Carlos Romero Dexeus studied applied economics with specialization in economic structures in Madrid Complutense University. He holds an Executive Master in Tourism Management from the IE Business School. He has been the Executive Director of the Affiliate Members of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), www.unwto.org, for two years. He has also worked as General Manager of the UNWTO.Themis Foundation, http://themis.unwto.org/es, and previous to that, he has been analyst at The Spanish Tourism Intelligence Unit of the Ministry of Economy, http://www.iet.tourspain.es. He has extensive experience in the tourism sector, both nationally and internationally, particularly in tourism planning, innovation, new technologies, smart destinations, organizational management, public-private partnership, tourism economy and tourism training. From 2008 to now he was appointed Director of Research, Development and Innovation of SEGITTUR, www.segittur.es. In this function, he is responsible for promoting the innovation and use of new technologies for the tourism sector. He is also in charge of the management of the Spanish National Innovative Tourism Startups & Entrepreneurs Program (Emprendetur), and he was member of the panel of experts of the Spanish Plan to Foster Language Technologies.

Christian Reimsbach-Kounatze is an Internet economist and policy analyst at the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry (STI). Christian has been working in STI on topics related to the Internet and digital economy since 2008. This includes work on assessing the impact of ICTs on the society (including on skills and employment) and more recently work on the economics of “big data”. He is now co-ordinating OECD’s horizontal project on “the role of data for growth and well-being”, which is part of a broader OECD project on New Sources of Growth (NSG). Before joining the OECD, Christian worked as a researcher at the Institute for Information and Market Engineering of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and at SAP Research in Germany on topics related to information markets, peer-to-peer systems, and distributed incentive mechanisms. Christian holds a Diploma (Master of Science) in Information Science, Engineering and Management and a Diploma in Economics, both granted by the KIT.

Elena Alfaro is the Chief Executive Officer of BBVA Data & Analytics, a spin off of BBVA Bank (Spain), which mission is to create new products and services based on internal and external data sources, and advanced analytics. Elena has achieved international recognition through various publications around Big Data applications to urban management and planning issues. Before joining BBVA, Elena worked at Ericsson, playing an important role in telecommunications development in EMEA and LATAM, and broadening afterwards her experience as an expert in innovation. Regarding her background: Elena has a BA in Economics & Business Administration by the Universities of Sunderland (UK) and Universidad Autonoma (Madrid), and a Master in Intangibles Analysis and Management. She has taken part in the program “40-under-40 Young European Leaders” in 2013 edition.

Frédérique is Director of Research of the Viseo Group and Associated Professor at the Institut National des Langues et Cultures Orientales, in Paris. Before joining Viseo, she was Principal Scientist and manager of the Parsing and Semantics area (ParSem) at the Xerox Research Centre Europe. She joined Xerox as a research scientist in 1993 where she worked on different European and national projects based on natural language technologies. Throughout her research career she has developed, worked and coordinated more than twenty collaborative international research projects links to data understanding.
Frédérique earned a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She was awarded a PhD grant  from the IBM Scientific Centre In France.  After a one year post-doc at IBM-Watson in Yorktown working on the links between syntax and semantics, she got a research and teaching position at Télécom Paris Sud in charge of starting an activity around Natural Language Processing.
Frédérique is co-author of six books, over 60 scientific papers and 5 patents. She belongs and provides scientific expertise to several scientific national and international committees and institutions. She has been the president of the CONTINT steering committee of the French National Agency for Research (ANR), President of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ATALA). She is now Vice President of the ATALA,  member of the European Language Resources Association board, member of the board of the University Stendhal, member of the Scientific council of the Labex DigiCosme and of the scientific and technical council of the IRT SystemX.

