Dr. Marlene Kanga

President-elect for the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO)

Dr. Marlene Kanga is President-elect for the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO), the peak body for engineering institutions internationally representing some 100 engineering institutions and approximately 20 million engineers. She is a director of iOmniscient Pty. Ltd. which has developed video analytic technologies for resilient and smart cities.
Dr. Kanga was National President of Engineers Australia in 2013. She is an innovation leader and is a board member of the Australian Department of Industry, national Innovation and Science Australia board, is Chair of the Department of Industry R&D Incentives Committee and other boards involving innovation. Dr. Kanga is also a Board member of Sydney Water Corporation Australia’s largest water utility.
Dr. Kanga is an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia and an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (UK). She is also a Fellow of the engineering institutions of New Zealand and India, Fellow of the Academy of Technology Science and Engineering (Australia) and a Fellow the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Dr. Kanga has been listed among the Top 100 Women of Influence in Australia and the Top 100 Engineers in Australia and was the 2014 FEIAP (Federation of Engineers in Asia and the Pacific) Professional Engineer of the Year. She is a Member of the Order of Australia, a national honour, in recognition of her leadership of the engineering profession.
Dr Kanga holds a Bachelor of Technology in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai (IITB - India). She has a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering the University of London and a PhD in Business Administration from Macquarie University in Sydney.

Dr Indrajit Banerjee

Director of the Knowledge Societies Division of UNESCO in the Communication and Information Sector

As Director of the Knowledge Societies Division of UNESCO in the Communication and Information Sector, Mr Banerjee is responsible for the coordination of UNESCO’s overall contribution to the follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).
The Division promotes the application of ICTs to enhance the quality of and access to education, build scientific knowledge, promote open access to scientific research results, and empower local communities. The Knowledge Societies Division contributes to the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Sustainable Development Agenda. In this regard, UNESCO has undertaken a number of brave initiatives and targeted project in order to promote disability rights through education, science, culture and communication and information.
The Division also promotes free and open source software, open web and open standards, as well as protects and digitize documentary heritage through the Memory of the World Programme. It fosters the role of libraries and archives and is responsible for further strengthening of the World Digital Library. The Division hosts Mr Banerjee as Secretary of the Intergovernmental Council for the Information for All Programme (IFAP) assists Member States in elaborating national information policy frameworks.

Robin Li

Co-Founder
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Robin Li is the Co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Baidu, Inc., and oversees the company's overall strategy and business operations.
Robin received a bachelor of science degree in information management from Peking University in 1991, and a master of science degree in computer science from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1994. Robin worked as a Senior Consultant at a subsidiary of Dow Jones and designed the real-time financial information system for the online edition of the Wall Street Journal. Robin received a US patent for a system of hyperlink analysis in 1999, one of the inventions that has helped shape today's search technology. He later joined InfoSeek, one of the early search engines, in Silicon Valley as a Senior Engineer.
Since founding the company in January 2000, Robin has led Baidu to be China’s largest search engine, with over 70% market share. Baidu is the largest Chinese search engine globally and the second largest independent search engine in the world. China is among the four countries globally—alongside the United States, Russia and South Korea—to possess its own core search engine technology. Through innovations such as from Box Computing to Baidu’s Open Data and Open App Platform, Robin has substantially advanced the theoretical framework of China’s Internet sciences, propelling Baidu to be the vanguard of China’s Internet industry.
In 2005, Baidu became a NASDAQ-listed public company and in 2007 was the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ-100 Index. In 2007, The Financial Times listed Baidu as one of the Top 10 Chinese Global Brands, with Baidu being the youngest company as well as the only Internet company in the top ten.
As one of the pioneers and leading figures in China’s Internet industry, Robin’s achievements are widely recognized. In 2013, Robin became a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. He currently acts as Vice Chairman of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce and Vice Chairman of the Internet Society of China (ISC). Robin is a “1000 Talent” National Distinguished Expert and has received honors including “CCTV Key Figure in China’s Economy,” “The Top 30 Figures in China’s 30 Years of Reform,” “Ten IT Leaders,” and many others. Robin topped Forbes’ list of “2012 China’s Best CEOs and was named Forbes’ List of World’s Most Powerful People three years in a row. Magazines such as BusinessWeek and Time Magazine have repeatedly put Robin’s on the lists of “Best Business Leaders in the World” and “China’s Most Influential Business Leaders.”

Mr. Liu Chuanzhi

Chairman of the Board of Legend Holdings Corporation
Founder of Lenovo Group Limited.

