Mohammed Ahli, Executive Director, National Statistics and Data Sector, Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority, United Arab Emirates

Mohammad Ahli is the Executive Director for National Statistic and Data Sector at the Federal Competitiveness and Statistic Authority. He is currently looking after the development of the national statistics and the data strategy for the authority and manages the execution in that sector across the board. He is also responsible for creating the workforce plan and resource allocation aligning with all stakeholders to develop the national statistics dissemination strategy. Prior to that, Mohammad served as Strategy Director developing the national statistics strategy 2021 for the UAE. Previously, he was the Engagement Director for corporate communication and external affairs at the Emirates Competitiveness Council in the Minister of State Office. Prior to working in the public sector, Mohammed worked for Microsoft International as the Government Sector Manager, where he worked closely with the UAE government towards achieving a position of trusted advisor in innovation for technology needs and helping both local and federal government bodies to achieve cost effectiveness with high level of customer satisfaction. Mohammad also worked for Emirates NBD Bank. He took several roles and positions within the bank’s information technology (IT) and financial branches, were he was managing and delivering high-level business operation for the Emirates Bank Group, handling the bank’s strategic IT projects and overall project management. Mohammad holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the National American University as well as a diploma in computer information processing from the Higher College of Technology Dubai.

Ebrahim Al-Haddad, Regional Director, ITU Arab Regional Office  

Ebrahim Al-Haddad has a wide experience in the telecommunication field that stretches over 25 years in the international arena as well as in the private sector. In 2002, Mr Al Haddad joined ITU and spent six and a half years between the headquarters in Geneva and the regional office in Cairo where he was the regional director. In July 2008, Mr Al Haddad joined a telecom consultancy group that provided consultancy services to governments, regulators and private sector entities in the Arab region. He rejoined the ITU as the regional director of the Arab office in October 2011. Mr Al-Haddad holds a master’s degree in information analysis and management from Bond University in Australia. 

Mansour Al Shehry, Market Study Specialist​, Communication and Information Technology Commission, Saudi Arabia

Mansour Al Shehry is Market Study Specialist at the Regulation and Competition Division of the Communication and Information Technology Commission in Saudi Arabia. Mr Al Shehry has 15 years of experience in regulation and market analysis. He was part of the second mobile license evaluation team, in 2005, he has been Project Manager of the Saudi Market Study projects for the years 2010-2014-2015 and 2016. Mr Al Shehry is the key person in setting and updating the list of ICT indicators. He is responsible for validation and analysis of the Saudi ICT market data from both the demand and the supply side. Mr Al Shehry is also member of the Parental Control Regulation team and part of the team of experts in Saudi Arabia participating in the discussions of the ITU Expert Group on Telecommunication/ICT Indicators. 

Christopher Amin, Senior Software Engineer, Research and Development, RIPE NCC

Christopher Amin is a Senior Software Engineer in the Research and Development Department of the RIPE NCC. He spends most of his time working as a back-end developer for the RIPE Atlas project, and has also contributed to the RIPEstat and DNSMON services. Before joining the RIPE NCC in 2011, Mr Amin worked in the UK as the lead technical architect in the e-commerce department of a FTSE 100 insurance company. He holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of East Anglia.

May Amr, Director, Data acquisition and annotation, Cairo Operations Lead​, Affectiva​

May Amr received a bachelor 's degree with honors in digital media engineering and technology from the German University in Cairo/Ulm University. She joined Affectiva in 2011, since then she has created the data annotation infrastructure, designed the company's acquisition and annotation methodologies. Ms Amr contributes in building emotion and appearance classifiers using support vector machine and deep learning methods. Aside from the technical responsibilities, Ms Amr i​s leading Affectiva’s Cairo office operations. She helps on-boarding researchers and engineers to the team.​

Muhammad Arif Sargana, Director (Economic Affairs), Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA)

