CO-DIRECTORS

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Ayisha Piotti is Managing Partner at the Swiss based firm RegHorizon and the visionary behind creating Switzerland’s largest Global AI Policy discussion platform the annual “AI policy Summit”, which she heads at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich. She is a frequent speaker and contributor on AI Policy at global AI events and also the host of a newly launched podcast series NAVIGATING AI. 

Ayisha is a strategic alliance builder with a strong business background and with extensive experience in Government Affairs tackling complex regulatory & fiscal challenges through working with politicians, diplomatic missions, international organizations, government ministries, consumer and business associations.

She has over 20 years of experience in the private & public sector, including with the United Nations. Prior to joining ETH Zurich and setting up RegHorizon, Ayisha was Senior Director of Business Development and Corporate Affairs within a large multinational, where she built and led cross-functional teams and projects spanning diverse geographies, including Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye is Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at Imperial College London where he heads the Computational Privacy Group. He is currently a Special Adviser on AI and Data Protection to EC Justice Commissioner Reynders and a Parliament-appointed expert to the Belgian Data Protection Agency. In 2018-2019, he was a Special Adviser to EC Commissioner Vestager for who he co-authored the Competition policy for the digital era report. He is affiliated with Imperial's Data Science Institute and Department of Computing. 

Aldo Faisal is the Professor of AI & Neuroscience at the Dept. of Computing and the Dept. of Bioengineering at Imperial College London. He was awarded a prestigious UKRI Turing AI Fellowship (£2 Mio including industry partners). Aldo is the Founding Director of the £20Mio. UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in AI for Healthcare that aims to transform AI for Healthcare research and pioneer training 100 PhD and Clinical PhD Fellows. He also holds a Chair in Digital Health at the University of Bayreuth (Germany).At his two departments, Aldo leads the Brain & Behaviour Lab focussing on AI & Neuroscience and the Behaviour Analytics Lab at the Data Science Institute. He is Associate Investigator at the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences and is affiliated faculty at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit (University College London). He was the first elected Speaker of the Cross-Faculty Network in Artificial Intelligence representing AI in College on behalf of over 200 academic members. 

Walter Neal Simmons is Gendell Family Professor of the Practice at Duke University, and the CEO of Eagle Creek Renewables, the hydroelectric division of Ontario Power Group. Neal previously served as Senior Vice President of Engineering & Major Projects at ECRE, as Vice President of Engineering at Cube Hydro, and as a professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University for 15 years.  At Duke, he played a key role in the formation of Energy Engineering program.  Neal remains committed to the importance of energy education and continues to teach courses at Duke on renewable energy technologies, modern power systems, hydroelectric generation, and engineering innovation.  He has also overseen the rehabilitation, automation, and management of several damaged and underperforming projects.

Rob Wolcott is an Honorary Practice Fellow with Imperial College London, and Adjunct Professor of Innovation, Booth, University of Chicago, and Kellogg, Northwestern University. From 2007 – 2019, he was Clinical Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Kellogg. Rob has been awarded Teacher of the Year in Kellogg’s EMBA program in 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2017. 

He is a venture investor in over 30 companies and funds. Rob also serves as Chair, TWIN Global (www.twinglobal.org), a global community of innovation leaders. 

He is author of PROXIMITY, (Columbia University Press, 2024) and has been published in MIT Sloan Management Review, The Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and has been a contributor for Forbes on the impact of technology on business and humanity. 

Board member, Clareo; Abroad.io; Open Innovation Lab of Norway; Cure Blindness Project.  

Professor Alex 'Sandy' Pentland is Fellow at Stanford HAI, and previously helped create and direct the MIT Connection Science, the Media Lab and the Media Lab Asia in India. He is one of the most-cited computational scientists in the world, and Forbes declared him one of the "7 most powerful data scientists in the world" along with Google founders and the Chief Technical Officer of the United States.

He is on the Board of the UN Foundations' Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, co-led the World Economic Forum discussion in Davos that led to the EU privacy regulation GDPR, and was central in forging the transparency and accountability mechanisms in the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. He has received numerous awards and prizes such as the McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review, the 40th Anniversary of the Internet from DARPA, and the Brandeis Award for work in privacy. Recent invited keynotes include annual meetings of OECD, G20, World Bank, and JP Morgan.

Dr. Michael Rich is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and practices Adolescent Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. 

Dr. Rich spent his first career as a Hollywood filmmaker before transitioning to medicine, which provided him with a unique understanding of the power of screens to engage, connect, and change us all. He founded the Digital Wellness Lab and the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders at Boston Children’s Hospital to bring together researchers, clinicians, and tech/media leaders to research the positive and negative effects of media and technology on children’s and teens’ health and wellbeing, and to use this research to respond to and innovate a digital environment in which we can raise healthy, smart, and kind children. 

Adele Jashari is a development consultant for the Trusted AI Alliance and advises several AI companies. She brings extensive experience in leveraging emerging technologies to drive innovation and growth across industries. Adele began her career as a Financial Analyst with NYSE Euronext in 2018, before moving into Capital Management at Goldman Sachs, Investment Banking at Nomura, and serving as a Vice President in Prime Brokerage at Société Générale Corporate and Investment Banking.

Lena Patricia Nieper is a researcher and PhD student at the University of Bayreuth and the Faisal Lab. Her research focuses on regulatory and ethical challenges for adopting AI in Healthcare and other industries. Previously, she led the organization of international AI conferences at the Bavarian AI Research Center and drives strategic collaborations in AI research at the University of Bayreuth. With strong working experience in Cultural Institutions and Public Affairs Agencies (MSL, Serviceplan), she is inspired by technology to create an impact and change. 

Xiaoxue is a PhD student in the Computational Privacy Group at Imperial College London. Her research focuses on the privacy and safety aspects of machine learning, including areas such as red-teaming attacks against machine learning models and synthetic data releases. Before pursuing her PhD, she worked as a data scientist at Deloitte’s AI consulting practice, where she leveraged machine learning and statistical techniques to advise clients across diverse sectors, including financial services, healthcare, and non-profits.

Peter Campbell recently completed his MBA from Imperial College along with an internship at the International Energy Agency. He believes the energy transition lies in aligning economic/capitalistic incentives with environmental sustainability, and that the fight against climate change cannot be won without ensuring financial sustainability as well. This is the fundamental challenge of our time, and he believes that we can rise to the occasion. His goal is to drive the energy transition from a financial/commercial perspective.