Meet this year’s MediaFutures evaluators!

Elena Simperl is professor of computer science at King’s College London, a Fellow of the British Computer Society and former Turing fellow. According to AMiner, she is in the top 100 most influential scholars in knowledge engineering of the last decade, as well as in the Women in AI 2000 ranking. Before joining King’s College, she held positions at the University of Southampton, as well as in Germany and Austria. Elena’s research is at the intersection between knowledge graphs and social computing. In her 15 years career, led 14 national and international projects, and contributed to another 26. Currently she is the scientific and technical lead of the European programme MediaFutures, researching how arts, entrepreneurship and AI can help tackle online misinformation and disinformation. She authored more than 160 peer-reviewed publications in knowledge engineering, semantic technologies, open and linked data, social computing, crowdsourcing and data-driven innovation. She is the president of the Semantic Web Science Association. Over the years she served as programme and general chair to several conferences, including the Web Conference, the European and International Semantic Web Conference, the European Data Forum and the AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing.

Hugues Vinet is Head of Innovation and Research Means at IRCAM, and is in charge of supervising the artistic residencies program for MediaFutures. He has recently coordinated the VERTIGO project managing STARTS Residencies, a program of 45 residencies of artists contributing to technological innovation throughout Europe. Hugues also curates the Vertigo Forum, a yearly symposium at Centre Pompidou associated with thematic exhibitions gathering artists and researchers on contemporary trends of artistic creation in relation to science and technology.

Julià Vicens is a research scientist leading the Computational Social Science research group at Fundació Eurecat. His research focuses on the study of collective behaviour, urban systems, information dynamics and participatory science in the field of complex systems. He has worked in centres and research groups such as OpenSystems and UBICS (Universitat de Barcelona), participating in national and international projects and publishing his research in top-tier journals. Transversally, he has been working on initiatives devoted to promoting the interaction between science, technology, education and the arts.

Louise Enjalbert is Art-Tech Coordinator at IRCAM. She holds a master’s degree in Management of Cultural Organisation from University Paris Dauphine. With experience in innovative projects at the crossroads of culture and technology, she is now in charge of MediaFutures’ residency programme – this involves designing the residency framework; following up with the artists; enabling collaboration between artists, scientists and technologists; and assessing the results and innovation aspects of the programme. She also communicates the residency results, events and methodology with the wider community.

Mr Gee is a Data Poet who combines the fields of Data Analytics and poetry to inform his work. He’s presented several radio series on BBC Radio 4,one of which – ‘‘Poetic Justice’ – focused on the extensive rehabilitation work that he does within UK prisons. He’s also a trustee for the street-art charity ‘Paint the Change’ and an advisor for the prison charity ‘Switchback’. In 2019, he created a digital art-piece called ‘Bring Me My Fire Truck’ for the Open Data Institute. It incorporated the A.I. of Google Translate with William Blake’s poetry to make an artistic commentary about Brexit. It was showcased at the Tate Britain gallery as a part of their 2020 ‘Blake Now’ series.

Nico Lumma is Managing Director at NMA (the Next Media Accelerator). He studied Political Science and History in Göttingen, Germany, and in Berkeley, California. He hasn’t been offline since 1995 and has a strong interest in digital innovation. Nico co-founded NMA in 2015 to build the premier hub for media innovation in Europe. Nico co-founded D64 – Center for Digital Process, a non-profit organisation that serves as a think-tank on important political issues dealing with the digital sphere. He serves on many advisory boards, including the State Council for Digital Development and Culture in Rhineland-Palatinate, and Hamburg’s Roundtable on Digital Business.Umesh Kumar.

Umesh is a serial entrepreneur with a wealth of operational experience, having founded multiple start-ups over the last decade. He is an innovation consultant who has worked with some of the largest companies in the world with clients, including National Grid, Unilever, P&G, SXSW, Cushman & Wakefield, and Accenture. He has mentored at some of Europe’s major accelerator programmes, advised 100+ start-ups at various stages and has reviewed over 10,000 pitch decks in his career to date. He is an active angel investor in early-stage start-ups focusing on tech, property, hospitality and retail sectors.

Harmeet Chagger-Khan is Founder and Creative Director of Surfing Light Beams, a media studio producing immersive experiences and playable adventures. Applying research with new technology, across stories and games we create positive behaviour change placing communities and people at the heart of the process. Using immersive storytelling we create a space where the inventor, the artist, the intellect, the communicator & the leader can be harnessed and for individuals to recognise how valuable their contribution is within a community, a society, an organisation or as a global citizen.

Fernanda Rojas is Project Manager with a focus on European Projects and startup-driven innovation at NMA Venture Capital. She has a background in International Business Administration and currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Business Development at HSBA. For the last six years, she has been working in the startup industry in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Germany. Fernanda is currently in charge of MediaFutures acceleration programme and her areas of expertise include startup development, executive management, and intercultural communication.

Haiqi Bian is a software engineer for automated driving at one of the top Tier 1 suppliers in the automotive industry in Germany. After getting his bachelor’s degree in computer science in Shanghai, he went on to earn his double degrees in France, one in electronic engineering and the other in international industrial affairs. He is currently working on a collision avoidance function for a next-generation electric vehicle. Furthermore, he uses his leisure time to win the online challenges for object detection and driver behaviour cloning by using deep learning models. Haiqi previously designed the software architecture and brought it from theory to practice for a backup function for the world’s first conditionally automated driving.