Professor Toby Walsh is Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales and Data61. He has a B.A. from the University of Cambridge and a M.Sc. and Ph.D. degree from the University of Edinburgh. He was named by the Australian newspaper as one of the "rock stars" of Australia's digital revolution. Professor Walsh is a strong advocate for limits to ensure AI is used to improve our lives. He has been a leading voice in the discussion about lethal autonomous weapons, speaking at the UN in New York and Geneva on the topic. He is a Fellow of the Australia Academy of Science and of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a Humboldt Award winner and recipient of the NSW Premier's Prize for Excellence in Engineering and ICT.

Zbigniew Michalewicz is the Chief Scientist of Complexica, an Artificial Intelligence software company that helps large organisations sell more products and services, at a higher margin, through the use of automated analytics. He is also Emeritus Professor at the School of Computer Science, University of Adelaide and holds Professor positions at the Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology, and an honorary Professor position at State Key Laboratory of Software Engineering of Wuhan University, China. He is also associated with Structural Complexity Laboratory at Seoul National University, South Korea. In December 2013 he was awarded (by the President of Poland, Mr. Bronislaw Komorowski) the Order of the Rebirth of Polish Polonia Restituta - the second highest Polish state decoration civilian (after the Order of the White Eagle), awarded for outstanding achievements in the field of education, science, sports, culture, arts, economy, national defence, social activities, the civil service and the development of good relations with other countries.

For many years his research interests were in the field of evolutionary computation. He published several books, including a monograph Genetic Algorithms + Data Structures = Evolution Programs (3 editions, a few translations, over 18,300 citations, source: Google Scholar), and over 250 technical papers in journals and conference proceedings that are cited widely (over 40,000 citations, source: Google Scholar). He was one of the editors-in-chief of the Handbook of Evolutionary Computation and the general chairman of the First IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation held in Orlando, June 1994.

Zbigniew Michalewicz has over 35 years of academic and industry experiences, and possesses expert knowledge of numerous Artificial Intelligence technologies. He was the co-Founder and Chief Scientist of NuTech Solutions, which was acquired by Netezza and subsequently by IBM, and the co-Founder and Chief Scientist of SolveIT Software, which was acquired by Schneider Electric after becoming the 3rd fastest growing company in Australia. Both companies grew to approximately 200 employees before they were being acquired.

During his time in the corporate world, Professor Michalewicz led numerous large-scale predictive analytics and optimisation projects for major corporations, including Ford Motor Company, BHP Billiton, U.S. Department of Defence, and Bank of America. Professor Michalewicz also served as the Chairman of the Technical Committee on Evolutionary Computation, and later as the Executive Vice President of IEEE Neural Network Council.

Andy Song is an academic specialized in Artificial Intelligence. He received his Ph.D. degree in AI from RMIT University and became a faculty member with the School of Science of RMIT since. His current research interests include evolutionary learning and optimization, especially for complex real-world problems, such as industry optimization, texture analysis, motion detection, time series analysis, and AI applications in intelligent transport systems. He collaborates extensively with industry partners on establishing cutting-edge techniques which integrate machine intelligence, mobile computing, and crowd sensing, to benefit transportation, logistics and warehouse industry. He is the lead investigator of this warehouse optimization project funded by Digital Futures Fund, and a key investigator of a series of research and development projects. Dr. Song is a local co-chair of IJCAI’17, the top AI conference in the world, and an OECD forum partner. He has been a B20 Taskforce Member since 2015 providing policy recommendations to the annual G20 summit.

Koren works as Senior Manager of Cyber Security, Risk & Compliance and Business Continuity Director for Technology New Zealand at ANZ bank. She is an accidental technologist, having achieved a Double Major with Hons. in Political Science and Criminology. Koren has worked in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, across Government, Telecommunications, Consulting and Financial Services sectors.

Koren is the author of several recent articles on AI Technology in New Zealand Financial Services. Koren also leads a project team within the international Partnership on AI’s ‘Fair, Transparent and Accountable AI’ international working group which aspires to develop and promote best practice in Fair, Transparent and Accountable AI. Koren is passionate about understanding and applying the suite of artificial intelligence technologies to benefit people and businesses.

Koren has been an active contributor at the AI Forum of New Zealand since its establishment in 2017. The AI Forum brings together New Zealand communities and interests with the goal of harnessing Artificial Intelligence to enable a prosperous, inclusive and thriving future New Zealand.

Dr. Hazel Bradshaw is a game designer, academic and emerging technologies explorer. Specialising in engaging design approaches for games, interactives and technologies. She is currently based in Wellington, applying her design abilities within the New Zealand government's Service Innovation Lab. Hazel’s role as the emerging technologies lead is to explore the opportunities that emerging tech; especially Artificial Intelligence, will have on the future design of government services. The Service Innovation Lab consists of a multidisciplinary team, working across-agencies, to undertake innovative service design at the heart of government. Hazel’s mission is to combine gameplay and technology to create playfulness and meaning to our everyday interactions.

Hazel holds a PhD in Human Interface Technology specialising in game design practise and is the founder of Driedfrog Ltd, a gameplay consultancy. Hazel draws upon a background in visual arts and design innovation, and has held international academic positions lecturing in game design, creative technology and game art.

Erich is chief RTI strategy advisor and CEO of eutema GmbH. He is a regular coordinator of international research projects, evaluator of RTD projects for the European Commission and an experienced programme manager of funding programmes. Erich is a certified managerial economist and works scientifically in artificial intelligence, research politics, innovation research and epistemology. He published more than 70 scientific papers and was a guest researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Dr. phil. in epistemology from the University of Vienna, his Dr.tech. from TU Vienna where he also completed his master’s in Computer Science (Dipl.Ing). He is a lecturer at TU Vienna’s Informatics Innovation Center. He received his MBA in General Management from Donau University. Erich is the co-ordinator of the EPIC project fostering Europe’s ICT RTDI cooperation with Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Asa is an experienced technology entrepreneur, having founded data centric businesses in healthcare, digital marketing and most recently artificial intelligence with Intela AI. Driven by a desire to help organisations benefit from technology, he takes pride in being able to connect the dots between business value and the latest geekery. As a Partner in Intela Advisory, he is focused on helping NZ Inc prepare to embrace AI and all the incredible opportunity it holds.

Since landing in Wellington in 2013, Asa has been a pioneer in the NZ technology space, leading Intela AI to secure country-first projects with organisation such as Transpower, MPI & NZ Police, and formal recognition as a leader in the Wellington analytics sector. As a working group lead for the AI Forum, Asa is a highly visible presence across the industry.

In addition to his primary role as an AI strategist, Asa has been recognized by many for his extraordinary commitment to engaging the local business, government and academic communities to solve real world problems; co-founding City.AI in Wellington, speaking at national conferences and running workshops for non-technical industry leaders.