Major Gen. (Ret.) Prof. Isaac Ben-Israel serves as Head of the Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center (ICRC). Additionally, he serves as Chairman of the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security, Chairman of the Israeli Space Agency in the Ministry of Science, Technology and Space.

Isaac Ben-Israel was born in Israel (Tel-Aviv), 1949. He studied Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy at Tel-Aviv University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1988. He joined the Israel Air Force (IAF) after graduating high school (1967) and has served continuously up to his retirement (2002). During his service, Isaac Ben-Israel has held several posts in operations, intelligence and weapon development units of the IAF. He headed the IAF Operations Research Branch, Analysis and Assessment Division of IAF Intelligence, and was the Head of Military R&D in Israel Defence Forces and Ministry of Defence (1991-1997). In January 1998 he was promoted to Major General and appointed as Director of Defence R&D Directorate in IMOD. During his service he received twice the Israeli Defence Award.

After retirement from the IDF Isaac Ben Israel joined the University of Tel-Aviv as a professor and was the head of Curiel Centre for International Studies (2002-2004), the head of the Program for Security Studies (2004-2007), Executive Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Technological Analysis & Forecasting at Tel-Aviv University (ICTAF) (2010-2013), Deputy Director of the Hartog School of Government and Policy in Tel-Aviv University (2005-2015) and a member of Jaffe Centre for Strategic Studies (2002-2004). In 2002 he founded and headed the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Ariel University Centre (2009-2011), and a member of the advisory council of Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology at the Technion (2000-2010). In 2002 he founded RAY-TOP (Technology Opportunities) Ltd, consulting governments and industries in technological and strategic issues.

Professor Ben-Israel was a member of the 17th Knesset (Israeli Parliament) between June 2007 and February 2009. During this period he was a member of the Security and Foreign Affairs Committee, the Finance Committee, the Science & Technology committee, the Chairman of the Homeland Security Sub Committee and the Chairman of the Israeli–Indian Parliamentary Friendship Association.

In 2011 he was appointed by the Prime Minister to lead a task force that formulated Israel national cyber policy. Following that he founded the National Cyber Headquarters in the PM Office. In 2014 he was appointed again by the PM to lead another task force which resulted in a government decision (February 2015) to set up a new National Cyber Authority. Isaac Ben Israel was a member of the board of directors of IAI (2000-2002), the board of the Israel Corp. (2004-2007) and the R&D advisory board of TEVA (2003-2007) and Chairman of the Technion Entrepreneurial Incubator (2007). He was the Chairman of Israel National R&D council between 2010-2016.

Professor Ben-Israel has written numerous papers on military and security issues. His book Dialogues on Science and Military Intelligence (1989) won the Itzhak-Sade Award for Military Literature. His book on The Philosophy of Military Intelligence had been published by the Broadcast University (1999) and has been translated into French (2004). His book Science, Technology and Security: From Soldiers in Combat up to Outer Space, was published in 2006. His book on Israel Defence Doctrine was published in 2013.
Isaac is married to Inbal (née Marcus) and they have three sons: Yuval (1981), Roy (1984) and Alon (1988).

Current Positions
– Chairman of Israel Space Agency (since 2005).
– Professor at Tel-Aviv University, teaching at the Security Studies Program (since 2002) and at the Cohen Institute for the History & Philosophy of Sciences and Ideas (since 1989).
– Positions at Tel-Aviv University:
* Head of Security Studies Program (since 2004-2007, 2010-).
* Head of the Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Studies Centre (since 2014)
* Head of the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security (since 2002).
– Member of the board of Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies (since 2000)
– Member of the academic council of Afeka – Tel-Aviv Academic College of Engineering(since 2003)
– Founder and CEO of RAY TOP Technologies Ltd. (since 2002)
– Founder and CEO of RAY TOP SINGAPORE Pte. Ltd. (since 2003)
– Partner at Cyber Security Group (since 2016)
– Member of the Advisory Board of RED DOT fund (since 2016)

Positions and Memberships abroad
– Member of IAA – International Academy of Astronautics (since 2012)
– Member of Singapore RIEC – Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council (since 2012)
– Member of the Board of the Agency for Science, Technology & Research in Singapore – A*STAR (since 2013)
– Commissioner at GCSC – Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (since 2017)

Prizes and Awards
1972 Israel Defence Award, for developing an airborne weapon delivery system for F-4E.
1976 Israel Air Force Award, for developing a C4 system.
1984 IDF Director of military Intelligence Prize for Creative Thinking.
1990 Itzhak-Sade Award for Military Literature, for the book Dialogues on Science and Military Intelligence.
2001 Israel Defence Award (Second time), for a project introducing a new concept of future warfare.
2002 Singapore Defence Technology Distinguished Award for his “outstanding contribution to bilateral defence relations between Israel and Singapore”.
2008 Lions “Man of Excellence”, for his contribution to Israel Security.

