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Biographies

Lubna A Al-Ansary Assistant Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO) Professor Lubna A Al-Ansary, from Saudi Arabia, has been appointed Assistant Director-General for Metrics and Measurement. Well known for her extensive experience promoting and supporting evidence-based health care in Gulf countries, Professor Al-Ansary is a Professor of Family Medicine at the College of Medicine and head of the Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee at King Saud University. She currently holds the Bahamdan Research Chair for evidence-based health care and knowledge translation at King Saud University, which focuses on evidence-generation and implementation. In 8 years, the Bahamdan Chair has published more than 40 papers. Along with her team, she has also provided in-depth training on local adaptation of clinical practice guidelines for different organizations in Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Kuwait, and collaborated with the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region toward establishing a regional initiative on clinical practice guidelines. In 2013, Professor Al-Ansary became a member of the Consultative Council, which is the ‘Appointed Parliament’ in Saudi Arabia, a recognition of her work in healthcare in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, as well as on human rights. She was one of the first female members of parliament, and she represented women at the Inter-parliamentary Union for 2 years.
Antonija Balenović Director, Health Care Center Zagreb & Assistant Professor, University of Rijeka Antonija Balenović was born in Split, Croatia, 1968. She is married with two children and lives in Zagreb, Croatia. She is currently the Director of Health Care Center Zagreb, Croatia and an Assistant Professor of Nuclear Medicine at the University of Rijeka, Croatia. Her credentials are as follows: She graduated from the University of Zagreb School of Medicine in 1993 to become a Nuclear Medicine Specialist in 2002. She headed the Nuclear Medicine Department in Zagreb in 2007 - Established first PET/CT diagnostic centers in Croatia. She obtained a PhD in Clinical Medical Sciences from the University of Zagreb School of Medicine in 2011. As of 2014 she became the Director of Health Care Center - Zagreb. She obtained a Healthcare Manager Diploma in 2015. In 2018, she did a Postgraduate Study of Quality Management in Health Care. She is the editor of two Croatian Textbooks in Nuclear medicine. Published over 50 articles and book chapters, including two chapters in USA Textbook “Nuclear Oncology”. Invited lecturer on over 100 domestic and international congresses. Lecturer at University of Zagreb, University of Rijeka, private University „Libertas“ in Zagreb and European School of Nuclear Medicine. Participated in creating oncology guidelines in Croatia, in many international projects and professional trainings including professional support for establishing first PET/CT diagnostic Center in Varna, Bulgaria. Since 2014 director of the largest primary health center in Croatia. Participation in projects: 21 of which 11 are international and the head of several international EU projects (European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, EIP on AHA, Reference Site „City of Zagreb“, mHealth Hub within the framework of the WHO ‘“Be Healthy, Be Mobile“). Education and international professional training at numerous international courses and centers. Awards for the contribution to the development of Nuclear medicine in Bulgaria 2010, for the contribution to “Early Childhood Caries prevention” 2015, the contribution to development of Dentistry in Croatia 2017 and for the contribution to development of Family medicine in Croatia 2017. Member of several Croatian Medical Associations, Council of Health- City of Zagreb and of the Presidency of Croatian Association of Employers in Health.
