Andrej Kiska (* February 2, 1963, Poprad) is the 4th president of the Slovak Republic, elected as civil candidate on March 29, 2014 and inaugurated on June 15, 2014. Philanthropist and former entrepreneur, graduated as electrical engineer, he is a founder of installment loan companies Tatracredit, Triangel a Quatro and co-founder of non-profit charity organization Dobrý anjel.
H.E. Didier Lopinot is the Ambassador of France to the Slovak Republic. Previously, Ambassador Lopinot was involved in the service of economic expansion in Sydney, and was Director of the one of Chicago. He was also second counsellor in Seoul, in Ankara, and Deputy permanent representative of France to the OECD. Ambassador Lopinot also served as the Ambassador of France to Ecuador.
Martina Malakova, who is the President of the French Slovak chamber of Commerce, is part of the national committee of the French advisors of foreign commerce. As a woman in business, she is also active in groups of business women. Ms. Malakova graduated in electrical engineering, but also in economics. She is the founder and CEO of Electrik, s.r.o. since 2002.
Bibop G. Gresta is considered worldwide as expert in finance, transportation and media, specializing in mass market community building and project design and world renowned speaker. He's in the board in several humanitarian projects. Activist in Transhumanism and Ethical Entrepreneurship. In 2014 he has become partner with Dirk Ahlborn, CEO and co-founder of Jump Starter, Inc. and Chairman and COO for Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc. Bibop is building the first Hyperloop.
Zuzana Nehajova currently holds the position of Director General at the Directorate General for Innovation and Business Environment at the Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic. Previously, she held the position of Director at the Department of Financial Strategy for Economic Growth at the Ministry of Finance. She started her career as a lawyer in Informa Business Trading, and has been professionally engaged in the Directorate-General for Trade of the European Commission.
Director of Innovations & Product Development, SOFTEC, spol. s r. o. At the present, Ján deals with the ICT trends, identifies the opportunities that arise from them and puts their results into practice. He joined Softec in 2014 and worked in various business and managerial positions. In the past two years, he worked as telecommunication systems division director. He is the founder of IoT community and the initiator of various activities within the IoT field in Slovakia.
László has over a decade of experience in managing technology and knowledge transfer activities at Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME). He is the director of BME Technology and Knowledge Transfer Office, director of BME Venture Mentoring Service modelled by MIT, founder and head of Demola-Budapest open innovation platform and senior advisor of Demola Network International. He works also as business development coach and mentor in several start-up accelerator programmes.
Head of the Globalization process of SMEs section at CzechInvest - Investment and Business Development Agency of the Czech Republic. Marketa is responsible for running programs and activities for start-ups companies such as CzechAccelerator - international acceleration program. She was at the inception of the CzechStartups.org - the first on-line startup hub in the Czech Republic. Marketa is also involved at V4 (Visegrád group) Innovation Task Force Group.
Simon Vacher is an entrepreneur with a mechanical engineer background. He currently manage the largest IoT startups accelerator in France : Le Connected Camp. He’s also coordinator of the IoT Valley, a large IoT startup ecosystem hosting startups like Sigfox, Connit, Intesens, etc.
Roman is one of the corporate hackers working in Numa Paris with its clients to shift the company's mindset and their service & product development processes. Since he joined in 2014, he has worked with a diverse range of private and public organizations - among them are Cisco, GE, Suez, EDF, Total or the City of Paris. Roman also designs and leads Numa's consulting projects on how to engage and reinforce an innovation ecosystem. Roman has a background in political sciences and marketing.
Co-founder and President of Startup Hub Poland Foundation, which strives to increase the high-tech investment density for the Central Eastern European market. CEO in StartVeture@Poland, a high-tech seed fund. IP transfer and RnD commercialization analyst. Manager of incubators and accelerators (recently: Startup Hub Warsaw). He is expert of the National Center for Research and Development and active in technology, commechnologies and Innovations to the Polish Chamber of Commerce. H
Rastislav Chovanec holds the Office of State Secretary of The Ministry of Economy of the SR. After his high school studies in Washington, Mr Chovanec attended University of Economics in Bratislava (International Business Management), where he received his PhD. He held twice the position of Adviser to the Prime Minister for Foreign Investment in the Governmnent Office and became Executive Director in Ceptra s.r.o. He also took up the post of Chairman of the Supervisory Board in Distribúcia, a.s.
He completed his university studies and obtained his CSc. degree at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava. He joined Orange SK in 1997, where he worked as a member of Senior Management and Chief Information, Operations, and Technology Officer and as a Deputy Director General. In 2005, he joined VÚB Bank. Returning to Orange SK in 2009 he has been the Director of Information Systems and Networks Department, Deputy Director General, and Member of the Board of Directors at Orange SK.
Ivan is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor with particular focus on the media and Internet space. He has founded several companies with global or regional impact, including Euractiv.sk, Pelicantravel.com, MONOGRAM Technologies and wineshop.sk. Prior to co-founding Neulogy Ventures, he was active as an angel investor and investment advisor and was involved in new ventures such as Piano Media, GA Drilling and Diagnose.me.