In 1984, eleven researchers including Liu Chaunzhi started their business in a less-than-20-square-meter bungalow of Computing Institute under the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS); up to now, he has created a number of leading companies, including Lenovo, China Digital, Legend Capital, Hony Capital, and several leading figures, such as Yang Yuanqing, Guo Wei, Zhu Linan, Zhao John Huan, etc. He constantly pursues increasingly ambitious goals and develops new business for Legend Holdings Corporation.
Liu Chuanzhi has made a significant contribution to the company’s institution and mechanism construction, strategy development, business expansion, management methodology and culture, and talents training. Meanwhile, his work with Legend Holdings has produced a number of achievements that guarantee its development in the long run.
Mr. Liu was born in Zhenjiang City of Jiangsu Province in 1944, and graduated from the People's Liberation Army Institute of Telecommunication Engineering (currently Xidian University) in China in November 1967. He was a delegate of the 16th and 17th National Congresses of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and of the 9th, 10th and 11th National People’s Congresses (NPC) of China. He was the Vice Chairman of the 8th and 9th Executive Committee of All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce (ACFIC). Additionally, he is the Honorary Professor of EMBA Program of Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, and Chinese Guest Professor at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS).
Domestic and international honors received by Liu Chuanzhi include:
1990: First Place, China’s 2nd Time Science & Technology Entrepreneur Awards
1995: National Model Worker, China
2000: Asian Businessman of the Year (The magazine of Fortune)
2000: Businessman of the Year, CCTV
2000: Asian Star, (BusinessWeek)
2001: Top 25 Most Influential Leaders in Business list (The magazine of Time)
2005: Outstanding Individual in Promoting China-US Relations (Awarded by National Committee of US China Relations (NCUSCR))
2009: Fifty Faces That Shaped a Decade, (Financial Times)
2009: Business Leader in a Decade of Economic Development in China (Businessman of the Year, CCTV)
2009: Pacemaker – Most Influential Model Worker since the Founding of New China (All-China Federation of Trade Unions)
2010: Entrepreneur for the World Award, World Entrepreneur Forum (Organized by France’s EMLYON Business School and KPMG)
2011: Businessman of the Year - Lifetime Achievement Award, CCTV
2012: 50 Most Powerful Businesspeople in China (Chinese Version of Fortune)
2012: 10 Most Powerful Businesspeople in China’ (Fortune/CNN)
2012: Distinguished Executive Award, International Association of Chinese Management Research (IACMR)
2015: The 15th Annual Meeting of Yabuli Chinese Entrepreneur Forum – the Most Thinking Entrepreneur of China
2016: Doctor of Business Administration honoris causa, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
2016: CNBC 15th Asia Business Leaders Awards – Lifetime Achievement Award

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford Internet Institute, Best selling author of Big Data:A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think

Born in Salzburg, Austria.
LL.M. of Harvard Law School
M.Sc. of London School of Economics and Political Science
Dr.iur. of Faculty of Law, University of Salzburg
Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. Associate professor of Public Policy at John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University from 2003 to 2008, and was chair of Governance of Information project.
Has been invited to speak at many internationally renowned enterprises and organizations, including White House, World Economic Forum, European Commission, European Parliament, International Telecommunications Union, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Deloitte, Intel, Huawei, China Mobile, Haier etc.
Best selling author, his recent work Big Data was bestseller of New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, shortlist of Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of The Year 2013, 5 must-read business books of CNN Money. Chinese version was awarded CCTV Best Books of 2013, 2013 8 Must Read Books for Chinese governments, 2014 National Library Award. The book has had great influence on industry, academy, and government ever since it has been published.
The Chinese version of Learning with Big Data: The Future of Education was published in 2014, which received great attention from education field, and was awarded 2015 TOP 10 books that influenced educators.

Pan Yunhe

Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering
Executive Vice President of Chinese Academy of Engineering

Pan Yunhe (1946.11.4-), an expert in computer applications. Born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. He graduated from the Department of architecture of Tongji University in Shanghai in 1970. 1981 graduated from the computer department of Zhejiang University and received a master's degree, he served as lecturer, associate professor, Department of computer science professor. He was president of Zhejiang University in August -2006. May 1995. Since June 2006, he served as executive vice president of Chinese Academy of engineering. In March 2013, he was appointed member of the Standing Committee of the Twelfth National Committee of the Chinese people's Political Consultative Conference and director of the foreign affairs committee. He is also a member of the academic degree committee of the State Council, an advisor to the China Association of science and technology, and an honorary chairman of the Chinese society of image and graphics.
Pan Yunhe is one of the pioneers in the field of intelligent CAD and computer art in china. He has long been engaged in the research of computer graphics, artificial intelligence, computer aided design and industrial design, computer art, intelligent CAD, computer aided product innovation, virtual reality, digital cultural relic protection and digital library and other fields, has undertaken many important scientific research topic, made a number of research results, and has good economic benefits and social benefits. He has published many research papers, and has won many national, provincial and ministerial level scientific and technological awards.
In 1997, he was elected academician of Chinese Academy of engineering.

