DEEP TECH SUMMIT

Dame Wendy Hall

Regius Professor of Computer Science
University of Southampton

Dame Wendy Hall, DBE, FRS, FREng is Regius Professor of Computer Science, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International Engagement), and is an Executive Director of the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton.

With Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt, she co-founded the Web Science Research Initiative in 2006. She is also the Managing Director of the Web Science Trust which has a global mission to support the development of research, education and thought leadership in Web Science.

She became a Dame Commander of the British Empire in the 2009 UK New Year's Honours list and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Dame Wendy has previously been President of the Association for Computing Machinery, Senior Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a member of the UK Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology, a founding member of the European Research Council and Chair of the European Commission's ISTAG, a member of the Global Commission on Internet Governance, and was a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Futures Council on the Digital Economy.

Dame Wendy was also Co-Chair of the UK government's Artificial Intelligence (AI) Review which was published on October 2017. She is the UK government's first Skills Champion for AI.

Prof Ho Teck Hua

Executive Chairman
AI Singapore

Prof Ho Teck Hua is the Executive Chairman of AI Singapore, and the Senior Deputy President and Provost at the National University of Singapore (NUS) where he is Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professor. He is also Chairman of the Singapore Data Science Consortium.

Prof Ho is a prominent behavioural scientist, with a PhD in Decision Sciences from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2011, he was appointed as Vice President (Research Strategy) at NUS and became director of the NUS Centre for Behavioural Economics. In 2015, he became Deputy President (Research and Technology). Before this, Prof Ho was the William Halford Jr Family Professor of Marketing at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

Prof Ho has had significant articles on Behavioural Economics, Management Science and Marketing published in refereed journals. He was the first non-US citizen to be the editor-in-chief of Management Science, the venerable flagship journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, and one of the top journals for research in management.

At the Haas School of Business, Prof Ho received the 2015 Williamson Award, the School's highest faculty award named in honour of Oliver Williamson, the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Dr Homer Pien

Chief Scientific Officer
Philips

Dr Homer Pien is the Head of Scientific Office for Precision Diagnosis at Philips. He was previously Chief Scientific Officer for Diagnosis and Treatment at Philips and before that, the Chief Technology Officer for Philips' Imaging businesses. Prior to joining Philips in 2012, Dr Pien was with Massachusetts General Hospital's Department of Radiology for nine years. Dr Pien holds a PhD in Image Processing and Computer Vision, as well as a Master's of Science in Technology Management.

Robbie Schingler

Chief Strategy Officer
& Co-Founder
Planet Labs

Robbie Schingler is the Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder of Planet Labs. Before Planet Labs, Robbie spent nine years at NASA where he helped build the Small Spacecraft Office at NASA Ames and was Capture Manager for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Robbie later served as NASA's Open Government Representative to the White House and served as Chief of Staff for the Office of the Chief Technologist at NASA. He received an MBA from Georgetown University, a Master's in Space Studies from the International Space University, and a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the Santa Clara University. Robbie was a 2005 Presidential Management Fellow.

Steve Leonard

Founding CEO
SGInnovate

Steve Leonard is a technology-industry leader with a wide range of experience, having played key roles in building several global companies in areas such as Software, Hardware and Services. Although born in the US, Mr Leonard considers himself a member of the larger global community, having lived and worked outside the US for more than 25 years.

In his current role as the Founding Chief Executive Officer of SGInnovate – a private limited company wholly owned by the Singapore Government – Mr Leonard has been chartered to lead an organisation that builds ‘deep-tech’ companies. Capitalising on the science and technology research for which Singapore has gained a global reputation, Mr Leonard’s team works with local and international partners, including universities, venture capitalists, and major corporations to help technical founders imagine, start and scale globally relevant early-stage technology companies from Singapore.

Prior to his role as the CEO of SGInnovate, Mr Leonard served three years as the Executive Deputy Chairman of the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), a government statutory board under the purview of Singapore’s Ministry of Communications and Information. In that role, he had executive responsibility at the national level for various aspects of the information technology and telecommunications industries in Singapore.

Mr Leonard serves on the advisory boards of a range of universities and organisations in Singapore. Mr Leonard also serves as an Independent Non-Executive Director at Singapore Post Ltd (SingPost), a global leader in e-commerce logistics; and AsiaSat, a Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed commercial operator of communication spacecraft.

