DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION - A ROADMAP TOWARDS A SMARTER SOCIETY

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Christoph Meinel (Univ. Prof., Dr. sc. nat., Dr. rer. nat., *1954) is CEO and Scientific Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering gGmbH (HPI) at the University of Potsdam. Christoph Meinel is CEO and Scientific Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering gGmbH (HPI). Since April 2017, he is the Dean of the Faculty of Digital Engineering at the University of Potsdam. Christoph Meinel holds the chair of Internet Technologies and Systems.

He is engaged in the fields of cybersecurity and digital education. He has develop the MOOC platform openHPI.de, supervises numerous Ph.D. students, and is a teacher at the HPI School of Design Thinking, where he is also scientifically active in research. Earlier scientific work concentrated on efficient algorithms and complexity theory.

Christoph Meinel is author or co-author of more than 25 books, anthologies, as well as numerous conference proceedings. He has had more than 550 (peer-reviewed) papers published in scientific journals and at international conferences and holds a number of international patents. He is a member of the National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), director of the HPI-Stanford Design Thinking Research Program, honorary professor at the TU Beijing, visiting professor at Shanghai University, concurrent professor at the University of Nanjing, and member of numerous scientific committees and supervisory boards..

Adrian FLOREA obtained his MSE (1998) at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the ’Politehnica’ University of Bucharest, Romania (2005). At present he is Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the ’Lucian Blaga’ University of Sibiu, Romania. Adrian is an active researcher in the fields of High Performance Processor Design and Simulation, Dynamic Branch and Value Prediction. He has worked over 20 years in interdisciplinary national and international research projects dealing with issues such as optimization problems in different engineering domains (microprocessors systems, suspension design and reliability, energy efficiency in buildings, smart electricity), embedded systems with applicability in Smart City (smart parking, urban mobility, smart traffic), creating digital tools for supporting communities of practice, mobile computing. He has published over 7 (didactic and scientific) books and 89 scientific papers in some prestigious journals (ISI Web of Science) and international top conferences in Romania, USA, UK, Italy, Germany, China, Slovenia, Korea, Latvia, Spain, India, Poland etc. He received ‘Tudor Tanasescu’ Romanian Academy Award 2005, for the book entitled ‘Microarchitectures simulation and optimization’ (in Romanian) and ‘Ad Augusta Per Angusta’ Award for young researcher, received from ‘Lucian Blaga’ University of Sibiu in June 2007, for special results obtained in scientific research. Since 2012 he is HiPEAC affiliate member and, since 2013 he is ACM Professional member. He is researcher in the European Union’s Horizon 2020 innovation programme under grant agreement No 731724, “Infrastructure and integrated tools for personalized learning of reading skill – iRead” and is the technical coordinator of the Erasmus+ KA2 strategic project “The FoF-Designer: Digital Design Skills for Factories of the Future”. Since 2019 professor Florea is leading the HPI Knowledge Transfer Centre at ULBS.

Ramona Samson is currently working for the Chief Economist Unit at the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, European Commission. Previously, she worked as Deputy Head of Unit for 'SMEs, Financial Instruments and State Aid', providing advice as regards the design of ways to increasing private finance and closing market gaps in research and innovation investments. Until 2012, she held various positions at the Directorate-General for Trade. She holds a PhD from Copenhagen Business School

With 30 years of experience in machine building, of which 10 years in personnel management and 5 years as General Manager of a profitable company in the field of special machines, Klaus-Georg Schmidt knows the requirements of Industry 4.0.
Seriousness, trust and good ability to organize and plan are the foundation of a long-term professional relationship!

Presentation topic: The Future of Work (Skills; Business Challenges; Trends in Learning and Development in Digitalization Era + acceleration process due to Covid-19 constraints)

Speech: Survival of the fittest through disruptive changes

Gicu Benchea obtained the Computer Science Engineering Degree at UPT Timisoara in 2000 and Aviation Engineering Degree in 1996 at “Aurel Vlaicu” Military Insititute.

