About The Event

Amber Allen, CEO and Founder of Double A Labs is a leading expert on the metaverse and hybrid events. Forever a “gamer girl” at heart, Amber is passionate about creating experiences and tools that promote human connection and help companies train and engage with employees. Double A Labs was founded nearly a decade ago to create innovative, data-driven, immersive technologies to help brands stay connected with current customers and new audiences. Today, Double A Labs is a global leader in creating digital worlds and has developed a proprietary online virtual platform to connect, learn, and play.​

Brittan Heller works at the intersection of technology, human rights, and the law. She is currently a fellow at the Atlantic Council, with the Digital Forensics Research Lab, examining XR’s connection to society, human rights and privacy, and commerce. As former counsel in Foley Hoag LLP’s Global Business and Human Rights practice, Heller advised companies, investors, NGOs, and governments on integrating public safety and human rights. Heller was an inaugural AI and Technology Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, studying content moderation and security risks in VR/AR/XR and emergent media. Heller previously founded ADL’s Center for Technology and Society. Her key projects included creating AI to study hate speech and analyzing disinformation that targeted minority communities. Additionally, Heller prosecuted grave human rights violations at the U.S. Department of Justice and the International Criminal Court and initiated landmark anti-cyber harassment litigation. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School.​

Edgar Auslander is Senior Director, Head of Strategic Partnerships and Intelligence at Meta, (fka. Facebook), where he develops and executes partnership and acquisition strategies for Metaverse, VR, AR, and wearables. He initiated and led a partnership with EssilorLuxottica that redefined Facebook’s AR roadmap with e.g. RayBan Stories. He was one of the founders of Texas Instruments’ Wireless Business Unit, bringing it from no product no revenue to $5B/year. He has more than 30 years of experience, serving on company Boards and working in product planning and management, marketing, licensing, business development, general management of business, marketing and engineering teams, venture capital, consulting, and M&A, at startups, Fortune 100 companies, and a VC firm. He combines deep business and technical knowledge of mobile systems et ecosystems, from semiconductors to consumer devices, application software, and services. A former Faculty Member at Stanford University and the EDHEC Business School, he is a frequent guest lecturer at engineering and business schools in Europe and the USA and started his career while studying for his MBA by licensing inventions from Columbia University.​

Pearly Chen is a VP at HTC with a unique operator-investor role at the forefront of immersive technologies. She has held several leadership positions for HTC’s early-stage venture investment program, VR content platform, and other strategic and operational roles as Chief of Staff to Chairwoman/CEO. She led the launch of HTC’s VR for Impact and serves on the WEF’s Global Future Council and AIXR’s Advisory Council. A dynamic, high-energy, multilingual global citizen and mother of 3 girls, Pearly now lives in Florida with her family.​

RIO KUROKAWA Director, IBM Power & Metaverse lead, Technology Sales, IBM Japan Ltd. Rio has over 7 years of experience as a Hybrid & AI product leader, experience in launching new products and services, including Metaverse business launch with HW / SW / IaaS / SaaS marketing, experience in facing media interviews, and publishing corporate brand blogs and magazines (Power9, 10, Cloud Pak for Data, WKC, z15) and in collaboration with business partners. He enables translation of company strategy from technology strength to client value point of view and has had over 19 years of client-facing experience in Sales, with 3,000 clients including CxOs, Insurance Actuary community, 4 years of certified IBM Executive experience, 10 years of Thought Leader experience in Financial Markets industry. Rio holds a B. A. in Mandarin, Chinese society, and culture from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Tokyo, Japan, and an MBA from the London Business School Short MBA program – London, United Kingdom.

Tae Ashida is a fashion designer who inherited the most prestigious fashion maison in Japan, Jun Ashida Co., Ltd., from her father who founded it, and was the representative designer of Japan. As Creative Director of the Maison, which will celebrate its 60th anniversary next year, she is constantly pursuing innovation to complement the existing tradition and high quality. In 2010 she designed an in-flight outfit that was worn in space by astronaut Naoko Yamazaki on the American space shuttle “Discovery”, the first time a designer’s creation has been worn in space, which brought her wide-ranging international acclaim. In 2012 she won the 54th Japan Editors’ Club Special Award (FEC). She debuted her collection for men in 2019 and celebrated her 30th anniversary as a designer in 2021. That same year, in collaboration with Canon Inc. and IBM Japan, Ltd., she presented the Jun Ashida Spring Summer Collection 2022 movie using a volumetric video system – a union of Jun Ashida Maison’s craftsmanship and innovative cutting-edge technology.