Julia Bohlius Cancer Epidemiologist, University of Bern PD Dr. med. Julia Bohlius is a cancer epidemiologist at the University of Bern, Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM). She heads the cancer research group at ISPM and conducted analyses on the risk of developing ICC among HIV-infected women in Southern Africa, Europe, Latin and North America under the umbrella of the International Epidemiology Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) collaboration This includes record linkage projects with HIV cohorts and National Cancer Registries in South Africa and Malawi. She is currently developing a Cervical Cancer Care Cascade and evaluated different tools for cervical cancer screening for women living with HIV in low- and middle-income settings. For her previous work, she was awarded the Robert Wenner Award by the Swiss Cancer League and received an Ambizione-PROSPER grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Alexander Börve Orthopedic Surgeon, CEO & Founder, First Derm Alexander Börve is an orthopedic surgeon. CEO and Founder of First Derm. He is a scientific researcher in the field of telemedicine and has studied the use of smartphone technology and dermatology. In 2012 he completed one of the largest telemedicine studies on skin cancer detection, using a smartphone application. The study included over 1500 patients and showed that the technology could be an effective triage tool for the early detection of skin cancer and the timely manner of treatment. First Derm has collected a unique dataset of over 250 000 “amateur” skin disease images that has been used for machine learning and is today used as a “Skin Image Search” online. Alexander lives between San Francisco, USA and Sweden. His technology to date has prevented skin cancer mortality, early detection of STD and peace of mind to worried individuals in 160 countries. AI Dermatology (https://www.firstderm.com/ai-dermatology/)
Alexandre Cuenat Director, TruthfulData Ltd and Expert, Residence, Wellcome Trust Dr. Alexandre Cuenat CEng Cphys is director of TruthfulData Ltd, a company offering services in the field of instrumentations, control, data acquisition, and modelling. He is also currently an Expert in Residence with the Wellcome Trust helping the Science, Innovation and Translation team to identify innovative solutions based on physical and digital technologies. Dr. Cuenat obtained his Engineering Physics degree and his PhD from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. He spent three years at Harvard University as a Postdoctoral Officer before moving back to CNRS as a European Research Fellow. From 2014 to 2016, he worked at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the UK's National Measurement Institute, and a world-leading centre of excellence in developing and applying the most accurate measurement standards, science and technology available. He started working on emerging nano-patterning methods before becoming the rapporteur for the UK wide Wireless Sensor Networks. He then developed and lead a team working in a range of areas: microfluidic, nanoparticle and nanotubes metrology, measurement for emerging electronic devices and renewable energy such as thermoelectric and solar cells. Dr Cuenat is a Fellow of Institute of Measurement and Control, a Fellow of the Institute of Materials and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.
Henry Hoffmann Chief Scientist, ADA Henry Hoffmann studied computer engineering at the Technical University of Berlin and since then has developed artificial intelligence technologies at several startups. He created the first prototype Ada was then later based on. During these first years he was responsible for the first generations of reasoning models and reasoning engines. After the AI went to production he focused as Director of Research more on the next generation of technology incorporating deeper reasoning approaches, the integration of sensors, genetics and lab results as well as creating NLP/AI technology for better supporting the knowledge acquisition.
Siddhartha Jha AI/Digital Program Manager, Fondation Botnar Siddhartha Jha is the AI/Digital Program Manager for Fondation Botnar. He grew up in India where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He gained many years of experience in Research and Development projects in technology and the healthcare industry, with a focus on mobile phones and hearing devices. He holds an MSc. in Biomedical Engineering and a CAS in Computer Science with a focus on AI and information systems, both from ETH Zurich. In recent years, Siddhartha has been closely involved in research, innovation and development of intelligent algorithms for use in hearing devices. Some of his co-authored and patented work around adaptive frequency remapping have found use in the latest digital hearing aid technology to mitigate problems accompanying profound hearing loss. Siddhartha is deeply interested in using technology and algorithms for social good. At Fondation Botnar, he is supporting digital health and artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives.
Ramesh Krishnamurthy Senior Advisor, Department of Information, Evidence and Research, World Health Organization (WHO) Dr. Krishnamurthy serves as a senior technical officer and the focal point for eHealth standardization and interoperability efforts at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. He has extensive experience in designing, implementing, coordinating, and managing national and subnational eHealth systems and services, including health information systems, emergency operations centers, and public health surveillance information systems. Dr. Krishnamurthy has also assisted numerous countries in all of the six WHO Regions in their development and implementation of national and sub-national eHealth strategies, standardization and interoperability of eHealth systems and services, and utilization of strategic information for evidence-based public health decision-making. Previously Dr. Krishnamurthy served as Senior Informatics Advisor at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. He holds many prestigious honors and awards.
Christian Lovis Chairman, Division of Medical Information Sciences, University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) Christian is professor of clinical informatics at the university of Geneva and chairman of the division of medical information sciences at the university hospitals of Geneva. He is a medical doctor board certified in Internal Medicine with special emphasis on emergency medicine, master in public health from the University of Washington, parallel education in biomedical informatics at the University of Geneva, focusing on clinical information systems, clinical data interoperability and medical semantics. Christian played an important role in the Swiss Federal strategy for eHealth and the future federal law for the shared patient record as chair of the standard and architecture and semantics working groups. He is member of the executive board of the Swiss Personalized Health network initiative. One of the focus of his team is on phenotype clinical data interoperability and semantic representation to support research, including a strong lead on computational linguistics and tools to use medical narratives and texts. He is a Fellow of the American Medical informatics association (FACMI) and medical informatics certified of the German medical Informatics Association. Christian co-authors more than 150 publications. He editor-in-chief of JMIR Medical Informatics and editorial board member of several peer-reviewed journals in biomedical informatics, such as the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA), PLOS One, Applied Clinical Informatics (ACI) and BMC Big Data Analytics. Christian was vice-chair of the board of directors of HIMSS until 2016. He is the president of the European federation of medical informatics. Christian has participated to several start-ups.
