Michael McTear
Michael McTear is an Emeritus Professor at Ulster University with a special interest in spoken language technologies. He has been researching in the field of spoken dialogue systems for more than 20 years and is the author of several books, including Spoken Dialogue Technology: Toward The Conversational User Interface (Springer, 2004), Spoken Dialogue Systems (Morgan and Claypool, 2010), with Kristiina Jokinen, The Conversational Interface: Talking to Smart Devices (Springer, 2016), with Zoraida Callejas and David Griol, and Conversational AI ( Morgan & Claypool 2020). Michael has delivered keynote addresses and tutorials at many academic conferences and workshops, including SpeechTEK, Conversational Interaction, ProjectVoice, REWORK AI Assistant Summit, and the European Chatbot Conferences. Currently Michael is involved in several research and development projects investigating the use of conversational agents in socially relevant projects such as mental health monitoring, and home monitoring of older persons.
Matthias Wölfel
Matthias Wölfel is a Professor for Intuitive and Perceptive User Interfaces at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, Germany, and associated with the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Hohenheim. His research interests include interaction design, human-computer and human-computer-human interaction, artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, as well as digital culture. Dr. Wölfel was recognized in 2017 as one of the best professors in Germany by UNICUM.
After studying electrical engineering, information technology, and computer science at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, MA, USA, and the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, PA, USA, Dr. Wölfel held full-time professorships in Interactive Media at Furtwangen University, Germany, and Intermedia Design at Pforzheim University, Germany. Besides his academic career, Dr. Wölfel contributes to media art exhibited at festivals and in museums worldwide (e.g., Venice Biennale of Architecture 2016). He worked for the ZKM|Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, and is the founder and CEO of ColorfulBit, an award-winning studio for new media and innovative technologies (awards include the “IKT Innovativ” by the Ministry of Economics and Technology in 2013, the “Innovationspreis-IT” in the category Entertainment/3D in 2014; nominations include the d-elina–German E-Learning Innovation and Young Talent Award in 2013).
Kathrin Kind-Trueller
Kathrin started her career 22 years ago, in the quality engineering of International Communication Mobile Networks at Siemens in 1999. Later on she developed complete vehicle process realisation processes, engine management-, steering-, braking-, cockpit infotainment- and driving assistance systems- , at several automotive suppliers as Bosch, ZF-TRW and Magneti Marelli. Also at Automotive OEMs such as: at BMW in Munich, Mercedes Benz Cars in Sindelfingen, Audi in Ingolstadt, and she is currently at the HQ of Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, Germany. She has an MSc. in Computer Science and Software Engineering from the University of Hertfordshire and a Master of Arts in Leading Innovation and Changes from York St. John.
Yariv Adan
Yariv has been leading product teams at Google since 2007. In his current role, Yariv is the Director of Product for Conversational AI in Google Cloud. Before that, he was one of the founders of the Google Assistant, the lead PM for privacy and security, built and led the Emerging Markets product team, and worked on YouTube monetization. Before joining Google, Yariv spent 10 years as an engineering manager in various Israeli start-ups and companies.
David Bolli
Driven by a fascination for the new capabilities and opportunities offered by Cloud services, breakthroughs in (NLP) models, and new approaches to make conversational AI work (even) in a regulated enterprise context.
Gennaro Montanino
Gennaro is an infinite learner, passionate, responsible, and always positive! Self-motivated and auto-disciplined. He has strong technical, Data Science, and business integration skills to design and implement high-impact people-centric solutions, by re-thinking operating models, products, and services, increasing effectiveness.
Dr.-Ing. Stefan Schaffer
Stefan Schaffer is a Senior Researcher and Project Manager at the Cognitive Assistants department of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). His works have resulted in several conversational interfaces for different domains, as mobility, automotive, tax information, customer service, and others. Currently, he is working on AI chatbots for museums and for hybrid events. Before joining DFKI, Stefan worked as a product manager at Linon Medien. He studied communication science and computer science and did his doctorate at the Technical University of Berlin in the field of multimodal human-computer interaction.
Aravind Ravichandiran
From playing the role of a Conversational AI Architect at Bosch and contributing towards our customers interacting with service centers using CAI and NLP techniques. Being an early starter in data science, he enjoyed learning along with the evolution of machine learning practices, thereby having hands-on with a variety of tech stacks and techniques right from their incubation. With this multitude of experience, he plays the role of conceptualizing AI applications and designing them for scale and production. His focus areas are adapting CAI practices and digital transformation for Bosch including building AI models and conversational flows, securing them against drift with active learning, designing for explainable AI, and protecting them against adversarial attacks.