Biography

November 2014-present - European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society
February 2010-October 2014 - European Commissioner for Energy
2005-2010 - Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg, Germany
2005-present - Member of the Governing Board and Federal Executive Committee of the CDU
2006-2010 - Chairman of the federal media policy committee of the CDU

In 2013 I launched Spend Network. Our mission is to make sense of the world’s open spending data. I’ve recently been appointed to the Government’s Open Data User Group and Spend Network is one of the ODI startups.
We’re a small team that have been working with public procurement data for over 12 years. We’ve grown tired of waiting for Government data on spending and contracts to be compiled into a useful tool, so we’ve decided to build a solution ourselves. We’ve grown out of Ticon, a consultancy focussed on transaction efficiency and research. We’ve got over 20 years experience of working with Government purchasing data.
We’re building a business for both Government and suppliers to Government. We believe that Government shouldn’t have to pay for spend analysis, as long as the data is open, and that suppliers need better data on Government opportunities. If you’d like to know more about what we’re doing and how we work, we’d be delighted to tell you more.

Jean-Paul Zens is the Director-General of the Media and Communications Department (SMC) of the Prime Minister's office.
Formerly known as the Media and Audiovisual Department, the SMC was established in order to foster the development of Luxembourg as an international media and communications hub. It is responsible for handling the coordination of all matters related to media and telecommunications policy – including Internet, content, data protection and their associated regulatory elements. The department is also responsible for the promotion of Luxembourg’s media and telecommunications activities on the international level.
Jean-Paul Zens serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Luxembourg-based global satellite operator SES, and is a board-member of Luxembourg’s largest telecom operator, the incumbent POST Luxembourg. He previously served as Chairman of the Luxembourg Filmfund for eleven years.
Before his appointment as director-general of the Media and Communications Department, Jean-Paul Zens was part of the diplomatic service where he was responsible, as part of the Department of International Economic Affairs, for representing Luxembourg’s interests at the international level in the field of media and communications.

Prof. Dr. Jorge Sanz has over 30 years of research and consulting experience in industry. He has specialized in banking, telecommunications, government and health care for global companies in America, Europe and Asia. He works in Operations Strategy and on the application of Information Technology for transforming organizations. He has worked at different times in IBM, as a Director on international assignments and also, for over 15 years in the Research Division located in Sillicon Valley, California.
Jorge conducts analytical modeling for business problems in companies, with applications in process innovation for front-offie and back-office operations and enterprise performance management in firms.
Jorge leads international academic and professional communities in Business Informatics, Services, Analytics and Enterprise Engineering. He is a frequent key-note speaker on the interplay between business and IT in international conferences. He has been the President of the University of St. Andrews, Professor in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Visiting Professor in University of California.
Jorge works today as Director of the Business Analytics Centre at the National University of Singapore (NUS), holds a Visiting Professor position at the School of Computing and teaches Business Analytics for graduates in the NUS Business School as well. He is also the Chief Innovation Officer for Retail Banking in IBM Corporation. He actively consults for Asian organizations, American and European companies. 
Jorge is Fellow of the IEEE Society.

Klaas Bollhoefer works as a Chief Data Scientist and Big Data Evangelist with The unbelievable Machine Company GmbH (*um) in Berlin and Vienna.
He is father of Data Science Day (DSDay), coordinator of Big Data Week in Berlin, renowned lecturer, keynote speaker and member of several program committees of international Big Data events, e.g. O´Reilly Strata + Hadoop World or BITKOM Big Data Summit.

Marc Schiltz holds a PhD in Physics (Crystallography) and an Executive MBA from INSEAD. He has been active in research and higher education for more than 18 years and is a recognised scientist in his field of expertise. Drawing on his international experience he has developed a thorough expertise in strategic research management and organisation.
Since 2011, he is heading the National Research Fund, which is the central agency for promoting and funding research activities in Luxembourg. In this role, he has significantly contributed to enhance the quality of the Luxembourg research system and to build bridges with the private sector as well as with the international scientific community.