Muhammad Arif Sargana has more than 23 years of professional experience as an economist both working for the public and private sectors and with International donors and international NGOs. He is Director of Economic Affairs at the Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA) since 2003. He is a focal person at the Pakistan Regulator to gather ICT statistics from all operators and other agencies in Pakistan and provide them to ITU and other national and international agencies. He also publishes PTA annual reports on Pakistan’s ICT and telecommunication sector, and contributes to the Pakistan Economic Survey annually published by the Ministry of Finance, Government of Pakistan. Mr Sargana is instrumental in the coordination of work with the National Statistics Office to revise the questionnaires of its regular surveys. He is also member of the working group to monitor SDG developments in Pakistan established at the Planning Commission of Pakistan. Before taking his current position at PTA, Mr Sargana worked as Deputy Director at the National Tariff Commission where he contributed to the Trade Remedy Laws in Pakistan in accordance with WTO Agreements. He also worked for the Competition Commission of Pakistan, the World Bank Pakistan Resident Mission, the United Nations and other development institutions for various assignments. Mr Sargana holds three post-graduate degrees in economics of development from Pakistan and from the Institute of Social Studies in The Netherlands. He is a research fellow at University of Bradford, UK. He has published a number of articles in the national press for general awareness about telecom sector developments, FDI in the ICT sector and regulatory reforms.

Kees Balde, Associate Programme Officer, United Nations University (UNU)-ViE SCYCLE

Kees Balde works at Statistics Netherlands, where he is deputy head of environment statistics. Next to that, Kees is a member of the board of directors of the Dutch Waste Electronical and Electronic Appliances Register. He also works for the United Nations University (UNU) as an Associate Programme Officer. At UNU, he is the focal point of e-waste quantifications. He is also the main author of the global e-waste monitor. Kees Baldé earned his PhD in Chemistry at Utrecht University.

Alexandre Fernandes Barbosa, Head, Regional Center for Studies on the Development of the Information Society (CETIC.br), Brazil

Alexandre Fernandes Barbosa leads several information and communication technologies (ICT) surveys and research projects on the socioeconomic implications of ICT in Brazil. He is responsible for conducting nationwide ICT surveys for the production of ICT-related statistics on the access to and use of ICTs in different segments of society and capacity building in survey methodologies in Latin América and lusophone countries of Africa. Mr Barbosa is also the Chair of the Expert Group on ICT Households indicators from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Mr Barbosa holds a PhD degree in Business Administration from Getulio Vargas Foundation (Brazil), a Master Degree in Business Administration from Bradford University (UK), an MSc Degree in Computer Science from Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil) and a BSc Degree in Electrical Engineering from Catholic University (Brazil). He has also conducted postdoctoral research at HEC Montreal (Canada).

Johannes Bauer, Chair, Department of Media and Information, Michigan State University and Associate Editor, Telecommunications Policy

Johannes M. Bauer is the Chairperson of the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University (MSU). He is trained as an engineer and economist, holding MA and PhD degrees in economics from the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria. Since joining MSU in 1990, he spent extended periods as a visiting professor affiliated with the Technical University of Delft, Netherlands (2000-2001), the University of Konstanz, Germany (2010), and the University of Zurich, Switzerland (2012). His research covers a wide range of issues related to innovation in information and communication technology industries (ICT), business models of national and global players, as well as the public policy and governance challenges of harnessing the full benefits of ICTs for society. He has developed and used computational methods to examine the effects of governance on advanced communications infrastructure and applied big data analytical methods to problems of information security. He currently serves as member of the boards of the Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy (TPRC) and on the Executive Committee of the iSchools. He is a regular speaker at international conferences and has served as an advisor to public and private sector organizations in North and South America, Europe, and Asia.

Linus Bengtsson, Executive Director, Flowminder.org

Linus Bengtsson is Executive Director and co-founder of Flowminder Foundation, as well as a researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. He pioneered the use of  mobile operator data to monitor population displacement during the 2010 Haiti earthquake and cholera outbreak. Dr. Bengtsson has since led projects using mobile operator data in a large number of countries, supporting governments, UN and intergovernmental agencies.

Hichem Besbes, President, Telecommunication National Regulatory Authority of Tunisia (INTT), Tunisia

Hichem Besbes is the Head of the Telecommunication National Regulatory Authority of TUNISIA (INTT) since April 2014. He holds a HDR “Habilitation à Diriger les Recherches” in Telecommunications and a PhD in Electrical Engineering. From July 1999 to October 2000, he was a post doctoral fellow at Concordia University, Montréal, Canada. In July 2001, he joined Legerity Inc., Austin, Texas, USA, where he was a senior system engineer working on broadband modems. From March 2002 to July 2003, he was a member of Technical Staff at Celite Systems Inc., Austin, Texas, where he contributed to the definition, design and development of Celite's high-speed data transmission systems. In September 2003, he regained Sup'Com in Tunisia, where he was a Professor in Telecommunication and director of the research Lab COSIM. In 2005, he co-founded smart-waves, a startup working on advanced signal processing for future networks. From January to May 2011, he was a Fulbright Visiting scholar at Colorado State University. From January 2013 to March 2014, he served as a board member of INTT. Prof. Hichem Besbes has more than 100 publications in international conferences and scientific journals dealing with wireless communication and signal processing. 

