Robert S. Langer is one of 12 Institute Professors at MIT; being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member. Dr. Langer has written more than 1,480 articles. He also has over 1,360 issued and pending patents worldwide. Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 400 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies. He is the most cited engineer in history (h-index 272 with over 304,000 citations according to Google Scholar). He served as a member of the United States Food and Drug Administration’s SCIENCE Board, the FDA’s highest advisory board, from 1995 — 2002 and as its Chairman from 1999-2002. Dr. Langer has received 34 honorary doctorates, including degrees from Harvard University, Yale University and Columbia University.

Dr. Langer has received over 220 major awards. He is one of 4 living individuals to have received both the United States National Medal of Science (2006) and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2011). In 1998, he received the Lemelson-MIT prize, the world’s largest prize for invention for being “one of history’s most prolific inventors in medicine.”

Forbes Magazine (1999) and Bio World (1990) have named Dr. Langer as one of the 25 most important individuals in biotechnology in the world. Discover Magazine (2002) named him as one of the 20 most important people in this area. Forbes Magazine (2002) selected Dr. Langer as one of the 15 innovators worldwide who will reinvent our future. Time Magazine and CNN (2001) named Dr. Langer as one of the 100 most important people in America and one of the 18 top people in science or medicine in America (America’s Best) and Parade Magazine (2004) selected Dr. Langer as one of 6 “Heroes whose research may save your life.”

Pam Melroy is an aerospace executive with government and industry experience across civil, commercial, and national security space. She is a retired Air Force test pilot and former NASA astronaut, and one of only two women to command the Space Shuttle.

Colonel Melroy received a Bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College and a Master of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was a United States Air Force pilot and test pilot with more than 6,000 hours of flight time in over 50 different aircraft.

Colonel Melroy was selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA in March 1995. She flew three missions in space: as Space Shuttle pilot during STS-92 in 2000 and STS-112 in 2002, and as Space Shuttle Commander during STS-120 in 2007. All three missions were assembly missions to build the International Space Station. She has logged more than 38 days in space.

After NASA, Colonel Melroy served in a variety of executive positions with Lockheed Martin, the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, and DARPA. She is now an independent consultant, and an advisor to the National Space Council in the US and to the Australian Space Agency.

Peter Norvig is a Director of Research at Google Inc. Previously he was head of Google's core search algorithms group, and of NASA Ames's Computational Sciences Division, making him NASA's senior computer scientist. He received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Award in 2001. He has taught at the University of Southern California and the University of California at Berkeley, from which he received a Ph.D. in 1986 and the distinguished alumni award in 2006. He was co-teacher of an Artifical Intelligence class that signed up 160,000 students, helping to kick off the current round of massive open online classes. His publications include the books Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (the leading textbook in the field), Paradigms of AI Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp, Verbmobil: A Translation System for Face-to-Face Dialog, and Intelligent Help Systems for UNIX. He is also the author of the Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation and the world's longest palindromic sentence. He is a fellow of the AAAI, ACM, California Academy of Science and American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Erin is a Director at Autodesk Research, specializing in intelligent and intuitive design technology for architects and engineers. She has a B.S. in Cognitive Science and a PhD in Information & Computer Science. Her dissertation work focused on technology affordances. Erin joined Autodesk in 2002 as a user researcher, conducting hundreds of user research sessions to identify the sweet spot where technology feasibility, viability, and desirability meet. She was on the founding team for generative design at Autodesk. In terms of customer pilots, Erin led Autodesk’s partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Labs, and was part of a team that helped NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab reduce the weight of a lander, proposed for a mission to Europa – a moon of Jupiter. Generative design was used to create optimised geometry of all the lander’s structural parts, reducing overall weight by over a third. Erin has also conducted numerous software ethnographies. She’s observed Architects design skyscrapers from 3D virtual studios, observed children program gravity engines with the XBOX in their living rooms, and observed aeronautical engineers design emergency landings for the space shuttle. As an ethnographer, she uses inductive reasoning to extract patterns of interaction and to develop predictive models of behaviour.

Shelley Peterson has supported Lockheed Martin pursuits, diving into the rapidly evolving augmented reality and wearables market to integrate emerging technologies into key solutions for Lockheed Martin. Her combined skill and reputation as a thought leader across the augmented reality industry have resulted in repeated demonstration of the potential of this emerging technology across numerous Lockheed Martin programs.

