Confirmed Speakers
Francisco (Paco) Herrera
Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Granada and Director of the Andalusian Research Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence (DaSCI). Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences (Spain).
Professor Herrera received his M.Sc. in Mathematics in 1988 and Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1991, both from the University of Granada, Spain. He is an academician of the Royal Academy of Engineering (Spain). He has published over 600 journal papers, received more than 130,000 citations (Scholar Google, H-index 173), and is an editorial member of a dozen academic journals. Professor Herrera has been nominated as a Highly Cited Researcher in Computer Science, Engineering, and Clarivate Analytics).
His current research interests include computational intelligence, information fusion and decision-making, explainable artificial intelligence, and data science (including data preprocessing, prediction, and big data).
Praneeth Vepakomma
Assistant Professor, Department of Machine Learning, Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence
Praneeth Vepakomma recently submitted his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Machine Learning at Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi.
He has extensive industrial experience at Meta, Apple, Amazon Web Services, Motorola Solutions, Corning, and several startups. He has won the Meta PhD research fellowship in Applied Statistics and two SERC Scholarships (for Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing) from MIT's Schwarzman College of Computing. He co-founded a research-based non-profit (Integrity Distributed) that won the Financial Times Digital Innovation Award. He was recently selected as an OpenDP academic fellow at Harvard under Prof.Salil Vadhan.
He holds an MS in Mathematical and Applied Statistics from Rutgers University. His research focuses on developing algorithms for distributed computation in statistics & machine learning under constraints of privacy and efficiency.
Carme Artigas
Co-Chair United Nations AI Advisory Body , former Spain’s Secretary of State for Digitalization and AI, Spain
Carme Artigas is a Spanish executive and entrepreneur in the fields of big data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and technology innovation, with over 30 years of experience. She is a renowned and recognized international leader in artificial intelligence regulation and governance. She has held several roles as CEO, board advisor, and chairman of the board in several public and private companies. She co-founded and served as CEO of Synergic Partners, a pioneering European Big Data company that was acquired by the Telefonica Group in November 2015. She continued in this role until the company's full integration into the Telefonica Group. In January 2020, she was appointed the first Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence for the Government of Spain, a position she held until December 2023. During her tenure, she played a pivotal role in the approval of the EU AI Act during the Spanish Presidency of the EU. She is currently the Co-Chair of the United Nations AI Advisory Body and has recently been appointed Senior Fellow for the Belfer Center in the Harvard Kennedy School.
Her early professional career included executive positions at Procter & Gamble, Director of Business Incubators at the City of Barcelona, and CEO of the Ericsson Innova, the European venture capital firm of the Ericsson Group. She holds a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering from the Instituto Químico de Sarriá, a Master's Thesis from the Max Planck Institute, a Postgraduate Diploma in Industry Management from the IQS, and an Executive Education in Venture Capital from the Haas School of Economics at Berkeley University.
Appointed by Stanford University as an Ambassador for "Women in Data Science (WIDS)," Carme has been recognized by the American business magazine "Insight Success" as one of the 30 most influential executives with international projection.
Merouane Debbah
Center Director 6G Research Center, Computer & Communication Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Merouane Debbah is Professor at Khalifa University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi and founding Director of the KU 6G Research Center. He is also the Chief Scientific AI Advisor at the Technology Innovation Institute. He is a frequent keynote speaker at international events in the field of telecommunication and AI. His research has been lying at the interface of fundamental mathematics, algorithms, statistics, information and communication sciences with a special focus on random matrix theory and learning algorithms. In the Communication field, he has been at the heart of the development of small cells (4G), Massive MIMO (5G) and Large Intelligent Surfaces (6G) technologies. In the AI field, he is known for his work on Large Language Models, distributed AI systems for networks and semantic communications.
He received multiple prestigious distinctions, prizes and best paper awards (more than 40 IEEE best paper awards) for his contributions to both fields and according to research.com is ranked as the best scientist in France in the field of Electronics and Electrical Engineering. He is an IEEE Fellow, a WWRF Fellow, a Eurasip Fellow, an AAIA Fellow, an Institute Louis Bachelier Fellow and a Membre émérite SEE. His recent work led to the development of NOOR (upon it release, largest language model in Arabic) released in 2022, Falcon LLM (upon its release, top ranked open source large language model) released in 2023 and the Falcon Foundation in 2024. The Falcon Model Series and The Falcon Foundation have positioned the UAE as a global leader in the generative AI field. He is a member of the Marconi Prize Selection Advisory Committee.