Chandrajit Chatterjee, Deputy Director, Economic Statistics, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, India

Chandrajit Chatterjee is the Deputy Director of Economic Statistics in the Central Statistics Office of the Government of India. Mr Chatterjee has 5 years’ experience in collection, compilation, analysis and dissemination of various economic statistics with a special focus on the industry and service sectors. Prior to joining the Government of India, Mr Chatterjee worked in the non-life insurance industry as an actuary. He has an advanced master’s degree in statistics and a certificate in actuarial techniques from the Institute of Actuaries of India (IAI). He has experience in various fields of economic statistics including compilation of index of industrial production, conduct of annual establishment surveys of registered manufacturing, development of factsheet for economy based on short term correlated indicators, statistical metadata standards as well as economic (industry/ product) classifications. Mr Chatterjee has been involved in developing ICT-based solutions for data collection in the official statistical system and has also conducted several studies on ICT usage in industries based on data collected through surveys and administrative records.  

Akmal Chaudhri, NoSQL and Spark Technical Evangelist, GridGain Systems

Akmal Chaudhri is a technology evangelist at GridGain. His role is to help build the global Apache Ignite community and raise awareness through presentations and technical writing. Akmal has over 25 years experience in IT and has previously held roles as a developer, consultant, product strategist and technical trainer. He has worked for several blue-chip companies such as Reuters and IBM, and also the Big Data startups Hortonworks (Hadoop) and DataStax (Cassandra NoSQL Database). He has regularly presented at many international conferences and served on the program committees for a number of major conferences and workshops. He has published and presented widely and edited or co-edited 10 books. He holds a BSc (1st Class Hons.) in Computing and Information Systems, MSc in Business Systems Analysis and Design and a PhD in Computer Science. He is a Member of the British Computer Society (MBCS) and a Chartered IT Professional (CITP). 

Jinqiao Chen, Deputy Chief Engineer, China Academy of  Information and Communications Technology, China 

Chen Jinqiao is the Deputy Chief Engineer of China Academy of Telecommunication Research, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). He is also the Secretary General and member of the Expert Committee of Information and Communication Technology, an important MIIT think tank on the ICT sector established in 2003. He has been invited as guest professor by several Chinese universities and as a trainer by multinational companies. He has also been invited as key speaker by several famous investment banks such as UBS, DB and Goldman Sachs to attend their investment conference. Since 2001, he participates in the study groups of ITU-T and ITU-D as a chief member of the Chinese delegation. He has also been taking part in ICT statistical work for several years. He successfully carried out some UNDP projects with Chinese and German scholars with the aim to promote the development of the information society. He was the main researcher for the EU-China information society comparison study in 2006. During his career, he has gained an in-depth understanding and mastery in development rules and future trends of the ICT industry. Mr Jinqiao graduated from Renmin University of China with a major is finance and economics. 

Wilson Chua, Managing Director and Founder, Bandwidth Signal and Statistics (BASS) Project

Wilson Chua is the founder and managing director of Bandwidth and Signal Statistics (BASS), a volunteer-developed, freely downloadable mobile app to crowdsource and map mobile Internet performance and coverage. Mr Chua has more than two decades of experience in building businesses in the ICT sector, from Internet service provision to call center and data center operations. His passion for using data science for social good has led to a widely read technology column in the Manila Bulletin and various volunteer efforts, including the use of big data analysis to fight dengue. He was recently part of the winning team in the IBM Fintech Pitching Competition in Singapore. Mr Chua has a master’s from the National University of Singapore and graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of the Philippines.                            

Louis DiCesari, Head of Big Data Implementation, Vodafone Group

Louis DiCesari is Head of Big Data Implementation at Vodafone, responsible for strategy, operations, and commercialisation of Vodafone's global big data capabilities.  In this role, he has launched Big Data Analytics in 14 Vodafone operating countries, leveraging data as a strategic asset to enable high-impact use cases across functional areas of the business. Before Vodafone, Louis was Vice President, Data Analytics at Prudential Financial, where he developed and grew a new team focused on advanced analytics as well as led strategic data insights work supporting Prudential’s business in 33-countries. He has more than 15 years of experience in analytics, with a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Temple University. 