 

Shelley also serves on the Barbara Bush Foundation Technology Advisory Board. In her spare time, Shelley teaches college mathematics as an adjunct, and enjoys volunteering for and speaking at STEM events.

Linda Hung has been part of the Accelerated Materials Design and Discovery group at the Toyota Research Institute since 2017.  Her current work integrates machine learning with materials science simulation and theory, with the goals of shortening the discovery timeline and improving the fundamental understanding of materials.  She has a background in computational materials science, and has studied mechanical failure, photovoltaics, and superconductivity through simulation at the atomic and quantum scales. She obtained her PhD in applied and computational mathematics from Princeton University, and has held research positions at the Ecole Polytechnique, the University of Illinois Chicago, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Graham received his PhD in Biology from MIT, where he studied microRNAs. After completing a post doctorate at the University of California, San Francisco, where he studied the genomics of infectious diseases, he joined Calico Life Sciences in 2014 as Principal Investigator. Within a company that focuses on aging and age-related diseases, his group’s research focuses on the genetics and genomics of lifespan and aging in humans and model organisms.

Dr. Simon Lui is the Director and Expert AI scientist of the QQ Music BU, Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME), and Adjunct Professor of the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). His primary research interests are AI and music information retrieval. Before joining TME, Simon was an Assistant Professor of SUTD, Visiting Assistant Professor in MIT, and he has developed several #1 best-selling apps in the iOS app store in 7 countries. As an award-winning violinist and professional pop music arranger, Simon was also an invited beatbox guest in Eason Chan and Andy Lau's concert. Simon is a member of Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong (CASH).

Toby Walsh is a world-renowned professor on artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales and Data61. He was named by the media as a "rock star" of the digital revolution and included on the list of the 100 most important digital innovators in Australia. Toby is the author of the books ‘IT’S ALIVE’, ‘Android Dreams’, ‘Machines That Think’ and ‘2062: The Year that AI Made”.

 

Toby is a sought-after keynote speaker on how artificial intelligence influences business, education, warfare, personal development, and finance, among others. His talks were featured at TED, Adobe Pacific Summit, Future Shapers Forum, CEBIT and Quest Future of AI. He has advised a number of leading organizations on their AI strategy such as McKinsey & Co, Bertlesmann, TATA Consulting, SeviceNow, Clayton Utz, the NSW Department of Education, and Penguin Random House.

 

Prof. Walsh is a passionate advocate for limits to AI to ensure AI is used to improve, not hurt, our lives. Together with Pope Francis, Toby was voted runner up in the Person of the Year Award by the Arm Control Association, recognizing his work in ensuring safe use of AI in warfare.

MARY L. GRAY is a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, an E.J. Safra Center for Ethics Fellow and Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society Faculty Affiliate at Harvard University, and a faculty member in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering with affiliations in Anthropology and Gender Studies at Indiana University. She is the co-author of Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass, a 2019 Financial Times Critic’s Pick, which explores the lives of people paid to train artificial intelligence and, increasingly, work as “humans in the loop” delivering on-demand information services. She is a leading expert in the emerging field of AI ethics.

 

Mary chairs the Microsoft Research Ethics Review Program—the only federally-registered review board of its kind in Tech. She is recognized as a leading expert in the emerging field of AI and ethics, particularly research at the intersections of computer and social sciences. She sits on the editorial boards of Cultural Anthropology, Television and New Media, the International Journal of Communication, and Social Media + Society. Mary’s research has been covered by popular press venues, including The Guardian, El Pais, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Nature, The Economist, Harvard Business Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Forbes Magazine. She served on the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association and was the Program Chair for the Association’s 113th Annual Meeting. Mary currently sits on several boards, including Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R), the Strada Education Network, and Stanford University’s One-Hundred-Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100) Standing Committee, commissioned to reflect on the future of AI and recommend directions for its policy implications.

 

Arthur is a structural engineer, architect, and circular economy innovator. He has spent over a decade turning post-consumer waste into innovative products for businesses and consumers through his company, MINIWIZ. As CEO and founder of MINIWIZ, Arthur is focused on accelerating the shift to a closed-loop circular economy where all products are made from recycled materials and eventually, even those products will be recycled. Today, MINIWIZ is a global leader in transforming post-consumer products into retail store interiors, architectural structures, and consumer goods. Under Arthur’s leadership, MINIWIZ has received the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneer Award, The Financial Times’ Earth Award, and The Wall Street Journal’s Asian Innovation Award. Arthur has been a National Geographic Explorer since 2016 and the World Economic Forum recognized him as the Runner up for The Circular Leadership Award 2019 Davos. In February 2019, the World Economic Forum named MINIWIZ as one of the top 11 companies leading the way to a circular economy.