Prof. Eviatar Matania is a graduate of the elite military-academic program Talpiot. He held professional and leadership roles in Israel’s defense community across the fields of R&D, technological project management, intelligence analysis, and operations research. Prof. Matania then worked in the hi-tech industry as a venture capital investment lead, as an entrepreneur and as an executive. Subsequently, he returned to the Ministry of Defense to lead the elite training programs for human capital in science and technology. In parallel, he was a lecturer in the Executive MBA program of the Hebrew University, and a fellow at the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security of Tel Aviv University.

Prof. Matania holds a B.Sc. in Physics and Mathematics (Hebrew University), a M.Sc. in Mathematics with an expertise in Game Theory (Tel Aviv University), and a Ph.D. in Judgment and Decision Making (Hebrew University).

In late 2011 Prof. Matania was appointed to establish and head the Israel National Cyber Bureau, operating directly under the Prime Minister. In 2015 he was appointed as Director General of the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD), responsible for Israel’s overall cyber policy and its implementation, as well as for the defense of Israel’s civilian cyberspace. On 31 December 2017 he completed his six-year term.

Prof. Matania has been a thought leader in cyber strategy and policy, participating in the foremost international fora, and engaged by top government officials and leading global companies.

Dr. Fei-Fei Li is the inaugural Sequoia Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, and Co-Director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute. She served as the Director of Stanford’s AI Lab from 2013 to 2018. And during her sabbatical from Stanford from January 2017 to September 2018, she was Vice President at Google and served as Chief Scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud. Dr. Fei-Fei Li obtained her B.A. degree in physics from Princeton in 1999 with High Honors, and her PhD degree in electrical engineering from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2005. She joined Stanford in 2009 as an assistant professor. Prior to that, she was on faculty at Princeton University (2007-2009) and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2005-2006). Dr. Fei-Fei Li’s current research interests include cognitively inspired AI, machine learning, deep learning, computer vision and AI+healthcare especially ambient intelligent systems for healthcare delivery. In the past she has also worked on cognitive and computational neuroscience. Dr. Li has published more than 200 scientific articles in top-tier journals and conferences, including Nature, PNAS, Journal of Neuroscience, CVPR, ICCV, NIPS, ECCV, ICRA, IROS, RSS, IJCV, IEEE-PAMI, New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Digital Medicine, etc. Dr. Li is the inventor of ImageNet and the ImageNet Challenge, a critical large-scale dataset and benchmarking effort that has contributed to the latest developments in deep learning and AI. In addition to her technical contributions, she is a national leading voice for advocating diversity in STEM and AI. She is co-founder and chairperson of the national non-profit AI4ALL aimed at increasing inclusion and diversity in AI education. Dr. Li is an elected Member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). She is also a Fellow of ACM, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a recipient of the 2019 IEEE PAMI Longuet-Higgins Prize, 2019 National Geographic Society Further Award, 2017 Athena Award for Academic Leadership, IAPR 2016 J.K. Aggarwal Prize, the 2016 IEEE PAMI Mark Everingham Award, the 2016 nVidia Pioneer in AI Award, 2014 IBM Faculty Fellow Award, 2011 Alfred Sloan Faculty Award, 2012 Yahoo Labs FREP award, 2009 NSF CAREER award, the 2006 Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship, among others. Dr. Li is a keynote speaker at many academic or influential conferences, including the World Economics Forum (Davos), the Grace Hopper Conference 2017 and the TED2015 main conference. Work from Dr. Li's lab have been featured in a variety of magazines and newspapers including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, Science, Wired Magazine, MIT Technology Review, Financial Times, and more. She was selected as a 2017 Women in Tech by the ELLE Magazine, a 2017 Awesome Women Award by Good Housekeeping, a Global Thinker of 2015 by Foreign Policy, and one of the “Great Immigrants: The Pride of America” in 2016 by the Carnegie Foundation, past winners include Albert Einstein, Yoyo Ma, Sergey Brin, et al.