Ajit Pai, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), is a partner at Searchlight Capital Partners, a global investment firm, where he focuses on investments in the telecommunications, media, and technology sectors. Concurrently, he is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he addresses issues about technology and innovation, communications policy, and market-based incentives for investment in broadband deployment. Ajit’s distinguished career at the FCC includes two leadership roles following presidential appointments. He was appointed commissioner by President Barack Obama in 2012, designated chairman by President Donald Trump in 2017, and twice confirmed by the US Senate. While at the helm of the FCC, Ajit had a transformative impact on the future of US technology and communications policy, implementing major initiatives to help close the digital divide; advance US leadership in 5G and other wireless technologies; promote innovation; protect consumers, public safety, and national security; and make the agency itself more open, transparent, and data-driven.

Dr. Derek Peterson, CTO, Boingo Wireless Derek Peterson, Ph.D., is chief technology officer at Boingo Wireless, a global leader in connectivity. At Boingo, he is responsible for the company’s technical vision and strategy. Under his leadership, Boingo is pioneering the adoption and deployment of the latest wireless network technologies including 5G, CBRS, Passpoint, edge computing, network virtualization, and convergence. He is directly responsible for building and operating Boingo’s core technologies and systems, including web applications, client software, networks, authentication, billing, advertising, IPTV, business intelligence, and IT infrastructure.

Maryam Rofougaran is the founder and CEO of Movandi, a leader in new 5G RF and millimeter wave technology that is commercializing multi-gigabit, 5G millimeter wave networks. Movandi is breaking through the coverage and network challenges of 5G millimeter wave networks. Their BeamXR active repeater and system solutions solve today’s real-world 5G deployment challenges – by increasing 5G coverage and capacity, while reducing infrastructure costs by 50%, and accelerating large-scale 5G commercialization. Before co-founding Movandi, Maryam was instrumental in starting and building the wireless business at Broadcom and in growing it to annual revenues of more than $3 billion. She is an Inventor and co-inventor on 280 U.S.-issued patents, 85 U.S.-filed patents

Matt Grob is the chief technology officer of XCOM which develops innovative wireless technologies. Matt previously spent over 26 years at Qualcomm in technology and engineering leadership roles. He served as Qualcomm’s EVP and CTO, overseeing R&D and managing a global team across various divisions worldwide, and later as EVP/Technology. Mr. Grob holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from Bradley University and a M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

Prof. Michal Lipson is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering and Professor of Applied Physics at Columbia University. She completed her B.S., MS, and Ph.D. degrees in Physics at the Technion in 1998 and a Postdoctoral work at MIT in 2001. Lipson pioneered the field of Silicon Photonics, which today is recognized as critical for scaling computing. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was awarded the NAS Comstock Prize in Physics, the MacArthur Award, the Blavatnik Award, the Optical Society’s R. W. Wood Prize, the IEEE Photonics Award, EPFL’s Erna Hamburger Award, and the OSA/IEEE John Tyndall Award. She has also received an honorary degree from Trinity College, University of Dublin. Since 2014 every year she has been named by Thomson Reuters as a top 1% highly cited researcher in the field of Physics. She is the inventor of over 30 issued patents.

Nada Golmie received her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland at College Park. Since 1993, she has been a research engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. She is an IEEE and a NIST Fellow in the Communications Technology Laboratory. Her research in media access control and protocols for wireless networks led to over 200 technical papers presented at professional conferences, and journals, and contributed to international standard organizations and industry-led consortia. She is the author of “Coexistence in Wireless Networks: Challenges and System-level Solutions in the Unlicensed Bands,” published by Cambridge University Press (2006). She leads several projects related to the modeling and evaluation of future-generation wireless systems and protocols and serves as a chair for the Next5G Channel Model Alliance.

