Helga Nowotny

Professor emerita of Science and Technology Studies, ETH Zurich and founding member and former President of the European Research Council

Helga Nowotny is Professor emerita of Science and Technology Studies, ETH Zurich, founding member and former President of the European Research Council. She has held teaching and research positions at universities and research institutions in several countries in Europe and continues to be actively engaged in research and innovation policy at European and international level. She received multiple honorary doctorates including from the University of Oxford and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Her latest publication “In AI we Trust. Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms” has been published by Polity Press in September 2021.

Sandeep Nulkar

Founder | BITS Private Limited

Sandeep Nulkar is the Founder and CEO of one of India’s oldest translation companies, BITS Private Limited and the Co-founder of Vernac Language Technologies that developed India’s first crowdsourced translation platform. He was recently re-elected as the President of India’s language industry body, CITLoB. Sandeep is the first Asian to receive the Outstanding Contribution to the Language Industry Award at the ATC’s Annual Language Industry Summit in 2016 and is also a recipient of the Udyami Award for Entrepreneurship in 2017. Sandeep has served on the Advisory Board of the Rajya Marathi Vikas Sanstha, a body constituted by the Ministry of Education, Government of Maharashtra.

Breandan O Broin

Founder at Company of Words

Breandán Ó Broin is a writer by trade, working in English and Irish. Following an advertising career as an international Creative Director, he founded Company of Words, a communications consultancy, in 2003. He first worked for Translated in Rome in 2018 as an Irish language ‘Transcreator’. He advises State and Semi-State Organisations and corporate and brand clients on the implementation of the Irish Language Act and on integrating the language into internal and external communication strategies. He also works as a media commentator, journalist and as a book editor. He was awarded an Honours MA Degree in Screenwriting in 2009. Breandán lives in Dublin and works where the world takes him.

Language Surveys – Ireland

Florencia Olivera

Freelance English to Spanish (Latam) Translator, Legal, Marketing, SEO content

Florencia Olivera is an English to Spanish (LatAm) freelance translator based in Uruguay specialized in legal, marketing and SEO content translation and localization. She graduated as a Sworn Translator from Universidad de la República in 2018. Since then, she has been dedicated to helping companies and brands communicate to their Spanish-speaking audience by translating their content accurately and effectively, always striving for high quality work. I have a diverse client portfolio which includes international translation agencies, luxury products brands, advertising agencies, NGOs, and travel and leisure companies, among others.

How is AI perceived globally? In your culture?

Michaël Oustinoff

Professor in Translation Studies

Michaël Oustinoff is associate Professor in Translation Studies at the Institute of the Anglophone World, University of Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle and currently on sabbatical leave at the ISCC, the Institute for Communication Sciences of the CNRS.

Vivekanand Pani

Co-founder, Reverie Language Technologies

Vivek is the Co-Founder and CTO of Reverie Language Technologies, a company specializing in text and speech technologies for Indian languages.  With more than 20 years of experience in Indian Language Computing, Vivek is one of the very few subject matter experts who are passionate and dedicated to making usage of Indian languages easy on digital platforms. Vivek began his Indian language journey at the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Pune, in the year 1997. His journey spans across developing advanced multilingual tools for early computing devices and word processing software for computers to leading today’s state of the art AI-driven Indian language technologies like Automated Speech Recognition, Machine Translation, Text-to-Speech, Natural language.

Daniel Pimienta

Responsible at the Observatory of Linguistic & Cultural Diversity on the Internet.

Daniel Pimienta is a board member and former Exec. Sec. of the World Network for Linguistic Diversity (MAAYA). He manages the Observatory of languages and cultures on the Internet since 1989 being a pioneer in cyber-metrics and the measure of the space of languages in the Internet. He was given, in 2008, the Namur Award for his comprehensive actions in the perspective of a positive social impact of ICT.

Valentina Rava

Internship at Human Technopole

Valentina Rava is an undergraduate student, she is doing her internship at Human Technopole. She has a bachelor’s degree in Medical Biotechnology, She is about to take a master’s degree in Medical Biotechnology and Molecular Medicine. At the moment, her research is mainly centered around studying neuronal maturation in non-human primates and humans.

Adebola Rayo

Storyteller | Communications Professional

Adebola Rayo is a storyteller. She is the co-founder of Asterism, a communication company where she and her team work on projects that mix storytelling with other art forms. Her work has appeared in the Lagos Noir anthology, The Republic Journal, Quramo Report, and Saraba Literary Magazine amongst others. She is driven by a belief that nuanced stories have the power to build the future. She has an LL.B from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and a master’s degree in Corporate and Marketing Communications from IE Business School, Spain.

How is AI perceived globally? In your culture?

