The 2026 speakers

Giorgio Metta is the scientific director of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT). From 2001 to 2002, he was a postdoctoral associate at the AI-Lab (now CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He worked at the University of Genoa and was Professor of Cognitive Robotics at the University of Plymouth (UK) from 2012 to 2019. From 2020 he Is Visiting Professor at the University of Manchester, UK. He is member of the Board of Gefran S.p.A. and the Board of Industrie De Nora S.p.A. (both listed in the Italian Stock Market). He advises HAT Sgr and the Quadrivio Group, two Italian/European Private Equity funds. Giorgio Metta's research activities are in the field of bioinspired systems and humanoid robotics, with a focus on the design of machines that can learn from experience; he has authored or co-authored more than 300 scientific publications .

A data and AI leader with extensive experience of delivering data-driven business value. Having worked for, among others, HSBC or ABB he currently works at WebPros as Senior Director of Data & AI. The author of over 30 scientific publications and patents, with over 250 citations in the field of broadly defined data analytics. A public speaker who presented at e.g. European Parliament and an author published by e.g. World Economic Forum. A member of the Forbes Technology Council for which he regularly writes thought leadership articles related to leadership and new technologies, mostly AI and data.

I am the President and Founder of Inlea Holdings, an international consulting firm dedicated to legal, commercial and technological advice, and specialized in the international expansion of companies thanks to its locations in Silicon Valley, London, Sao Paulo and Barcelona.
As engineer, I am specialist in deep technologies and web3. My experience and global vision allow me to advise and invest in startups.
I am also Chairman of the Entrepreneurship Committee of 22@Network, professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Universitat Ramon Llull and mentor in accelerators such as Attico, The Collider, Stage 2 and UPF Ventures.

Olivier Legris is Co-Founder of Alter (AlterHQ.com), the fastest native macOS AI assistant built in Swift that unlocks AI power across every Mac application. Launched in January 2025 from London, Alter delivers up to 3,000 tokens/second — 17x faster than competitors — and streamlines workflows through intelligent context understanding, advanced prompt libraries, and invisible background actions that automate complex tasks without requiring conversation windows. Alter supports all major LLM models via API and enables local use through Ollama or LM Studio server, prioritizing user privacy and flexibility over corporate-controlled solutions. Before founding Alter, Olivier built Clauders.com, a community platform for Claude Code enthusiasts, and served as Strategy Director at StadionUK, developing voice applications including a Google Home app for Paris Saint-Germain. Based between London and Paris, Olivier is a regular speaker at AI events including Voice AI Space Paris 2025 and organizes Claude Code community gatherings bringing together 100+ developers. He holds expertise in UX, product strategy, and AI-powered productivity, with prior experience at The VERY Food Company.

Reema Gill is a Data & AI Governance Specialist with extensive experience designing & operationalizing responsible data & AI governance frameworks across financial services, technology, & public sectors. She specializes in translating complex regulatory, risk, & ethical requirements into practical governance programs that enable innovation while maintaining accountability. Reema has led enterprise-wide initiatives covering AI risk assessments, third-party AI risk management, AI inventories, governance operating models, & compliance with leading standards, including the EU AI Act, NIST AI Risk Management Framework, & OSFI’s E-23 model risk guidelines. At Wealthsimple, Reema leads efforts to strengthen responsible AI & data governance practices, helping ensure effective oversight of critical data assets as the organization continues to scale. Previously, she held governance, risk, & policy roles at CIBC, Equifax Canada, & Payments Canada, where she advanced initiatives related to AI governance, data management, & payment system risk.

Nicolas Leonard is the founder of Experimenta, a small team of seasoned product operators who help companies adopt, build, and scale with AI.

After 13 years in product management at companies like Luko, Thiga and Viadeo, he deliberately stepped off the management track to return to an IC role, convinced that AI is killing product management theater and forcing PMs to become actual builders.

Experimenta partners with companies of all sizes, from early-stage startups to established scale-ups, including Evaneos, SightCall, Coinhouse, and currently Bricks (proptech), where Nicolas is building the AI analysis platform powering the company's investment decisions.

He writes and speaks about the identity crisis hitting the PM role, the discipline of knowing what NOT to build, and why everyone becoming a builder makes product thinking more critical, not less.

