The 2026 speakers

Miquel de la Mano is Technical Director of the Fundació BCN Port Innovation, the public-private foundation created within the Port of Barcelona's innovation plan alongside founding trustees Ackcent and Aggity. An engineer trained at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, with postgraduate work in intelligent transport systems and in technologies applied to cities and the electricity grid, he spent years in technology transfer at the i2CAT Foundation's innovation business unit before taking the role in 2023.

He brings an operator's view of what innovation actually survives contact with a working port. His remit covers the digitalisation of logistics and port processes, energy transition and electrification, and the assembly of public-private consortia to fund collaborative projects.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in AI in port and logistics operations, energy transition in heavy infrastructure, and how public-private innovation vehicles move technology from pilot to deployment.

Cori Crider is Executive Director of the Future of Technology Institute, the technology and society programme at Meliore Foundation, and a Senior Fellow at the Open Markets Institute. A lawyer and advocate, she has led international teams for over fifteen years and holds an honorary professorship at UCL. She previously co-founded Foxglove, a legal non-profit whose cases have covered the rights of platform content moderators and warehouse workers, the role of social media in fuelling violence, and patient autonomy in the use of health data.

She brings a governance and accountability perspective to applied AI: who holds power over these systems, how concentration in digital markets shapes what gets built, and what enforceable rules look like in practice rather than on paper. In 2019 she presented The World According to AI, a documentary for Al Jazeera English, and she writes regularly on competition, democratic oversight and technology policy in Europe.

Pablo Bou is General Manager of BlueNetCat, the Catalan Network for Blue Innovation, the region's transfer and innovation instrument for the blue economy, coordinated by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). He has spent more than a decade inside the network, moving from business development into general management, and works at the point where marine research meets industry: knowledge and technology transfer, maritime sciences, and innovation policy.

He brings the perspective on how ocean and port research actually reaches the market. BlueNetCat connects more than seventy research groups with companies and public institutions across Catalonia, and runs programmes such as BlueNet2Market and the Maritime Hub that take marine deep tech from proof of concept toward deployment. His work touches also funding mechanisms that make innovation viable.

His perspective is relevant for audiences interested in ocean data, marine deep tech, and how regional research ecosystems turn science into industrial outcomes.

Danae is a product and technology leader specialising in turning emerging technologies into scalable products and businesses. With 15+ years of experience across startups, scale-ups, tech transfer organisations, and entrepreneurship, she has a deep understanding of what it takes to create and manage successful solutions.

As both an operator and founder, she has led cross-functional and international teams, launched and scaled digital products, and worked across the full product lifecycle—from strategy and discovery to execution, growth, and transformation.

Danae has been working with and implementing AI solutions for almost a decade, long before the current AI wave, and is a strong advocate for responsible and ethical AI.

Beyond her operating roles, she is a mentor, speaker, startup advisor, and early-stage investor passionate about technology for good, sustainability, and building stronger tech ecosystems.

Arno Strotgen has over 30 years of international experience in robotics, digital transformation, and customer service across the automotive, electronics, and consumer goods industries. During his career at ABB Robotics, he built and led multidisciplinary local organizations of 50–200 employees, encompassing R&D, sales, and engineering, before taking responsibility for a global business line with more than 1,600 employees across 53 countries and a P&L exceeding USD 500 million.

Passionate about emerging technologies and entrepreneurship, Arno is an investor and Head of Strategic Partnerships at Jacobi Robotics, which is building the physical AI that powers lights-out warehouses. He is also Co-Founder and CTO of Smartech Villas, which is transforming how homes are designed and built through robotics and an AI-powered configurator.

Wided Boutar is Director of Sales Engineering and Customer Success for Emerging Markets at Dataiku, the platform companies use to build and deploy AI and analytics at scale. She works with organisations across the region on moving AI projects from prototype into production, and leads the technical and customer success teams that support them.