JACK MA

Executive Chairman, Alibaba Group

Jack Ma is our lead founder and, since May 2013, has served as our executive chairman. From our founding in 1999 until May 2013, Jack served as our chairman and chief executive officer. He is also the founder of the Zhejiang-based Jack Ma Foundation.
Jack currently serves on the board of SoftBank Corp., a Japanese corporation listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. He is also a member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, a member of the board of the Breakthrough Energy Ventures, chairman of the Zhejiang Chamber of Commerce, as well as chairman of the China Entrepreneur Club. In January 2016, he was named a Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) advocate by the United Nations. In September 2016, he was named special adviser of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) for Youth Entrepreneurship and Small Business, which holds the rank of assistant secretary-general of the United Nations.
Jack graduated from Hangzhou Teacher's Institute with a major in English language education.

Dong Mingzhu

Chairman of the Board and President of Gree Electric Appliances, Inc. of Zhuhai

Dong Mingzhu, Member of 10th, 11th and 12th National People’s Congress;
Member of the Standing Committee of China National Democratic Construction Association;
Member of 10th Executive Committee of All-China Women’s Federation; Member of Committee of Experts for the 13th five-year plan of National Development and Reform Commission;
Messenger of UN Sustainable Urban Development;
Chairperson on duty of “Sustainable Development Commission” of UN Development Programme .
Ms.Dong has awarded honors and tiles of “National Labor Model”, “National May Labor Prize”, “March 8 Red Banner Pacesetters Model of China” and so on. Moreover, she has been awarded "CCTV’s China Economic Figures of the Year” for three times and “World’s 50 Most Powerful Business Women” by Fortune, USA for ten times.
Ms.Dong wrote two books recording her work experience in Gree. The remuneration of the books was donated for education.

Professor Bo Zhang

professor of Computer Science and Technology Department of Tsinghua University
the fellow of Chinese Academy of Sciences

He is now a professor of Computer Science and Technology Department of Tsinghua University, the fellow of Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1958 he graduated from Automatic Control Department of Tsinghua University, and became a faculty member since then. From 1980/02 to 1982/02, he visited University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA as a scholar. In 2011, Hamburg University awarded him Honorary Doctor of Natural Sciences. He is now the member of Technical Advisory Board of Microsoft Research Asia.
He is engaged in the research on artificial intelligence, artificial neural networks, machine learning, and so on. And he also is engaged in the research applying technology that applies the theories mentioned above into pattern recognition, knowledge engineering, and robotics. In these fields, he has published over 200 papers and 5 monographs (chapters). His monograph involved “Theory and Applications of Problem Solving” in Chinese/English version won the special-class prize of excellent academic monograph from College and University Press awarded by State Educational Commission. His academic achievement won ICL European Artificial Intelligence Prize, etc. In addition, he took part in building up the State Key Lab of Intelligent Technology and Systems and served as director of the lab from 1990 to 1996.
Recently, he found research group for cognitive computation and multimedia information processing. The group has got some important results in machine learning, image and video analysis and retrieval.

LIU Qingfeng

The Founder, Board Chairman of iFLYTEK

Liu Qingfeng, founder and CEO & president of iFLYTEK, director of the National Speech & Language Engineering Laboratory of China, professor and doctoral advisor at the University of Science and Technology of China, director general of the Union of Speech Industry of China, director general of the Union of National University Student Innovation & Entrepreneurship, representative of the National People’s Congress.
For 17 years, Dr Liu Qingfeng has stood by the mission of “Let machines hear and speak, understand and predict”, and led iFLYTEK, the company that he cofounded with his team, in achieving outstanding results in the research and industrialization of speech and artificial intelligence core technology. The speech synthesis system that iFLYTEK developed has won eleven consecutive championships (2006-2016) in the Blizzard Challenge, which is the largest and most influential speech synthesis contest internationally. Their speech recognition system has been ranked among the best for 5 years executively since 2008 in the Speaker Recognition Evalution held by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), as well as achieving the best performance in all indicators in the Computational Hearing in Multisource Environments (CHiME) Speech Separation and Recognition Challenge. Their Chinese (Mandarin)-English two-way translation system won the championships in the International Workshop on Spoken Language Translation in 2014, as well as the Open Machine Translation Evaluation held by NIST in 2015. iFLYTEK owns a 70% marketshare of the Chinese speech market. The total number of users of the iFLYTEK voice cloud exceeds 0.89 billion, and the average number of daily interactions exceeding 3 billion per day. More than 250 thousand third party startup teams make use of the technology. They also launched a major AI project called “iFLYTEK Hyper Brain”, which won the Winograd Schema Challenge and the NIST TAC Knowledge Base Population Contest in 2016. Now, iFLYTEK is recognized as the biggest speech public company in the Asia Pacific region. In recognition of his outstanding achievements in technological innovations and industrial contributions, Liu Qingfeng was appointed one of the 14th CCTV's China Economic Figures of the Year in 2013, and awarded the CBN's China Business Leaders Awards in 2015. iFLYTEK was listed as one of the Top Ten Public Companies of the year by CCTV in 2016.