Claire Beatty is editorial director for Asia at MIT Technology Review Insights. She partners with clients across Asia and the Middle East to develop thought leadership that drives conversations around the way that technology is shaping our lives.

 

Claire has lived and worked in Singapore since 2007 and has more than 15 years of experience in consulting, editorial, and communications roles. She began her career in London as a researcher in the Technology Practice at CEB (now Gartner), developing best practice case studies from world-class IT organizations. On moving to Singapore she joined the Economist Intelligence Unit as senior editor for Southeast Asia, creating client-commissioned content on issues such as trade, innovation, and the outlook for different sectors in the region.

 

From 2012 to 2015 she took a consulting role with boutique leadership firm BTS, where she led worked with business leaders around the region on strategy alignment, innovation and workforce mobilization. A highly experienced chair, facilitator, and program designer, Claire has led dozens of workshops and events across the region for companies including Prudential, DBS, Unilever, Deloitte, and HP.

 

Before joining MIT, Claire was group communications director for logistics firm JF Hillebrand. She holds a bachelor’s degree in European Studies from the University of Leeds and a Postgraduate Diploma in Law.

Professor Daniel Hastings is the Cecil and Ida Green Education Professor and the former director of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hastings became head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT on January 1, 2019. Before joining SMART, Hastings completed a seven-and-a-half-year tenure as MIT's dean of undergraduate education. Hastings joined the MIT faculty in 1985 and became a full professor in 1993. From 1997 to 1999, Hastings served as the U.S. Air Force's chief scientist, leading influential studies of Air Force investments in space and of preparations for a 21st-century science and technology workforce. From 2002 to 2008, he was a member of the National Science Board. He became director of the MIT Technology and Policy Program in 2000, director of the Engineering Systems Division in 2004, and dean for undergraduate education in 2006.

Prof Eugene Fitzgerald is CEO of SMART, MIT’s Research Enterprise in Singapore. His research work resulted in the discovery of high mobility strained silicon, the basis of the founding of his first company. He is a practicing researcher, serial innovator and entrepreneur and has founded or co-founded seven enterprises. His latest venture is New Silicon Corporation, a Singapore venture co-founded with colleagues in the SMART Low Energy Electronic Systems program. He is co-author of the book “Inside Real Innovation”. He received his undergraduate degree from MIT in 1985 and his PhD from Cornell University in 1989.

Feng-Yuan is the Co-founder and CEO of BasisAI, a Singapore-headquartered augmented intelligence software company that helps data-driven enterprises deploy AI responsibly. In his previous capacity, he was responsible for leading and driving Smart Nation data initiatives for the Singapore government, including setting up and growing the data science and AI capabilities within GovTech.

Dr Califano leads and manages the overall operation of the Innovation Centre. He brings experience from the academic industry and financial sectors focused on developing businesses around emerging technology. He has founded, held executive management positions, acted as Member of the Board of Directors and CEO of multiple companies in the United States and Asia. He was Consulting Director of Bio*One Capital Pte Ltd and acted as the interim CEO of several of their portfolio companies. Dr Califano was the CEO of Johns Hopkins Singapore and The Johns Hopkins-NUH International Medical Centre.

Associate Professor Jeremy Lim is the founder of AMiLi (Asian Microbiome Library), the first gut microbiome bank in Singapore and Southeast Asia. AMiLi’s mission is to advance human health through microbiome science and we work with clinicians, researchers and patient groups to make accessible the microbiome for patient care and research.

 

Prior to AMiLi, Jeremy founded global consultancy Oliver Wyman’s healthcare consulting practice in Asia in 2012. He has held senior executive roles in both the public and private sectors in Asian healthcare including as director of research in Singapore’s largest healthcare system and as Singapore CEO of a pan-Asian private healthcare group. He continues to serve in the National University of Singapore as co-director of the global health program in the School of Public Health.

