With over 28 years of managerial experience in product, IT, business development, and marketing, Ralf is responsible for bringing many of the world’s leading big data, AI, and machine learning startups to international conferences in Europe. Having worked for five years as a product manager in Silicon Valley, he directly contributed to the building of the world’s first gigabit and terabit routers. Before that, he spent four years in China during the years in which the country opened up to foreign investment from the West. Ralf holds an MA in electrical engineering and radio frequency technology from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany and a degree in data engineering from the UCSC.

Jürgen’s main goal since he was 15 has been to build an AI smarter than himself, then retire. On the way there, as scientific director at IDSIA, he and his research group have been at the forefront of modern machine learning since the early 90s, including the first deep networks to win international competitions in pattern recognition which have revolutionized handwriting recognition, speech recognition, machine translation, and image captioning. He is the recipient of numerous awards, and advises governments on AI and how it’s about making lives longer, healthier, easier, and happier.