Manuela M. Veloso is the Head of J.P. Morgan AI Research, which pursues fundamental research in areas of core relevance to financial services, including data mining and cryptography, machine learning, explainability, and human-AI interaction. J.P. Morgan AI Research partners with applied data analytics teams across the firm as well as with leading academic institutions globally. Professor Veloso is on leave from Carnegie Mellon University as the Herbert A. Simon University Professor in the School of Computer Science, and the past Head of the Machine Learning Department. With her students, she had led research in AI, with a focus on robotics and machine learning, having concretely researched and developed a variety of autonomous robots, including teams of soccer robots, and mobile service robots. Her robot soccer teams have been RoboCup world champions several times, and the CoBot mobile robots have autonomously navigated for more than 1,000km in university buildings. Professor Veloso is the Past President of AAAI, (the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence), and the co-founder, Trustee, and Past President of RoboCup. Professor Veloso has been recognized with a multiple honors, including being a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE, AAAS, and AAAI. She is the recipient of several best paper awards, the Einstein Chair of the Chinese Academy of Science, the ACM/SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award, an NSF Career Award, and the Allen Newell Medal for Excellence in Research. Professor Veloso earned a Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon, Portugal, a Master of Arts in Computer Science from Boston University, and Master of Science and PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. See www.cs.cmu.edu/~mmv/Veloso.html for her scientific publications.

Tomaso A. Poggio, is a physicist whose research has always been between brains and computers. It is now focused on the mathematics of deep learning and on the computational neuroscience of the visual cortext. He is the Eugene McDermott Professor in the Dept. of Brain & Cognitive Sciences at MIT and the director of the NSF Center for Brains, Minds and Machines at MIT. Among other awards he received the 2014 Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience and the IEEE 2017 Azriel Rosenfeld Lifetime Achievement Award. A former Corporate Fellow of Thinking Machines Corporation, a former director of PHZ Capital Partners, Inc. and of Mobileye, he was involved in starting, or investing in, several other high tech companies including Arris Pharmaceutical, nFX, Imagen, Digital Persona, Deep Mind and Orcam.

Shimon Ullman is the Samy and Ruth Cohn Professor of Computer Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and the head of the Weizmann Institute AI Center. Prior to this position, he was a Professor at the Brain and Cognitive Science and the AI Laboratory at MIT. His areas of research combine computer and human vision, human cognition, and brain modeling. He obtained his B.Sc. in Mathematics, Physics and Biology, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a recipient of the 2008 David. E. Rumelhart Prize in human cognition, the 2014 Emet Prize for Art, Science and Culture, the 2015 Israel Prize in Computer Science, and the 2019 IEEE Azriel Rosenfeld Award for lifetime achievement in computer vision. He is a member of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Mirella Lapata is a Professor at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Her recent research interests are in natural language processing. She serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR). She is the first recipient (2009) of the British Computer Society and Information Retrieval Specialist Group (BCS/IRSG) Karen Sparck Jones award. She has also received best paper awards in leading NLP conferences and financial support from the EPSRC (the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) and ERC (the European Research Council).

Sumaya Al Hajeri is professional in the field of Technology and Space policies and regulations with a 14 years of experience. She is the Head of Governance and Data at the Office of the Minister of Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications on a secondment basis, where is responsible for the development and implementation of the policy and regulatory framework. She is also heading the Space Policies and Regulations at the UAE Space Agency, and contributed towards achieving several projects such as: the draft federal law on regulating space activities, the space regulations and the regulatory procedures. Sumaya worked at the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority since 2007 as a Radio Planning Engineer where she developed the National Spectrum Plan as per the outcomes of the World Radiocommunication Conferences by the International Telecommunication Union. In 2012, she was involved in the Telecommunication Competition Regulations and Licensing and contributed towards: licensing major space telecom operators in the UAE and development of the Universal Service Obligation Policy. Sumaya is a holder of: a bachelor in Communication and Electronics Engineering 2007 from UAE University, Master of International Law, Diplomacy and International Relations 2011 from Paris Sorbonne University, Master in technology Public Policy Analysis 2020 at Mohamed Bin Rashid School of Governance, and currently a doctoral student at Ecole des Ponts – Paris Tech in Paris. Sumaya has a number of contributions in the field of: women in ICT as part of the ITU agenda, Research policy proposal on increasing Emirati women participation in the workforce, and a study on history of Emirati women empowerment in the UAE.

Holding a BSc in Computer Science and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sana Khareghani has over 20 years’ experience in technology and business across the private and public sectors. She has worked as a software engineer in big corporates and start-ups, as a management consultant advising senior officials throughout North America, Europe and the Middle East, and in HMG, currently and over the past year as Head of the Office for AI – a joint unit between Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). The Office for AI is putting in place the foundations around: Skills, Access to Data, International and Leadership by the UK AI Council, to underpin the adoption of AI & Data technologies across the economy for the betterment of society. Sana is also on the Advisory Board of Tortoise Media Global AI Index and Bristol Interactive AI Centre for Doctoral Training.

