Data Driven Innovation in a Connected World

Speakers for this event

• Benifei, Brando

  Benifei, Brando

  Member of the European Parliament

  Brando Benifei, 31, European Federalist, is one of the youngest MEPs and is from La Spezia, Italy. He has been chair of European affairs for the Young Democrats and Vice-President of ECOSY (youth organization of PES) for 4 years and was part of the PES working group which originally drafted the European Youth Guarantee. His main fields of legislative work in the EP are Employment and social affairs and Foreign affairs. He is co-chair of the Youth Intergroup and vice-chair of the Disability Intergroup. Among his parliamentary activities in the Committee of Employment and Social Affairs, he was responsible for key legislative and non-legislative reports on the social inclusion and integration of refugees into the EU labour market; youth employment policy such as the Youth Guarantee and the Youth Employment Initiative; digitalisation and rights of persons with disability.

  Member of the European Parliament

• Burgelman, Jean Claude

  Burgelman, Jean Claude

  Head of Unit Open Data Policy & Science Cloud, DG RTD, European Commission

  Jean-Claude Burgelman is Head of Unit Open Science at DG RTD. He joined the European Commission in 1999 as a Visiting Scientist in the Joint Research Centre (the Institute of Prospective Technological Studies - IPTS), where he became Head of the Information Society Unit in 2005. In January 2008, he moved to the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (attached to the president of the EC) as adviser for innovation policy. Since 1-10-2008, he joined DG RTD, as advisor and then Head of Unit in charge of top level advisory boards like the European Research and Innovation Area Board, the Innovation for Growth Group and the European Forum for Forward Looking Activities. Till 2000 he was full professor of communication technology policy at the Free University of Brussels, as well as director of the Centre for Studies on Media, Information and Telecommunication and was involved in science and technology assessment. He has been visiting professor at the University of Antwerp, the European College of Brughes and the University of South Africa and sits on several academic journals. He chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Innovation and was a member of its Science Advisory Committee.

  Head of Unit Open Data Policy & Science Cloud, DG RTD, European Commission

• de Bruin, Ronald

  de Bruin, Ronald

  Director, COST Association

  Dr Ronald de Bruin was appointed Director of the COST Association on 1 June 2016. Before joining the Association, Ronald was Director of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and Head of Department of the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA). For almost eight years, he played a key role in managing and setting up these European Union agencies from scratch. Prior to this, he was Deputy Director of a public-private partnership platform for the Information Society in the Netherlands for over three years. His main responsibilities included drafting the annual work programs including public-private partnership projects, managing the implementation of national multi-stakeholder projects, and coordinating EU-funded projects. For almost three years, he worked for a global .COM company with top-100 clients. During his one-year stay as manager at KPMG, he worked on developing e-security services for the growing e-commerce market. He started his career as Policy Advisor for the Dutch national government, where, for three years, he was responsible for developing a national policy on e-security services, and scenarios for introducing digital TV. He is Ambassador to Brussels for the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership Europe and Founding Director of the Greenleaf Center in Brussels. Dr De Bruin has also authored several books on servant-leadership, digital television, online consumer trust and computer security. He holds a Ph.D.in Law and Computer Science, an M.Sc. in Technology Management and a B.Sc. in Electronic Engineering.

  Director, COST Association

• Herczog, Edit

  Herczog, Edit

  Director, Vision & Values

  Edit Herczog is the Director of her company Vision & Values situated in Brussels and is member of the Research Data Alliance Global Council since April 2017, where she is Co-Chair of the Financial Subcommittee. She is appointed Senior EU Liaison Adviser for GÉANT. She sits on the Administrative Board of the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators and is Member of the Board at the Transatlantic Policy Network (TPN). Prior to establishing her company, she served two consecutive terms in the European Parliament as MEP (2004-2014). She was member of the ITRE, IMCO, BUDG and CONT committees. As MEP she served as Member of the K4I governing board, was one of the governors of the European Internet Foundation and was vice-president of the Kangaroo Group and the European Energy Forum. Prior to her election to the EP she was member of the Hungarian Parliament in which role she was delegate to the Council of Europe as well as active member of the Committee for European Integration. Before her public career, she worked for the private sector as a regional sales and technical manager for a specialty chemicals company called National Starch & Chemical (belonging to Unilever and later to ICI) She has an MSc in food conservation engineering. She was research fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and professor’s assistant at the University of Horticulture. Edit holds a Certificate of Company Direction for strategic marketing, financial management and company law from the Institute of Directors at Pall Mall, London.

