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  • Sophia

    Sophia

    Humanoid robot developed by Hanson Robotics

    Sophia is a social humanoid robot developed by Hong Kong-based company Hanson Robotics.
    As she chats with people, she emulates more than 60 facial expressions (sadness, curiosity, happiness, etc) and other social cues, thanks to a life-like face made of a delightfully-named material called frubber (“flesh rubber”).
    Hanson was working with the Hubo robotic team at Korea's KAIST public research university to give Sophia a full body.
    The software has been programmed to give pre-written responses to specific questions or phrases, like a chatbot. These responses are used to create the illusion that the robot is able to understand conversation, including stock answers to questions like "Is the door open or shut?" The information is shared in a cloud network which allows input and responses to be analyzed with blockchain technology.
    Around January 2018 Sophia was upgraded with functional legs and the ability to walk.
    In October 2017, the robot became a Saudi Arabian citizen, the first robot to receive citizenship of any country.
  • Jong-seok Lee

    Jong-seok Lee

    Former Unification Minister

    Jong-seok Lee was a former unification minister and a Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Security Council in Korea. In 1994 He became a researcher at the Sejong Institute, a private institution studying national security and inter-Korean relations. He is now a senior researcher at Sejong Institute.
    In 2000, Lee accompanied former President Dae-jung Kim to the inter-Korean summit held in Pyongyang as a special entourage. He was in charge of policy-advising at Ministry of Unification from 1996 to 2003. During the time of Moo-hyun Roh administration in March 2003, Lee was appointed as a Deputy Secretary General of National Security Council. From 2008 to 2009, Lee studied East Asia at Stanford University as a visiting scholar. He has written several books on inter-Korean policies. His works are as follows;
    <The border between North Korea and China: History and current situation, 2017>, <Peace on a Knife's Edge, 2014>, <The theories of peaceful unification between the two Koreas, 2012>, <History of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, 2011>, <Understanding Contemporary Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, 2000> , <Relationship between China and Democratic People’s Republic of Kore, 2000>, <Unification Studies in Era of the division, 1998>, <Understanding Contemporary Democratic People’s Republic of Korea: ideologies, systems, and the leader, 1995>, <A study of workers' Party of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, 1995>.
    He holds both bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in public administration from Sungkyunkwan University. In 1993, he earned a doctoral degree in political science with specialization in North Korean politics.
  • Robert Edwin Kelly

    Robert Edwin Kelly

    Professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy at Pusan National University

    Dr. Robert E. Kelly is an professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy at Pusan National University in South Korea.
    His research interests focus on security in northeast Asia, US foreign policy, and international financial institutions.
    He has written for outlets including Foreign Affairs, the European Journal of International Relations, The New York Times, and the Economist. He regularly provides commentary for television news services including CNN, ABC, BBC, and Arirang.
    Dr. Kelly in 1994 graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Miami University with a BA in history and political science, before graduating from Ohio State University with an MA in international relations in 2002, and Ph.D. in international relations in 2005.
    He briefly became famous last year when his child interrupted him live during a BBC News interview.
  • David Hanson

    David Hanson

    Hanson Robotics Founder

    David Hanson has built a worldwide reputation for creating the world’s most humanlike, empathetic robots, endowed with remarkable expressiveness, aesthetics and interactivity.
    He has produced many renowned, one-of-a-kind robot characters including Sophia and Prof. Einstein. Hanson worked with KAIST laboratories in Korea, the makers of the HUBO series of robots.
    This collaboration produced the Einstein HUBO, a walking android with the body of a HUBO robot and the face of Albert Einstein.
    The Einstein HUBO was the first android with a mobile humanoid body as well as humanoid face.
    He has been labeled a “genius” by both PC Magazine and WIRED and has earned awards from NASA, NSF, AAAI, Tech Titans’ Innovator of the Year, and Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial.
    At Walt Disney Imagineering, Dr. Hanson worked as both a sculptor and a technical consultant.
    He has spoken at venues including IEEE, SPIE, AAAI, DARPA, MIT, Dartmouth, Brown, Google, Sandia Labs, UCSD and AAAS annual meeting.
    Dr. Hanson received his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in film/animation/video, and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas in interactive arts and engineering.
    Dr. Hanson sits as the Founder and CEO of Hanson Robotics and as the Robotics Lead at SingularityNET.
  • Ben Goertzel

    Ben Goertzel

    CEO of SingularityNET

    Ben Goertzel is the founder and CEO of SingularityNET, a blockchain-based AI marketplace. Sophia, the robot-humanoid has been partly developed by him together with Dr. David Hanson, and he is called an AI visionary and the father of Artificial General Intelligence.
    Goertzel is also the Chief Scientist of robotics firm Hanson Robotics; Chairman of AI software company Novamente LLC, which is a privately held software company; Chairman of the Artificial General Intelligence Society and the OpenCog Foundation(A project that aims to build an open source artificial intelligence framework).
    Scientific Advisor of biopharma firms Mozi AI Health and Genescient Corp.
  • Jun-ho Oh