Andrea Santilli

PhD student in NLP @ Sapienza

Researcher in NLP and Language Models: first author of Jacobi Decoding which now doubles LLMs decoding speed (extended and adopted by lmsys); co-author of instruction-tuning (T0) now adopted in every LLM training (including ChatGPT). Contributor to Open Source and Open Science projects (250+ stars on GitHub).

When Speed Meets Precision

Silvio Severino

NLP Engineer

I am a second-year PhD Student in Natural Language Processing at the Sapienza University of Rome, where I am part of the GLADIA research group, led by prof. Emanuele Rodolà. I spend a lot of time studying Natural Language Processing technologies. In particular, my research fields are Multilinguality, Machine Translation and Geometric Deep Learning.

When Speed Meets Precision

Blessing Sibanda

Software Engineer || Researcher

Blessing Sibanda is a Natural Language Processing researcher at Masakhane since its inception in 2019. He has been working on creating language datasets for tasks such as Named Entity Recognition, Part of Speech and machine translation for low resource African languages, specifically Shona, his native language from Zimbabwe. He is passionate about the involvement and empowerment of native language speakers to work on language technologies for their language.

Elena Taverna

Research Group Leader at Human Technopole

Elena Taverna is a Group Leader at the Neurogenomics Research Centre. Elena obtained her degrees in Biology at the University of Milan and she completed her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology at the CNR’s Neuroscience Institute in Milan. From 2006 to 2015, she worked as post-doc researcher in the group of Wieland Huttner at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, studying neural stem cells and brain development. From 2016 to March 2021 she was a Senior Staff Scientist and Project Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, working in the team lead by Svante Pääbo. At the MPI-EVA Elena studied the evolution of neuron structure and function in apes and humans. Following up on her previous work, she also developed a robot for the high throughput analysis of single neural stem cells in tissue. At the HT, Elena uses advanced robotics combined with multimodal analysis paradigm to understand brain development and evolution at the single cell level.

Alifya Thingna

Marketing Communications and Brand Awareness for a B2B2C FinTech

Alifya started her career as a professional French-English translator in 2014 and quickly rose to becoming an integral part of the sales and marketing strategy team at BITS Private Limited and BITS International, as she proactively championed language industry initiatives and took on more challenging responsibilities. A passionate culture enthusiast and a strong advocate of women empowerment at heart, she also co-founded a language technology startup in 2019 (subsidiary of BITS) and took on a voluntary marketing role in the India chapter of Women in Localization. This year, she was invited to head a new division at BITS as the Chief Business Officer, where she will not only closely monitor the sales and marketing verticals, but will also look after the content strategy and the entire communication lifecycle for aspiring brands.

Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún

Linguist, writer | Helping African languages grow on the internet through research, technology, literature, education, advocacy, translations, documentation, and lexicography.

Linguist, creative writer, teacher, and project manager with over a decade-long experience in language technology, research, localisation, translation, literature, art & culture, and language advocacy for African (and Nigerian) languages.

Making Machines Speaking in Yoruba

Eugenia Urrere

Founder at Indigenius | Localization Project and Vendor Manager | Degree in Social Communications

Eugenia Urrere is a social communicator, a self-taught and tech-loving entrepreneur. Since 2018, she has been dedicated to the revitalization and digitization of indigenous languages in Latin America through her work in an NGO. In 2020, Eugenia founded Indigenius, a company committed to fostering fair employment opportunities for communities, digitizing indigenous languages, and raising awareness about underrepresented linguistic diversity.

Indigenous Language Revitalization: a journey of localization

Jaap Van der Meer

Owner, TAUS and Information Technology and Services Consultant

Jaap Van der Meer is a language industry pioneer and visionary, who started his first translation company in The Netherlands in 1980. In 2005, Jaap established the Translation Automation User Society (TAUS), along with founding members from most of the leading IT companies. TAUS has become the language data network offering the largest industry-shared repository of data, deep know-how in language engineering, and a network of Human Language Project workers around the globe. TAUS mission today is to empower global enterprises and their service and technology providers with data solutions that help them to communicate in all languages, faster, better, and more efficiently.

Ersilia Vaudo

Space, STEM, European Space Agency, Presidente Il Cielo Itinerante

Ersilia Vaudo Scarpetta graduated from the Sapienza University of Rome with a degree in Astrophysics. For many years, she has been working for the European Space Agency, where she now holds the position of Chief Diversity Officer and Special Advisor on Strategic Evolution. Her professional journey has also taken her to Washington, where she spent 4 years managing ESA relations with NASA. She has received numerous accolades, including the Tecnovisionarie 2020 International Prize. In 2021, she was included in the InspiringFifty list, which recognizes the 50 most influential women in the field of science and technology in Italy. In 2022, she curated the 23rd International Exhibition of Triennale Milano, titled Unknown Unknowns. She is the president and co-founder of the association Il Cielo Itinerante (The Wandering Sky), which promotes STEM literacy by “taking the sky where it doesn’t reach”, to boys and girls in troubled areas affected by educational poverty.