Shafi Goldwasser
Director of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at UC Berkeley
Professor Goldwasser was the recipient of ACM Turing Award for 2012. She was also the recipient of the Gödel Prize in 1993 and another in 2001 for her work on interactive proofs and connections to hardness of approximation, and was awarded the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award (1996), the RSA award in mathematics (1998), the ACM Athena award for women in computer science (2008), the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science (2010), the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award (2011), the Barnard College Medal of Distinction (2016), the Suffrage Science Award (2016), the BBVA Frontier Knowledge Award (2017), the Loreal Unesco International Women in Science Award(2021).
She is a member of the AAAS, ACM, NAE, NAS, Israeli Academy of Science, London Mathematical Society, the Russian Academy of Science and a foreign member of the Royal Society. She holds honorary degrees from Oxford University, Carnegie Mellon University, Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv University, Ben Gurion University, University of Haifa and University of Waterloo.
Karim Lekadir
ICREA Research Professor and Director BCN-AIM, University of Barcelona, Spain
Karim Lekadir is an ICREA Research Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Barcelona. He obtained his PhD from Imperial College London and was a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University. He investigates new data science techniques for trustworthy and ethical artificial intelligence in medicine. He has been PI in 12 EU-funded projects, coordinated 5 Horizon projects, and was awarded an ERC Consolidator grant to investigate new AI techniques tailored to resource-limited settings. In addition, Karim is General Chair for the MICCAI 2024 Conference (Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention) which for the first time will take place in Africa – in Marrakesh, Morocco.
Rafael Sánchez
GenAI/ML CE Specialist Manager, Google Cloud, Spain
Rafael Sanchez is the GenAI/ML Specialists Manager for Southern Europe and the Middle East at Google Cloud. He has been a part-time teacher at UC3M since 2005 and also teaches GenAI/ML at various private masters programs. He earned his PhD from UC3M in 2015, where he was honored with both the Outstanding PhD Award and the National Award for Best PhD by COIT in 2016. With a background as a telecoms engineer (1996), Rafael has spent 11 years at Google, contributing to cloud and AI-related projects for major customers and enterprises.
José Carlos Calvo Tudela
Chief Innovation Officer, Nazaríes / Intelligenia, Spain
José Carlos Calvo is a computer engineer with a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and an Executive MBA, passionate about launching new projects in technology and artificial intelligence to facilitate daily activities for individuals and companies. With over 20 years of professional experience, Jose Carlos has gained significant insights into the industry. He frequently assists companies with their digital transformation efforts and actively contributes to the creation and development of tech startups. He leverages his expertise in not only the tech field but also in digital marketing, business strategy, and business models.
Justo Hidalgo
Chief AI Officer, Adigital, Spain
Justo Hidalgo is the Chief AI Officer of Adigital, the Spanish association for the digital economy. Hidalgo has concentrated his professional career on digital strategy, with particular expertise in the advanced use of data, AI, and behavioral psychology. He holds an MSc and a PhD in Computer Science, and has published more than twenty research articles on search, web technologies, data virtualization, EdTech, or API-fication. He has also served as Global Head of Product at Universia, the largest university network in the world, and founding partner at Quantified Reading, a reading behavior analytics company. From 2010 to 2019, he served as CEO and founding partner of 24symbols, and was also VP of Product Management and Consulting at Denodo Technologies from 2008 to 2011.
Justo is the author of three books on digital product strategy, data analytics, and data-informed behavioral psychology (2017, 2020, 2023). He is a professor of Product, Data, and AI Strategy in postgraduate and executive courses, in addition to serving as a mentor for startups.
Leticia Gómez Rivero
Head of AI Strategy and Governance, Minsait, Spain
Leticia is an expert in artificial intelligence strategy and governance at Minsait. With more than 10 years of experience in business consulting, he has specialized in artificial intelligence consulting with a clear objective: to ensure that companies adopt AI in a way that is safe, governed and beneficial for their business objectives. With this mission, it has helped Spanish and international companies to: define their AI strategy, design and implement governance models that value their already available capabilities, measure the business value contributed by AI and, especially, orient themselves towards ethics and good use of data and AI. With a Magna Cum Laude degree in Business Management and Administration and with several master's degrees of specialization, Leticia uses her training and professional experience to unite business and technological visions.