I'm Alexandre Gol i Mestre, CTO and co-founder of Systellar Space, a Barcelona-based deep tech startup. I'm a space systems engineer by training — MSc from Cranfield University and BSc in Physics from the University of Barcelona — with prior industry experience at Luxspace, OpenCosmos, and Exotrail, where I led frontier projects in the satellite industry. I now lead all technical development at Systellar, where we have built synapse™ to enable AI for the design of complex physical systems and make hardware work at the speed of software.

Pedro Romera López is a Data, Analytics, and AI Executive with a distinctive profile that bridges deep technical expertise and commercial leadership. With over 20 years of hands-on experience across the full data spectrum—from enterprise analytics to production-ready Generative AI—he has successfully guided organizations ranging from startups to large enterprises across Spain and international markets. His professional foundation is built on nearly six years at AWS, where he served in both technical and business development leadership roles across EMEA.

Throughout his career, Pedro has demonstrated a proven ability to build and scale data and AI practices from the ground up. He specializes in defining go-to-market strategies and service offerings with a "production-first" approach, ensuring that AI initiatives move beyond experimentation to deliver tangible business results. His expertise spans the entire lifecycle of AI adoption, including technical scoping, use case analysis, and the development of structured delivery methodologies.

An experienced leader of people and strategy, Pedro has held senior executive positions including Data & AI Director and Chief Revenue Officer. He has a track record of managing large-scale professional services teams and overseeing the development of dozens of specialists. His leadership style combines strategic planning and partner engagement with a core focus on problem-solving and "customer obsession

Alex Shershebnev is Lead DevRel at Zencoder, where he architects scalable ML/DevOps infrastructure and champions AI-driven developer productivity through coding agents and autonomous systems. With over a decade shaping AI-powered software development, Alex leads teams building production-grade ML pipelines on GCP and Kubernetes, managing infrastructure that scales to hundreds of GPUs while driving down costs and accelerating data scientist workflows. His expertise spans computer vision, MLOps, distributed training, and advanced AI agent architectures including ReAct (Reasoning and Acting) patterns and Model Context Protocol (MCP) for tool integration. Before Zencoder, Alex held pivotal roles at Sanas (ML/DevOps lead), MTS AI (computer vision lead), and ivi.ru (recommender systems), and started his career as a bioinformatician at Genotek and Vavilov Institute of General Genetics analyzing NGS and WGBS/RRBS data. A sought-after international speaker, Alex presents at London Tech Week 2025, Conf42 ML 2025, AI Skills Virtual Conf 2026, and MLConference, delivering hands-on talks on AI coding agents, multi-agent collaboration, and building autonomous systems. He holds a Deep Learning Nanodegree from Udacity and maintains technical certifications in AWS and AI.

Joan Salvatella is Co-Founder and CTO of Bookline.ai, a Barcelona-based Conversational AI leader serving over 1,000 companies across 9 countries in hospitality, travel, healthcare, and retail. Since founding Bookline in 2018, Joan has built a 40+ person team and scaled the company to $1.5 million ARR, automating customer service through advanced phone systems that ensure no call goes unanswered. His platform integrates with all major restaurant reservation software in Spain, positioning Bookline as the go-to solution for AI-powered phone automation. Before launching Bookline, Joan was an Artificial Intelligence Consultant at Accenture España, where he led teams building chatbots for robotic interfaces (Jibo, Nao, Pepper) and spearheaded digital transformation of IBEX35 call centers using voice bots. He holds expertise in Dialogflow, Rasa, Microsoft Bot Framework, and cloud platforms (Google Cloud, AWS, Azure). Joan serves as a certified startup mentor for ACCIÓ, the Catalan government agency supporting enterprise competitiveness, and lectured on Strategic Business Analytics at EAE Business School. He holds an MSc in Computer Engineering from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

Astghik Zakharyan is Europe Manager at Startup Investor Accelerator (SIA), where she accelerates the development of angel investor ecosystems across Europe and North America through learning-by-doing methodologies. Born in Armenia and based in Barcelona, she leads SIA's mission to create balanced startup ecosystems, having trained 700+ angel investors who have collectively deployed $225 million into early-stage companies. Astghik holds a LEINN degree in Entrepreneurial Leadership and Innovation from Mondragon Team Academy and completed Harvard's Investing in Private Equity program. She co-founded ABORA, launching 40+ startup projects across China, Spain, the Netherlands, and the USA, and founded Kendani.com, a sustainable consumption platform. As Regional Manager at Mossy Ventures and a visiting lecturer at IMDBS teaching startup investment, Astghik is a prominent voice in Barcelona's tech ecosystem. She frequently speaks at industry events including DES Digital Enterprise Show and organizes Angels and Beers networking gatherings for investors.