Gianluca Gilardi is CEO of LT42, a Milan-based legaltech company that transforms traditional legal services into structured, tech-enabled processes for law firms and corporate legal departments. He is a former lawyer specialising in corporate law, IP, and TMT, with additional experience in digital forensics, online IP violations, and industrial secrets cases.

At LT42, he focuses on developing legaltech solutions, compliance audits, and IT security-related services, and he lectures on legal tech and data management at the University of Milan and at the Politecnico in Turin on legal aspects of cybersecurity. His work sits at the intersection of law, data, and technology, aiming to make legal operations more efficient, measurable, and integrated with digital workflows.

His profile is especially relevant for sessions on legaltech, AI in legal services, data governance and compliance, digital forensics, and how professional services firms can adopt technology and automation without losing control over risk and quality.

Tetiana “Tania” Klymchuk is a data scientist and AI specialist based in Barcelona, with a PhD in mathematics and deep expertise in natural language processing (NLP). She is a lecturer in data science and advanced analytics at UIC Barcelona and collaborates with the university’s Observatory of Artificial Intelligence and New Technologies (IANT).

She co-founded Somia Solutions, a Barcelona startup focused on making responsible AI accessible to SMEs through platforms that let companies build their own AI agents and applications. Previously, she led AI teams at technology consultancies and served as Chief AI Officer at Sabentis, working on AI for occupational risk prevention.

Her profile is especially relevant for sessions on responsible AI, NLP and generative models, AI education, AI for SMEs, and the ethical and societal implications of deploying AI in real-world business contexts.

Obaid Amjad is Vice-Dean for Research and Faculty Development at EU Business School in Barcelona, and an academic collaborator at ESADE’s Institute for Social Innovation. His research focuses on the ethical, regulatory, and societal implications of digital platforms, including data extractivism, platform power, and public policy responses.dobetter.

He holds a PhD from ESADE and has previously worked as a strategy consultant at IBM Canada. His teaching and research activities cover geopolitics, the platform economy, cultural anthropology, and the governance of digital technologies.

His profile is especially relevant for sessions on AI governance, platform regulation, data ethics, digital policy, and the broader societal and political challenges created by large-scale data and AI systems.

Laura Gil Centeno is Chief Data Analytics Officer at Damm, the Barcelona-based beverage group. She leads the company’s data and artificial intelligence strategy, including IAmm, Damm’s AI & Data Transformation Hub, which coordinates data and AI initiatives across the entire organisation.

She has been with Damm for more than a decade, previously leading the company’s digital transformation programme. Under her leadership, Damm has built one of the most ambitious data and AI programmes in the Spanish FMCG sector, with AI projects running across operations, commercial, marketing, and new business development.

Her profile is especially relevant for sessions on AI in FMCG, enterprise data strategy, building internal AI hubs, scaling AI across large organisations, and the intersection of data, AI, and business transformation in traditional industries.

Dr. Leon Tsvasman is a media and communication scholar, cybernetician, philosopher of AI and founder of The Epistemic Core, an independent research and orientation initiative focused on human agency, epistemic autonomy and governance in AI-mediated environments. His work connects second-order cybernetics, ontocybernetics, complexity, communication theory, information science and AI ethics with the design of decision architectures that preserve human judgment, accountability and autonomous becoming. He is Professor at LIGS University, a Fellow of the Cybernetics Society (FCybS, UK), academic lecturer, author and editor, including Cybernetic Leadership for Sustainable Innovation (2026). He teaches, advises and supervises Master’s and doctoral research across universities in Germany and internationally. His recent work develops concepts such as Sapiocracy, Sapiopoiesis and Trajectory AI to distinguish human orientation from automated execution and to examine how AI systems and institutions can remain corrigible, epistemically responsible and compatible with human integrity under conditions of technological complexity.

Arvand Modarresi is Managing Partner and Global Consumer Practice Lead at Artefact, a data and AI consulting firm. He leads global Data & AI transformation programmes for consumer brands and retail companies, covering marketing, commercial, operations, and product innovation functions.