Sanyogita Shamsunder Head of Global Edge Networking Sanyogita Shamsunder heads Global Edge Networking at Google, where her team is responsible for various cloud networking products, solutions, and systems supporting Google’s Global Network. Previously, she was the VP of Product Strategy and Operations at Verizon where she was responsible for incubating enterprise and consumer products driven by emerging technologies. Previously, she led the industry-leading 5G network and technology development. Sanyogita’s work experience spans all areas of the wireless business, including silicon, network technology development, and spectrum strategy. Earlier in her career, she held various R&D and development roles at Lucent-Bell Labs, Sandbridge Technologies, and Stanford Telecom.

Chris Bergey is the senior vice president and general manager of the Infrastructure Line of Business at Arm. Chris’ organization is responsible for the proliferation of Arm-based solutions throughout the data infrastructure of today and tomorrow, from cloud computing to the network edge. Before joining Arm, Chris served as senior vice president of Devices Products at Western Digital Corporation and was responsible for product management and product marketing across the company’s $10B+ portfolio of hard drive and flash-based products for data center, client, mobile, automotive, and IoT. Previously, Chris was the vice president of Marketing at Luxtera, a silicon photonics startup that revolutionized datacenter interconnect, after spending over nine years at Broadcom. Chris holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Drexel University and an MBA degree from the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.​

Dean Brenner is a leading expert on the allocation of spectrum for wireless technologies and on wireless public policy issues in the United States and around the world. In January 2022, the Chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) appointed him to be Chairman of the FCC’s Technological Advisory Council to lead a new initiative to advise the FCC on 6G, as well as leading ongoing work on spectrum sharing, emerging technologies, and machine learning/artificial intelligence. Mr. Brenner holds one patent on spectrum sharing. He was the co-chair of the US Policy Task Force of the 5G Automotive Association, an industry group working on connected car policy, and he was a member of many wireless industry groups. Mr. Brenner joined Qualcomm in November 2003, after working at a large Washington DC law firm and founding his law firm. He received his J.D., cum laude, from Georgetown University in 1985 and his A.B., magna cum laude, with distinction in public policy studies, from Duke University in 1982.​

Elana Lian is an Investment Director for Intel Capital located in the Bay Area. Elana focuses on investments in Commerce, IoTG, SaaS/Enterprise digitization and DeepTech. Companies. Elana believes there is a tremendous opportunity for disruption in legacy industries by unlocking insights into their data and creating new consumer experiences. Elana currently serves as board director or observer at Teikametrics and Fictiv. Before Intel Capital, Elana began her career working in Engineering, Product Development, and Business Development roles across the high-tech industry. She is a Kauffman Fellow and received her MBA from Kellogg School of Management, has a BS & MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto and Tufts University. In her spare time, she loves traveling to five continents, skiing, scuba diving, and spending time with her son.​

Mike Vildibill leads Qualcomm’s Cloud Edge AI business unit responsible for AI cloud computing in cloud edge servers, datacenters, and enterprise end-to-end solutions. Products include a family of Qualcomm Cloud AI 100 accelerators and software that accelerate AI/ML inferencing applications. These systems are deployed worldwide in environments ranging from edge to cloud. Mike has extensive experience in high-performance and data-intensive computing and has held executive positions at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Data Direct storage systems, Sun Microsystems, and the University of California, San Diego. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Open Scalable File Systems open-source project. His varied executive responsibilities have included Product Management, Server and software Product Development, Sales leadership, Marketing, Advanced Development, and Academic Research.​

Pete Warden was the founder of the TensorFlow Lite Micro open-source project at Google, and previously CTO of Jetpac, a machine-learning startup acquired in 2014. He’s an author of the TinyML book from O’Reilly, has taught embedded machine learning at Stanford and Harvard, and has an EdX online course. He occasionally blogs at petewarden.com [petewarden.com], and is on Twitter as @petewarden.​

Vinay Ravuri, CEO of EdgeQ, has 25+ years of experience as a distinguished industry executive and general manager for high-tech corporations in computing, communications, and networking. As an executive, he has navigated companies to key strategic inflections in areas of cloud computing, machine learning, and 5G. As Vice President at Qualcomm, Vinay played an integral part in the establishment of its Data Center server and Machine-Learning technology and drove their advanced mobile software product management. He obtained a Master of Science from Georgia Institute of Technology, a Bachelor of Engineering at the City University of New York, and holds 12 US patents.​

A 30-year technology veteran with expertise in robotics, AI, machine learning, and business transformation. Anthony Jules is Co-founder and CEO of Robust.AI, where he is pioneering a vision of collaborative mobility in robotics. Anthony’s exceptional track record as a technology leader is based on his belief that complex problems like robotics require multidimensional and multidisciplinary solutions that are human-centered by design. Before joining Robust.AI, Anthony led several high-performance multidisciplinary teams building robotics products at Google. As part of Google Robotics and X, he was head of Product and Program Management for the Everyday Robot project. He joined Google through its acquisition of Redwood Robotics in 2013, at which he was COO and VP of Product.