Keynote speaker, healthcare AI strategy advisor, and CEO of Carebot — the most widely deployed radiology AI across CEE. I help hospitals deploy AI, advise governments and investors, and speak at the industry's most demanding stages. From longtime news reporter and the youngest anchor of TV Prima's prime-time newscast to the front lines of healthcare AI: 500+ hospitals visited, 15+ countries, millions of euros raised.

Pol Fenollar Villà is the Founder and Strategic Advisor at Deep Engineering, where he advises CEOs, CTOs, and CPOs across SaaS, PE-backed, and enterprise organisations on platform engineering, AI governance, and engineering organisation design. Before founding Deep Engineering, he led the Barcelona R&D lab at Dynatrace. He previously directed global engineering, IT operations, and M&A integration at Hotelbeds Group and served as CEO and Chief Technology & Product Officer at SUEZ Group. He began his career advising institutions on technology strategy at Gartner and enjoys building platforms with open-source blocks in his spare time.

Antoine Heftler has built a 20-year career at the intersection of operational management, B2B marketing strategy, and AI integration. Having worked at Ogilvy (Paris, Bangalore, Bucharest), TietoEvry (Stockholm), and as an Operating Partner with PE/VC funds (Marlin, Verdane), he has led international teams and supported scale-ups across Europe and Asia.

Today, Antoine focuses on two converging shifts: the erosion of traditional acquisition models in the face of conversational AI engines, and the organizational transformation driven by AI. As co-founder of ResonanceMetrics — a Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) platform — and strategic partner at Ardelys.ai, he helps marketing, sales, and general management teams structure their visibility in AI-generated responses and embed AI into their value chain.

Lean Six Sigma certified, trained at IIM Bangalore and in AI ethics at Lund University, he advises CEOs, CMOs, CROs, and investment funds.

Writer and speaker on AI.
Author: Fantasia, Tales and legends of AI.
Teacher at Sciences Po and HEC Paris.
Ex-Google Arts & Culture Lab Coordinator.
Ex-cofounder AURA (incubated by Bayes Impact), AI for medical emergencies.

Bertrand K. Hassani is a mathematician with a PhD and a Doctor of Science degree, specializing in applied artificial intelligence, advanced risk modeling, and decision-making systems for regulated environments. He is currently CEO and Managing Partner of Quant AI Lab.

Before founding the company, he was a Partner at Deloitte, where he participated in the development of the AI ​​& Analytics practice. Previously, he served as Chief Solution Officer and General Manager of InstaDeep's Paris office, leading advanced artificial intelligence projects applied to banking, insurance, and utilities. His work also focused on model interpretability and advanced visualization technologies, including AR, VR, and 3D.

Previously, he was Vice President and Chief Data Scientist at Capgemini Consulting, where he developed innovative methodologies to reduce the risk exposure of financial institutions through data mining, machine learning, frequentist statistics, and artificial intelligence. He also served as Global Head of Research & Innovations at Santander Bank.

Bertrand Hassani holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He is currently a research associate at that university and an honorary reader at University College London. He also co-directs the “Data Science & Regulation” research group within Labex Refi, an initiative that brings together laboratories from ENA, ESCP, and Paris 1.

Throughout his career, he has received numerous awards for his contributions to operational risk modeling, climate risk, and credit risk.

Founder of Skills4Impact (B Corp) · AI & Sustainability expert· Educator in Responsible AI.

I am a member of the Paris Bar and the Barcelona Bar. PSL Avocat is my independent legal practice in Paris and Barcelona. I worked fifteen years structuring technology transactions and regulatory compliance for global organizations including OECD, ESA, ITER Organization, CMA CGM and ADP. My areas of focus are the AI Act, GDPR and more broadly SaaS & technology contracts.

I am the founder of Pokamind, and i have a PhD in social AI and robotics. I focus on affective computing and understanding AI and how people interact with in.

Builder at the intersection of technology, music, and human experience. 50+ countries. Always looking for what moves people and how technology makes that feeling bigger.

Co-founded SABDA: Europe's first immersive wellness studio offering 360° projection mapping & Dolby Atmos spatial audio. A space at the intersection of art, technology and wellness. I run the full technology & AI stack of the business.

Before SABDA, I co-founded DROP: a music and cultural platform that ran 250+ events across 14 countries. Different industry, same obsession: bring people together around shared experience and let community shape what it becomes.