With 20 years of experience in Automotive Industry in development of ADAS Systems and 6 years as owner and director of Milichron SRL with focus in Engineering Services for Tier 1 Automotive Suppliers.
Milichron develops technologies for Autonomous Driving Systems.

Cristi is an antrepreneur and IT project manager, running his constantly growing IT business since 2004. Since then he ran projects for different companies across the world, from the UK to Australia, from the Netherlands to Germany or Austria. His clients come from a variety of industries, from health insurance to construction or manufacturing. As an Agile and Scrum enthusiast he brought his experience in many organizations, helping with establishing agile development processes. He is also involved in a list of philanthropy projects, organizing online school for children in remote villages or helping local hospitals with the now much needed PPEs. Cristi is fluent in Romanian, English and German.

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Mihai Sfintescu is a start-up & scale-up investment enthusiast with 25 years of successful track-record in venture capital, private equity & investment banking (M&A). He has invested in numerous companies and helped them grow as Board Director.
Currently, Mihai Sfintescu supports the European start-up ecosystem as Jury Member of European Innovation Council as well as mentor in several start-up and scale-up programs. At the same time, Mihai acts as advisor on raising finance for growth companies and private equity / venture capital portfolio management.
Until end 2015, Mihai led 3TS Catalyst Romania, a venture capital fund dedicated to Romania which made 10 successful investments. Between 2007 and 2015, Mihai Sfintescu was a Partner at 3TS Capital Partners, a leading private equity and venture capital firm that has made investments such as Avangate, a global challenger in IT sector, and Regina Maria (then called Unirea Medical Centers), a local leader in healthcare.
Prior to 2007, Mihai was an investment banker specialized in mergers & acquisitions, both at his own firm Abilito Capital and as Director and Member of the Board of Directors of CA IB Romania (now part of UniCredit Group). Mihai has participated in many transactions, including some over EUR 100 million, such as the acquisition by CEZ of Electrica Oltenia.
Mihai Sfintescu has an Executive MBA from the University of Washington (USA) and ASEBUSS Bucharest, and MS from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest.

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Studied economics with focus on IT with thesis, “Forecasting exchange rates using Neuronal Networks.”
Became technical SAP professional with Ernst & Young & KPMG. Background of 12 years SAP Consultancy from Architecture design, Set-up and Run systems, Programming, up to technical project lead for major international SAP projects.
Started in software industry in 2011 building innovative software solutions for Regulatory Reporting Business. Running Teams in Romania and Germany and partnering successfully with SAP for 10 years.

George Bontas obtained his Computer Science diploma from “Lucian Blaga” din Sibiu.
For more than 9 years George was focusing in supporting Banks in Europe in their Digital Transformation process to automate the Regulatory Reporting requirements towards local and International supervisory authorities.
Since end of 2018, George returned to Sibiu and focused on the Managing Director role for the software spin-off from BearingPoint, leading the team in building products and offering services in the RegTech space.
George believes in an agile mind set, where continuous improvement is part of the daily activity and empowered people that under the appropriate predesigned rule book will be energized to take decisions at hand and learn from them.

Vali is the co-founder of Scriptics. He has a Management degree with 2 masters (Finance and Management of European Projects).

Since 8 years ago he has been CEO of Scriptics, a software development company.

In his free time Vali likes to spend time with his dogs, travelling, chess and wrist mechanical watches lover.

Ionel has an engineering degree in Computer Science and in 2013 co-founded Scriptics Decisions.

His responsibilities in the company include managing part of the company projects and making sure that they are delivered on time.

He's also involved in customer interaction and contract negotiations.

He's a sport enthusiast and Crossfit is his game, thus he spends most of his free time in the gym.