Severence M. MacLaughlin Global Head AI & Data Sciences Severence serves as the Chief of Intelligence, Vice President – Artificial Intelligence & Data Scicences, of Capgemini Invent. Dr. MacLaughlin oversees and develops the sales, solutions and delivery of Systems of Intelligence that address complex corporate opportunities driving increased productivity, financial ROI as well as enhanced regulatory compliance in the verticals of Healthcare, Life Sciences, Banking & Financial Services, Oil &Gas, Natural Resources as well as Entertainment, Retail and Consumer Packaged Goods. Dr. MacLaughlin is a thought leader in the application of Artificial Intelligence, Data Sciences & Advanced Analytics space and has helped numerous Healthcare (Payer, Provider, Technology & Government), Life Sciences (Pharma, Biotech & Medical Device) and Financial Services (Investment Banks, Hedge Funds, Private Equity and Venture Capital firms) organizations in addressing complex business challenges, resulting in improved health outcomes, better operational efficiencies, enhanced regulatory compliance, decreased costs and increased top line growth in an entrepreneurial fashion. He is well versed in Pharma operations from development, clinical trials to regulatory and go to market events. In the Healthcare space, Severence is seen as a trusted advisor to the CXO's in aiding digitization of Medical Operations for Hospitals and Providers as well as increasing health outcomes for the Payer Community. Dr. MacLaughlin is one of the top ranked Life Sciences/Healthcare Data Scientists globally (Ranked among top 20 Life Sciences Data Scientists; Ranked #2 Healthcare Data Scientist; Ranked #1 Consulting Data Scientist in the Life Sciences and Healthcare knowledge base; Recognized as American Healthcare Leader for Q1 2018). Severence M. MacLaughlin's career is comprised of a demonstrated track record in Artificial Intelligence, Data Sciences, Operational Strategic Analytics, BioIntelligence, Competitive Intelligence, Due Diligence and Project Execution for Healthcare, Life Science and Financial Services industries. Severence's experiences encompass advising members of domestic and foreign governments on policy development for Technology Development (Artificial Intelligence), Healthcare, Life Sciences & Education (USA, UK, France, Australia, Russia & Kingdom of Denmark). In addition to these areas of expertise, Dr. MacLaughlin has interests in helping executive's across a broad range of business sectors harness the true potential of their internal data sets to improve operational efficiency, rationalize costs and increase top line growth. Severence has advised a diverse number of industries ranging from insurance, financial services, US auto sales, franchise based businesses, agriculture, academic institutions, and other Fortune 500 companies. Dr. Severence's clients include advising the C suite of the top 25 global Health Care Insurance and Hospital Groups, the top 20 Pharma companies and two of the top Global Investment Banks. Severence manages the go-to-market, sales, solutioning and delivery of novel AI and data science accelerators in addition to advising and consulting executive integration and formulation of Data Sciences and Big Data Strategy Roadmap for these organizations. Dr. MacLaughlin has delivered over 40 new disruptive technologies and or implemented Systems of Intelligence resulting in over $1.8B in net present value to customers and an estimated $8B ROI over the next five years. In addition, Severence evaluates potential companies and technologies for acquisition and has developed a robust System for M&A and corporate restructuring activities encompassed within Due Diligence through Data Integrity (DDDI) resulting in an increased rate of return on investment (RROI) & an improved process efficiency. Prior to Capgemini Invent, Severence was the Global Head for Artificial Intelligence & Data Sciences in the Healthcare & Life Sciences verticals and Head, Artificial Intelligence Learning Institute (AILI) and Cognizant Academy of Data Sciences (CADS) at Cognizant Technology Solutions. Before his time at Cognizant, Dr. MacLaughlin served as Managing Director at MGI&I, where he brought to bear the power of data sciences and advanced analytics for telecom, automotive, healthcare, pharma and financial service clients (VC, PE, Hedge Funds) in terms of operational improvements, mergers & acquisitions and corporate restructuring. Severence earned a BS (Magna Cum Laude, Honors & Distinction in Research) at Cornell University, a Doctorate Degree (Honors, Top 1%) from the University of Adelaide and a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of South Australia, where he maintains an adjunct academic position and taught medical, dental and nursing curricula. Severence has authored over 20 international scientific papers and given invited lectures and conference papers at academic institutions as well as international scientific events. Severence is personally interested in equine, bovine and ovine genetics and breeding as well as being an accomplished equestrian and amateur polo player.