Robert Opp

Chief Digital Officer
UNDP

Robert Opp is currently the Chief Digital Officer of UNDP, the United Nations' global sustainable development organisation working across 170 countries globally with more than 17,000 staff. He leads the agency's digital transformation, an organisation-wide effort, to harness the power of new technology to improve the lives of those furthest behind.

Prior to this role, Robert served as Director of the Innovation and Change Management Division within the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) where he established an in-house 'Zero Hunger' innovation accelerator and created an award-winning crowdfunding smartphone app, ShareTheMeal.

Previously, Robert was a management consultant with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) based in Singapore, where he served a wide range of private sector companies throughout Asia and the Middle East. He has also served in various other capacities in WFP, including as Manager of the emergency food aid assistance programmes in Angola with a $260 million operation that reached over 1 million internally displaced persons affected by civil war. Robert began his career at Canada's International Development Research Centre, managing projects focused on peacebuilding in post-conflict countries.

Lin Suling

Executive Editor - Commentary Section (CNA)
Mediacorp

With more than 13 years of expertise in public policy transformation, strategy and strategic communications, Lin Suling is Executive Editor at award-winning news outlet CNA where she set up its Commentary section. Each day, she aims to define, discuss and provide critical insight into top breaking news and hot-button issues by partnering opinion shapers and authoritative experts from Singapore, Asia and across the globe, writing the occasional column, and producing CNA’s podcast The Pulse.

Suling spent the first decade of her career in the civil service after securing a Defence Merit Scholarship. She has worked previously at the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Finance and what was then the Pioneer Generation Office. Her notable projects include work for the Committee on the Future Economy, the establishment of the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus, the creation of the Konfrontasi memorial and the relocation of Paya Lebar Airbase.

She is passionate about issues surrounding diversity, inclusion and community-building in a digital age. She believes technology can be a force for good and more can be done to build a vibrant, thinking and engaged Singapore civil society.

Dr Nicolas Chapados

Co-Founder & Chief Science Officer
Element AI

Dr Nicolas Chapados is Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer at Element AI. He holds an Engineering Degree from McGill University and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Montreal. In 2001, while still writing his thesis, he co-founded Machine Learning Technology Transfer company ApSTAT Technologies with his advisor Yoshua Bengio. ApSTAT Technologies applies cutting-edge research ideas to areas such as insurance risk evaluation, supply chain planning, business forecasting, national defence, and hedge fund management. From this, Dr Chapados also co-founded spin-off companies Imagia - to detect and quantify cancer early with AI analysis of medical images, Element AI - to help organizations plan and implement their AI transformation, and Chapados Couture Capital - a quantitative asset manager. Dr Chapados holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.

Bernhard Schambeck

Head
BMW Startup Garage

Bernhard Schambeck is Head of BMW Startup Garage, the Venture Client unit of the BMW Group. The BMW Startup Garage helps early-stage startups to succeed in this multi-trillion-dollar industry.

Bernhard has successfully worked with numerous early-stage startups throughout his professional career, some of which are now leaders in their industry or even among the world’s biggest companies. His 20+ years in the automotive industry and his experience in working with startups and as a founder of his own company allowed him to understand both sides - the corporate and the startup worlds.

Bernhard joined BMW in 1996 and has since worked in several positions, including Project Lead Electric/Electronic and Interior for the BMW X1; Head of HMI (Human Machine Interface) Team for the new MINI product line; Senior Technology Engineer at the BMW Tech Office/Palo Alto USA; Series Development Engineer Interior Components.

He holds a degree in Precision Engineering and Microsystems from the University of Applied Science in Munich.

Maarten Camps

Secretary-General
Ministry of Economic Affairs & Climate Policy of the Netherlands

Maarten Camps is Secretary-General at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy of the Netherlands (until 26 October 2017, he was Secretary-General at the Ministry of Economic Affairs). Maarten held various senior positions at the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment in the Netherlands. At the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, he held the position of Director-General for Employment from 2008 to 2013. From 2005 until 2007 he was chairman of the Employment Committee (EMCO) of the European Union. From January 2016 to July 2017, he was chairman of the European High-Level Group for Competitiveness and Growth. Maarten Camps studied economics at the University of Tilburg and Exeter.