Martin Kaltenböck studied communication, psychology and marketing at the University of Vienna. In 2000 he was co-founder of punkt. netServices - an Austrian company specialised on information- & knowledge management as well as on Enterprise 2.0 solutions.
He is co-founder and managing partner of the Semantic Web Company and as CFO responsible for financial and organisational issues. Furthermore he leads and works in several national and international research, industry and projects in public administration - mainly in the areas of project management, requirements engineering and communication activities.
Martin leads and works in several national and international research & industry projects as well as projects in public administration - mainly in the areas of project management, requirements engineering and communication activities.
He is tutor and publishes in the fields of semantic information management, Linked (Open) Data as well as Open (Government) Data and social semantic web. He is lecturer at national and international conferences and business events in the mentioned topics.
Martin is Certified Management Consultant since 2006, member of the Executive Board of the Austrian Chapter of Open Knowledge (former OKFN) as well as Member of the Advisory Council of the Open Knowledge (Foundation, UK) and invited expert of the governmental Cooperation OGD Austria. He is working as invited expert of W3C and is member of the Steering Board of the European Data Forum that he chaired in Athens, Greece in 2014. In 2015 he co-founded the ODI Node Vienna together with 3 Austrian university partners.

Marc Küster holds a degree in Physics, a Master in Philology and History and a PhD in Modern Philology. After working for the University Tübingen's Computing Centre in the department of Literary and Documentary Data Processing and the XML service provider Saphor GmbH, he became Professor for Web Services and XML Technologies at the University of Applied Sciences Worms. In 2008 Marc joined the Publications Office to lead the development of the Publications Office's common content and metadata repository CELLAR including its Common Data Model (CDM). Since 2011 he is head of section of the Office's "Storage and Electronic Archive" section.
Norbert Hohn holds a degree in Business Management and Economics. He worked in the domain of trans-European intraregional cooperation, capacity building and the implementation of the European Higher Education Area before joining the European Commission in 2006. In the Commission, he dealt with a variety of issues in the production, identification and dissemination of publications (metadata, e-book, websites). Since 2013 he is head of the European Union Open Data Portal section.

Professor Dr. Gabriel M Crean is the first Chief Executive Officer of the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST). The LIST was created on the 1st of January 2015, arising from the merging of two of Luxembourg’s national pubic research centres, CRP Gabriel Lipmann and CRP Henri Tudor. With over 650 research scientists and engineers, it is now one of Europe’s key research technology organisations with a clear mission to be the research and innovation engine for the 21st century Luxembourg economy.
Prior to this post, Professor Crean was the Vice-President for Technology and Director for Europe of CEAtech, the Division of Technological Research of the Atomic Energy and Alternatives Energy Commission (CEA) of France, from 2012 to May 2015. Before that, Professor Crean was the Scientific Director of the Division of Technological Research of CEA from 2009 to 2012. He led CEAtech though its first national scientific audit in 2011.
Professor Dr. Crean holds professorial appointments in several European universities. He is a full professor of the Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland; most recently receiving in November 2014, an Honoury Doctorate Degree from Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland. Previous recipients include Chancellor Angela Merkel of German, European Commission President J M Barroso and European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek. He also holds a professorial appointment at the Universidade Nova De Lisboa, in Lisbon, Portugal. He was a visiting Professor and Advisor to the Administrator General (President) of the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG), France, on research policies from 2009 to 2012.
Professor Crean has played a key role at European level in the formulation of European Commission research, development and innovation policy. He is a member since 2011 of the European Commission “Mirror Group on Smart Specialisation” advising European Commissioner Hann on smart specialisation strategies for Europe’s regions. Professor Crean also plays a key role in the European Commission High Level Group on Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) established by Vice-President Commissioner Tajani to advise the European commission on a competitive industrial and technological policy.
He has been widely recognised for this work in European innovation policy, He is an Academic Fellow of the European Policy Centre (EPC), one of Europe’s leading Think Tanks and currently chairs the prestigious EPC Taskforce on ”A new European Industrial Policy”. Professor Crean has acted as a consultant for several European member state Governments.
Professor Dr. Crean is known internationally for his contributions to science and technology education and research. He is a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers of Ireland and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics of the U.K. He is President Emeritus of the International Union of Materials Research Societies (IUMRS) and President Emeritus of the European Materials Research Society (E-MRS). He was a co-chairman of the 3rd World Materials Summit, held in Washington, USA, in October 2011.
Professor Dr. Crean was a co-founder of three venture capital backed high-technology companies and is a Board member of several European industry associations.