Wang Wenjing

Chairman and CEO of Yonyou Software Co., Ltd.

Wang Wenjing, male, born in December 1964; native place: Shangrao, Jiangxi; graduated from Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics with a bachelor’s degree in economics. Between July 1983 and November 1988, he worked in the National Government Offices Administration of the State Council as a clerk. In December 1988, he founded Yonyou. He now serves as the Chairman and CEO of Yonyou Software Co., Ltd. as well as the Executive Director of the Internet+ Development Association of China. He used to be a Deputy to the 9th to 12th National People’s Congress, and a number of social honors have also gone to him successively, including “Outstanding Private Entrepreneur of China”, “Outstanding Contributor to the Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”, “Top Ten Software Enterprise Leader of China”, “Annual Economic Figure of China”, “Top Ten Chinese Business Leader”, “China’s Independent Innovation Leader”, “Industrial Internet Leader”, etc.
Under the leadership of Wang Wenjing, Yonyou has been focusing on the innovation and development in the field of enterprise informatization and public organization informatization for nearly 30 years. The development of the Company in Yonyou 1.0 era has identified the Company as China’s largest financial software service provider that has served hundreds of thousands of enterprises and governmental organs in China; the development of the Company in Yonyou 2.0 era has identified the Company as a leading ERP management software service provider in the Asia-Pacific Region that has promotes the informatization process of more than 2 million enterprises in China; the development of the Company in Yonyou 3.0 era has identified the Company as the world’s leading software, cloud services and financial services provider that has served more than a hundred thousand Chinese enterprises and public organizations in internetization and financialization, for a win-win situation in the times of enterprises internetization.

Sun Pishu

Chairman and CEO of Inspur Group

Sun Pishu is the Chairman and CEO of Inspur Group. Sun participated in the R&D of China’s first generation of PC in 1983, leaded the R&D of China’s first server in 1993, known as “the father of China’s servers”. As the pioneer in China’s IT industry, Sun Pishu makes Inspur become China’s only cloud computing manufacturer regarding software and hardware comprehensive strength. Inspur servers ranked No.1 in China, No.5 in the world server field. Inspur has become the world’s 5th and China’s only enterprise to have mastered UNIX server core technologies, pushing forward China’s server industry and providing cloud computing products and service for over 100 countries in the world.

Piero Scaruffi

Founder of Silicon Valley Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (SVAIRI), the author of A History of Silicon Valley, Intelligence Is Not Artificial and Human 2.0 - the Future of Technology

Founder of Silicon Valley Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (SVAIRI), Expert on AI from Silicon Valley. He is also an AI and cognitive scientist, and university lecturer (UC Berkeley, Standford and Harvard Universities).
Scaruffi is the author of A History of Silicon Valley, Intelligence Is Not Artificial and Human 2.0 - the Future of Technology. A History of Silicon Valley is the first history of Silicon Valley from 1900 to the 2010s. It is a comprehensive study of the greatest creation of wealth in the history of the world, from the establishment of Stanford University to the age of social media. The later two introduced the current state and future of Artificial intelligence. All the three books have been published and translated to several languages around the world.

