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). He is also Vice 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 developed 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

Innovation director, entrepreneurship coach and theoretician of the evolution of the innovation models and tools for practice. His scientific work gained worldwide recognition and put in light the emergence of a new innovation French model but also completed the theories of two Nobel Prize Winners (Stiglitz, J., Sen. A) after having applied and adapted them to the highly collaborative processes like innovation.

His professional experience includes being the founder of Agilising Innovation, Innovation Director at AKKA Group, Deputy Innovation Director at ONERA, French Aerospace Lab, and Strategy and Development Director at the Competitive Pole SAFE – PACA region in France. Currently entrepreneur and Business Angel, Dr. Florin Paun is a founder of the Start-up and CELIDEA Consultancy.

Dr. Paun teaches his own innovation methods in International MBA and Master programmes at ISAE, Ecole de l'Air, ENAC, ESEO, Toulouse Business School. His strategies and tools aim to support the creation of the shared value between research laboratories, SMEs, multinationals, clusters and regions.

Alexandru Costescu is a medical doctor passionate about bringing medical advances to patients and healthcare specialists, and has more than ten years’ experience as a Scientific Policy Officer in the Directorate Health of DG Research & Innovation, European Commission. He has been working on various health policy areas and has managed research projects in the fields of paediatric medicines, medical diagnostics, health data, rare diseases, cancer, model organisms, etc. Currently he is focused on the transformation of healthcare systems and the uptake of personalised medicine in clinical practice. Prior to joining the EC he has worked as a family doctor and as an associated lecturer of European studies with SNSPA Bucharest. He is a graduate of the University of Medicine "Carol Davila" in Bucharest, the National School of Political Studies in Bucharest and the College of Europe. .

Senior executive in engineering, delivery and IT-compliance.Experienced in project management, delivery management, process management and strategy.

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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Remus Brad received an Engineer Diploma degree in Computer Science from the “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu (ULBS), Romania, in 1993, a M.S. degree from Université “Pierre et Marie Curie” Paris, France, in Artificial Intelligence in 1995 and a PhD. from Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 2003. Since 1994 he has joined the Department of Computer Science and Automation at the “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, Romania, where he is actually a Professor. His current research interests include Image Processing, Motion Estimation and Biomedical Imaging. As Head of the Data Communication and Marketing Department of ULBS since year 2000, he has managed and maintained the university core network and server infrastructure, developing in-house software and web-based applications. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE.

Manager with more than 20 years’ experience in the telecom industry, with expertise in a broad range of technologies, product development and innovation management. At the moment he is the Development and Innovation team manager in the Engineering department, coordinating multiple research projects in various fields such as: 5G & networks of the future, cyber security, smart cities, APIs exposure and monetizing, cloud technologies & IoT/M2M..

With more than 10 years' experience in the tech startups ecosystem, Monica facilitates Orange's relationship with innovative startups and the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Romania, through the Orange Fab acceleration program.

A Computer Science graduate with a passion for building products, she worked in startups in roles like software tester or product manager and has lead multiple startup support programs.

For over 12 years, Mihai Svasta has been working with teams that implement change and innovation projects. He has worked with dozens of companies in multiple industries - automotive, pharma, banking, oil & gas, retail, IT - in projects related to the development of new products and services, redesigning the customer experience, digitization and organizational transformation.

George Bontas obtained his Computer Science diploma from “Lucian Blaga” din Sibiu.
For more than 10 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 leading the Romanian team in building products and offering services in the Regulatory Technologies 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.

Radu Orghidan is a Computer Vision PhD from the University of Girona, Spain, and holds an Executive MBA from the University of Hull, UK. He is currently the VP of Cognitive Computing in Endava and deals with strategic innovation through cloud and on-premise cognitive computing systems.
He has a technical and business driven focus on Machine Learning, 3D sensing and Mobile Robotics. During his carrier, Radu co-founded 2 startups and managed cross-functional teams to achieve research and development objectives for customers from different industries. In his free time, Radu loves running outdoors, skiing and motorcycling..