Dong Min Deputy Director, Smart Health Department of Cloud Computing & Big Data Research Institute, (CAICT) Dong Min, Senior Engineer, is the deputy director of the Smart Health Department of Cloud Computing & Big Data Research Institute in China Academy of Information and Communications Technology(CAICT). He is also the deputy secretary-general of the Internet Medical Health Industry Alliance. He joined the Health Promotion and Education Committee of the National Health Commission of China, and is the executive director of Telemedicine Professional Committee of Chinese Health Information Association. He leads the TC11 business platform and application group in China Communications Standards Association. He got his engineering master degree at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. He has a long research experience in internet medical health, mobile internet, intelligent terminal and artificial intelligence, hosting and participating in many national science and technology major projects. He is also responsible for more than ten national or industry standards, over 30 papers in domestic and foreign journals and four patents.
Fareed Mirza Head of Research, Novartis Foundation Dr. Fareed Mirza is Head of Research at the Novartis Foundation, overseeing and guiding the foundation and its partners in the generation and evaluation of evidence-based health outcomes. Prior to joining the foundation, Fareed has held various scientific roles in early research and late clinical development at Novartis. In his last role in Novartis Pharmaceutical Development, he was responsible for building scientific and clinical research capabilities across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Prior to his extensive drug R&D experience, he was a post-doctoral scientist at the University of Oxford, working in vaccine research and evaluating study endpoints in early phase clinical trials. Fareed holds a DPhil in Immunology from the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and a Masters in Immunology from Imperial College, United Kingdom.
Jochen Moninger Director of Innovation, Welthungerhilfe Jochen holds his post-graduate in human geography and economics. In 2005, he started his career in Yemen as an advisor to the German Embassy. He then worked in Togo and Sudan as Democracy & Civil Society Promoter. In 2009, he joined Welthungerhilfe (WHH) on infrastructure rehabilitation projects in Liberia. He moved to Sierra Leone where he managed an ever-growing portfolio on rural development initiatives. In January 2016 he has started as Innovation Lead of WHH headquarters at Bonn/ Berlin. His work has focused on three pillars: new business models in the aid market; institutionalizing: ideation, prototyping and scaling. One major initiative is the Child Growth Monitor as a digital innovation with the potential to disrupt the humanitarian aid market and contribute to hundreds of millions € in efficiency gains.
Hans Östholm SKaPa Initiator I am a dentist and former CEO of the public dental service in the County Council of Värmland, Sweden. I am also the initiator of the Swedish Quality Registry for Caries and Periodontal disease and I have been the Registry Manager for 12 years. At present I work as an expert with the National Board of Health and Welfare in revising National Guidelines for dentistry.
Marcel Salathé Associate Professor & Head of Digital Epidemiology Lab, EPFL Marcel Salathé is Associate Professor at EPFL and head of the Digital Epidemiology Lab. His interest lies in combining machine learning with the broad usage of online mobile technology to build innovative health systems. He is also deeply involved in online education as academic director of the EPFL Extension School.
Wojciech Samek Head, Machine Learning Group, Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute Wojciech Samek is head of the Machine Learning Group at Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, Berlin, Germany. He studied computer science at Humboldt University of Berlin, Heriot-Watt University and University of Edinburgh from 2004 to 2010, was visiting researcher at NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA, in 2009, and received the Ph.D. degree from the Technische Universität Berlin in 2014. He is associated with the Berlin Big Data Center and is an editorial board member of Digital Signal Processing. He was a co-chair of the 2017 Workshop on Deep Learning and was organizer of workshops on interpretable AI and machine learning at ICANN'16, ACCV'16 and NIPS'17. He has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, predominantly in the areas deep learning, interpretable artificial intelligence, robust signal processing and computer vision.