Wu Guanghui

Vice president of COMAC&C919 Chief Designer

Mr. Wu Guanghui, born in February 1960 in Wuhan of Hubei Province, holds a Doctorate Degree. He graduated from Nanjing Aeronautical Institute majoring in aircraft design with a Bachelor’s Degree of Engineering in 1982; and from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics majoring in aircraft design with a Doctorate Degree of Engineering in 2008.
Mr. Wu joined Xi'an Aircraft Design Institute in 1982, serving successively as Designer, Deputy Director and Director of General Design Department, and in 2003 Vice President of the First Aircraft Design Research Institute of AVIC I. Since 2006, while at First Aircraft Design and Research Institute, he has served successively as President, Chief Designer of 998 Project, Chief Designer of ARJ21, General Director of On-site Command Department of 998 Project and General Director of Research Site of Large Transport Aircraft. He was appointed as Vice President of COMAC, Member of the Party Committee of COMAC and Chief Designer of C919 program in March 2008.
He was awarded the Prize for Outstanding Contributions in High-tech Project by the CPC Central Committee, the State Council and the Central Military Commission and won a gold medal in 2007. He received the Special Government Allowance awarded by the State Council. He was awarded with Special National Prize for Process in Science and Technology in 2011, and occupied the No. 1 position .He was awarded the national excellent scientific and technological workers in 2014.
Delegate of the 17th National Congress of the CPC, and Member of the 11th and 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

Nick Bostrom

Professor at Oxford University
Founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University

Nick Bostrom is Professor at Oxford University, where he is the founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute. He also directs the Strategic Artificial Intelligence Research Center. He is the author of some 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias (Routledge, 2002), Global Catastrophic Risks (ed., OUP, 2008), Human Enhancement (ed., OUP, 2009), and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (OUP, 2014), a New York Times bestseller.
Bostrom has a background in physics, computational neuroscience, and mathematical logic as well as philosophy. He is recipient of a Eugene R. Gannon Award (one person selected annually worldwide from the fields of philosophy, mathematics, the arts and other humanities, and the natural sciences). He has been listed on Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice; and he was included on Prospect magazine's World Thinkers list, the youngest person in the top 15 from all fields and the highest-ranked analytic philosopher. His writings have been translated into 24 languages. There have been more than 100 translations and reprints of his works.

Wu Ying

Chairman of China Capital Group
co-founder of UTStarcom

Ying Wu, founder and Chairman of China Capital Group since October 2008, has more than 28 years of experience as a technological innovator and telecommunications entrepreneur in China. As a co-founder of UTStarcom, Ying had served Chairman and CEO of UTStarcom China for 12 years. Prior to that he performed President of Starcom Inc., which he co-founded in 1991. Previous to his founding role with these start-up enterprises, Ying was a member of the technical staff at Bellcore after his graduation from NJIT.
Ying has been a global board member with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) since Oct 2015, and a board member of TNC China since May 2013. Ying has also been a founding board member of the Future Forum in China since Jan 2015. In addition, Ying has been serving as a senior consultant on Internet industry for the Shenzhen City government in China, and performing as Chairman of E-China Alliances.
The recipient of numerous awards, Ying was recognized in 1998 by Business Week as one of the 50 Stars of Asia, credited for averting a financial crisis in Asia. In 2003, China Central TV (CCTV) named Ying one of the Top 10 Most Influential Persons in China’s economy.

Prof. Gong Ke

President of Nankai University
Vice President of World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO)

Prof. Gong Ke, male, the Han nationality, was born in June, 1955. He studied at Beijing Institute of Technology in March, 1978 and then got his PHD degree in the Technical University Graz (Austria) in December, 1986. He returned to China and started his academic career in Tsinghua University in 1987. From then on, he ever served as Vice President of Tsinghua University, Dean of the School of Information and Director of Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology. He became the President of Tianjin University in July, 2006. And he has been the President of Nankai University since January, 2011.
Prof. Gong Ke holds the positions as the Vice President of World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO) and the Chair of its Committee of Engineering for Innovative Technology（CEIT）. He is also member of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of Secretary-General of the United Nations. And he also serves as Vice Chairman of China Association of Higher Education (CAHE), Chief Supervisor of Chinese Institute of Electronics (CIE), executive member of the council of China Institute of Communications, member of standing committee of Communication Technology Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Meanwhile, he is deputy to the 12th National People's Congress and the alternative member of the Eighteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Prof. Gong Ke has been engaged in wireless communication research and education for years. He ever presided and participated over a series of programs, including Digital Cordless Communication System, Wireless Access Equipment and Technology, Point-to-multipoint Microwave Communication System in Rural Areas, Wireless Information Communication Characteristics of Cellular and Indoor Communication, Small-size Multi-antenna Technique, Micro-nano Technology Test Satellite, China Digital Television Wireless Transmission Broadcasting Standard, etc. Major academic awards to him include the National Technical Invention Award, the First Scientific Development Award from Beijing Municipal Government.

