Speakers
Our speakers of the day are a mix of highly experienced AI experts. They originate from the business world, as well as research institutes and the government, providing you with a wide range of expertise.
 | Focco Vijselaar is Director-General for Enterprise and Innovation at the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy. Prior to this role he was Chief Economist at the same Ministry and also worked as Director for Foreign Finance Affairs at the Dutch Ministry of Finance. |
 | Prof. Dr. Max Welling is a research chair in Machine Learning at the University of Amsterdam and a VP Technologies at Qualcomm. He has a secondary appointment as a fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). Max Welling has served as associate editor in chief of IEEE TPAMI from 2011-2015. He serves on the board of the Neurips foundation since 2015 and has been program chair and general chair of Neurips in 2013 and 2014 respectively. He was also program chair of AISTATS in 2009 and ECCV in 2016 and general chair of MIDL 2018. He is a founding board member of ELLIS. Max Welling is recipient of the ECCV Koenderink Prize in 2010. He directs the Amsterdam Machine Learning Lab (AMLAB) and co-directs the Qualcomm-UvA deep learning lab (QUVA) and the Bosch-UvA Deep Learning lab (DELTA). He is a fellow and founding board member of the European Lab for learning and Intelligent systems (ELLIS). |
 | Lowri van der Linden is Director Investment Projects EMEA & South East Asia at the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA). As an operational unit of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, NFIA helps and advises foreign companies in the various stages of establishing, rolling out and expanding their international activities in the Netherlands. |
 | Kees van der Klauw graduated from the department of Electronics Engineering of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and received a Ph.D. in the area of semiconductor devices. During his professional career, he has contributed to and has led several digital transformations and innovations inside and outside Philips in various businesses. Kees was also a driving force in the establishment of the Alliance for Internet of Things Innovation (AIOTI, www.aioti.eu) and is currently leading the Netherlands AI Coalition NL AIC (www.nlaic.com), a public-private collaboration in artificial intelligence engaging 400 parties from business, government, education and science and society. |
 | Maarten de Rijke is Distinguished University Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Information Retrieval at the University of Amsterdam. He is VP Personalization and Relevance and Senior Research Fellow at Ahold Delhaize. His research strives to build intelligent technology to connect people to information. His team pushes the frontiers of search engines, recommender systems and conversational assistants. They also investigate the influence of the technology they develop on society. De Rijke is the director of the Innovation Center for Artificial Intelligence. |
 | Paul Merkus is head of the Research Support Office at TU/e and co-founder of EAISI, the Eindhoven AI Systems Institute. He chairs the AI Hub Brainport Work Package on Research & Innovation and represents Brainport in the NL AIC interhub meetings. Paul has a background as in Applied Physics and over 30 years of experience in industry: hardware development, software development and project development. |
 | Pieter Jeekel is chairman of the Netherlands AI Coalition for Well-being & Healthcare and director and founder of Evodoc and The Social Health Company. Pieter has a background as an eHealth entrepreneur and leader of nationwide healthcare reform programs. |
 | Moderator: Marloes Pomp (International Strategy Netherlands AI Coalition & Dutch Blockchain Coalition) |