He has more than 15 years of experience in large scale transformation programs, and has lately been supporting international companies on their Agentic journey acrossEurope, the US, and South America. He regularly speaks on how AI is reshaping consulting and consumer industries, and has been featured in Artefact’s “The Bridge” series on topics such as data mesh and AI in CPG.

Cathy is Founder & CEO of CEW Communications, the international communications partner for the builders and backers of tech’s future. For more than 15 years, she has worked across Europe’s technology ecosystem, helping ambitious technology companies and investors turn complex ideas into stories that build reputation, credibility and influence.

Alongside leading CEW, Cathy is an experienced moderator and speaker, regularly taking to stages across Europe and internationally to lead conversations spanning AI, technology, venture capital and entrepreneurship.

Originally from the UK and now based in Barcelona, Cathy brings an international perspective to both her communications work and the conversations she leads on stage.

CEO & Co-founder of Timeleft. We provide human connection IRL at scale, in 50+ countries. Every month, 150,000+ people show up to share a moment together.

I started Timeleft on a simple idea: use technology to get people off their screens and give them a shot of real human connection.On my LinkedIn, I share what I'm learning while building it, the wins, the mistakes, the parts nobody puts in the highlight reel. Every day at 2pm and 7pm.

Roberto is a Payments and FinTech expert with over 10 years of experience bringing new payment technology to the gaming and gambling industry. With a strong background in sales and leadership at major companies like Truelayer and Trustly, Roberto focuses on using modern financial tech to help digital entertainment businesses grow.

Emma has built four companies, exited two, and now sits on the board of Deployed, which she co-founded and where she raised $5M from global VCs including Mayfield Ventures and M12.

Today she leads AI transformation at Mindstone, working with teams across sales, ops, HR and leadership. Beyond helping people automate their workflows with the tools already available to them, the part she cares about most is the human piece: helping companies use culture, identity and purpose to guide people through the transition to a working life where half of what they used to do is no longer theirs to do.

I’m Director of AI Engineering at Typeform, where I lead a team building production-grade AI systems and helping shape how AI changes products and the way engineering teams work. I have 13+ years of experience across Data Science, Machine Learning, MLOps, Data Analytics and GenAI, working across both large enterprises and fast-moving scale-ups.

I’m passionate about combining technical excellence with strong, people-first leadership: building high-performing teams, developing talent, and turning complex technical challenges into solutions that create real business impact. Today, I’m particularly focused on what it takes to move beyond AI experimentation and into real AI engineering: building reliable, scalable and observable AI systems and the organisational foundations needed to make them work.

I’m also an advocate for women and underrepresented groups in technology, and I’m passionate about sharing practical lessons from building AI in the real world.

Alex Turpin is a physicist with more than 15 years across deep tech, healthcare and AI-driven innovation, combining deep technical understanding with a strong systems and innovation mindset. His background spans academia, neuroscience-related research, health-tech startups and senior AI leadership roles, including Technical Director positions in fast-growing environments.

His current focus is on Pharma, where he leads the design of AI governance and enablement frameworks at a global pharmaceutical company, building the frameworks and tooling that let advanced AI move into research and development faster and with more confidence. He believes in governance as an accelerator rather than a checkpoint, and also that technology is the best option to make the compliant path the quickest one.

He is also co-founder of a deep-tech AI startup in remote health and ambient monitoring, and is actively involved in shaping thought leadership at the intersection of AI, governance and real-world clinical impact.

Alfonso Bustos, Ph.D., is a psychologist, researcher, and executive specialised in artificial intelligence adoption, learning transformation, and organisational capability development.

Throughout his career, he has led international initiatives in digital transformation, AI Literacy, artificial intelligence adoption, and reskilling across global organisations in Europe and Latin America.