    Jun-ho Oh

    Professor at Mechanical Engineering Department at KAIST

    Jun-ho Oh is a distinguished professor of mechanical engineering and the director of Humanoid robot research center(Hubo Lab) at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).
    Oh performed many industry and government research projects in motion control, sensors, microprocessor applications, and robotics, etc.
    He is especially interested in mechatronics and system integration.
    In the past ten years, he completed unique humanoid robot series KHR-1, KHR-2, Hubo, Hubo 2, DRC-Hubo and DRC-Hubo+.
    Oh also developed Albert Hubo and Hubo FX-1. His team won DARPA Robotics Challenge 2015.
    Oh is currently working on improving the performance of humanoid robot for faster and more stable walking, robust robotic system integration and light weight design, etc.
  • Ariel Luedi

    Ariel Luedi

    Founder of HammerTeam

    Ariel Luedi was for eleven years the CEO and major shareholder of hybris software, which assumed the position of the global leader in omni-channel commerce software.
    A journey which lead to SAP acquiring the company for $1.5bn in August 2013.
    Ariel was before the Senior Vice-President of European Sales at salesforce.com, the global pioneer of cloud based enterprise solutions, where he built up the European organisation from scratch.
    Ariel entered e-commerce in early 1996 at BroadVision were he built up and led the European sales organisation, joining at a time when e-commerce was still in its infancy.
    Other milestones in his career include seven years at Oracle as Head of Sales and Product Marketing in Switzerland, during a time when Oracle was still small and the future of relational database systems uncertain.
    He joined Oracle from IBM, his first position after studying physics at ETH in Zurich. Today he is leading his own growth accelerator fund, the Hammer Team, which is investing and coaching a group of 20 innovative software startups.
  • David Ham

    David Ham

    CEO of Scanetchain

    David Ham is the Chief Executive Officer of Scanetchain which is a company that is developing an innovative AR + Blockchain Platform that will feature industry leading business models for advertising, commerce, content distribution, and social network. His key mandate is to lead the team on a broad scale by expanding the business through strategic global partnerships, and establishing key revenue generating strategies through quick commercialization.
    David is the former Head of Global Business Development for Blockchain at Samsung, where he lead the key growth strategy for Samsung’s global Blockchain business, covering Asia Pacific, EMEA, and North America by developing strategic partnerships with organizations such as Amazon AWS, Hyperledger Foundation, and Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.David has been involved in the Blockchain industry since 2010 and has more than 15 years of experience in ICT, Telecommunications, and Enterprise Mobile Solutions and has held positions in sales management, business development, and strategic planning in both Canada and Korea with companies such as Bell, Rogers Communications, and the SK Group.
    David has also established new venture start-ups in the founder and executive leadership roles in retail, mobile communications, and Blockchain.
    David holds various degrees and certifications in Communications, Network Administration and Engineering technology, from Simon Fraser University and British Columbia Institute of Technology.
  • Mike Costache

    Mike Costache

    CEO, d10e & KrowdMentor

    Mike Costache never liked being put in a box so he spent the last 20 years as an entrepreneur, investment banker, author, professor, speaker, angel investor and fundraiser for various charities. He is the co-founder & Managing Partner at KrowdMentor, a strategic investment and advisory firm empowering blockchain startups, funds and entrepreneurs to reach their funding and liquidity goals. Mike is also CEO of d10e, the leading conference on decentralization, the founder of the Blockchain Investors Consortium (BIC).
    Mike also serves on the Advisory Board of Token-as-a-Service (TaaS), the first ever tokenized closed-end fund dedicated to investments in blockchain assets. TaaS raised $7.6 million through its ICO in March-April 2017 and currently has $50 million under management after $9.2 million invested in 30 ICOs and being active with daily crypto trading.
    Since 2011, He is a member of Tech Coast Angels (TCA), a network of 330 angel investors in Southern California who have invested $185 million in 300+ deals and raised over $1.5 billion from VCs.
    From 2006 to 2011, He was the President of Leo & Leo, which represented brands such as Maserati, Segway, NetJets, PrivatSea, Sunseeker Yachts, NetSuite, Marsh, Orgil Greenhouses, Miss Universe, and Rockstar Energy Drink.
    Total sales amounted to €60 million.
    From 2000 to 2006, He served as founding CEO of Pioneer TeleCare, an e-commerce firm with revenues of $4 million. From 1998 to 2003, Mike was an Associate at WestPark Capital, The Interlink Group, Millennium Capital Partners.
    Mike holds a degree in Economics from Pepperdine University, a Graduate Certificate in Dispute Resolution from Pepperdine’s School of Law and has completed the Program on Negotiations for Senior Executives at Harvard.
  • Miko Matsumura