Silvio De Nicola, Officer, AGCOM, Italy

Silvio De Nicola is an Officer of the Italian Communication Authority (AGCOM). He has worked as consultant for several telecommunication companies (TIM, Alcatel, Huawey, etc). Since 2009, he works for AGCOM, participating in several international expert groups on ICT. He holds a degree, a PhD, and a Master in Communication Engineering (University of Naples, University of Hong Kong, European University Institute). He has a number of publications in international refereed journals, and his interest lies in data processing, information design, and knowledge network.

H.E. Mr Habib Dababi, Secretary of State for the Digital Economy, Tunisia

H.E. Mr Habib Debbabi is the Tunisian Digital Economy Secretary of State. Mr Debbabi held several managerial and business positions with mobile operators and mobile manufacturers in Europe and in the Middle East region. At Ericsson AB, he held the position of Business Development Director in Saudi Arabia, and the position of Senior Consultant for Smart Grid Solution in the Mediterranean Region. He was also the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Havas Tunisia and he founded his own consulting firm in 2014. Mr Debbabi holds a master's degree in science, radio communication networks option from the University of Versailles, France. 

Scarlett Fondeur Gil, Economic Affairs Officer, Division on Technology and Logistics, UNCTAD

Scarlett Fondeur Gil has been an Economic Affairs Officer at UNCTAD for more than 10 years. She and her colleagues produce the annual Information Economy Report, which looks at trends in ICT for sustainable trade and development. She also works on the development of information economy statistics, representing UNCTAD in the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development. UNCTAD currently collects data on the use of ICT by businesses, on the ICT sector, and on international trade in ICT goods, and is working to improve the measurement of e-commerce and of international trade in ICT and ICT-enabled services. Ms Fondeur Gil is an economics graduate from the Santo Domingo Institute of Technology in the Dominican Republic, with a master's in international relations from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. 

Bjorn Forssell, Statistician, Statistics Sweden

Björn Forssell is the product manager at the Swedish government agency Statistics Sweden for the survey ICT usage in Enterprises, which aims to measure the access and usage of information and communications technology in Swedish enterprises. He is also working with the surveys on ICT usage in households and individuals and the survey Enterprises' IT and marketing expenditure. Björn is specialized in ICT and digitalization statistics at Statistics Sweden and holds a bachelor's degree in applied social research and statistics from Stockholm University.
 

Nicolas Friederici, Postdoctoral Researcher, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

Nicolas Friederici is a postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute and a Junior Research Fellow at Kellogg College in Oxford. As member of the Geonet team, he studies how digital entrepreneurship works in environments that are far more challenging than Silicon Valley or London. His comparative grounded research covers African cities including Nairobi, Lagos, Accra, Kigali, Addis Ababa, and Harare. Ultimately, this work explains how and why digital entrepreneurship flourishes in some places but not in others. Nicolas’ doctoral work focused on technology innovation hubs in Africa. He was a visitor at SCANCOR at Stanford, a Clarendon Scholar, and grantee of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. Until 2014, Nicolas was consultant for the Mobile Innovation for Development and ICT Policy & Regulation programs at infoDev (World Bank). He helped to coordinate and analyse infoDev’s global mobile incubation and entrepreneurship network of innovation hubs (“mLabs” and “mHubs”). Mr Friederici has also contributed to projects on ICTs for post-conflict reconstruction, as well as the ICT Regulation and Broadband Strategies Toolkits. He was a Fulbright scholar at Michigan State University, where he did his MA in telecommunications, information studies and media. Mr Friederici also holds a Diplom in Media Management from the University of Cologne.  
                

Bowei Gai, Founder, World Startup Report and World Startup Wiki

Bowei Gai is an engineer by trade, founder by heart and global startup researcher by passion. As an engineer, Bowei learned the tools of trade working with the original AppleTV and iPhone team at Apple. He now holds 8 US patents in consumer hardware and software technologies. As a serial entrepreneur, Bowei built a handful of companies including CardMunch, which was acquired by LinkedIn in 2011 prior to IPO. As a researcher, Bowei interviewed startups, investors and policy makers across 29 countries in a single year as part of the World Startup Report initiative. Findings of his research have been shared with The Economist, European Commission and US Department of State. Today, Bowei focuses his time working with various Philippine government agencies to help improve the lives of 100M Filipino citizens.