Ioan Levitchi works for the RDA Centru since 2013 and prior to this had coordinated logistic activities in large manufacturing companies as well as consultancy companies. With a bachelor degree in Law and a master degree in Project Management, Ioan Levitchi had managed for the RDA Centru project appraisal, contracting and monitoring processes, especially SMEs investment programs. Now, Ioan Levitchi is involved in the preparation of the Smart Specialization Strategy of the Region Centru and also in the regional ERDF programming for 2021 – 2027, especially for Policy Objective 1 A Smarter Europe, being also involved in the preparation of the National Smart Specialization Strategy

Spectro:o Smart City and Digital Signage

Marius Pãtroi graduated from Lucian Blaga University and optained his diploma in Industrial Affairs Management.
So far Marius managed to accumulate more than 11 years of experience in direct sales, in the field of telecommunications working with Vodafone Romania and UPC Romania.
For more than 9 years he has been an antrepreneur, managing several direct sales teams composed of 5 to 30 people distributed in 5 counties ( SB,MS,HR,AG,BUC ).
During all this time, Marius has been active in sales on all customer segments, SOHO (0-9 ang), SME (10-49 ang), Corporate (> 50 ang), Strategic (with contractual values over 200,000 euros / year) .
Marius Pãtroi toghether with Paul Bozan are the founders of Spectroo a software development company, that since 2018 delivers on the Romanian market a digital signage platform embraced by some of the biggest retailers on the market such as Carrefour Romania. The goal is to become an international player with our product.

Currently full professor in intelligent robotics and innovation management at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Stelian Brad comes up with a complex background of about 20 years in software industry, as product or project manager, CEO, innovation manager, entrepreneur and mentor.

Stelian holds a PhD in robotics and a PhD in economics. Till now, he had the chance to lead or to be involved in 150+ research and innovation projects, as well as many institutional development initiatives. His current technological focus is on disruptive IT product-service systems, industry 4.0 and robotic intelligence. On the academic side he has published over 200 papers in journals and international conferences.

On the entrepreneurial side, Stelian led and is leading various initiatives towards collaborative and polycentric innovations, business internationalization, and international and cross-industry strategic alliances. He is also reporting contributions in consultancy projects for communities and companies on lean agile design thinking, innovation management, competitive engineering, shared value, smart specialization, and digital transformation. He was invited as speaker in many events in the fields of IT, robotics and innovation.

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15+ years automotive experience in embedded and non-embedded projects from different domains

Virgil has more than a decade of experience in adapting cutting edge tech to business needs. He has been active both in the academic field and in the business domain working on research projects, startups and company initiatives. This has taken him around the world working in business hubs such as Dubai, Beijing and many others.

Currently he works for NTT DATA in R&D, where he focuses on AI technologies and the business applications they have in all their forms both software and hardware.

He holds a PhD in Autonomous Robotics from Politehnica University of Bucharest.

Cantemir Mihu is leading the Technology Office of NTT DATA Romania SA. His goal is to help the company and its customers by leveraging market trends, customer needs, technological assets and creating the appropriate framework for innovation and collaboration towards a co-creative ecosystem

In the role of Innovation Ecosystem Manager, Loredana is responsible for developing and executing an integrated, long-term open innovation strategy. With over 12 years of identifying business opportunities and a knack for making meaningful connections, her current focus is on establishing an ecosystem of partnerships and alliances with promising start-ups.

Kensuke Ishizu is a cloud platform engineer with ten years of experience: from the R&D at the very beginning phase of the cloud technology, to the implementation of the cloud platform for the public sector. Currently, he is working at NTT Data Romania as the Head of Innovation and responsible for the expansion of NTT Data’s knowledge and solutions in Romania. He is also part of EMEA Innovation Hub, the organization that promotes digital tech business in Europe and manages Innovation Acceleration (initiative which invests in innovative PoCs by utilizing digital technology like AI, block chain and IoT).

Information security professional specialised in CERTs, incident handling, security architectures and processes with telecommunication backgrounds. Long years of industry experience provided valuable competencies and abilities that enables him in offering innovative and quality services. Currently he coordinates, develops, and evaluates security services for NTT DATA Romania. Certified by GIAC in security management and strategic planning, systems security audits and forensics, offensive security certified professional and ISO27001 implementer.