Luis Seco
Professor of Mathematics at the University of Toronto and Director of Risklab in Toronto, Canada.
Professor Seco’s core activity is bringing artificial intelligence into today’s sustainability challenges to build a new and better world. He has extensive expertise in developing University-Industry relationships, which he has done since 1996. In October 2007, he won the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Synergy Award for Innovation. In 2011, he was admitted Caballero de la Orden del Mérito Civil (Knight of the Order of Civil Merit), an award from the Government of Spain for his application of mathematics to foresee economic cycles.
Professor Seco’s career started at Princeton University in 1985 and landed at the University of Toronto in 1992 after a short stay at the California Institute of Technology. Today, he holds adjunct appointments at Renmin University in Beijing, Florida International University, the Technical University of Munich, the University of Zurich and Kutaisi International University.
Peter Kairouz
Research Scientist, Google, USA
Peter Kairouz is a research scientist at Google, where he leads research efforts on distributed, privacy-preserving, and robust machine learning. Prior to joining Google, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University, and before that, he was a PhD student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He is the recipient of the 2012 Roberto Padovani Scholarship from Qualcomm's Research Center, the 2015 ACM SIGMETRICS Best Paper Award, the 2015 Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship Finalist Award, and the 2016 Harold L. Olesen Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from UIUC.
Ira Ktena
Staff Research Scientist, Google DeepMind, UK
Ira Ktena, PhD, is a Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind working on Robust and Safe Machine Learning. Previously, she was a senior Machine Learning Researcher with the Cortex Applied Research team at Twitter UK, where she carried out research at the intersection of recommender systems and algorithmic transparency. Her research has been featured in the Economist and the BBC, among others. She completed a Doctoral degree in Medical Image Computing at Imperial College London under the supervision of Professor Daniel Rueckert, as part of the High Performance Embedded and Distributed Systems (HiPEDS) Doctoral Training Programme, for which she currently serves as an Advisory Board member. Her research focused on developing methods for modelling and analyzing graph-structured neuroimaging data at an individual or population level using traditional graph theoretical approaches and geometric deep learning. During her PhD, Dr Ktena visited the Stroke Group in Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, where she worked with Prof. Natalia Rost and Dr. Markus Schirmer, while being supported by an EMBO Short-Term Fellowship. She is passionate about community outreach and increasing diversity in technology.
Marcos López de Prado
Global Head of Quantitative R&D at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Professor of Practice at Cornell University's School of Engineering, Research Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (U.S. Office of Science), and Professor of Practice at Khalifa University’s Department of Mathematics.
Marcos Lopez de Prado has helped modernize finance for the past 25 years by pioneering machine learning and statistical inference methods and implementing the Big Science paradigm of national laboratories at some of the largest investment corporations. In recognition of this work, he has received various scientific and industry awards, including the National Award for Academic Excellence (1999) by the Kingdom of Spain, the Quant Researcher of the Year Award (2019) by Portfolio Management Research, the Buy-Side Quant of the Year Award (2021) by Risk.net, and the Bernstein Fabozzi / Jacobs Levy Award (2024) by The Journal of Portfolio Management.
Since 2011, Prof. López de Prado has been a research fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science). He has published dozens of scientific articles on machine learning and supercomputing in leading academic journals, and is a founding co-editor of The Journal of Financial Data Science. He is the author of several popular graduate textbooks, including Advances in Financial Machine Learning (Wiley, 2018), Machine Learning for Asset Managers (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and Causal Factor Investing (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
Prof. López de Prado earned a PhD in financial econometrics (2003), and a second PhD in mathematical finance (2011) from Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He completed his post-doctoral research at Harvard University and Cornell University, where he is a faculty member. Prof. López de Prado has an Erdős #2 and an Einstein #4 according to the American Mathematical Society.