  Director, Vision & Values

• Herczog, Edit

  Herczog, Edit

  former MEP, Advisor at the Research Data Alliance

  former MEP, Advisor at the Research Data Alliance

• Hollman, Susanne

  Hollman, Susanne

  Scientific Manager, University of Potsdam

  Susanne Hollmann is chemist and biochemist by training. She holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and used to work as a postdoc for both- industry and academia. Dr. Hollmann was one of the managers for the first German funding program FORSYS on systems biology and participated in the development of a business concept for a European infrastructure on systems biology. Dr. Hollmann is member of the ISO TC 276 on “Standardization in Biotechnology” and has long-term expertise in the development of standard operating procedures (SOP), which form the prerequisite for subsequent translation of research results into application. Dr. Hollmann is initiator and coordinator of the COST Action CHARME bringing together 30 countries to work on the harmonization of standards in the life sciences. She has long-term and outstanding expertise in the development and management of scientific projects, especially in EC programs and German funding initiatives. Dr. Hollmann does work as scientific manager for the Potsdam Research centre for Plant genomics and Systems Biology. In addition she works at her company SB-ScienceManagement UG, a spin-off of Potsdam University, founded in 2014.

  Scientific Manager, University of Potsdam

• Kauermann, Göran

  Kauermann, Göran

  Head of Chair of Statistics, Department of Statistics, LMU Munich

  Göran Kauermann is an acknowledged expert in the field of applied statistics. After his degree in mathematics and doctorate in statistics at the TU Berlin in 1994 he was postdoc at the University of Chicago, USA. He completed his habilitation in 2000 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) in Munich and took a position as senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. In 2003 he became full professor of statistics at the University of Bielefeld and since 2011 he is professor at LMU Munich. Kauermann has numerous publications in the field of applied statistics. From 2005 to 2013 he was chairman of the German consortium of statistical societies (Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft Statistik - DAGStat). Since 2016 he is speaker of the international elite graduate program ‘Data Science’ at LMU Munich and grant holder of COSTNET (COST action CA15109).

  Head of Chair of Statistics, Department of Statistics, LMU Munich

• Koureas, Dimitris

  Koureas, Dimitris

  Programme Director, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden

  Dimitris is the Director for the International Biodiversity Research Infrastructures programme at Naturalis Biodiversity Center and head of Department. Coordinator of the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) Research Infrastructure. He also serves as a chair of the executive committee of the international organisation for Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG). Dimitris has a PhD in biosystematics and post-doctoral expertise in biodiversity informatics

  Programme Director, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden

• Milani, Federico

  Milani, Federico

  Deputy Head of Unit, Data Policy and Innovation Unit, DG for Communication Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission

  Federico Milani is the Deputy Head of Unit of the Data Policies and Innovation Unit of CONNECT Directorate General. The unit supports the data economy in the Digital Single Market through policy initiatives addressing new and emerging issues (such as data ownership and brokerage, open data policies by ensuring the correct implementation of the Public Sector Information Directive). The unit steers together with industry the strategic research and innovation agenda. Federico Milani has previously worked as a project officer for making accessible European digital content since October 2001 and as Deputy Head of Unit the Creativity Unit As responsible for supporting the creative industry sectors and Europeana project since 2008. Mr. Milani studies comprise a PhD in neural networks and intelligent systems, and a degree in electronic engineering.

  Deputy Head of Unit, Data Policy and Innovation Unit, DG for Communication Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission

• Plaut, Pnina

  Plaut, Pnina

  Professor in Transportation Planning, Technion Israel Institute of Technology

  Pnina Plaut is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. Pnina was the Chair of COST Action TU1305 on Social networks and travel behaviour. Her input is critical in understanding thelink that exists (and probably increasingly in the future) between the use of social media, and the mobility patterns in urban spaces

  Professor in Transportation Planning, Technion Israel Institute of Technology