IT and Services Manager, Orange Slovakia. Currently in charge of Orange IT and ICT services, his role also includes M2M platforms and solutions especially for B2B segments. With Orange since 1998, he held several technical and managerial positions and got deep expertise in IT and ICT ecosystem. Since 2015, he is leading IT & Services department that provides modern ICT services and solutions over traditional IT ecosystem, big data and media.
Milan Kalal leads the IoT research practice for IDC across Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa (CEMA). He manages research and consulting projects examining IoT use cases and adoption. His research on both IoT end users and the vast ecosystem of technology vendors examines market developments, quantifies opportunity, and provides unique insight addressing industry-specific drivers for IoT, vendor strategies, and end-user trends affecting IoT adoption dynamics.
Olivier Padiou is group COO of Valtech and President and CEO of Valtech North America, company of which he took full control from 2009 with some associates. Since then they have re-founded Valtech to create the worldwide leading independent digital Agency operating in more than 12 countries and 22 offices with 2000 employees. Olivier steers and runs Valtech countries as sales and Marketing operations in Europe, Asia and North America by managing global partnerships and key strategic clients.
Olivier has been project manager for French Ministry of Economy and Industry since 2006. At Directorate-General for Enterprise (DGE), he is in charge of the fields of RFID and IOT. He has been involved in the former Experts Groups set by the European Commission on RFID and IOT and launched the French Reference Center for RFID. He is the national focal point of the Competitiveness cluster for the Future of Shopping. He is involved in the French Tech and in the Smart Objects Initiatives.
Rolf Riemenschneider, Ph.D., is Research Programme Officer at the European Commission, Directorate Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG Connect), Unit Complex systems & Control. Before joining the Commission in 2001 he worked as an engineer for consulting and project management on behalf of the German government (Federal Ministry of Education and Science - BMBF). Current research interests cover ICT for manufacturing, especially manufacturing design & PLM, Cyber Physical Systems..
With engineering and management studies from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) in his background, Jozsef leads the business development and sales functions of HEPENIX Ltd, a private-owned engineering system integrator and solution provider for the automotive, nuclear and other sectors. Involved in engineering practice on an everyday basis, Jozsef specializes in integrating R&D tasks into projects and thus working solutions for partners.
Jan gained MBA & Msc at Nottingham Trent University. He co-founded telecommunication consulting company FUBAR. After a series of successful projects in ICT (Fubar, Ceske Radiokomunikace, T-Systems/T-Mobile) he was so excited by Internet of Things, that he decided to bring IoT dedicated network to the Czech Republic – SIGFOX. He co-founded SimpleCell Networks (Czech Sigfox network operator) and acts as a Managing Director – responsible for business development and strategic partnership.
Peter Blaas is the Business Development Director at Antik Telecom. He is responsible for finding new localieties for expansion of the company. He helps to develop and give directions to the new ideas and projects. Mr. Blaas is representing not only Antik Telecom but also its subsidiary company Antik Technology dedicated to production and development of IPTV hardware and software worldwide.
Peter obtained his Master's degree in Economics from Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica. He is a founder and executive manager of Keners and also a partner at the Grant Thornton Advisory (Czech and Slovak offices). He focuses in particular on the area of IoT, energy projects, manufacturing and healthcare sectors. Peter has over 19 years of experience in consulting engagements focused on asset management, operation and maintenance redesign and controlling.
Franz Harmer is founder and CEO of Thirtyseventy Digital After studying Artificial Intelligence at Edinburgh University, Franz moved to Barcelona to pursue a career in interactive design and branding. Working both for agencies and as a freelancer, he developed digital projects for IKEA, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Adidas and the BBC for over 10 years. He now channels his creative and technical experience into co-developing digital products and strategies with his clients.
Associate professor in Industrial Management, she acts as Vice dean for International Projects at the Faculty of Materials Science and Technology in Trnava, the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava Slovakia. She is also the cofounder of the EIA in Slovakia, management committee member of E-COST, executive committee member in Danubius Academic Consortium, steering committee member of Danube strategy PA 7 Knowledge society-science, R&I and ICT for the Slovak Republic.
She joined Bpifrance in 1991, with as a Credit Analyst and Corporate Relationship Manager in Financial Institutions to manage the development in the International affairs and the programs. Before, she was Head of Credit and Guarantee Department in the regional branch West Ile de France, Deputy Manager of the training department and relationship manager. At Société Générale bank, she was previously in the department of the euro-credits&bonds and relationship manager at the International Agency.
Prof. Milan Dado is Full Professor with the Department of Telecommunication and Multimedia. He is also dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, former rector of the University of Zilina, former president of the Slovak rectors’ conference and has number of other activities in Slovakia and in foreign countries. He has been actively involved in European research and education programs such as Tempus, Cost, Leonardo and others and has managed national projects in innovation field.
Radoslav Mizera attended courses of environmental / ecological economics, climate change or innovations / regional development & competitiveness in Vienna. He is an entrepreneur as R&D manager at Solved – The Cleantech Company. Before that, he worked Finpro’s Global Industry Analyst specializing in cleantech markets. Besides active consulting done for the Finnish cleantech SMEs, he was also an active member of the Cleantech Finland team.