Dr. Juliana Chan is the editor-in-chief of Asian Scientist Magazine and CEO of Wildtype Media Group, Asia’s leading STEM-focused media company, spanning digital, print, custom publishing and events. She received a BA/MA degree in natural sciences from the University of Cambridge, UK, and a PhD degree in biology from MIT, USA. Awards received include the 2011 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science National Fellowship, the 2013 Singapore Youth Award, the 2014 MIT Technology Review’s 10 Innovators Under 35 from Asia Pacific and the 2017 American Chemical Society's ACS Nano Junior Fellowship. Dr. Chan's research work into drug delivery and nanomedicine has been featured by The BBC and MIT Technology Review, and she is an inventor on four patents. Dr Chan is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, and she serves on the WEF Technology Pioneer Selection Committee.

Karen Hao is the artificial intelligence reporter for MIT Technology Review. In particular she covers the ethics and social impact of the technology as well as its applications for social good. She also writes the AI newsletter, the Algorithm, which thoughtfully examines the field’s latest news and research. Prior to joining the publication, she was a reporter and data scientist at Quartz and an application engineer at the first startup to spin out of Google X.

As CEO of SGInnovate, Dr Lim Jui has overall leadership of the organisation that is committed to helping entrepreneurial scientists build and scale Deep Tech startups. At SGInnovate, Jui and his team work closely with a wide range of partners and co-investors to back this unique group of founders, who are looking to solve global challenges with their research-based solutions. This is done through equity-based investments, access to the Deep Tech ecosystem and talent network, as well as by providing business-building support.

While he trained in medicine, Jui had spent most of his professional life in the business of science and innovation. He was Director of Investments, Bio*One Capital; CEO of Merlin MD, a medical device company; Executive Director of the Medical Engineering Research and Commercialisation Initiative (MERCI) at the National University of Singapore (NUS); and Programme Director of the Singapore-Stanford Biodesign Programme (SSB), a joint venture between the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) and Stanford University. Before joining SGInnovate, Jui was CEO of NTUitive, the innovation and enterprise company of the Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

He currently serves on the advisory boards of IPOS International, the business arm of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS), and several startup companies. He was previously a board member of the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) in Singapore.

Jui received his Bachelor of Arts (BA, Biological Sciences and East Asian Studies) and Doctor of Medicine (MD) at Columbia University. He then obtained his Master of Medicine (Anaesthesiology and Surgical Intensive Care) from NUS. He remains a registered medical practitioner today.

Prof. Kedar Hippalgaonkar holds a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor at the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Senior Scientist at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering at the Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR). His interests are in the application of ML/AI tools to unearth novel physics in existing or novel materials, especially with an eye for multifunctional devices towards sustainable energy. His research emphasizes on using high-throughput automated experiments via machine learning optimization and rapid characterization to accelerate materials discovery and device innovation.

 

He has published over 40 research papers, and was nominated as a Journal of Materials Chemistry Emerging Investigator in 2019. He was recognized as a Science and Technology for Society Young Leader in Kyoto in 2015. For graduate research, he was awarded the Materials Research Society Silver Medal in 2014.  He graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Distinction) from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University in 2003 and obtained his Doctor of Philosophy from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley in 2014. While pursuing his doctoral studies, he conducted research on fundamentals of heat, charge and light in solid state materials.

Dr Paola A. Magni is a Senior Lecturer in Forensic Science at Murdoch University (Perth, WA) and the Deputy Dean at Murdoch University Singapore.

 

Paola is a forensic biologist with a key focus on the application of natural sciences (entomology, taphonomy and aquatic biology) to crime scene investigation. She has several years of experience as a lecturer, researcher and expert witness in the Court of Law on cases of homicide, suspicious death, animal cruelty/wildlife, food forensic and stored products security. She is the co-author of several books, book chapters and peer reviewed articles focused on her research and case-work.

 

She is the of “SmartInsects – Forensic Entomology”, the smartphone App designed to facilitate the work of law enforcement agencies and pathologists at crime scenes, and “VirtualCSI”, the Virtual Reality training suite for forensic science students and law enforcement.

 

In the last few years, Paola has also undertaken research into the pedagogy behind innovative methods in forensic education, with a special focus in the internationalization of the Forensic Science curricula. Example of this are the successful projects for the New Colombo Mobility Plans and the Endeavour Leadership Program founded by the Australian Government.

 

Deeply interested in science communication and advocate for women in STEM, Paola is the Australian winner of the global science communication competition FameLab, a TEDx speaker, a WiTWA Role Model and she has been nominated one of the 100 people who will influence Western Australia in the biggest way in 2020.

As CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), Bob leads the strategic vision for the company. He received his PhD in plasma physics at MIT, focusing his work on Alcator C-Mod and developing techniques to measure the magnetic field inside tokamak plasmas. During this time, Bob contributed to the design of several small tokamaks using high temperature superconductors (HTS). As an MIT fellow, Bob focused on how entrepreneurship, risk-retirement strategies, and partnerships could increase the speed of fusion from laboratory to market. His work has focused on strategies to leverage the collaboration of private finance and traditional academic resources to speed the path to commercial fusion energy.

Hong Kong Baptist University President Roland Chin worked on machine vision and pattern recognition since the 70’s from automated visual inspection for manufacturing to NASA remote sensing. Now as President of a leading liberal arts university in Asia, he advocates a new renaissance in liberal arts education in which core values and ethics become the DNA of future generations of scientists.

Dr. Saif A. Khan obtained a Bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering at the University Department of Chemical Technology (UDCT), Mumbai where he was the university gold medallist. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006, where he was a Presidential Fellow. In 2006, he joined the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he is currently a tenured Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. His research group at NUS develops new microfluidics-based ‘factories’ for the continuous manufacture of pharmaceuticals and advanced materials in collaboration with several industrial partners worldwide. He has also co-founded two start-up companies focused on advanced materials manufacture and opthalmic drug delivery.

Mr. Steve Leonard is a technology-industry leader and a passionate advocate for constructive debate about technology and the future of humanity. He is a regular speaker at United Nations Development Program and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific events. He is also a frequent on-stage and on-air contributor at a wide range of technology events, hosted by leading media groups including WSJ, Forbes, CNBC, Bloomberg, BBC, The Economist and MIT Technology Review.

 

In his most recent role as Founding CEO of SGInnovate – a private limited company wholly-owned by the Singapore Government – Steve created an organization whose mission is to build investable early-stage deep tech companies. Capitalizing on the top-ranked education system and world-class scientific research for which Singapore has gained a global reputation for, he and his team worked with local and international partners - including universities, venture capitalists, and major corporations - to help technical founders start and scale investable early-stage deep tech technology companies based on scientific research. SGInnovate has played a role in building nearly 90 deep tech startups and formed a community of 33,000 members during Steve’s tenure.

 

Prior to his role at SGInnovate, Steve served three years as the Executive Deputy Chairman of the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), a government statutory board under the purview of Singapore’s Ministry of Communications and Information. In that role, he had executive responsibility at the national level for various aspects of the information technology and telecommunications industries in Singapore. Although a proud US citizen, having lived and worked outside the US for nearly 30 years, Steve considers himself a member of the larger global community.

 

Scott Anthony is a Senior Partner at Innosight, where he helps leaders design new growth strategies, build innovation capabilities, navigate disruptive innovation, and manage strategic transformation. He has been based in Singapore since 2010. In his 17 years with Innosight, Scott has advised senior leaders in organizations such as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Singtel, Tata Consultancy Services, the Singapore Economic Development Board, General Electric, LG, the Ayala Group, and DBS on topics of growth and innovation. He has significant on-the-ground experience in emerging markets, particularly in India, China, and the Philippines. Scott has written extensively about strategy and innovation. He is the lead author of the forthcoming book "Eat, Sleep, Innovate." Prior to joining Innosight, Scott was a senior researcher with Clayton Christensen, managing a group that worked to further Christensen’s research on innovation. Scott received a BA in economics summa cum laude from Dartmouth College and an MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar. In 2019, Thinkers50 named Scott as one of the world’s 10 most influential management thinkers, and in 2017 he won the T50 Innovation Award.

Born in 1975. After graduating from the Nagoya University School of Architecture, Shunsuke Nakamura created media art and completed his PhD (Art and Technology) at the Kyushu Institute of Design Graduate School. He is also a visiting associate professor at the Kyushu Institute of Technology.

He founded SHIKUMI DESIGN in 2005. And His work “KAGURA” - AR musical instrument - won the Prizes of the world contest “Intel® Perceptual Computing Challenge 2013” in the USA, “Sonar+D Startup Competition 2016” in Spain, “Future-Maker Award 2016” in China, “WIRED Audi INNOVATION AWARD 2016” in Japan, and more.

Dr. Steven Tucker is a Preventive Medical Oncologist and Co-Founder of Re:Mission Health, a digital platform that aims to reduce the burden of preventable non-communicable diseases. By integrating personal nutrition, continuous monitoring, and community building, Re:Mission Health brings education, empowerment, and accountability to individuals and families at the highest risk of disease by starting with cancer survivors and their families.