Senior Radiologist, Medical Manager of Clinical Pediatric Hospital Sibiu. "Designer" of the Laboratory of Radiology and Medical Imaging endowed with some of the most advanced devices: high end ultrasound, X-ray machines, spiral CT 128 slices and of the Neuroradiology Laboratory of the Research Department (3T MRI, angiograph, x-ray machines ) all connected to RIS/HIS and PACS

Entrepreneur with interest in the software engineering focused on European nearshore business model, exploiting innovative technologies and agile software methodologies, blended with strong ethics.With over 18 years’ experience in management and implementation of commercial and research projects rooted in fundamental research in artificial intelligence and information technology.Successfully made key-note speeches in several Business IT and Computer Science conferences in the Europe and United States.Serial entrepreneur and technology angel investor I’m interested working with creative teams delivering beautiful highly performing products and services.

A mathematician and computer scientist by education, with a PhD in Engineering and Management, Gabriela has taken over the responsibility of managing the Research & Innovation Department of ROPARDO, mainly coordinating the activities related to research projects. With more than 10 years of experience as a Computer Science teacher, she is leading initiatives regarding ROPARDO talents.Gabriela strongly believes that innovation is an investment in human capital, thus she has contributed massively to what is now an employee-oriented company culture resulting in valuable human resources, continuous improvement, key employee retention and development, friendly environment and high performance..

More than 15 years in HR field, mainly involved in learning, training and organizational development activities. With a psychology background, I’m passionate about human behavior and how can we change our future by using a very special tool – the learning tool

Bian Alexandru is a Team Leader with 10 years of experience working alongside 4500+ employs. Alex specializes in automating the factory of tomorrow, industry 4.0, Collaborative robots and different specific technologies used in Continental. He is responsible for a team of 12 engineers and 24 technicians, that assure the well function of the shop floor machines and also responsible for research and development projects. Alex is a powerful force in the workplace and uses his positive attitude and tireless energy to encourage others to work hard and succeed. Alex is inspired daily by his son Filip, In his free time, Alex likes to hike, listen to music and discover local food and drinks

Iris thrives in the area of Industrial Psychology and Human Relations for the past 8 years. If she is not practicing Human Relations, she is selling it. As most of her experience is built on working from the Philippines and start-up companies, this opened her to work with international culture which strengthened her corporate skills. Iris attained 3 management programs from Harvard Business Publishing and holds 1 active publication from Amazon.com about Tourism in Sibiu as a collection from her initial 6-month residence in Romania. Currently, she freelances for chatbot projects and she loves running the Performance Management process in Continental alongside fun and exciting projects which her colleagues enjoy

Safe Driving towards "Vision zero"

38 years old, In Continental Sibiu since 2005, working as tool developer (SW and HW tools) and Team Leader of the tool development team. As tool development team, my team is responsible for introduction in our organization of new tools (own developed or integration of off the shelf tools). Introduction of the new tools is necessary as reaction to the continuous evolution of the automotive industry (new car features, new communication interfaces, reduced development and testing time.

New developments in the Automotive industry raised a new demand for better approaches on product validation techniques. The Offline Analysis Toolchain enables the deployment of big data analisys algorithms that address the increased complexity of required validation scenarios.

I am Lucian Rusu and I am a team leader in Continental Automotive Systems Sibiu. Having more than 10 years of experience in IT, being a passionate coder and staying connected with the IoT world, I’ve dedicated my last few years working on “the factory of the future” concept in Conti Sibiu. My passions are of course linked with everything that “flies, moves, speaks or see” in the robotics, IoT & AI world.

I get in love with ML and security in 2001, starting an exclusive career in security just in 2013. I will try to summarise the Good and Bad of Machine Learning in Cybersecurity from my own perspective.

Starting with 2020 Daniel Reisenauer joined Visma Romania as Managing Director. He has 15 years of experience in the BPO industry managing multiple Global Clients and Delivery Centers. Daniel is a disruptor, driving 'as a service' transformations with focus on growth and business outcomes.

With experience in a wide range of work areas, from IT Management to Electrical Engineering Power Plant Technologies and even Research and Development in Automotive Industry, I have constantly focused on developing innovative and sustainable partnerships. Identifying efficient ways and methods of training and working with others I have aimed to build knowledge networks between stakeholders from both private and institutional areas.
Only driven by great ideas one can obtain sustainable development.