David Fernández-Llorca
Scientific Officer at the European Commission, Joint Research Centre
David Fernández Llorca received a PhD in telecommunication engineering from the University of Alcalá (UAH) in 2008. He is a Scientific Officer at the European Commission - Joint Research Centre. He is also a Full Professor with UAH (on special leave). He has authored over 150 publications and more than 10 patents. He received the IEEE ITSS Young Research Award (2018). He is Editor-in-Chief of the IET Intelligent Transport Systems and Section Editor-in-Chief of the Transportation and Future Mobility of Applied Sciences. His research interests include trustworthy AI, harm evaluation of foundation models, human-centered autonomous vehicles, predictive perception, and human-robot interaction.
Atia Cortés
Researcher, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Spain
Atia Cortés is a researcher at the Social Link Analytics Unit of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS). She holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science (2009), an M.Sc. in Artificial Intelligence (2012), and a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence (2018) from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC).
From 2017 to 2020, she was an assistant professor at UPC, teaching courses in Computer Interfaces and Professional Practices of Artificial Intelligence. Since 2007, she has participated in various EU and national research projects, focusing on AI applications in assistive technologies and health. Her recent work explores ethical, legal, socio-economic, and cultural aspects of AI (ELSEC-AI) in several funded projects, including her co-directorship of the AI4EU Observatory on Society and AI (2019-2021).
Dr. Cortés is on the Executive Board of the Bioinfo4Women program at BSC, co-leading research on Sex and Gender Bias in AI and Healthcare. In 2022, she joined the Spanish Bioethics Committee and the Ethics and Scientific Integrity Committee of the IMPaCT project. She also serves on ethics committees for various EU-funded projects and the FAIR LAC initiative of the Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo.
Joao Gama
Professor, Faculty of Economics, University of Porto, and INESC TEC
João Gama is a Full Professor at the School of Economics, University of Porto, Portugal. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Porto in 2000. He is an EurAI Fellow, IEEE Fellow, and the Asia-Pacific AI Association Fellow. He is a member of the board of directors of the LIAAD, a group belonging to INESC Tec. His main contributions are learning from data streams, where he has an extensive list of publications. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Data Science and Analytics, published by Springer.
Paolo Giudici
Professor of Statistics at the University of Pavia and Professor of machine learning at the European University Institute.
Professor Paolo Giudici is an accomplished scholar with numerous scientific publications on statistical learning models for economics and finance. He has coordinated 12 funded scientific projects, including the European Horizon2020 projects "PERISCOPE" and "FIN-TECH," which supported 18 PhD students and 13 Postdoc researchers.
Professor Giudici is an editor for the journals Statistics and Artificial Intelligence and a board member of the Journal of Data Science and Analytics. He is also a Research Fellow at the Bank for International Settlements and the University College London Centre for Blockchain Technologies. He has also served as an expert advisor for the European Commission, the Bank of Italy, and the Italian Ministry of Development.
He is an expert member of the ISO/IEC and CEN-CELENEC AI standardization committees and an elected fellow of the International Statistical Institute. Professor Giudici holds memberships in several professional associations, including the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the Association for Computing Machinery, the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics, the European Big Data Value Association, and the Italian Statistical Society. He is also an honorary member of the Italian Association of Financial Risk Managers.
Amparo Alonso Betanzos
Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of A Coruña, Spain
Amparo Alonso Betanzos is a full professor in the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at CITIC-University of A Coruña (UDC). She coordinates the LIDIA group (Artificial Intelligence R&D Laboratory). Her research focuses on the development of scalable machine learning models, reliable and explainable artificial intelligence, and green AI, among other areas. She has published over 200 articles in various academic journals, international conferences, books, and book chapters, and has participated in over 30 competitive European, national, and local research projects.
She previously served as President of the Spanish Association of Artificial Intelligence (2013-2021) and was a member of the "Reserve List" of the High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI HLG), of the European Commission. She is a Senior Member of the IEEE and ACM. She has participated as a member of the Working Group on Artificial Intelligence of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, which collaborated in drafting the Spanish R&D&I Strategy in Artificial Intelligence in 2018. She is currently a member of CAIA, the Advisory Council on Artificial Intelligence of the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Public Function of the Government of Spain, since 2020, as well as a member of the Spanish Research Ethics Committee of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of the Government of Spain, since 2023. Additionally, she is a Senior Member of the IEEE and ACM. Since October 2023, she has been a corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Exact, Physical, and Natural Sciences.