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

Employee of Continental Sibiu since 2008 member of the "Manufacturing Innovation" department. The presentation will focus on the innovation side in the production process and the work environment. Continental INNOHUB SIBIU aims to improve existing processes using the latest technologies. The technologies used in this innovation process vary depending on the needs from "Deep Learning-Based image inspection", "Digitalization", "Collaborative Robotic Environment" to "Software Innovation".

Born 1980, Diploma in telecommunications at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He started with the international automotive supplier Continental AG in 2004. In his current position, Mr. Gruian is the head of Production Software Solutions within Automotive Manufacturing (AM) and has a strong electrical test background being a senior expert in this field. The Automotive Manufacturing is a cross-divisional organization within Continental Automotive Technologies Group, that includes dedicated central departments. His department, AM Manufacturing Innovations, is responsible for equipment software standardization, globalization of new solutions, as well as piloting emerging technologies through specific innovation projects focused on manufacturing.

Data Scientist, Florentin focuses on developing machine learning solutions for the healthcare and pharma industries. He successfully applied ML for solving complex widespread problems, such as estimating covid-19 infection rates, predicting non-attendance to doctor appointments, supporting medical diagnosis using computer vision or optimising healthcare professional targeting with recommender systems. Florentin moved to London in 2014, where he studied Medical Engineering at Queen Mary University of London, followed by several years in the industry working at organisations such as NHS, GlaxoSmithKline and now NTT DATA.

We discuss how the digital transformation of the entire process of operating a building creates benefits for both those who use them and for owners and how this transformation, extended to a city has a significant contribution to increasing the quality of life of citizens.

Control engineer with more than 12 years’ experience in industrial process control, sensors and communication protocols working in research and development projects funded by the European Commission and the European Space Agency. Currently, Andrei holds the Institutional Relations Manager role at NTT DATA Romania focusing on extending the company’s network of partners active in the research area. One of Andrei’s top priorities is to obtain external funding for research and development projects targeting smart factory, blockchain, smart city and AI topics.

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..

Lasse Berntzen is a Professor in the School of Business, University of South-Eastern Norway. Since 2003, his research has focused on the Information Society and ICT in public sector, with emphasis on e-government and e-democracy. During the last years his research has focused on smart cities and smart communities. He has been involved in several research projects on national and international level, author and co-author of several conference papers and articles, and program committee member and reviewer for some of the most important conferences within his field of research.

His current research interests include automatic assessment of e-government services, different aspects of e-participation, and the use of geographic information systems to improve public decision-making and democratic participation, and the development of smart city concepts and technology.

In 2007 and 2008, he worked on regulatory aspects of e-democracy as an expert for the Council of Europe’s Ad-hoc Committee on e-democracy. He has also been a reviewer for the European Commission. Lasse Berntzen received his Cand. Scient. degree in Computer Science from the University of Oslo. His thesis work focused on object-oriented modeling of workflow processes. Since then, he has worked both as an academic and as a computer professional. During his professional career, he has written textbooks on computer networks, systems development, and web technology. In 2009, he was appointed fellow of the International Academy, Research and Industry Association (IARIA). He has been on the steering committee of ICDS since 2007, Cyberlaws since 2010, and COLLA since 2011, CENTRIC since 2013, and SMART since 2015. He is currently a member of IFIP WG 8.5: Information Systems in Public Administration. He is also a member of AIS, ACM, and IEEE.

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.

PhD in High Performance Computing and Image Processing; academic and research activity both in Technical University of Cluj- Napoca and in computer science dedicated research institute (ITC & Software ITC), CEO in software company (Software ITC Cluj).
Coordinator of "Brained City" Group of Cluj IT Cluster and Leader of Smart City Unit / DIH4S – Cluj IT

I'm a senior software developer with over 13 years of experience.I spend the majority of my free time playing with new technologies and helping adults and children to learn about technology through programs like Coder Dojo ( https://coderdojo.com/ ) and programming courses developed by Scoala Informala de IT ( https://scoalainformala.ro/ ) The latest project I am proud to be part of is developed by Asociația Pasionați De Tehnologie. Through this project we are working on developing platforms and workgroups that help people passionate about IT to grow. .