Paolo Venturi

Director of AICCON and The FundRaising School

Paolo Venturi is the director of AICCON and The FundRaising School. Professor in social entrepreneurship and social innovation at the University of Bologna. He is member of the Scientific Committee of the Symbola Foundation, of Corriere Buone Notizie and of the Social Impact Agenda for Italy. Member of the Social Cooperation Council of Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna. Co-Author with Flaviano Zandonai of numerous publications including “Neomutualism”, “DOVE. The dimension of place that recomposes business and society” and “Hybrid companies. Models of social innovation to regenerate values” published by Egea. He collaborates with numerous newspapers and blogs including Il Sole 24 Ore, Il Corriere della Sera and Vita Magazine.

Guido Vetere

Knowledge and Language Research

Guido Vetere graduated in Philosophy of Language under the guidance of Prof. Tullio De Mauro at Rome Sapienza University, with a dissertation on computational linguistics. Then he spent most of his career at IBM Italia, where he has been leading the Center for Advanced Studies in Rome and Trento. He is now Adjunct Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Technologies of the University of Guglielmo Marconi in Italy and head of Isagog Srl, an Italian AI startup. His research interests range from logic, knowledge representation and automated reasoning to computational linguistic models and resources.

Andy Way

Full Professor in Computing @ Dublin City University | Co-founder & Deputy Director ADAPT Centre | Machine Translation & AI Thought-Leader | MT journal editor 2007-21 | EAMT President 2009-15 | IAMT Award of Honour 2019

Prof. Andy Way served as President of the European Association for Machine Translation from 2009-2015, and was President of the International Association for Machine Translation from 2011–13. He has been Editor of the Machine Translation journal since 2007. He is currently editing a series of six books for Springer in the area of Machine Translation, with two already published. Prof. Way’s research interests include all areas of machine translation: statistical MT, example-based MT, neural MT, rule-based MT, hybrid models of MT, MT evaluation, teaching MT.

Tess Whitty

Certified English into Swedish translator | Localizer and transcreator with SEO skills for engaging digital text that inspires and converts | UX Writer

Tess Whitty is English-Swedish freelance translator specializing in digital marketing, software and website localization. She has a Master of Science in Economics and a Master of Arts in marketing and previously worked as a marketing manager. She shares her knowledge and experience in marketing and business as an award-winning speaker, trainer, consultant, author, and podcaster.

Rachmadhina Insan Widyapianissa

Freelance Copywriter | Tarot Reader | Pop astrology content creation

Rachmadhina Insan Widyapianissa is currently living her life as a freelance copywriter by dawn and tarot reader by dusk while roaming around here and there.

Eva Xavier

Youth Participation Activist

Eva Xavier is a sixteen-year-old student in year 11 from Madeira, Portugal, she has been actively engaged in various initiatives since she was in year 7. Making a personal commitment to participate in every opportunity available, she now finds herself representing her region in the Conselho Nacional de Crianças e Jovens, the national Portuguese youth council. Her involvement has led her to contribute to diverse documents, such as the Strategy of the Rights of the Child 2022-2027, where she represented Portugal at the launch conference in Rome, and to participate in a youth meeting with the President of Portugal last November. Eva volunteers at TED events in her city and was a speaker last year. Most recently, she talked at Future Days. Her mission as a youth participation activist is to ensure that every individual has a voice. Her primary objective is for every young person to not only be acknowledged but also to feel genuinely seen. Through her participation in various youth political projects, she strives to raise awareness of numerous concerns, particularly ensuring that as many people as possible are included in governmental plans.

How is AI perceived globally? In your culture?

Andrea Zaccaria

Researcher at Complex Systems Institute

Andrea Zaccaria is a researcher at the Institute for Complex Systems (ISC)-CNR and consultant at the International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group). He received his PhD in Physics at the “Sapienza” University of Rome, where he applied concepts and methods borrowed from statistical physics and the physics of complex systems to the study of financial markets. His present interests include the study of complex networks methodologies, algorithmic tools, machine learning, and their application to development economics.

Paulina Zguda

PhD candidate in philosophy at the Doctoral School in Humanities at Jagiellonian University

Paulina Zguda is a cognitive scientist and currently a PhD candidate in philosophy at the Doctoral School in Humanities at Jagiellonian University. Her main research interest is how people react to social robots, and in particular, how their aesthetics – design, movement and additional factors (e.g. possible clothing) – determine people’s perceptions of these artificial agents.