Christian Ramsauer is a full professor at the Department of Innovation and Industrial Management at Graz University of Technology. He received his Ph.D. focusing on production management from TU Graz in 1996 and spent two years conducting research on process development as a visiting scholar at Harvard Business School in Boston, Massachusetts, working with Professor Stefan H. Thomke. He worked for five years with McKinsey & Company Germany as a management consultant, focusing on product and process development and strategic issues, mainly with automotive and steel companies in Europe, the United States of America, and Mexico. As a shareholder and CEO of a “green technology” company in Salzburg, he developed his company into a fast-growing and profitable enterprise. After working in the private equity sector in Munich he joined Graz University of Technology in 2011. He is chairman of the supervisory board of the two start-ups Panthronics AG and Reactive Reality7 AG in Austria.

Sonita Lontoh is an accomplished public company’s board director and a former Fortune 100 executive. Over her 25-year diverse global career, she has led and advised public companies and governments on innovative programs that have delivered positive impacts to businesses, consumers, and society. She is a purpose-driven thought leader with a passion for advancing more women leaders in technology and corporate boardrooms. She has been invited by the White House to speak at President Barack Obama’s Global Entrepreneurship Summit and to an event honoring AAPI Women Champions of Change. Sonita was recognized by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her pioneering work for TechWomen and was invited by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for a roundtable discussing digital transformations. She is an inductee to the US Asian Hall of Fame, and the US Women in Manufacturing Hall of Fame, and is a notable MIT women’s alumna.

Xiaolin is a Fellow and Director of Texas Instruments Kilby Labs Sensing & Processing Group. She is responsible for R&D on connected sensors, embedded AI, timing, and clocking technologies for industrial internet and automobile applications. She has worked on various embedded processing and communication system programs, including Smart Sensing with edge computing, Intelligent Industrial Internet Sensor Network systems, embedded AI hardware acceleration, etc. She is the author/co-author of more than 60 U.S.-issued patents and the recipient of the special recognition awards: 2016 Asian American Engineer of the Year, Society of Women Engineers (SWE), and National Women of Color award in the Technical Innovation – Industry category.

Yasser joined Amazon Web Services as a VP of IoT coming from Qualcomm where he was Vice President. He held a variety of leadership roles that included managing teams that released Qualcomm’s first WLAN chip for mobile phones, and leading the formation and launch of QuIC (Qualcomm Innovation Center) and CAF (Code Aurora Foundation) to solve legal and operational issues around the open source software release. Yasser also led the Qualcomm Reference Design (QRD) program, to expand Qualcomm’s business in China which grew the market share by helping the Chinese manufacturers produce phones based on Qualcomm technologies. For the past four years, Yasser managed Qualcomm’s IoT ecosystem. He directly managed the critical part of the strategy to scale IoT chipsets, including key technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision drones, robotics, and 5G. Yasser attended numerous trade shows, customer meetings, and other marketing events in the United States, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Yuki Nakagawa RT Corporation CEO, President, Founder In 2005, she started RT Corporation, a company that develops, sells, and trains university students and professional engineers about service robots, and became its representative director. RT is the official ROS supporter of Denso Wave COBOTTA. RT is also a Jetson Education Partner. For Google ADK production and sales, RT became the first Japanese company to be introduced at the Google I/O in 2011. In 2015, she was selected as one of the “25 Women in the World You Should Know in the Robotics Industry” by ROBOHUB in Silicon Valley, USA. In 2017, the company received investment from the Mirai Sousei Fund as a lead investor to develop Foodly, a humanoid collaborative robot for food factories. It is also attracting attention as a rapidly growing venture. She has published many papers and books and writes a column for robotics or food magazines. She is also the executive director of the New Technology Foundation, which organizes Micromouse, a maze analysis robot competition, and a board member of ROSConJP, a general incorporated association.