Kaupo Laagriküll
Kaupo Laagriküll is the head of the department of information system authority, an experienced leader and a fond believer in service design who enjoys using his skills to contribute to the exciting technological advances that happen in estonia with and without Bürokratt.Bürokratt is the vision of how digital public services should work in the age of artificial intelligence (AI)
Collin Arumai Harinath Mendons Jeyaseelan
Collin has done his Bachelors in Computer Science and has 20 years of experience in Information Technology. He is working as a Product Owner in Swisscom handling Test Automation and Data Anonymization products. He has implemented various Innovative solutions as part of “Digital Transformation”.
Collin has a passion for creating innovative products. In his spare time, he works on developing IoT devices and frameworks.
Michiel Gaasterland
As Evangelist at CM.com, Michiel Gaasterland helps companies adapt to conversational commerce and build intelligence for the brand-new generation of consumers. Previously, Michiel was Chief Brand Officer at ROBINHQ.COM, an eCommerce customer service solution acquired by CM.com in 2020. He was instrumental in building up the ROBIN brand from zero to a market-leading position in the Dutch eCommerce space. CM.com is a global leader in Conversational Commerce, based in The Netherlands, with offices in over 18 countries.
Christoph Börner
In a few words - entrepreneur, developer, tester, keynote speaker and drummer. Active member and organizer in the testing community. Deep interest in artificial intelligence, machine learning and chatbots from day one. Close friendship with Florian Treml, with whom I started developing the open source Botium Core in 2018 to reinvent automated testing for chatbots. Today, Botium is part of Cyara's award-winning CX Assurance Platform and can be considered as the first choice of testing and training Conversational AI.
Stephen Kennedy
Stephen Kennedy heads the EMEA solutions team for eGain. Working with eGain’s customers and prospects, he helps clients understand the benefits that can be obtained with a successful eGain implementation. Stephen started his career with Sterling Software where he managed the Northern European support centre. Using effective knowledge during his tenure at Sterling software, he moved into a Pre-Sales role, working with prospects and customers to achieve some of the results he attained. For the last 20+ years, Stephen has been involved in many aspects of the implementation of successful Customer Service environments and ensuring that customers attain the expected benefits
Bartosz Malinowski
Having studied electronics and telecommunications engineering Bartosz has naturally become a great enthusiast of automation and artificial intelligence. As an expert in communications automation and conversational AI he's a frequent speaker at conferences on intelligent automation and robotization. Bartosz wants to help businesses grow via smart automation, as well as to build an ecosystem for Voicebots via multi integration with different ATS partners in Europe.
Paulina Lewandowska
For over 20 years, my passion has driven me to create solutions embedded in our daily lives, making them easier and more exciting. But more importantly, technological solutions, which increase the quality of people's lives and are accessible and inclusive to everyone who needs it.
For the last two years, this passion has evolved around digital virtual assistants, which can help people with various diseases get support faster and easier. In my daily work, I'm experimenting with voice, text, and gesture technology to make it accessible and convenient to everyone.
Rick van Esch
Rick van Esch is Vice-President SaaS Business at Sinch a leading Communication Platform as a Service provider. He is passionate about how to make businesses communicate more authentic with their customers through digital channels like messaging, video and voice. 2020, Rick joined Sinch through the acquisition of Chatlayer, a Gartner recognised Conversational AI Platform of which he served as CEO. Before Rick van Esch worked for over 6 years in Software-as-a-Service start-ups and scale-ups in the field of digital identity & authentication, digital signatures, CPaaS & Conversational AI. His origin belongs to management consultancy – he acts 4 years as a management consultant in the Financial Services Industry advising on straight-through-processing for stock exchanges.
Patrice Mattez
Patrice Mattez is EMEA Business Development Manager at AudioCodes focusing on Intelligent Contact Center transformation solutions that includes Voice bot technologies. He has more than 20 years of experience in the consulting and system integrators industries with a strong focus on Unified Communication and Contact Center solutions. As an entrepreneur, he also created his own company delivering about 10 years Business and technology consultancy services towards the top 500 companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, NATO, European Institutions and Belfius bank. He understands the customer challenges of Digital Transformation and provides useful advice to companies about enhancing their customer journey while reducing their costs. As a proud father of three children, he however still find time for running, cycling, and practicing Karate.