Jonathan Wong

Chief of Technology & Innovation
UNESCAP

Jonathan Wong is the Chief of Technology & Innovation at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). He joined UNESCAP from the United Kingdon (UK) Department for International Development (DFID), where he was the inaugural head of innovation. Jonathan has led the establishment of several high-profile innovation initiatives, including the Global Innovation Fund, a partnership between the Omidyar Network and the governments of the United States, UK, Sweden, Australia and South Africa; and the Amplify programme, an open innovation platform for development in partnership with Ideo.org and OpenIdeo. Jonathan has extensive experience in developing partnerships with private sector technology companies, impact investing, tech for good, and social entrepreneurship development. He also has substantial technology and innovation policy expertise, having advised governments across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific.

Jonathan has served on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation's E-commerce Business Council. Before joining DFID, he was a Founding Partner of a technology and innovation venture capital fund and supported the establishment of the UK NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement. Jonathan is a globally respected expert on innovation and was honoured with the inaugural Public Social Intrapreneurship Award by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship - the sister organisation of the World Economic Forum.

Dr Andreas Liebl

Managing Director
UnternehmerTUM GmbH

Dr Andreas Liebl is Managing Director of UnternehmerTUM GmbH. He is responsible, among other things, for setting up the appliedAI initiative with partners such as Google and NVIDIA. With 50 partners, the initiative is already one of the most significant efforts in Europe in the field of applied artificial intelligence and answers the organisational, technological and strategic questions of companies with regards to the application of AI. Before joining UnternehmerTUM, Dr Liebl worked for McKinsey for five years and did his PhD at the Entrepreneurship Research Institute at the Technical University of Munich. In his doctoral thesis, he accompanied 120 startups for one year and examined their corporate culture and identity.

Dinakar Munagala

Chief Executive Officer
Blaize

Dinakar Munagala co-founded Blaize and serves as Chief Executive Officer. He brings more than 22 years of experience in successfully leading global teams building graphics chips for multiple $10 billion programs, with recognition for technical excellence, new initiatives and results focus. Starting with a bootstrapped development effort to create a more energy-efficient processor architecture for the needs of a new generation of computing, Dinakar has led Blaize in delivering a transformational compute solution that unites silicon and software to optimize AI at scale from the edge to the core. Under his leadership, the company has brought together marquee investors to back the vision of the founding team, grown to ship products to multiple customers across automotive and other sectors, and continues to hire exceptional talent to join its US, UK, Japan and India offices.

Prior to co-founding Blaize, Dinakar spent 12 years at Intel where he held pivotal roles in graphics processor micro-architecture and design and feature ownership in the mobile and graphics engineering group, as well as with the Intel Centrino platforms. Programmes included Intel's next-generation multi-core, multi-threaded graphics chips, and the architecture for Intel's first integrated CPU/GPU product family.

Dinakar holds a Bachelor's of Engineering degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Osmania University, India, and a Master's of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University, USA. He is credited with five IP/Patent filings.

Actively engaged in community service initiatives, Dinakar has for ten years taken a leadership role in fundraising for CRY (Child Relief and You) / Vibha (Sacramento Action Centre), a non-profit that supports educational projects for underprivileged children, and is an active supporter of Kiva & Vittana initiatives, empowering students and entrepreneurs globally to achieve their goals via non-profit micro-finance loans.

Liza Lin

Correspondent
Wall Street Journal

Liza Lin is a Singapore-based correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. She was a former China technology reporter with the paper and had spent more than ten years covering business news in Asia, with seven years in China. Before the Journal, Liza wrote for Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg Television in China and Singapore. She holds a Bachelor's in Communication Studies from the Nanyang Technological University and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to complete her Master's in Global Affairs from Yale University. Liza is a former recipient of the prestigious Gerald Loeb Award for International journalism and the prize for best investigative reporting at the Society of Publishers in Asia awards.

Daryl Arnold

Chairman
ConnectedLife and DEX

Daryl Arnold is an entrepreneur experienced in data, marketing, technology and sustainability. Building businesses from the ground-up, Daryl has achieved more than a hundred million dollars of sales from Asia, Europe and America.