Scott Beaumont

President of Google Greater China

Scott Beaumont is the President of Google Greater China, overseeing Google’s Sales and Operations in mainland China, Hong Kong Taiwan and Korea.
Previously, Scott was the Managing Director of Partnerships in Northern & Central Europe. He was responsible for some of Google’s largest European partnerships, including eCommerce, ISPs, and media publishers. He was also a member of the European Management Team.
He joined Google at the beginning of 2009 from his own mobile start-up, Refresh Mobile, which he founded in early-2005. The primary product of this start-up was Mobizines, an award winning downloadable app in the days before iPhone and Android made apps mainstream.
Prior to Mobizines, Scott was EVP Business Development for T-Mobile International where among other things he helped establish the T-Mobile Venture Fund as well as managing T-Mobile’s key international strategic relationships.
He spent the early years of his career as an Equity Analyst for Telecoms at HSBC James Capel at a time that saw the advent of both the internet and mass scale cellular technology.
He is passionate about entrepreneurship and innovation and an active mentor to a number of start-ups and small businesses. He lives in Shanghai with his wife and two sons.

Bin Ran

Director of ITS Program at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (UW-Madison) Director of the Traffic Operations and Safety Lab (TOPS) at UW-Madison

Dr. Bin Ran is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor and Director of ITS Program at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (UW-Madison). He also served as the Director of the Traffic Operations and Safety Lab (TOPS) at UW-Madison. Dr. Ran holds the title of National Distinguished Expert in China. He also serves as the Director of Research Institute of Internet of Mobility, a joint effort between Southeast University, China and UW-Madison.
Dr. Ran is an expert in dynamic transportation network models, traffic simulation and control, traffic information system, Internet of Mobility, and Connected Automated Vehicle Highway System. He has led the development and deployment of various traffic information systems and technologies in the US and China. He was a co-founder of three ITS companies in the US and China. He has trained younger generations of professors and experts in traffic engineering and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) in the US, China, Korea, and other countries.
Dr. Ran is the author of two leading textbooks on dynamic traffic networks. He has co-authored more than 160 journal papers and more than 240 referenced papers at national and international conferences. He co-authored 6 books on intelligent highways in China. He holds 3 US patents and 12 Chinese patents, and has a few patents pending in the US and China. He is an associate editor of Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems. He is the Founding President of North America Chinese Overseas Transportation Association (NACOTA, currently named as Chinese Overseas Transportation Association or COTA) from 1996 to 1998.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Ran held positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley. He is active in the Transportation Research Board and Intelligent Transportation Society of America. Dr. Ran received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1993, his MS from the University of Tokyo in 1989, and his BS from Tsinghua University in 1986.

Thomas Jakob

President Asia Pacific at Bosch Software Innovations

As Regional President Asia Pacific, Thomas Jakob is responsible for Bosch Software Innovations – the software division of the Bosch Group – in the Asia Pacific region since 2012.
In this role, Thomas is working on how to leverage the Internet-of-Things (IoT) for smart connected solutions in sectors such as manufacturing (a.k.a. Industry 4.0), energy, transportation as well as smart buildings and smart cities. He has been engaged in the IoT arena since 2010 having implemented numerous real-life projects across Asia as well as having spoken at numerous conferences and expert workshops on IoT-related topics around the world.
Prior to joining Bosch, Thomas established a consulting firm providing strategy and business development services to high-tech companies after having served as CEO of T-Systems in the region. Having worked for Hewlett Packard and Nortel in Europe as well as for Deutsche Telekom in Asia Pacific in product management, marketing, finance and business development roles before,he has been active in the ICT industry for more than 25 years now.
Thomas holds a Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Applied Sciences in Dieburg, Germany as well as an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Liming CHEN

