Our Experts

Kenji Hiramoto Chief Strategist, Government of Japan

Kenji Hiramoto is the Chief Strategist in the National Strategy Office of IT, at the Government of Japan. He is also the Executive Advisor to the CIO of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) of Japan. He is in charge of the digital government and the national data strategy. Additionally he is a leader of the Government Interoperability Framework project that is focused on taxnomy, API, data structure, data quality and rules. He is also a member of the data exchange plattform project. Mr. Hiramoto is an active member of many AI and NLP projects. Especially, he is one of the key people who analyzed SNS messages at the time of the Fukushima disaster. Taking advantage of his experience, he uses language analysis in various fields such as policy making and economic analysis.

Ursula Hillbrand Strategic Process Designer and Founder of Salonhosting, Former Process Innovator at Secretariat-General, European Commission, Art of Hosting Salonhosting

Ursula Hillbrand is Founder of Salonhosting a participatory host and process designer in the European Commission. Since 1995, she has been working in various policy areas, currently in Corporate Management in the Secretariat General. She has applied participatory leadership and innovative meeting formats as a pioneer in her multicultural environment and supports participatory and strategic processes and stakeholder events in many departments. She regularly gives workshops in Result-Based Management, Art of Participatory Leadership and Communities of Practice in the EU institutions.

Eszter Hargita Deputy Head of Department, Hungarian State Aid Monitoring Office, Ministry for Innovation and Technology, Hungary

Eszter Hargita has been working at the Hungarian State Aid Monitoring Office since 1999. The State Aid Monitoring Office (SAMO) is responsible for a competition-minded State aid control functions within the Prime Minister's Office. Eszter Hargita holds a PhD from the University of Economic Sciences in Budapest (Hungary) and is the editor of the State Aid Law published in Hungarian.

Anu Hautalampi Head of Social Media and Audiovisual, University of Cambridge

Anu Hautalampi is the first Head of Social Media and Audiovisual at the University of Cambridge. She has a MA in Audiovisual Media from the University of Lapland, Finland. She has worked in media and communications for 15 years, focusing on digital communications since 2011. She has previously worked as the Head of Digital Communications for the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the UK’s public research funding body.

Prof. Dr. Holger Hoos Professor of Machine learning, Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Sciences (LIACS), Leiden University (TBC)

Prof. Dr. Holger H. Hoos is Professor of Machine Learning at Universiteit Leiden (the Netherlands) and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia (Canada). He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, past president of the Canadian Association for Artificial Intelligence and one of initiators of CLAIRE, an initiative by the European AI community that seeks to strengthen European excellence in AI research and innovation (claire-ai.org).

Rafael Hirt Officer, Sustainable Economy and Procurement, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability

Rafael Hirt joined ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability - in April 2019 as a Sustainable Economy and Procurement Officer. He is involved in the management and implementation of projects on sustainable, innovative and socially responsible public procurement such as the Buying Social guide, Innovation Brokers, the European Innovation Council (EIC) and the Big Buyers project. Prior to joining ICLEI, Rafael Hirt gained experience working with EIB in Luxemburg (Division NPST3) on fund of funds investments in climate friendly technology and infrastructure. He also worked as a project manager at the German Energy Solutions Initiative (BMWi). Rafael Hirt holds a M.A. in International Public Management and a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Sciences Po Paris.

Alexander Handke Projektmanagement Europe, Middle East, Africa (SO/RP-EMEA), Bosch Service Solutions GmbH

Before joining Bosch in 2015, Alexander Handke was working many years for an international IT Consultancy. At Bosch Service Solutions he was involved to the Automation Strategy as well as derived Roadmaps and Potential Analysis. Since 2018 he joined as Regional Ambassador for EMEA to build up local RPA Competences and Implementation projects in the countries. During his journey he has learned all different impacts for success in terms of technical limitations, financial benefits, skills and resources. Due to the fact that RPA is only one Building block within our Digital Transformation Roadmap he is forcing to get aligned all different technology stakeholders at Bosch Service Solutions.