The thread across everything: start with passion, build with technology, grow through community. I don't chase markets. I build spaces worth walking into.

Currently exploring the future of wellness & and what technology unlocks when you stop treating it as a product and start treating it as a language for human connection.

Viktoriia Kniazeva is a Solution Architect at Omnevo, where she designs the technical foundations of complex systems from the ground up. Her work focuses on turning high-level concepts into clear, scalable architectures—starting from a blank slate and shaping every layer, from data flows to service contracts. She leads the full lifecycle from strategic vision to detailed technical specifications, ensuring that solutions are both practical and future-ready.
Viktoriia also oversees critical product integrations, creating reliable interfaces between internal services and external platforms across heterogeneous tech stacks. In addition to her architectural work, she has guided the design and implementation of a company-wide BI platform, establishing clean data pipelines and a governance model that supports trustworthy analytics—an initiative that strengthened alignment across teams but remains one part of her broader systems focus.

Yohan Liyanage is the Founder & CEO of Sentiva, an AI-native HR platform reimagining how organizations hire, engage, and grow talent in the age of AI. He is also the Founder & CEO of Altrium, which he bootstrapped from Sri Lanka to $3M ARR in just 900 days while scaling the company from 1 to nearly 100 people. A hands-on technologist and enterprise architecture veteran, Yohan brings deep experience across Generative AI, cloud transformation, SaaS, and large-scale enterprise systems, with a career spanning global organizations and Silicon Valley startups. His work today is focused on helping organizations build more intelligent, responsive, and human-centered workplaces through practical AI. Yohan is a Forbes Technology Council Member, Stanford GSB LEAD alumnus, and was named Enterprise World’s Most Transformative Tech Leader & CEO for 2025 (APAC). He speaks on AI, entrepreneurship, leadership, and the future of work.

Tanya Van Gastel is the Founder of Rankingonai.com, AI visibility & SEO agency for $5M-$500M ARR SaaS.

Her clients include Cal.com, Suno, and other high-growth SaaS companies. She's helped her clients triple AI referrals and become the top AI-recommended product in their category. Tanya previously built an AI photography startup that grew purely through SEO with clients like Walmart and Google, then exited it. She's also a Forbes 20 Women in Tech and has been featured in Forbes, INC Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, and Digital Trends.

I help organisations turn technical complexity into stories people act on — using GenAI.

I work with teams where data is abundant but decisions are slow, trust is fragile, and AI feels promising but unclear. My focus is translating complex data and technology landscapes into clear, actionable narratives that support decision-making.

My background spans data management, marketing, digital analytics, and earlier roles in journalism and PR. This allows me to bridge technical and business worlds, helping senior leaders understand trade-offs, risks, and opportunities.

I use GenAI as a force multiplier: accelerating sense-making, structuring knowledge, and training teams to apply AI responsibly in real business contexts.

Head of Data Management at the British Council. DataIQ Top 100. Regular speaker on AI, storytelling, and decision-making.

Maanas Mediratta is CEO and Co-Founder of Bridged Media, an AI Agent platform empowering media companies and event organizers to achieve measurable ROI through bespoke Small Language Models (SLMs) tailored for high-impact content funnels. Since launching Bridged in Barcelona in September 2022 (backed by Techstars '22), Maanas has led 2,000+ AI experiments across global publishers—from those serving 500 million monthly users to niche audiences of 50,000—delivering 300% ROI within 3-6 months and 3x engagement uplifts while keeping editorial control and human judgment at the center. Named CEO of the Year 2025, Maanas has scaled Bridged to break-even multiple times through disciplined innovation cycles that prioritize real-world outcomes over hype. His platform uses AI to identify trigger points in user journeys, enabling a sports publisher to increase email collection rates 10x by personalizing offers and eliminating guesswork. Before Bridged, Maanas founded NITL App (2020-2022), a news platform using machine learning to surface contextual social and environmental actions for readers. He began his career as Senior Analyst at Goldman Sachs (2013-2015), where he designed algorithms for 7 products serving 1,000+ users, led a $12M regulatory risk mitigation project achieving 85% risk reduction, and revolutionized storage systems cutting allocation time from 3 days to 2 hours. Maanas also founded CabAmigo, India's first cab-sharing application, acquired by Ola Cabs in 2016 after gaining 50,000+ users. A graduate of IIT, Maanas is fluent in English, Hindi, and Spanish, and serves as a thought leader on AI adoption in media and event tech.