Carme Artigas is a recognized Expert in Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Technology Innovation, with more than 25 years of experience the Technology sector. She co-founded and was the CEO of Synergic Partners, a Pioneer European Big Data Company, which was acquired by Telefonica group in November 2015. She continued serving as company CEO until the company’s full integration into the Telefonica Group at the en of 2018. Since 2019 until her appointment as Secretary of State, she was member of several International Advisory Boards. She was appointed by the University of Stanford (California) as Ambassador “Women in Data Science (WIDS)”. She was recognized by the American business magazine ”Insight Sucess” as the one among the 30 most influential executives with an international projection. She is among the top women in the world in the data business and she has come the public sector to make Spain a leading country in Digital transition and Technology transformation.

Picture Author Luis Gaspar

Mr Ng Chee Khern is Permanent Secretary for Smart Nation and Digital Government in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). In this role, he leads the government’s efforts in driving the development of digital enablers for citizens and businesses, and applying digital and smart solutions to improve the lives of citizens in a Smart Nation. Mr Ng was previously Permanent Secretary (Defence Development) in Singapore's Ministry of Defence with a portfolio ranging from defence research and technology, to capability development and acquisitions, to defence administration. He was concurrently 2nd Permanent Secretary in Singapore’s Ministry of Health from August 2014 to February 2016 where he oversaw the overall operations, emergency preparedness and capacity building for the public healthcare sector in Singapore. He is the Chairman of the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech) board. Mr Ng also serves as a board member of both the National Research Foundation (NRF) and the Changi Airport Group (CAG). Mr Ng was enlisted in the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) in 1984 and served in the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF). Throughout his military career, Mr Ng held various appointments, including: Commanding Officer, 149 Squadron; Commander, Tengah Air Base; Director, Joint Operations and Planning Directorate; Chief of Staff (Air Staff). He took over as the Chief of Air Force in March 2006. After leaving the Air Force, Mr Ng was appointed as the Director of the Security and Intelligence Division in September 2010. Mr Ng was a recipient of the President's Scholarship and Singapore Armed Forces Overseas Scholarship in 1985. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Second Upper Class Honours) and a Master of Arts in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford. He also graduated with a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University. NG Chee Khern Permanent Secretary Smart Nation and Digital Government Prime Minister’s Office Republic of Singapore Chairman Government Technology Agency of Singapore

Professor Gérard Medioni received the Diplôme d’Ingenieur from ENST, Paris in 1977, a M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 1980 and 1983 respectively. He is Vice President/Distinguished Scientist at Amazon, where he is leading the research efforts for Amazon Go, and he recently announced Amazon One service. He is also Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at USC, where he served as Chairman of the Computer Science Department from 2001 to 2007. Professor Medioni has made significant contributions to the field of computer vision. He has published 4 books, over 80 journal papers and 200 conference articles, and is the recipient of more than 45 patents. He is the editor, with Sven Dickinson, of the Computer Vision series of books for Morgan-Claypool. Prof. Medioni is on the advisory board of the IEEE Transactions on PAMI Journal, associate editor of the Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis Journal. He is vice president of the Computer Vision Foundation (CVF). Prof. Medioni serves at general co-chair of many CVPR Conferences (1997, 2001, 2007, 2009, 2020), ICPR (1998, 2014), WACV (2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2022), ICCV (2017, 2019). Prof. Medioni has been a consultant to several companies and startups (DXO, Poseidon, Opti-copy, Geometrix, Symah Vision, KLA-Tencor, PrimeSense) prior to joining Amazon. He is the recipient of the IEEE PAMI Mark Everingham Prize for contributions to the Computer Vision Community. He is a Fellow of IAPR, a Fellow of the IEEE, and a Fellow of AAAI.

Holds a BSc in computer science and physics, and a PhD in computational neuroscience. After his PhD, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto and a postdoctoral fellow at MIT. His research interests include machine learning, deep learning, graphical models, optimization, machine vision, and natural language processing. His work has received several prizes including five paper awards at NeurIPS, ICML and UAI. In 2019, he received the ERC Consolidator Grant.

Itay is Intel’s IT General Manager for Artificial Intelligence . The AI group is chartered to transform Intel’s critical work (‘AI Inside’) and has yielded a business value that exceeded $1B in 2020. Itay is the co-founder of this activity at Intel (2009) and is leading it since then. The AI group has over 200 AI experts world wide and is a hub of innovation of Algorithms, ML engineering, Product AI methodologies and the required change at a large corporate scale. Itay is focusing on accelerating the AI change to create unprecedent speed and quality of Intel’s competitive advantage activites.