newly launched podcast series Navigating AI.

In addition, Ayisha is on the Advisory Board and Ethics Council of Eightfold.ai in California, USA, a Committee Member of the ITU /UNESCO Expert Committee on AI Capacity building, an Expert Contributor on Digital & AI Leadership at the AI Business School, Switzerland, and the Board Member & Co-Founder of the Swiss LSE Alumnae & Alumni Foundation.

ANIKÓ HANNÁK,

Prof. Dr.

Assistant Professor, Social Computing Group, Department of Informatics @ University of Zurich

She is an Assistant Professor at the computer science department of the University of Zürich. She received her PhD from the College of Computer & Information Science at Northeastern University advised by Alan Mislove and David Lazer.

     Broadly, her work investigates a variety of content-serving websites such as Search Engines, Online Stores, Job Search Sites, and Freelance Marketplaces. In this quickly changing online ecosystem companies track users' every move and feed the collected data into big data algorithms to match them with the most interesting, most relevant content. Since these algorithms learn from human data they are likely to pick up on social biases and unintentionally reinforce them. In her PhD work, she created a methodology called Algorithmic Auditing which tries to uncover the potential negative impacts of large online systems. Examples of such audits include examining the "Filter Bubble effect" on Google Search, online price discrimination, or detecting inequalities in online labour markets.

NAYA GIANNAPOULOU,

Ph. D.

Senior Technical Architect @ Microsoft

Dr. Naya Giannakopoulou is a technical leader in the field of Data & AI currently working as a Senior Technical Architect at Microsoft Technology Center Switzerland. She leads workshops with customers and partners from envisioning to prototyping, bridging the gap between business requirements and technical implementation aspects. She is advocating for Responsible AI practices and the implementation of AI/LLM workloads in a scalable and responsible way. Naya's international career spans between Big Tech, IT consulting, and fintech to academic research. She holds a Ph.D. in BiopPhotonics and an MSc & BSc in Physics. 

JANA MARECKOVA, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor in Econometrics @ University of St. Gallen

Jana Mareckova is an assistant professor in econometrics at the University of St. Gallen and a member of the Empirical Economic Research team at the Swiss Institute for Empirical Economic Research (SEW-HSG). Her research focuses on developing and applying statistical and machine-learning techniques for prediction and causal analysis. She collaborates with a team supporting the Swiss and Canadian governments in the evaluation of programs for unemployed individuals.

KSENIA KRAM

Coach For Growth @ Coachingkram

Ksenia spent her career path in various analytical positions in risk management:  from data analyst in credit & fraud risk to Senior Strategic Risk Manager.  In 2023 she followed her passion for communication and became a Coach for Growth and Transformation, supporting individuals in their journey to personal fulfillment and success.

MAGDA KERN

Psychologist, Public Speaking Trainer

@ Public Speaking Wizard

Magda Kern is a psychologist, public speaking trainer with 10 years of experience, and PCC ICF coach. In 2021, she was selected as one of the world's 11 best public speaking coaches. Head of Speakers at TEDxZurich and TEDx speakers coach, she graduated in psychology and management and did postgraduate studies in coaching. For many years, she has performed in the Cuban musical "Conoce mi Cuba," won song festivals, and sang at concerts and conferences. Due to her professional activity, she has given more than a hundred interviews. From childhood, she performed on stage, studying at the 1st and 2nd degree of a music school (jazz vocals and cello). She conducts workshops and individual training on how to present science to non-expert audiences, public speaking, communication, stress management, and mental health for ETH and other universities, companies, and individual clients.

BIANKA DOROVA

Stargate Data Analytics Lead @ Swiss Re

Bianka joined Swiss Re in 2018, in the very early days of SwissRe's Stargate program to enable business transformation with Palantir Foundry. Over the years she has built the Stargate CoE Data Analytics and Engineering team that continuously drives and supports a variety of key data analytics initiatives across the Group Digital and Technology Office, Reinsurance and CorSo.

Bianka brought a broad experience delivering data-driven digital transformation in the financial industry from her previous roles at Credit Suisse and Deloitte Consulting (Data Analytics and Actuarial). She holds a master's degree in mathematics from Charles university in Prague. 

IRENE BAEZA, Ph.D.