 

Dr. Tucker trained in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology at the UCLA Center for Health Sciences and joined the UCLA Clinical faculty in 1999. In 2006, he moved to Singapore to develop a global oncology clinical trials program and in 2011 founded Tucker Medical, a multi-specialty medical practice caring for regional patients. As a leader in population health in Asia, he has had strategic roles at CXA Group, MetLife Asia, Lumen Lab Innovation Center, and was founding Global Health Advisor at Singtel. Dr. Tucker is a member of the faculty at the MIT - Singapore Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) teaching medical innovation, design thinking, and entrepreneurship.

Tonio BUONASSISI’s research interests are at the intersection of machine learning, high-throughput experimentation and high-performance computing. He founded the MIT PVLab and co-founded the Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems in Boston, USA, and is known for his work in the field of photovoltaics, predictive process simulation, defects, multiscale characterization (synchrotron), photoelectrochemistry, system design and modeling, and technoeconomic analysis. His work was recognized with a Google Faculty Award, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), MIT Everett Moore Baker Memorial Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, National Science Foundation CAREER Award, among others.

Professor Virginia CHA is a professor of innovation and entrepreneurship in Singapore with multiple appointments at Singapore’s leading tertiary education institutions: Adjunct Professor at INSEAD, Adjunct Professor at NUS Business School, and other adjunct appointments at SMART (Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology) and Lean LaunchPad @Singapore.

 

In her multi-faceted 40 year-long industry and academic career that spanned multiple countries, Virginia co-founded or was the sole-founder and CEO of multiple venture-funded, hi-tech companies in Singapore and China, with listings on NASDAQ and HKSE. She has co-authored a book “Asia’s Entrepreneurs: Dilemmas, Risks and Opportunities” which captured Singapore’s recent entrepreneurial history. Additionally, Virginia is a member of the Future Council of World Economic Forum. In addition to teaching entrepreneurship, Virginia is also an active researcher, mentor, and angel investor in Asia’s entrepreneur ecosystem. Virginia has 16 companies in her angel investment portfolio, supporting start-up entrepreneurs with operations in Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, USA, Finland, and the UK.

 

Virginia’s latest research into innovation is on the subject of restorative innovation (www.restorativeinnovation.com). This emergent framework uses an economic model on how sustainable goods can reach mass consumption through innovation along three dimensions: increased supply, supply chain efficiency, and increased adoption. This framework is now a subject taught in all the leading Singapore tertiary institutions in innovation.

 

Virginia earned her Bachelor of Science in Information Computer Science, University of Hawaii, in 1980, and her PhD from National University of Singapore, with concentration in entrepreneurial logic as the key research thesis.

 

Professor Yi-Ke Guo, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng), was appointed as the Vice-President (Research and Development) of Hong Kong Baptist University on 1 January 2020. Prof Guo is Professor of Computing Science in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London since 2020. Before joining Hong Kong Baptist University, Prof Guo was the founding Director of the Data Science Institute at Imperial College since 2014, which is one of the six Imperial College Global Challenge Institutes. He is also a Member of Academia Europaea (MAE), Fellow of British Computer Society.

 

Professor Guo obtained his first-class honours degree in Computing Science from Tsinghua University, China, in 1985 and received his PhD in Computational Logic from Imperial College in 1993. In 1999, Prof Guo founded InforSense Limited, an Imperial College spin-off software company specialized in big data analysis for life science and medicine.

 

Prof Guo’s main research interests lie in the field of machine learning and large-scale data management and has contributed to numerous major research projects. He is now the investigator of several major data science projects in UK and Europe including the €47M project of

Idea-Fast in digital biomarker discovery for neurodegenerative diseases.

 

Professor Guo has published over 250 articles. He had won the “Most Innovative Data Intensive Application Award” at the Supercomputing 2002 conference for Discovery Net, the Bio-IT World "Best Practices Award" for U-BIOPRED in 2014 and the "Best Open Source Software Award" from ACM SIGMM in 2017.

Yuki Hanyu got his Ph.D in chemistry from Oxford University on 2010. After working as a research scientist in Tohoku University and Toshiba Research and Development Center, he founded in 2014 the "Shojinmeat Project", the world’s first citizen science community for DIY open-source cell-based meat. Based on the low-cost cell culture technology developed in the Shojinmeat Project, he founded IntegriCulture Inc. in 2015 to commercialise cell-based meat. The company is developing food grade culture media and a wide range of cell-based products such as cosmetics, foie gras and meat.