Mohamed Hamdi is the Director of Innovation at El Ghazala Communication Cyberparc. He has co-authored more than 150 scientific publications published in international books, journals and conferences. He was the chair of the Cloud Security industry forum in the IEEE ICC'12 conference (Ottawa, Canada). He has also chaired and co-chaired international conferences and special issues in international conferences including the Trust, Security, and Privacy symposium in the IEEE IWCMC 2012 conference and the special issue on Web Services in Multimedia Communication for the journal on Advances in Multimedia. He has presented multiple tutorials and invited speeches in international conferences, such as the GEOSS Forum (Globecom 2011). In addition, Dr Hamdi was invited at the ITU World Telecom 2011 conference to serve as a panellist in a forum on the security of social networks. He also passed prestigious professional certifications including the CISSP and the CISCO Security certifications. He is conducting research activities in the areas of wireless sensor networks, risk management, algebraic modeling, cloud security, intrusion detection, and network forensics. Between 2001 and 2005, he worked for the National Digital Certification Agency (Tunisia) where he was the leader of the security risk management team.                                        

Iñigo Herguera, Professor of Economics, University of Madrid, Spain and Chair of the Expert Group on Telecommunications/ ICT Indicators (EGTI) 

Iñigo Herguera is an associate professor in Economics at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) and has a number of publications in international refereed journals. His research field is industrial organization, anti-trust and regulation. He has worked as the Director of the Statistics Division at the telecommunications regulatory commission in Spain for 11 years and participated and chaired several international expert groups on benchmarking telecommunications and ICT indicators. He has been consultant in relevant cases on regulation of the telecommunications industry and has been involved in several anti-trust cases working both for private corporations as for regulators and public institutions (energy regulator, European Commission). He holds a degree in Economics from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, a Diploma in European Studies from the Universitaet des Saarlandes and a PhD in Economics from the European University Institute.​

Tatiana Jereissati, Coordinator, UNESCO Projects, Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC.br), Brazil 

Tatiana Jereissati is Coordinator of Unesco Projects at the Regional Center for Studies on the Development of the Information Society (Cetic.br) under the auspices of UNESCO based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She has experience in the implementation of nationwide ICT standalone surveys in Brazil, such as the ICT Households and ICT Kids Online Brazil. She is responsible for international cooperation at Cetic.br, especially promoting capacity-building on ICT survey methodologies in Latin America and lusophone countries in Africa. She is also responsible for the ICT & Gender cross-national project. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Fundação Armando Alvares Pentado, a bachelor’s degree in languages and literature (Portuguese and French) from the University of São Paulo and a Postgraduate Diploma in Social Sciences with special mention to Gender and Public Policies from Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), Argentina.                                            

Elif Köksal-Oudot is an Economist at the Economic Analysis and Statistics Division of the Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation (OECD) since 2006. She currently serves the Working Party on the Measurement and Analysis of the Digital Economy by developing new metrics and conducting analytical studies. Her main fields of expertise include skill composition of employment, productivity and ICT usage by households, individuals and by businesses. Ms Köksal-Oudot is also part of the team in charge of the measurement strand of the OECD’s horizontal project on “Going Digital: Making the Digital Transformation Work for Growth and Well-being”, which aims to give policymakers the tools they need to help their economies and societies prosper in a world that is increasingly digital and data-driven. In parallel, she represents her institution at relevant international bodies, such as steering and expert groups at the European Commission and ITU. Over the past decade, Ms Köksal-Oudot has been co-authoring several flagship publications including the OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard, the OECD Digital Economy Outlook and the OECD Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook. Ms Köksal-Oudot holds a M.Sc. in labour economics from the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (France) and is a member of the Centre for Strategic and Prospective Studies (CEPS).

Eni Lestariningsih, Head of ICT Statistics Division, BPS Statistics, Indonesia

Eni Lestariningsih is the Head of ICT Statistics Division at BPS Statistics Indonesia since 2013. She is responsible for the collection and harmonization of ICT statistics through various surveys, such as the Survey on ICT Usage in Business Sector and Education Sector, the Survey on Information and Communication Industries, the Survey on Telecommunication Statistics, which is mainly developed based on secondary data. She has also been responsible to develop the ICT Development Index at the sub-national level for Indonesia. She is also as a national focal point for ITU in terms of ICT household indicators. She has a degree in statistics from Padjajaran University, Bandung, Indonesia and she holds also a master’s degree in economics from Tokyo International University, Japan, under a Monbusho Scholarship (2004-2006).