Paul is experienced in Autonomous Driving (deep learning, computer vision, real time programming), Industrial IoT and operating systems (Linux, QNX). He is a Software Engineer since 2004. Since 2010 he is a Software Architect, contributing to various AD/ADAS, as well as connected vehicles (V2X) projects for Volvo, BMW, VW and General Motors.

Pandemia SARS-CoV2, reprezintă o inimaginabilă provocare la nivel populațional și medical. Schimbările majore ale societății în această etapă, se regăsesc în toate planurile profesionale dar mai ales în plan medical. Profesie eminamente socială, de interrelație medic-pacient, de empatie și comunicare face-to-face, activitatea medicală s-a transformat radical în telemedicină, medicina la distanță, greu acceptată de pacienți. Activitatea de învățare a viitorilor medici, parcurge și ea o etapă nouă de învățare, lipsită de practica obișnuită ”la patul pacientului”. Prin prezentarea de față, voi aduce argumente pivind impactul acestor schimbări asupra actului medical și posibile consecințe în perspectiva următorilor ani în domeniul medical

Iustinian Sovrea (PhD, PMP). I am the CEO of jpard, a technology company in Cluj-Napoca. During my last 17 years of experience I was involved in projects in different fields such as research, diplomacy, communities building initiatives, and IT projects. I have a PhD in Philosophy and I am a certified PMP. My areas of expertise include strategic planning, strategy execution, business management and process optimisation. All these mentioned areas are impacted by the evolution of AI, therefore I will focus in my presentation on the disruptions that occur and how the decision-making process evolves.

Ana Correia has been an Economist in DG Research and Innovation (Chief Economist unit) since 2016. Her policy and research work focuses on digitalisation, intangibles, business dynamics, innovative entrepreneurship and access to capital for innovation. She has actively contributed to the 2018 and 2020 editions of DG R&I´s flagship report "Science, Research and Innovation Performance of the EU". Previously, she was R&I country-desk for Austria, Portugal and Denmark in the context of the European Semester cycle of economic policy coordination, and also had coordination roles in H2020 Policy Support Facility activities. She is currently DG R&I´s coordinator of the relations with the OECD STI department. Other past experiences include the study of the determinants of export capacity of Portuguese firms in the Research department of the Portuguese Ministry for Economy and Innovation, and field work in Microfinance and Entrepreneurship in East-Timor. Ana is also passionate about communication, evidence-based "storytelling" for policymaking, and data science. Ana holds a MSc in Economics from Nova School of Business and Economics, Lisbon.

Lukas Borunsky has worked as economist in the Chief Economist unit of DG Research and Innovation since 2018. After joining the European Commission in 2015, he spent his first three years in the Strategy unit for Key Enabling Technologies. Before coming to Brussels, Lukas worked in Europe's largest application-oriented research organization Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. He worked at the Fraunhofer Center for International Management and Knowledge Economy in Leipzig on evaluation of locations for R&D centres and technology transfer

Patrick McCutcheon is a senior expert on IP and competition policy at the European Commission Department for Research and Innovation. He is responsible for the review of the impact of competition policy on innovation and antitrust and merger cases involving innovative firms. He holds master degrees in chemistry, business administration and law from respectively the National University of Ireland, Edinburg Business School and the University of London.

“Resilience” is the next evolutionary phase of business continuity. What is resilience and how does it differ from traditional perspectives on organizational response to disruptive events?

Beniamin Mincu is the Co-founder & CEO of Elrond, perhaps the most scalable blockchain architecture in the world. Elrond is designed from scratch to bring a 1000-fold improvement in performance compared to Bitcoin or Ethereum, and solve the scaling problems that have prevented blockchain adoption. Through Elrond, Beniamin attempts to accelerate the advent of a high-bandwidth, transparent, digital financial system, and make it accessible to anyone, anywhere. A relentless tech entrepreneur and visionary, he is one of the early blockchain pioneers in Europe, involved since 2014 in the NEM.io core team, co-founder of Metachain Capital, and investor in several well-known blockchain startups like Binance, BAT, and Tezos.