Radomir Ivankovic
Bachelor's Degree in Electrotechnical engineering and computer science with a background in Server Administration, VoIP engineering, Customer support, and Finance. Under my supervision more than 700 RPA robots were released. 2 ChatBots and Document understanding project for 12 countries that are processing more than 8000 invoices every month.
Dr. Christoph Esslinger
As a founder & managing director of VUI.agency Dr. Christoph Esslinger lives every day for the vision of charismatic ai to make customer service a delightful experience, especially in the digital age. He also adds that when we properly harness the opportunities of our technology, we create scalable customer delight instead of scalable frustration. Artificial intelligence should be used in such a way that we are cost-efficient, but at the same time create true value for our customers.
Kuba Krchák
Kuba is an Executive Director and co-founder of Telma AI as well as co-CEO and co-Founder of The MAMA AI.
For many years, he has been a leader in the IBM Watson AI R&D Lab in Prague, focusing on various applications of AI for business, most recently leading the global development team for the new Watson AIOps product.
Kuba is dedicated to making Telma AI a worldwide success, leveraging his senior leadership skills supported by 20 years of experience with Dialog Systems.
Aarsh Srivastava
Aarsh is a well-recognized AI strategist and business leader, who has co-
founded a buzzing AI start-up Gravitas AI, based in London, UK.
He has guided multiple organizations through their artificial intelligence
and business journeys. Aarsh led the delivery of the world’s first-ever AI-powered healthcare information provision assistant and has closely worked with the IBM Watson's core product team on Watson enhancements.
He has been a speaker at many leading conferences such as IBM, Think etc.
MBA and Engineer by trade, Aarsh has a great business and commercial
understanding. He strongly believes in the ethical use of technology, human
centered design approaches and is a strong advocate of balancing
professional and personal life.
Dr. Caroline Löffler
An enthusiastic digital leader with almost 15 years of experience in digitization, data science, and data-driven decision-making in risk management, finance, and the energy sector.
Eager to develop agile, cross-functional teams. Excellent reputation for resolving problems and improving customer and stakeholder satisfaction. Motivated to learn, grow and excel in an innovative environment.
Data science professional with expertise in machine learning, artificial intelligence, data mining, data processing, and storytelling.
Neil Barman
Neil has 2 decades of experience in Saas and direct-to-customer sales and marketing processes. With business leadership experience in managing sales, marketing, and account management functions in IT Services or IT products environment. He has a deep understanding of building sales and revenue generation functions in start-ups and scaling organizations across industries and regions.
Apart from leading the Growth function globally for Yellow.ai, He is one of the founding members of the Sales Enablement society in India and Malaysia, an Ambassador for the Future Of Sales - APAC community, an Advisory Board member to multiple start-ups in India, Malaysia, and US and Mentor to the Entrepreneurship cell of BITS Pilani India.
Björn Schuller
Björn is a Full Professor and head of the Chair of Embedded Intelligence for Health Care and Wellbeing at the University of Augsburg/Germany. At the same time, he is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London/UK (since 2018 - Reader in Machine Learning since 2015 - Senior Lecturer since 2013). Further, he is the co-founding CEO of audEERING GmbH – a TUM scale-up on intelligent audio engineering.
Matthias Schrödl
Matthias Schrödl is an experienced Manager currently leading the business and growth for DRUID AI in the DACH region. He has over 12 years experience of in leading customer-focused teams and is an expert in conversational AI business applications. Based in Nürnberg, Germany, he previously worked for companies such as Pluralsight, Oracle, and Snowflake.
Andreea Socol
Andreea Socol is a tech-savvy expert with more than 16 years of experience in finance & financial technology. Currently, she leads the presales activities for EMEA, preaching AI automation solutions to customers throughout the world and assisting them in driving digital transformation and solution adoption across their businesses.
Vincenzo Sciacca
Vincenzo Sciacca is the Product Manager for cognitive technologies at Almawave. He is responsible for developing new ideas to address market needs and addressing market opportunities. Vincenzo leads a team that sets the strategy, roadmap and feature definition, ensuring that the products support Almawave’s overall AI strategy and goals. He moved to Almawave after a long experience working for global companies, playing several roles in software R&D teams, Cloud and AI technical sales departments, and gaining a rich experience and knowledge as Software Architect, leading many international software projects. Vincenzo is also an active inventor, achieving multiple patents and authoring technical papers and he has always strived to apply AI/ML to traditional IT projects. Vincenzo holds courses in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.