Chairman, IBM Greater China Group

Liming Chen is a transformational and transboundary business leader with a track record of 30+ years with MNCs across a range of industries and diversified cultures. He has led corporate transformation, business turnaround, performance improvement, and governance enhancement.
Liming Chen is currently the Chairman of IBM Great China Group and is accountable for overall performance of IBM Great China Group (GCG) across multiple business units. Since joining IBM in 2015, Mr. Chen has designed and implemented the '3+3 Strategy' and 'Made with China' initiatives adapted to the new business era. He leads the transformation of the traditional core business of GCG and at the same time drives the new strategic initiatives of cognitive solutions and cloud platform. He fosters the culture of One Team with Shared Goal to encourage co-creation across business areas and functions. He has driven process simplification to make the company more client and market centric, and enhanced governance by creating a responsible culture.
Prior to IBM, commencing in 2008, Liming Chen served BP China as the President of Great China as well as the Chairman of BP (China) Holding Company. He chaired the BP China Executive Committee (CEC) to coordinate executive management across businesses areas and functions, developing the country strategy and the very first cross-BP Group that laid the foundations for business growth. He brought BP upstream back to the country; and led the successful entry and approvals from partners and government into deep water acreage, and developed a pipeline of opportunities with Chinese national oil companies.
He started his career as an assistant researcher in 1982, and between 1991 and 1994, was a senior research fellow at Singapore Institute of Standards & Industrial Research in food technology. In 1994, he joined Condea Chemie GmbH in Singapore and later moved back to China as the Deputy General Manager of Condea China Chemical Company, and later as General Manager and Managing Director. He was appointed as Executive Vice President of Sasol China in 2006.
He has served on many boards of directors over the past years. He is an honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh.
Liming Chen obtained his Bachelor’s degree from Xinjiang Shihezi University in 1982 and Master’s degree from Cornell University in 1989. He completed the Advance Management Program at Harvard Business School in 2003. He and his family currently live in Beijing.

Jivka Ovtcharova

Academician, Member of German National Academy of Science and Engineering(ACATECH)
Director of Institute of Information Technology Management, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

Academician, Member of German National Academy of Science and Engineering(ACATECH), Director of Institute of Information Technology Management, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and Director for Process and Data Management in Engineering in the field of Intelligent Systems and Production Engineering at the Research Center for Information Technology (FZI) in Karlsruhe. In 1992 she received the doctor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Sofia, and in 1996 she received the doctor’s degree in computer science at the Technical University of Darmstadt. She has the position of C4 Professor of Computer Applications in Planning and Construction since 2003. Furthermore, she also works as an expert for the European Commission, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the German Research Foundation, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the German Academic Exchange Service.

Qi Yuan

Vice President and Chief Data Scientist of Ant Financial Services Group

Dr. Qi Yuan is Vice President and Chief Data Scientist of Ant Financial Services Group. He works on large scale machine learning, Bayesian inference, and big data analytics. He obtained his PhD from MIT Media Laboratory in 2005 and worked as a postdoctoral associate at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory until 2007. He joined Purdue University in 2007 and was tenured in 2013 as associate professor in Department of Computer Science and Department of Statistics. He has given numerous invited talks at universities and conferences, and collaborated with researchers in IT, financial and pharmaceutical industries on machine learning and data analytics problems. He is an associate editor of Journal of Machine Learning Research and served as area chair of International Conference on Machine Learning. He has received Microsoft's Newton Breakthrough Research award in 2008 and USA NSF Career award in 2011. Now he leads the AI department of Ant Financial, empowering business partners by AI tools and solutions.

Dr. Joseph J. Salvo

Head of Complex Systems Engineering Laboratory, GE Global Research
Chief Scientist of GE. Director

A.B. Harvard University, Ph.D. Yale University. Head of Complex Systems Engineering Laboratory, GE Global Research. Chief Scientist of GE. Director, US Industrial Internet Consortium，US White House Industrial adviser. Dr. Salvo currently has 15 U.S. patents with more than 15 others pending. He is a member of the board at the M.I.T. Forum for Supply Chain Innovation and the IEEE Computer Society.

Wei-Ying Ma

Vice President at Toutiao (Bytedance)

Wei-Ying Ma is a Vice President at Toutiao (Bytedance) where he manages its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Laboratory. He is leading his researchers to conduct fundamental research and develop new technologies in the areas including machine learning, natural language computing, visual computing, speech processing, information retrieval, data mining and knowledge engineering, distributed system, and human computer interaction.
Prior to Toutiao, he was an Assistant Managing Director at Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) where he oversaw several research groups and developed many key technologies that have been successfully transferred to Microsoft’s Bing Search Engine, Ads Center, Cognitive Services, Exchange, SharePoint, Delve, and Azure.
Wei-Ying Ma is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Distinguished Scientist of the ACM. He has served as program co-chair of International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW) 2008 and the general co-chair of ACM Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR) 2011.He has published more than 270 papers at international conferences and in journals. He has been granted with more than 160 patents.

Erez Tsur

co-chairman of the Israeli High-Tech and Life Sciences industries association (IATI)

Erez Tsur is the co-chairman of the Israeli High-Tech and Life Sciences industries association (IATI). IATI 700 members representing every dimension and aspect of the tech ecosystem: Erez is a board member of the new Israeli national Innovation authority (IIA), with approximately $400 million in annual funding for start-ups, innovation and collaborative research and development projects.
Erez is an industry veteran who gained unique experiences serving as a successful Israeli CEO of large U.S based corporations, such as Cadence Design Systems and EMCii. Erez is the former co-chairman of the multinational R&D centers GMs forum representing 70 R&D centers of multinational companies operating in Israel.
Erez is also Chairman of the board of infi - a special artificial intelligence start up from Israel founded by Israeli defense forces (intelligence) veterans. Infi combines decades of psychology turning it into software algorithms and combining them with Artificial Intelligence creating a personal assistant for its user.