Pr. Dr. Ing. Xavier Boucher Professor in Industrial Management at Mines Saint-Etienne. His main research orientations are focusing on Factory of the Future and Industrial-Product-Service-Systems (PSS). Active member of several scientific societies in the field of Industrial Engineering (IFAC, IFIP, SAGIP, SOCOLNET), he has participated to several EU projects, with the role of scientific coordinator for Mines Saint-Etienne for FA 4.0 (2020-2023), DIGIFoF (2019-2021), OMIKA2 (2015-2018). Prof. Boucher is Operational Director for the industrial Chair CORENSTOCK (collaboration IMT-elm Leblanc Bosch Group, 2021-2024) and he has coordinated several national research project for Mines Saint Etienne notably ANR PSS-EuroNetwork (2016-2018 MRSEI), ANR ServINNOV (2012-2015) and FUI projects. Prof. Boucher serves as Associated Editor for JDS and member of Editorial Board for IJITM. He has published more than 50 articles in international & national scientific journals or book chapters, as well as more than 100 communications in international conferences. He publishes notably in Computers in Industry, CIRP Journal of Manufacturing Science and technology, International Journal of Computer Integrated Systems, Journal of Decision Systems.

40 years old, In Continental Sibiu since 2005
2005 - 2021: Testing solutions tool developer.
2014 - present: Team Lead VNI CE SYS Sib EQP2
2018 - present: Software tool architect for testing solutions (expert at company level)
2021 : Head of Equipment Platform in BA AN CE SYS (world wide organization)

Senior executive in business consulting. Experienced in project management, process improvement, business plan evaluation and GRC audit

Busi Laurentiu (born October 29, 1983, Avrig, Sibiu). High school followed at Avrig. High School in Marsa Mathematics - Informatics (1998 - 2002) - Analyst, assistant programmer. Faculty of Sciences, Lucian Blaga University (2002 - 2006) - degree in Informatics and Economic Informatics Master in Engineering, Lucian Blaga University, Master in CAD, CAM, CAE in plastic deformation (2009-2011) Employed at SAS Sibiu (2005-2006) as a data processing and validation operator Employed at Continental since February 2007 as: test engineer (10 years 8 months), test development engineer (4 years 1 month), team leader test and mes development team (8 months) until now

Yiran Chen received B.S (1998) and M.S. (2001) from Tsinghua University and Ph.D. (2005) from Purdue University. After five years in industry, he joined University of Pittsburgh in 2010 as Assistant Professor and then was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2014, holding Bicentennial Alumni Faculty Fellow. He is now the Professor of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University and serving as the director of the NSF AI Institute for Edge Computing Leveraging the Next-generation Networks (Athena), the NSF Industry–University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) for Alternative Sustainable and Intelligent Computing (ASIC), and the co-director of Duke Center for Computational Evolutionary Intelligence (DCEI). His group focuses on the research of new memory and storage systems, machine learning and neuromorphic computing, and mobile computing systems. Dr. Chen has published 1 book and about 500 technical publications and has been granted 96 US patents. He has served as the associate editor of more than a dozen international academic periodicals and served on the technical and organization committees of more than 60 international conferences. He is now serving as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine. He received eight best paper awards, one best poster award, and fourteen best paper nominations from reputable international conferences and workshops such as MICRO, KDD, DATE, SEC, etc. He received numerous awards for his technical contributions and professional services such as IEEE Computer Society Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award, ACM SIGDA Service Award, etc. He is a Fellow of the ACM and IEEE and now serves as the chair of ACM SIGDA.

Unrooted study background from dev, network and security, through semiotics and communication, up to a PhD pathway in political sciences / conflict studies. Currently Digital Advisor for the University of Burgundy, and active IT member of the FORTHEM Alliance European University. Deep interest for everything digital, especially in relation to politics and society; as well as for sound design.