She has received numerous awards, including the Helena Rubinstein-UNESCO "Women in Science" award in Spain and European finalist (1998), Galicia ICT Award for Digital Innovation (2004), Galicia ICT Award for Professional Career (2019), Josefa Wonenburger Planells Award from the Xunta de Galicia (2020), and Galician of the Year Award, 2020, Grupo Correo Gallego.
Jose Antonio Martin Hernandez
Advisor, Advanced Mathematics, Repsol, Spain
Jose Antonio holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from the Technical University of Madrid (UPM), awarded in March 2009.
With over 50 scientific publications in leading journals and over 20 years of experience, he is a research and applied scientist with strong business skills. He has acquired these through firsthand experience, using curiosity to connect diverse fields and create technology from doing science. This enables him to apply it in the real world, making the entire cycle possible and viable.
He has been instrumental in the development, application, and deployment of new technologies and algorithms for strong artificial intelligence, as well as the general application and adoption of reinforcement-learning and deep-learning technologies at the core operational activities in the enterprise.
Jose Javier Valle Alonso
Senior Scientist, Advanced Mathematics, Repsol, Spain
Since the creation of the Advanced Mathematics discipline in 2018, he has been working on data modeling of industrial assets, within different public and private collaborations.
Currently focused on developing the trustworthiness of the AI applied to Industry.
Darko Matovski
Co-Founder & CEO, causaLens, United Kingdom
Darko Matovski is a research scientist turned technology entrepreneur known for his pioneering work in Causal AI - a new category of intelligent machines that reason like humans. He is the co-founder and CEO of causaLens, a $50M venture-backed scaleup headquartered in London.
Darko draws on over a decade of experience across respected institutions such as the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, where he made transformative contributions as an AI researcher. Darko also has experience applying artificial intelligence quantitatively within the financial sector – previously working as a researcher at hedge funds, including a global investment firm managing over $160 billion in assets.
In addition to leading causaLens’ rapid growth, Darko contributes to the development of ethical AI through his role as a Global Innovator at the World Economic Forum – an international organization that engages world leaders to drive impactful change. Darko is also a member of the Milken Institute's Young Leaders Circle, a network of intellectually curious, motivated, and philanthropic young professionals supporting the Institute's mission and collaborating on global challenges.
Simon Fossier
Senior Research Engineer in AI, Thales, France
Simon Fossier has been a senior research engineer at Thales Research & Technology France since 2006. After a PhD in applied quantum cryptography, he started working on algorithmics at the French Thales research centre. His career involved working on situation awareness, data science, and hybrid AI for various use cases (rail, avionics, transportation, cybersecurity). His current research interests focus on Experimental Algorithm Validation, to bridge the gap between systems analysis and algorithm engineering towards AI trustworthiness.
Nuria Rodríguez-Barroso
Postdoc, University of Granada - DaSCI, Spain
Nuria Rodríguez-Barroso received the B.Sc. degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Granada in 2018 and the M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from the University of Granada in 2019. Finally, she received the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Granada in 2023. She is currently working as a Postdoc at the University of Granada. Her main research interests include adversarial attacks and defenses in federated learning, as well as other applications of federated learning. She is also interested in natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and trustworthy AI.
Vincent Zoonekynd
Quantitative Research and Development Lead, ADIA, United Arab Emirates
Vincent Zoonekynd is a quantitative researcher in one of the largest sovereign wealth funds. Vincent holds a PhD in Mathematics from Université de Paris. During his career, Vincent worked as a quant for banks such as Goldman Sachs in Tokyo, and Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong, and for a few fintech startups in London and Hong Kong.
Jerzy Stefanowski
Professor at Poznan University of Technology, Institute of Computing Science, and elected member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
His research interests include data mining, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and intelligent decision support. Major results are concerned with: explicable artificial intelligence, counterfactual or prototype explanations of machine learning black box models, induction of various types of rules, multiple classifiers - ensembles, mining of class imbalanced data, incremental learning from evolving data streams and concept drift detection, data preprocessing, descriptive clustering of documents, and medical applications of data mining. He is the author and co-author of more than 230 research papers and 2 books (in particular, together with Nathalie Japkowicz, he co-edited the book Big Data Analysis: New Algorithms for a New Society, Springer 2016).