Following successful exits in the digital space, Daryl now focuses on Smart Cities, Civic Innovation, Open Data, Internet of Things, Health Diagnostics and Active Ageing. Having lived and worked in major world cities including Beijing, London, New York, Shanghai and Tokyo, Daryl is now based in Singapore since 2010.

Outside of business, Daryl is happily married and a father of three. He is a keen snowboarder and competitive squash player.

Dr Philippe Beaudoin

Senior Vice President of Research Group & Co-Founder
Element AI

Dr Philippe Beaudoin co-founded Element AI and is Senior Vice President of Research Group. He oversees the AI for Good and Applied Research Lab divisions, directing the researchers who explore and refine Element AI's bold vision of the future of AI in the enterprise. Dr Beaudoin also ensures that these research discoveries are used to make the world a better place. Before co-founding Element AI, Dr Beaudoin was a senior developer at Google and Co-Founder of two startups. He holds a PhD and postdoc in Computer Science, specialised in Computer Graphics and Reinforcement Learning. Dr Beaudoin also volunteers on multiple boards and foundations that focus on improving public understanding of science & technology and encouraging entrepreneurship. As a public speaker, he has participated in more than 50 events in the last two years.

Chew Men Leong

Chief Marketing Officer
ST Engineering

Chew Men Leong is the ST Engineering’s Chief Marketing Officer and oversees the Group’s efforts in overseas business expansion, especially in the areas of international defence business and smart city initiatives. He is also concurrently the Deputy President of the Marine sector where he oversees its defence business and environmental engineering services businesses.

Men Leong was a former member of the Administrative Service and was the former Chief of Navy.

Men Leong served as the Chief Executive of the Land Transport Authority (LTA) Singapore from 2014 to 2016. He oversaw the launch of the Downtown Line operations, the initial bus services under the new Government Contracting model, and the transition of the train operator to the New Rail Financial Framework model. He also drove new initiatives on autonomous vehicles, smart and active mobility.

Prior to LTA, Men Leong helmed the Public Utilities Board where he helped ensure an adequate and sustainable water supply for Singapore.

Before 2011, Men Leong served 25 years in the Singapore Armed Forces and was the Chief of Navy from 2007 to 2011. He operationalised key aspects of the Third Generation Republic of Singapore Navy, transforming its force structure as well as its people development frameworks.

Men Leong was awarded the Public Administration Medal (Military) (Gold) in 2008.

Chiu Wen Tung

Group Director (Research & Development)
Urban Redevelopment Authority

Chiu Wen Tung is Group Director (Research & Development) at Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). He leads his team in researching solutions to meet Singapore's future planning needs and steers URA's research programmes.

Wen Tung was previously Executive Director (Resource Development) at the Singapore Economic Development Board, responsible for planning and securing resources needed for industries to grow in Singapore.

Wen Tung graduated with a Master’s in Chemical Engineering from the Imperial College, United Kingdom and with High Honours from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Executive MBA programme.

Dr Steve Marsh

Chief Technology Officer
GeoSpock

Dr Steve Marsh is a Computer Scientist and Deep Tech entrepreneur with a passion for addressing planet-scale problems with innovative new technology.

In 2013, Dr Marsh founded GeoSpock, a venture-funded cloud-based Spatial Big Data technology company with the long-term goal of making cities more liveable for their citizens by helping Smart Cities and Smart Nations solve congestion and pollution issues, as well as enabling the next generation of applications and services for its partners in the Automotive, Maritime, IoT and Telecommunication sectors.

Before GeoSpock, while Dr Marsh was completing his PhD at the University of Cambridge, he built biologically-inspired massively parallel supercomputer-architectures for real-time simulation of the human brain function. His work on neuromorphic hardware was recognised with a highly prestigious Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship and also resulted in Dr Marsh being listed on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for Science and Technology.

With technology originating at the bleeding-edge of computer science research, GeoSpock’s next-generation database solution is uniquely placed to cope with the extreme-scale data challenges. Through its partners, GeoSpock opens up new data-driven market opportunities that the rise of connected-everything and M2M communications are enabling.