WAY-SHING LEE

Vice President, Technology Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Way-Shing Lee serves as Vice President of Technology for Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (QTI). He is currently responsible for technical/business development efforts on both modem and application and bringing leading technologies to partners in China.
Upon joining Qualcomm in 1994, Way-Shing began a notable career in which led EVDO Rev.A commercialization with its first launch in Japan by KDDI. In his most recent accomplishment, he built the Qualcomm Reference Design team (QRD) in Shanghai which enabled the device ecosystem to accelerate the 3G/4G transition in China. His past contributions to CDMA/EVDO, WCDMA, Application processor in DSP, 3GPP2 and 3GPP has helped to broaden the scope and connected applicable technology to mass market utilization. His time spent with Chinese operators contributed to smooth and rapid transition from 3G to 4G in 2014 and further ongoing modem advanced technology spanning LTE Advanced Pro and 5G NR.
Way-Shing holds a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering from National Taiwan University and a master’s degree of electronic engineering from Stanford University.

Michael Li

Vice President & Head of Analytics, Data at LinkedIn

Michael Li joined LinkedIn on May, 2011 and currently serves as the Vice President and Head of Analytics, Data at LinkedIn. Michael Li is a seasoned global leading figure in Analytics and Data Science, leading a data analytical team of 150+ people worldwide.
Before Jointing LinkedIn, as an explorer and among first batch of practitioners in business data analysis, Michael used to work at Capital One, eBay and Coursera. Currently, Michael has been driving analytics effort with cross-functional teams (e.g. sales, products, engineering, marketing, and operations) across the company with the focus on delivering actionable insights and developing end-to-end, robust, fast, and scalable analytical intelligence solutions to empower data-driven decision making and create business impact.
Emerging from a data-driven Silicon Valley start-up to a mature big data company, LinkedIn has been showcasing its strength—over 500 million users globally, 7 million company homepages, 27,000 college and university homepages, 5 million job vacancies, 45,000 professional skills and 8 billion skill endorsements. These numbers are still growing. Now, Michael and his team are making these reliable connections visible for users to view. Based on the users, their professional information, and real-life connections, LinkedIn are trying to build an “Economic Graph”, which gathers all the factors in business activities: talents, companies, jobs, skills, universities and knowledge, and visualize them for reliable matching and connection among different factors.
As a well-respected industry leader, he has been speaking at conferences and advising for start-up companies in the field of big data and artificial intelligence. He is also actively engaged in training the next generation of data science talents through partnership with universities and professional training programs.
Michael graduated from Fu Dan University with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. He acquired his master’s degree in engineering from the University of Illinois.

Song Jiqiang

Managing Director of Intel Lab China

Dr. Song Jiqiang is the managing director of Intel Lab China. His research interests include: interaction technologies in smart robots, smart devices innovations of multiple forms, mobile multimedia computing, mobile platform performance optimization, new human-machine interface, and the creation of software and hardware environment for new application use. Dr. Song joined Intel Lab China in 2008 as an application R&D director at the Tsinghua-Intel Advanced Mobile Technology Center, and is a core member of the team in developing the Intel Edison prototype. After Edison was successfully commercialized, he drove the development of the developer tools for Edison-based smart devices to promote the adoption of Edison among the maker community. He also invented a new device category called interactive porcelain. He is now committed to developing a smart service robot platform based on Intel’s technologies.
From 2001 to 2008, he was a post-doctoral researcher at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the principal engineer at the Hong Kong Applied Science & Technology Research Institute (ASTRI), and the multimedia R&D director at Beijing SimpLight Nano Electronics Co., Ltd. In 2003, he won first place in the IAPR GREC International Circular Arc Recognition Algorithm Competition. Furthermore, in 2006, the computer graphics reading technology research in which he participated (and was the second author of) won second place in the “college of science and technology” award category, which was administered by the Ministry of Education. He is a senior member of the IEEE and CCF, and published over 40 papers at international journals and conferences such as IEEE TPAMI, IEEE TCSVT, Pattern Recognition, CVPR and ICPR.
Dr. Song Jiqiang received a doctoral degree in computing from Nanjing University in 2001 and his doctoral dissertation was awarded a national outstanding doctoral dissertation.