Research Engineer @ Disney Studios

Irene joined the Face VFX group of DisneyResearch|Studios in February 2020, while she was finishing her PhD at the Computer Graphics Laboratory of ETH Zürich. In the past, Irene focused on scientific visualization, mainly in feature extraction of unsteady flows and visibility optimization for scalable exploration. Nowadays, her work at Disney allows her to contribute to the process of creating state-of-the-art capture technology.

VAGIA TSIMINAKI, Ph.D.

Computer Vision and Machine Learning Researcher | Principal Engineer

Vagia is a Research Scientist with over a decade of experience in both industry and academia, having worked at IBM and esteemed academic institutions such as ETH Zurich, EPFL, IDIAP, INRIA, and Kyoto University. She has led projects and teams by seamlessly integrating her expertise in 2D/3D Computer Vision and Machine Learning, and fostering collaborative environments.

ARGY TZITZI

Data & Commercial Analytics Director @ MSD

 Argy specializes in delivering business insights, data science, and commercial analytics capabilities for international organizations. With extensive experience in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, she has held progressive roles at both country and regional levels. Currently, she leads regional strategy and operations in the data and commercial analytics domain for MSD in European markets. Based in Switzerland, Argy's focus is on driving impactful solutions and informed decision-making.

KORNELIA PAPP

Group Head of Conversational AI and Intelligent Automation @ Zurich Insurance

Kornelia Papp serves as the Group Head of Conversational AI and Intelligent Automation at Zurich Insurance, where she leads the integration of AI and automation capabilities to enhance customer engagement and streamline operations. She founded the NLP Zurich group, fostering a community dedicated to the advancement of AI technologies. She holds a PhD in Cognitive Linguistics. 

ELENA CALLEGARI

Lecturer in Language & Technology

@ University of Iceland

Elena Callegari is a lecturer in Language & Technology at the University of Iceland, where she teaches Natural Language Generation and theoretical linguistics courses. She has authored several publications in both fields. Elena is also the co-founder of SageWrite, a startup developing text-generation tools for academic and technical writing. She has a postdoc in NLP (University of Iceland) and a PhD in Linguistics (University of Oslo). She is passionate about merging technological innovation with deep linguistic insights, applying them across various fields, ranging from business to clinical applications. For instance, one of her recent projects involved using language analysis to diagnose Alzheimer's disease. 

PELIN TIRYAKI

Analytics Engineering Lead

@ Swiss Re

Pelin joined Swiss Re in 2021 and works as the Analytics Engineering Lead in Life & Health Reinsurance projects. As Analytics Engineers, Pelin and her team are responsible for building data products in close collaboration with the business on the Palantir Foundry platform. She has contributed to a variety of projects facilitating user workflows in the domain of Data & Analytics. Some key reinsurance topics that have been covered in products built include portfolio strategy and costing tool calibrations.

Before Swiss Re Pelin worked as a consultant for clients in the financial services industry. She holds a master's degree in Economics from the University of Zurich.

SAADHVI KHULAR

Head New Propositions & Digital Partnerships @ Swiss Re

Saadhvi joined Swiss Re in 2021 and Heads up the New Propositions & Prototype Lab team where she is responsible for the ideation and testing of new to market ideas. She also leads the Data Ingestion strategic initiative, focused on creation of data assets through effective data ingestion and extraction. Saadhvi bought with her a wide range of digital insurance experience from previous roles at Munich Re Digital Partners and UK General Insurance. She holds a Master's degree in Biochemical Engineering from University College London.

MARIJA NIKOLIC

Principal Member Of Technical Staff

@ Oracle

Marija is a data scientist/ML engineer who enjoys creating innovative solutions that matter. She likes enhancing and sharing knowledge and ideas and working in a visionary, enthusiastic and friendly environment.
She has s strong academic background and extensive work experience in the domain of data science and software engineering. She is skilled in data analyses, algorithm design, coding, and mathematical modelling through applied statistics and probability theory, machine learning and simulation. Marija successfully applies these skills to build effective solutions for different real-world technical and scientific problems. Also, she has strong organisational, and effective communication and collaboration skills.
She likes creative and challenging roles where her knowledge and skills can bring a contribution towards building products that make a positive impact. Also, she enjoys working in an environment that fosters professional and personal growth.

SIMONE LIEBERHERR LEHNER

Head Technology Steering

@ Swiss Re