Roberto Viola holds a Doctor degree in Electronic Engineering (Dr. Eng.) and a Masters in Business Administration (MBA).
He is Director-General of DG CONNECT, in the European Commission.
Between September 2012 and August 2015 he was Deputy Director-General of
DG CONNECT with responsibilities for Electronic Communications Networks and Services Directorate, Cooperation Directorate - International and Inter-institutional relations, Stakeholders cooperation, Coordination Directorate - Growth and Jobs, Innovations and Knowledge Base, Media and Data Directorate.
From 2005 to 2012, he was the Secretary General in charge of managing AGCOM (Italian media and telecom regulator).
He was Chairman of the European Radio Spectrum Policy group (RSPG) from 2012 to 2013, and Deputy Chairman in 2011 and Chairman in 2010.
He was member of the BEREC Board (Body of European Telecom Regulators).
He was Chairman of the European Regulatory Group (ERG) in 2007.
He served as Director of Regulation Department and Technical Director in AGCOM from 1999 to 2004, in charge of  inter alia, regulation in terrestrial, cable and satellite television, frequency planning, access and interconnection of communication services, cost accounting and tariff in telecommunication and broadcasting services.
From 1985-1999 he served in various positions as a staff member of the European Space Agency (ESA) in particular, he has been Head of Telecommunication and Broadcasting Satellite Services.

Stefan Auerbach has been Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Lufthansa Systems GmbH &  Co. KG since April 1, 2015. Lufthansa Systems GmbH & Co KG is one of the world’s leading airline IT providers. The company provides a comprehensive portfolio of consulting and IT services for the global aviation industry. In his capacity as CEO, he is responsible for Global Sales as well as Production and Service Delivery.
Stefan Auerbach joined the Lufthansa Systems Group in 2006. In his most recent position as Executive Vice President Airline Solutions, he was responsible for the entire airline product portfolio... During the first years, he was heading Sales EMEA/Central at Lufthansa Systems. In June 2009, he was appointed Senior Vice President Sales EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and was responsible for the entire sales region.
His career within the Lufthansa Group started 1994 when he joined Lufthansa Consulting as a consultant in the field of management consulting. Since then he has been responsible for numerous projects for airline and airport customers. Before joining Lufthansa Systems, Stefan Auerbach served as one of the managing directors of Lufthansa Consulting GmbH. In this function, he advised clients from the aviation and transport industries in strategic and operational areas.
Stefan Auerbach studied business administration at Cologne University and specialized in planning, logistics, management accounting and business information systems. Prior to his studies he completed his vocational training as a bank clerk.

Tatjana Gornostaja is an experienced manager, trainer and researcher in multilingual technologies. Her academic background is in terminology management (Bachelor and Master) and machine translation for Government-to-Citizen communication (Doctor), accompanying with more than 10 years in the field, including project, service and group management and recently business development at Tilde. Tatjana Gornostaja is a General Assembly member and SME and Startup group lead in Big Data Value Association. More information on LinkedIn profile.

Wendy is a Director and an EU policy advisor within Capgemini Consulting. She works in the Digital Transformation & Innovation practice of Capgemini Consulting where she is a core member of Capgemini’s global EU account. She plays a central role in the development of future Internet policies and deployment of digital services for governments across the EU.
Since January 2015, Wendy is managing the development of the European Data Portal and associated services, on behalf of the European Commission – DG CONNECT. Beyond being just a Portal, the project offers support services to countries as they mature on their open data journey. In addition, there is a strong focus on driving a user community and understanding the benefits of open data. Moreover, Wendy has been leading the research work on calculating the economic benefits of open data measuring: market size, jobs created, cost savings for public administrations and efficiency gains.
Wendy has equally been supporting DG CONNECT’s reflections on 21st Century Rulemaking in the Digital Age, as well as Open Innovation through workshops and ad hoc working groups within DG CONNECT and the Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group.
Building and contributing to the above, Wendy has over 9 year experience in managing complex eGovernment and digital projects as well as studies for the European; Commission bringing together multiple actors ranging from Member State representatives, to multiple EC directorates and businesses.
In addition to her consulting experience, she has worked in the international arena as representative of a national government in defining eGovernment and High Impact Services with the EC, Council and OECD.