    Miko Matsumura

    Founder of Evercoin cryptocurrency exchange

    Miko Matsumura is a founder of crypto exchange Evercoin, is a Venture Partner with BitBull Capital, a cryptocurrency fund-of-funds. He is also an advisor to Arrington XRP Capital. He is a token holder in FileCoin, Brave, CIVIC, Propy, Polymath and an investor in Lyft. As chief Evangelist for the Java Language and Platform he participated in the first wave of the Internet, and is now fully engaged in Internet of value. As a 25 year operating exec in Silicon Valley, he has raised over $50 million in venture capital for Open Source startups and over $250M in ICO capital. He currently advises cryptocurrency startups like Naga Group ($50M ICO Stock Trading), Playkey ($10.5M Streaming Gaming), Bee Token ($15M, Decentralized AirBnB), Celsius ($50M Ether Lending), Wala (African Cryptobanking), Lottery.com (Online Lottery), Millenium ESports (ESport Gaming), Refereum ($30M Gamer Affiliate Marketing), Pundi X ($35M Payments), WiFiCoin, Guardian Circle (Decentralized Global 911 Emergency Services), Blockchain Terminal ($30M Bloomberg for Crypto) and Hub (Decentralizing Professional Social Networking). He is also an LP with Focus Ventures, a firm with over $800M under management, 9 IPOs and 44 exits. He holds an Master’s degree in Neuroscience from Yale University where he worked on abstract computational neural networks. He’s leads the Crypto Underground meetup in San Francisco and is a well known speaker at many cryptocurrency and blockchain events.
  • Sang-Baek Chris Kang

    Sang-Baek Chris Kang

    The Director of Global Cooperation Department at Korea Local Information Research & Development Institute

    Sang-Baek Chris Kang is the Director of Global Cooperation Department at Korea Local Information Research & Development Institute (KLID) under Ministry of the Interior and Safety, Republic of Korea, which supports building information-oriented societies and Smart Cities in local areas.
    He manages overall global cooperation with respect to e-Government and Smart Cities at KLID.
    For instance, he is in charge of a World Bank cooperation consulting project regarding Smart City and e-Government transformation in Cairo, Egypt. He was also a supervisor of a consulting project for sustainable local development master plan in Sidoarjo regency, Indonesia.
    He is currently an ICT expert adviser at KOICA and EDCF.
    Furthermore, he won the Ministry of the Interior and Safety Award for recognizing global facilitation of Korean e-Government export at the 50th anniversary event of Korea e-government ceremony.
    He served as a regional director for SK C&C in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He has diverse experiences in developing large-scale smart cities projects in private sectors of Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
    In addition to working at SK C&C,
    Dr. Kang formerly worked for Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST)-GTC, LG Uplus, and Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).
    He received his Bachelor's degree in Economics at Hanyang University, Korea, M.S. in Policy Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S. and Ph.D. in Information Systems at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, U.S.
  • Maximilian Musselius

    Maximilian Musselius

    An executive Director of ECR Russia

    An executive Director of ECR Russia and Co-chairman of ECR Europe, Maximilian is credited with the creation of the most successful ECR unit in the world.
    As part of ECR, developed and implemented EDI technology for the entire industry, launched master data catalogue initiative, and organizes 6 conferences annually and 7 separate working groups quarterly.
    Maximilian is the author of numerous research and analytical articles in the field of FMCG manufacturing and retail, including ECR Bluebook, EDI Bluebook, Scorecard Bluebook by ECR Russia, Global ECR and ECR-Rus Master Data Bluebook, and Global Scorecard. Prior to ECR, he held various marketing positions in International consultancies. Maximilian is a Moscow State University graduate with degrees in law and economics and speaks 6 languages.
  • Eyal Oster

    Eyal Oster

    President at MobileBridge Momentum

    Eyal Oster is a President and Founder of MobileBridge Momentum, and a strategic advisor at the Hammer Team. An entrepreneur and visionary strategist brings more than 20 years of experience and leadership roles in both software and hardware companies and startups. Recognized as one of the most innovative thought leaders, He founded MobileBridge and today as President, he continues to drive the company’s overall vision and strategy.
    He further brings a range of technology achievements including AI-Tech in which he led the development of the NASA space shuttle solid state flight recorder program which won the ‘Partner of the Year’ award for the International Space Station video compression program, and AI-Pixel, a video server and marketing video-casting focused technology startup which was taken over by Stern group NV.