Peter Gorm Larsen is both deputy-head of section and professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Aarhus University, where he also leads the Cyber-Physical Systems research group as well as the Centre for Digitalisation, Big Data, and Data Analytics (DIGIT) and the AU Centre for Digital Twins. After receiving his M.Sc. in Electronic Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark in 1988, he worked in industry before returning to complete an industrial Ph.D. in 1995. In his industry career, as a development engineer and manager, he gave industrial courses all over the world, and saw the technology he developed be applied in areas as diverse as secure message processing and options trading. He returned to academia in 2005. His prime research goal now is to improve the development of complex mission-critical applications by implementing and applying well-founded technologies, in particular in the design of robust tools that help engineers to leverage models in early design stages to reduce overall product development risk in particular in the area of Cyber-Physical Systems. He is the author of more than 200 papers published in journals, books and conference proceedings, and several books and has an h-index at 36.

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.

Gerhard Benedikt Weiß has started to work at Virtual Vehicle after receiving his M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering at Graz University of Technology in 2016. He is a senior researcher and has a great expertise in co-simulation (Model in the loop) and real-time co-simulation (Hardware in the loop) as well as knowledge in automotive area. Recently he is managing research projects with focus on Reinforcement Learning and digital twins. Moreover, through open calls during the HUBCAP project he supported SME’s experiencing model-based design for cyber physical systems. He has collaborated in several publications with focus on holistic simulation.

Entrepreneur and specialist in technology development, Eugen learned to write software, mostly by himself, in highschool and started to work in the IT domain since he was a 1st year student at ULBS (Computer Science). His passion and desire to become a professional in the Information Technology field led him to embrace a continuous development process which transformed, in time, in a mindset. Eugen also holds a Master of Business Informatics degree and he is actively working on his PhD paper in Cybersecurity.
In the first part of his career, he had the opportunity to work with customers from all over the world and understand the praiseworthy aspects and shortcomings of small, medium and large IT companies. In 2013 he started to build companies where everything is based on strong principles and values, where people feel inspired, safe and creative, being the best in what they’re doing and carrying out their activity with joy and enthusiasm.
In the last 15 years, Eugen was involved in building high performing teams and coordinating projects as a manager in an IT corporation, his own technology company (GSD SOFTWARE & TECHNOLOGY) and other companies, as part of his consulting services.

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.

Ken is a Lecturer in the School of Computing at Newcastle University. His main interests lie in developing methods and tools for collaborative, model-based design and engineering of cyber-physical systems (CPSs). In particular, he is interested in helping engineers from multiple disciplines collaborate effectively through co-modelling and co-simulation to achieve better performing, more resilient designs across a range of domains. Recent new collaborations include investigating Digital Twins for Resilient Geoinfrastructure with the School of Engineering, and Studying Drones in Mountain Rescue with Virtual Field Trials with domain experts from Newcastle University Business School and registered charity The Centre for Search Research.

Ken is associated with the AMBER group (Advanced Model-based Engineering) the CPLab (Cyber-Physical Systems lab) and has been Convener of the Language Board of the VDM (Vienna Development Method) formal method since 2014. He is Degree Programme Director (DPD) for the Smart Systems Engineering MSc. programme. Ken is currently involved in the HUBCAP project, an Innovation Action funded by the European Commission's H2020 programme, which brings model-based design to European SMEs through an online platform and cascading funding.

He is deputy heady of the technology transfer department “fortiss Mittelstand (SME)” and coordinator for technology transfer project within fortiss. Currently he is managing several DIH related projects, all with the goal to support SMEs in their digital transformation. Previously he was a project manager at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) taking care of nationally and EU funded projects as well as industry projects in the field of communication and navigation. Holding an MSc in International Business, his main expertise lies within innovation management, entrepreneurship and internationalisation with which he is supporting research.