Ain McKendrick is the founder and CEO of Faction. He has a track record of developing cutting-edge consumer electronics products and technologies throughout his career at many startups. Before forming Faction, Ain was the VP of Engineering at Starsky Robotics which became the first company to operate completely driverless semi trucks on public roads in North America. He was the Senior Director of Netflix’s partner products team which brought Netflix Instant Streaming to connected consumer products and has co-founded several startup technology ventures. Ain began his technology career as one of the founders of Palm Computing developing the original PalmPilot PDA. Ain holds a degree in Computer Science from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, is a Y Combinator alumni, and has several patents issued and pending for handheld computing, user interface, DVR, networked storage, and driverless vehicle technologies.

Florian Holzapfel received the Engineering Diploma and Doctorate degrees in aerospace engineering from the Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany, in 1999 and 2004, respectively. He is currently a Full Professor at the Department of Aerospace and Geodesy, Technische Universität München, where he is also the Director of the Institute of Flight System Dynamics. From 2004 to 2007, he was a Project Leader for flight simulation and flight control with IABG mbH, Munich, Germany. His current research interests include aerospace GNC applications, with a focus on transitioning novel methods to flight experiments and products. He is the Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Luft und Raumfahrt (German equivalent to the AIAA), past and present member of GNC TCs for AIAA, DGLR, and CEAS, past and present member of company advisory boards and expert boards of public institutions like NATO, BavAIRia, German Government Ministries.

Lihn Pham is the CEO of VinES, the battery arm of VinGroup, the largest private conglomerate in Vietnam, a top 50 Asian company. In this role, she leads the company from strategy to execution in achieving its mission to become a global EV battery maker Incorporating global disruptive new battery technologies into the in-house supply chain. Lihn also serves as Deputy CEO of VinFast, the mobility arm of VinGroup. VinFast was established in 2018 and envisioned to drive the movement of the global smart electric vehicle revolution. In this role, she leads global partnerships to combine with in-house R&D capabilities, to bring the most advanced technologies in ADAS, AD, Infotainment, and the Internet of Energy, to the company’s first generation of electric cars for global markets.

Maha is a senior leader with more than 25 years of experience in both public, defense, and startup companies in semiconductor and wireless RF and optical communication and sensing systems. She was recently recognized in the Forbes 50 Vision list for founding Metawave. Maha is also Glass Dynamics Chairwoman of the board. Her strong technology background combined with leadership, business, and marketing skills. Previously, Maha served as co-founder and CTO of Rayspan, Dir of Adv Technology at SDRC (Boeing), and Dir of Adv Technology of Optical access where she pioneered the first broadcast HDTV system over satellite, mm-wave/Free-Space Optical systems for last mile connectivity, and led various DARPA projects in wireless MIMO and Optical devices. She holds a doctorate in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), authored over 35 publications, and holds more than 75 granted patents and over 150 pending applications.

Co-Founder and CEO of Ciconia Ltd. Led the development of the flight-tested C&CAS (Coordination & Collision Avoidance System), a decentralized, hybrid, midair conflict management system. The C&CAS bridges the technological, cultural, and operational gaps between all users of low-altitude airspace, enabling a far more intensive use of the airspace. Moshe (retired Col., Israeli Air Force) has logged over 5000 flight hours in complex operations as a helicopter pilot and commander. Before founding Ciconia, he held managerial positions in a several industries. Moshe holds a Master’s Degree in Financial Management from the Naval Post Graduate School (Monterey CA.) and a Master’s Degree in Political Science from Haifa University, Israel.

Sara A. Jones currently serves as Senior Vice President at New Vista Capital, an investment firm focused on emerging technologies in Aerospace and defense. Before New Vista, Ms. Jones drove innovation investments, partnerships, and new venture initiatives in the future of mobility and emerging technologies at The Boeing Company, including serving as Innovation Director, Digital & Emerging Aviation in Boeing HorizonX. In addition, Ms. Jones has worked in corporate strategy and management consulting, developing research-driven business and customer strategies for Fortune 100 companies, including Microsoft, UPS, T-Mobile, and Nordstrom. She also has extensive experience in the start-up sector as a founder and advisor.​