Reinhard Scholl ITU Reinhard Scholl is with the ITU (International Telecommunication Union), the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies. Previously he has been with Siemens, Germany and with ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute). He also served on the Board of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). He received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States.
Vasili Sofiadellis CEO, Visions2Ventures and Founder, Changemakers Lab Vasili Sofiadellis is the CEO of Visions2Ventures and the founder of Changemakers Lab, an initiative to position Lesvos as a Global Humanitarian Tech Hub, with a focus on accelerating social impactful tech solutions in mhealth and edtech. Prior to this Vasili transitioned from a professional soccer player to being a Chartered Accountant. In his time at PwC he focused on entrepreneurship, innovation and the acceleration of startups. He was also a member of the Silicon Cape´s Executive Committee in South Africa, EBAN’s European Impact Investment Committee and a founding crew member of StartupBoat.
Sameer Pujari WHO Currently with WHO, he is helping manage the mHEALTH for NCDs as part of the secretariat for the flagship WHO and ITU joint program on mHealth for Non-Communicable Diseases; Be He@lthy Be Mobile which was awarded the WHO DGs Excellence Award this year. With WHO since 2008, he has also provided technical advise and support to over 50 countries in the development of surveillance and management information systems. He is also a core member of the Health Data Forum at WHO and the co-chair of the WHO mHEALTH working group. Before coming to WHO, he worked with the US Governments health agency helping various countries build informatics systems for immunization and vaccination programs in Asia Europe and Africa. He started his career working with WHO's National Polio Surveillance Project in India for 7 years, where he led the development and implementation of various information management systems for surveillance across the country. He holds bachelor degrees in business and software engineering and a master's degree with a gold medal in management, he also has an earned fellowship in public health informatics from the US government health and human services.
Yen-Hsiang Wang Tencent AI Lab Yen-Hsiang Wang completed his PhD and postdoc training in Bioengineering at Stanford University, with a Ph.D. minor in control systems and theory. His past research interests lie in area of computational and synthetic biology, specifically in driving innovative research in application of models/algorithms to predict biomolecular systems. Yen-Hsiang is currently at Tencent AI Lab and continues to study using algorithms to increase our understanding of life. For example, he is currently working with first-tier hospitals in China to investigate how to apply deep learning algorithms in clinical setups such as pathology labs. Yen-Hsiang was Stanford Bio-X fellow, and a Siebel Scholar in 2014. His work has been published in top journals including Science, Cell Systems and Annual Review.
Thomas Wiegand HHI/Fraunhofer, Germany Thomas Wiegand is a professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Technical University of Berlin and is jointly heading the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, Berlin, Germany. He was a visiting professor at Stanford University and co-founded several startup companies. For his research and publications, he received numerous awards. Thomson Reuters named him in their list of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” as one of the most cited researchers in his field. He has been elected to the German National Acdemy of Engineering (Acatech) and the National Academy of Science (Leopoldina). He is a recipient of the ITU150 Award. Since 1995, he has been an active participant in standardization for multimedia with many successful submissions to ITU-T and ISO/IEC. In 2000, he was appointed as the Associated Rapporteur of ITU-T VCEG.
Shan Xu Engineer, Smart Health Department, CAICT Shan is an engineer from the Smart Health Department of Cloud Computing & Big Data Research Institute in China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT). She has a wealth research experience in medical information processing, artificial intelligence algorithm and industrial research in AI4H. She won first prize in Stanford Digital Health Hackathon, received the second prize in Interdisciplinary Contest In Modeling (ICM) and twice got best paper award from IEEE conferences on automated risk assessment for cardiovascular disease. She joined many national science and technology major projects and released "Medical Health IoT White Paper (2018) " & “Medical Artificial Intelligence Technology and Application White Paper". She used to support China-EU ICT Dialogue, National Informationization Plan of the 13th Five-Year Plan, and work on Smart medical industry planning in many cities across China.
Nafissa Yakubova Visiting Researcher, Facebook AI Research Nafissa Yakubova is a visiting researcher at Facebook AI Research (FAIR) exploring fundamental scientific research, and AI for good applications. With a background in medicine and human physiology, and prior professional experiences in both scientific research, and tech/ biotech startup industries, Nafissa primarily focuses on cross domain applications to explore scientific questions.