Technology Entrepreneur, Advisor, and Investor

Volker is an entrepreneur, executive, and investor who has founded and co-founded a total of 7 companies to date. Most recently, he was the Chief Commercial Officer of the UK’s Medicines Discovery Catapult and a Partner at Amadeus Capital. He is also co-founder of Blue Beck, a 30-strong software development house, and Chairman of Advantage Creative. His investment focuses on health, AI, Med Tech, Digital Health and education technology. Further, Volker is a co-founder of Tech North Advocates, a non-profit focused on promoting the role of tech in the North of England.

Previously, Volker was the Chief Strategy Officer at Scoreloop, a mobile social gaming platform, which he helped grow to 450m users. After the company was acquired by BlackBerry, he served as its Global Head of Business Development – Games.

Source: Gerd Featured Colleagues

Dr. Elina Hiltunen – Futurist, Author, D. Sc (business), M.Sc. (chemistry)

Elina Hiltunen is a futurist, D. Sc. (Business administration) from Aalto University, School of Business and M.Sc. (chemical engineering) from Helsinki University of Technology (currently Aalto University, School of Chemical Engineering). Forbes has listed her as one of the 50 leading female futurists in the world. She is an experienced keynote speaker who has delivered hundreds of lectures about various topics on the future in Finland and abroad. She studied at the National Defense University, Finland and wrote her second PhD thesis on how to use science fiction in the foresight process of defense organization.

Elina has experience working as a futurist at Nokia, Finland Futures Research Centre and Finpro (Finnish Trade Promotion Association). She has also worked as an Executive in Residence at Aalto University, ARTS.

Source: Gerd Featured Colleagues

The Norwegian-born philosopher, deep-tech investor Anders Indset has been recognized by Thinkers50 as one of the leading thinkers in technology and leadership. Anders is a bridge-builder between humanity and technology, shaping the economy of tomorrow with his practical philosophy. With two decades of experience working with multinational companies, he is a trusted sparring partner for international CEOs and political leaders, and a guest lecturer at leading international business schools.

With his deep understanding of the impact of exponential technologies, Anders demonstrates how and why leadership and its relationship to philosophy are more relevant than ever. He firmly believes that in a world with nearly unlimited access to knowledge, a deeper understanding and the ability to anticipate future scenarios, combined with the development of interpersonal skills, will be the most sought-after qualities for leaders.

Source: Gerd Featured Colleagues

Aharon Hauptman is senior researcher at TSF/ICTAF since 1988. Dr. Hauptman has a B.Sc from the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) and Ph.D in Engineering from Tel-Aviv University (1986).

Specializing in the evaluation of trends in emerging technologies and their impacts, he has much experience in Technology Foresight and its relations with research policy and with various application areas. Examples of past/recent activities: Delphi surveys of emerging technologies; foresight in nanobiotechnology; foresight in the area of future unmanned/autonomous systems, “wild cards” and “weak signals”.

He has been involved in several EU FP6 projects (ELOST, Knowledge-NBIC, SSH-FUTURES) and led central work-packages or tasks in the FP7 projects FESTOS (impact of future/emerging technologies on security), PRACTIS (impact of  future technologies on privacy), iKNOW (wild cards and weak signals shaping the future science, technology and innovation policy) and RACE2050 (future transportation scenarios).

Source: Webpage

With over three decades of organisational change and foresight experience, LASA CEO Patricia Lustig has worked with leaders worldwide to anticipate change and shape the future. An internationally respected consultant, author, and practitioner in strategic foresight, Patricia brings unparalleled expertise in futures thinking, strategy development, and innovation.

Her portfolio includes collaborations with the UK Government Office for Science, the European Commission, and the Construction Industry Training Board. Patricia has been featured by Harvard Business Review, invited to the inaugural Dubai Futures Forum, and is a thought leader in futures strategy, regularly publishing insights and co-authoring groundbreaking works such as the award winning Strategic Foresight: Learning from the Future and her most recent book, co-authored with Gill Ringland, The Possibility Wheel: Making Better Choices in a Fractured World.

Source: Website

Rakesh Kapoor is a researcher, writer, editor and founder-managing trustee of Alternative Futures. Rakesh works on the interface of science, technology, society and the future and on issues of sustainable development. He is Consulting Editor of Futures: the journal of policy, planning and futures studies (www.elsevier.com/locate/futures).

He was Director of the World Futures Studies Federation (www.wfsf.org) – a global community of futurist thinkers, scientists and consultants from 2008 to 2014. See detailed c.v.

Bill’s Vision

As an aerospace engineer on Apollo, an Air Force officer, a Silicon Valley manager, professor of technology & innovation, and founder of TechCast, I have always been fascinated with the revolutionary power of technology driving us into a high-tech global order. My work is devoted to helping us figure out where this profound transition is heading, what it all means, and how we can get there.

Source: William Halal and Associates Website

Chair, onAir Tech Corporation
Curation Director,  onAir Networks
Chair, Future onAir Advisory Board

Interests:  Knowledge Networks, Catalyzing Innovation, Tech Entrepreneurship, Healthy and Sustainable Communities

Pioneer in identifying, developing, and applying new information and communication technologies:

• The first consumer applications of the microprocessor (4bit & LSIs) … for the toy and game industry and for education
• The first internet cafe with online news, games, and computer conferencing
• The first prototype smartphone working with the developers of the Amiga computer, the first graphical computer

My current focus has been on developing the onAir Knowledge Network System, a knowledge sharing software platform with many unique features such as enabling authors to own and share their content across multiple public and custom Hubs.

The 2-minute video  gives an overview of many of the capabilities of the onAir platform and the US onAir network of 50 state hubs and national hub at us.onair.cc.  The nonpartisan nonprofit onAir Networks, a 501c3, oversees the public onAir networks and hubs licensing the onAir software from onAir Tech corporation (formerly AIR Networks, LLC).

Geoffrey Everest Hinton (born 6 December 1947) is a British-Canadian computer scientist, cognitive scientist, cognitive psychologist, and Nobel laureate in physics, known for his work on artificial neural networks, which earned him the title “the Godfather of AI”.

Hinton is University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. From 2013 to 2023, he divided his time working for Google (Google Brain) and the University of Toronto before publicly announcing his departure from Google in May 2023, citing concerns about the many risks of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.  In 2017, he co-founded and became the chief scientific advisor of the Vector Institute in Toronto.

Source: Wikipedia

Sir Demis Hassabis (born 27 July 1976) is a British artificial intelligence (AI) researcher, and entrepreneur. He is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Google DeepMind, and Isomorphic Labs, and a UK Government AI Adviser. In 2024, Hassabis and John M. Jumper were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their AI research contributions for protein structure prediction.

Hassabis is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and has won many prestigious awards for his research work including the Breakthrough Prize, the Canada Gairdner International Award, and the Lasker Award. In 2017 he was appointed a CBE and listed in the Time 100 most influential people list. In 2024 he was knighted for services to AI.

Source: Wikipedia