In recent years, he has driven AI Awareness, AI Literacy, and AI Adoption programmes for thousands of professionals, combining capability building, work redesign, governance, communities of practice, and adoption measurement. His work focuses particularly on how to move from individual experimentation with AI to distributed, responsible organisational adoption connected to processes, decision-making, and each organisation’s specific knowledge.

He is a professor at the Barcelona School of Management, Pompeu Fabra University, a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, and the author of more than one hundred academic publications and specialised chapters on learning, technology, and organisational transformation.

Henrik is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder/CEO of Momentum Data, a pioneer in Human-to-Human GTM for micro-targeted B2B audiences.

Momentum Data's AI technology leverages the profiles of real client-facing team members and executives to drive Account-based Marketing, Event Engagement, Thought Leadership and Strategic 1:1 ABM.

Prior to Momentum Data, Henrik worked as a Design Thinking Coach for St. Gallen University and Stanford, studied Innovation & Entrepreneurship at ESADE in Barcelona, and co-founded GetYourHero, a tech startup backed by Seaya Ventures.

Nuno Silva is a software developer in Quality Clouds with seven years of experience. Additionally currently pursuing an MSc in Artificial Intelligence, deepening his expertise at the intersection of software engineering and AI.

Carina Kaeser is a robotics engineer and Co-Founder & CEO of Ply, building safety and assurance infrastructure for Physical AI. Her background spans robotics research, system design and product development across ETH Zurich, EPFL and Harvard, and her work received the ICRA 2025 Best Mechanism & Design Award. She currently focuses on one of the hardest challenges in the field: how collaborative robot functionality can be developed and deployed with meaningful safety and security assurances.

Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, integration and digital infrastructure expert innovating and delivering mission-critical, safe and regulated digital systems across global markets.

I work in AI strategy, capability creation, and research in Supervised ML and Reinforcement Learning for the safety-critical aeronautical domain. Real-world, mission-critical applications such as route optimisation, conflict detection and resolution, constrained by safety. I created the first Air Traffic Management Digital Twin in Singapore used for AI research and prototyping new capabilities (Continous Descent Operations).

I also work in Agentic AI for regulated environments that require predictability and norm copmpliance (financial transactions or private data kept available and confidential).

I am a teaching assistant at Stanford's executive education. In the Stanford’s AI Professional Program with XCS229 Machine Learning, XCS236 Deep Generative Models, XCS234 Reinforcement Learning, XCS224R Deep Reinforcement Learning & XCS221 Artificial Intelligence Principles and Techniques. Also the new Agentic AI program: XAG329A Agentic AI, Building Self-Improving AI Agents.

Miquel Rodriguez Planas is Director of Economic Development at Barcelona City Council, where he leads the city’s economic promotion and innovation agenda. He oversees initiatives such as Barcelona Impulsa, the 22@ innovation district, and the Barcelona Innovation Coast, aiming to consolidate Barcelona as a global talent and technology hub.

His work focuses on attracting investment, supporting startups and scaleups, strengthening the local innovation ecosystem, and aligning public policy with the needs of tech companies, research centres, and international organisations. He has been involved in high-profile initiatives including UNWTO’s presence in Barcelona and new innovation infrastructure projects.

His profile is especially relevant for sessions on smart cities, urban innovation, tech ecosystems, public–private collaboration, and how cities can position themselves as AI and deep-tech hubs through strategy, infrastructure, and talent policies.

Javier Cuadra Alconero is an AI Engineering Lead specialising in generative AI, large language models (LLMs), and NLP. He is currently GenAI Tech Lead at Zurich Insurance, where he leads a team building production LLM-powered pipelines that process thousands of insurance documents monthly and extract structured data at scale.

He previously worked at Amazon, building predictive maintenance and optimisation models across European fulfilment centres, and has experience spanning cloud architecture (AWS/GCP), MLOps, and end-to-end AI system design.

His profile is especially relevant for sessions on industrialising generative AI, LLM applications in enterprise, MLOps and AI engineering, document intelligence, and moving from AI prototypes to reliable, production-grade systems.