Laurent Brisedoux - Senior Manager, Amazon
Laurent has been heading the Amazon R&D team in Cambridge, part of the Lab126 organization, since its creation in 2014. His group is responsible for developing software for Amazon’s consumer electronic devices such as Cloud Cam, Echo Look, Echo Show and many more innovative products to come. Prior to that, Laurent was in charge of the development and productisation of imaging technologies at Broadcom. He joined the Broadcom Mobile Multimedia group in 2004 with the acquisition of Alphamosaic, one of the Silicon Fen ’success stories’. Laurent is also a junior angel investor and working with several technology startups in the Cambridge area.
Phil Claridge is a ‘virtual CTO’ for hire within Mandrel Systems covering end-to-end systems. Currently having fun and helping others with large-scale AI systems integration, country-wide large scale big-data processing, hands-on IoT technology (from sensor hardware design, through LoRa integration to back end systems), and advanced city information modelling. Supporting companies with M&A ‘exit readiness’, due-diligence and on advisory boards. Past roles include: CTO, Chief Architect, Labs Director, and Technical Evangelist for Geneva/Convergys (telco), Arieso/Viavi (geolocation), and Madge (networking). Phil’s early career was in electronics, and still finds it irresistible to swap from Powerpoint to a soldering iron and a compiler to produce proof-of-concepts when required.
Richard Dearden - Head of AI Digital Health, AstraZeneca
Richard is a Senior Director in R&D Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at Astrazeneca in Cambridge, UK. He leads a team doing a wide variety of data analytics, artificial intelligence and optimisation projects in the areas of clinical trial design and clinical supply chain. Richard is also an industrial advisor for the University of Birmingham-based National Centre for Nuclear Robotics. He has spent six years in industry, previously working at Schlumberger’s Cambridge Research Centre where he led a robotics and AI team working on drilling automation and other oilfield applications.
Prior to joining Schlumberger, Richard was Reader in Intelligent Robotics at the University of Birmingham, where he was a principal investigator on a number of UK and European-funded research projects, including work on robotic manipulation with the German Space Agency, DLR, and on autonomous underwater vehicles with the National Oceanographic Centre. He has over 70 academic publications in the field of artificial intelligence, largely in the areas of automated planning under uncertainty, robotics, machine learning and fault diagnosis.
From 1999 until 2005 Richard worked as a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Centre, and for part of that time ran the Model-based Diagnosis and Recovery Group. He worked primarily on the Mars Exploration Programme, including work on planning daily activities and fault diagnosis for Mars rovers. His team also developed the Livingstone 2 fault diagnosis engine which was used for a number of project including being successfully deployed on-board the EO-1 satellite mission.
Richard studied Computer Science at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and obtained his doctorate on Markov decision problems and reinforcement learning in structured worlds from the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Gunter Haberkorn - Senior Manager Product & Technology, Magna International
Gunter works in the Corporate R&D Department and has years of experience in complete vehicle engineering. He is looking into Product and Technology trends within the automotive industry with a special interest in autonomy, mobility solutions, manufacturing and electrification and especially technologies which can support advancements in these areas.
Vaiva Kalnikaite - Founder, Dovetailed
Dr Vaiva Kalnikaite is the founder of Dovetailed and an expert on behaviour design for human-machine interactions for artificial intelligence, internet of everything and digital environments. She holds a PhD in Human Computer Interaction and has worked for companies like Microsoft, PARC and GE. She recently appeared on BBC Click and in the Stylist Magazine. She is an RSA fellow.
Peter Whale - Senior Advisor, UK5G, Founder, Vision Formers
Peter is Senior Advisor at UK5G, where he has been leading work on inter-project collaboration, along with supporting a wide range of other UK5G delivery initiatives.
Peter is also Founder & CEO of Vision Formers, the specialist consultancy that helps visionary technology businesses get product to market and turn ideas into reality.
Vision Formers works with start-ups and scale-ups, providing significant expertise in accelerating business growth through a focus on developing a robust product strategy, growing and coaching product and development teams, and providing operational excellence. Peter has a long track record of conceiving, developing and marketing successful technology-based solutions, deployed at scale, globally. Innovative products Peter has brought to market in digital, cloud, AI, consumer electronics and telecommunications have been used by countless millions of people on a daily basis globally, badged by the world’s leading digital and technology brands. Peter is a board member of CW (Cambridge Wireless), and co-leads its Artificial Intelligence special interest group.