Mihai Neghina este lector la Facultatea de Inginerie si a lucrat in industrie in echipe de prelucrare a vocii in sisteme de telefonie, dezvoltare de module audio-video in aplicatii de screen-sharing si control de sisteme in automotive. Domeniile de interes includ prelucrarea digitala a semnalelor, comunicatii, controlul sistemelor si inteligenta artificiala

Vlad Toncian has graduated in 2012 from the “Hermann Oberth” Engineering Faculty of ULBS, majoring in Computer Science. Since then, he has activated in the Automotive Industry both in Research and Development, as Software System Test Engineer, as well as in Industrialization, as a Test Equipment Requirements Engineer.

With a strong R&D background and more than four years’ experience in Industrialization, the skill-stack acquired by Vlad allowed him to efficiently organize the daily work in projects, assuring a cohesive and stable interface between SW development and automatic industrial equipment development, designed specifically for testing and validating embedded automotive products. As side projects, for the last two years, Vlad organized the internship program for the university student and also prepared various workshops designed specifically for High School pupils inside his department.

Completing the skill stack, Vlad also has acquired the Lean Six Sigma – Green Belt Certification by IASSC and the Project Management Certification by Romanian Ministry of Labor: two additional qualifications and knowledge sources that offer a high positive impact in the daily project work activities within the Marquardt Group

Constantin-Bălă ZAMFIRESCU obtained his PhD degree in Automation from the Politehnica University Bucharest in 2007. Since 1998 he is with the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department of the “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu where he is currently leading as full professor the INCON research center, part of the regional European Digital Innovation Hub. He also worked as invited researcher in Austria, Spain, Belgium, and Germany, participating as principal investigator in many international projects. He is a member of IFAC TC 5.4 “Large scale and complex systems” and IEEE TC on Computational Collective Intelligence. He is trained in foresight methods by UNIDO. Current research interest includes multi-agent systems, cyber–physical social systems and group decision support systems.

Journalist and entrepreneur, Andrei Nistor is the owner of a company that publish a regional online newspaper, Stirile Transilvaniei and also DIGITALIO platform, a website dedicated to digitalisation, new technologies, crypto and cybersecurity.
His company is a Cluj IT Cluster member, one of the largest and best known IT business association in Romania, with more than 70 member companies and 14 Romanian universities and research institutions, focused on promoting technology based innovation across the society and the economy.
DIGITALIO is part of a winning european financing Horizon 2020 consortium, that utilizes blockchain and AI to fight disinformation.
Andrei Nistor is also a Certified Knowledge Manager, Trainer, and Coach

Daniel Homorodean is vice president of Cluj IT Cluster and CEO of Arxia, a Romanian IT company specializing in software development, consultancy, and training, with activity in many markets and subsidiaries in Africa and Latin America.
Daniel is coordinating the Internationalization working group of Cluj IT Cluster and is actively engaging in exploring new markets, support the development of partnerships and of access to opportunities in different parts of the world. He is engaged in promoting globally the Romanian digital innovation ecosystem and believes that the internationalization of the digital expertise should be a top priority of our country.

Currently SMEs Liaison Coordinator within the Cluj IT Cluster, in the last two years Paula has happily extended her responsibilities within the Digital Innovation Hub for Society (DIH4Society) as Coordinator of Market Brokerage and Internationalization, Innovation Ecosystem & Network Lead.
Paula followed up on the International Business and Economics bachelor degree obtained from Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, by building a career as an operations manager in an international industrial machinery building group. Passionate about continuous professional development, she diversified her activities towards NGO community projects and business consultancy services. Gathering more than 20 years of experience in coordinating actions at local, national and international level, Paula joined the Cluj IT Cluster team in January 2020, aiming to contribute to the stimulation and optimisation of business development and Learning & Development opportunities within the cluster.
In the current context that encourages the massive digital transformation of economy and society, Paula has an active role within the DIH4Society initiative, in services related to market brokerage, business internationalization, and international and cross-industry partnerships, dedicated to SMEs, public administration and healthcare..