Sergio Gusmeroli is Research Coordinator at MADE Competence Center and Politecnico di Milano, Industrial Engineering Department.

He has been and is coordinating several H2020 and HEP projects in the domain of Digital Manufacturing, especially focussing on Data Technologies and Artificial Intelligence.

Sergio is also co-leading the BDVA working group about Smart Manufacturing Industry and is Ambassador of the International Data Space Association about Data Spaces for Manufacturing. He's also involved in the coordination of the euroFMX Flagship project about genAI for Manufacturing.

Recent research activities are mostly focussing on Data Spaces for Circular Manufacturing and AI Testing and Experimentation Facilities (TEF).

Nick Arapkoules is a mechanical engineer (NTUA) and serial technology entrepreneur with over 15 years of building ventures from zero.

As Business Development Manager at Axl Imperial, he founded the company's Robotics & Industrial Automation unit and built its team and sales engine. He is now developing Mark One, a 41-DoF mobile humanoid robot for end-of-line packaging and logistics applications.

Before that, he managed a €5M+ robotics R&D portfolio at IKH for clients such as Enel, EDF and Siemens Gamesa. He also co-founded Heliix Power based on a ground-breaking heat-to-power technology.

He is a Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe honoree.

Dr Apostolos Chondronasios is a Production and Management Engineer from the Engineering Department of Democritus University of Thrace. He also holds an MSc in Advanced Manufacturing Technology and a PhD in Machine Vision and Artificial Intelligence from the University of Portsmouth.

He is passionate about the entire lifecycle of building intelligent systems. His interests lie at the intersection of machine learning and software engineering, to design scalable software architectures while leveraging the power of cloud computing to deploy resilient, high-performance solutions that solve real-world problems.

Currently, he is the Director of Engineering at CORE Innovation, and he leads the COREbeat technical development.

John Soldatos holds a PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (2000) and is Senior R&D Consultant and Innovation Delivery Specialist with Netcompany and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow, UK (2014–present).

He was a Professor and Head of the Internet of Things (IoT) Group at the Athens Information Technology (AIT), Greece (2006–2019), and Adjunct Professor at the Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA (2007–2010).

He has experience in working closely with various large multi-national industries as R&D consultant, while being partner and scientific advisor to high-tech startups.

He has played a leading role in the delivery of more than 100 (industrial, R&D, consulting) projects, for both private & public sector organizations.

Iñigo Flores Ituarte is a Full Professor in Digital Manufacturing at Tampere University and leads the Digital Design and Manufacturing (D2M) Lab. He holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Aalto University and has held academic positions in Finland, Denmark, and Singapore.

His research focuses on AI-enabled engineering, computational design, digital twins, advanced manufacturing, sensing and monitoring, and sustainability-driven Design-to-Manufacturing systems.

He combines fundamental research, computational methods, system development, and industrial collaboration to advance intelligent, autonomous, and resource-efficient engineering and manufacturing workflows.

Kostas Daniilidis is the Ruth Yalom Stone Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania where he has been faculty since 1998. He is an IEEE Fellow.

He was the director of the GRASP laboratory from 2008 to 2013, Associate Dean for Graduate Education from 2012–2016, and Faculty Director of Online Learning from 2013–2017.

He obtained his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, 1986, and his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Karlsruhe, 1992.

He received the Best Conference Paper Award at ICRA 2017. He co-chaired ECCV 2010 and 3DPVT 2006. He received the 2026 Provost's Award for Distinguished PhD Mentoring.

His most cited works have been on event-based vision, equivariant learning, 3D human pose, and hand-eye calibration.

He is currently serving as the Director of the Robotics Institute at the Athena Research Center in Greece.

Cecilia Fatás Paúl is an Innovation Project Manager with extensive experience leading projects across the industrial and construction sectors.

At ITA, she coordinates multidisciplinary R&D initiatives in mechatronics, robotics, advanced construction processes and sustainable industrial technologies.

With a strong engineering background and over 20 years of experience, she specialises in transforming complex technical ideas into structured, impactful projects.

Her approach combines technical expertise, strategic vision and business value, bridging research and real-world industrial needs through collaborative national and European R&D initiatives.

Leire Bastida, PhD, is Head of the Visual and Multimodal Interaction Technologies Platform at TECNALIA and leads the Augmented Interaction Strategic Focus of Excellence (FEE).

Her work focuses on Industry 5.0 and AI-enabled adaptive interaction, fostering bidirectional communication between people and intelligent systems that perceive, interpret and respond to each other.

She combines Extended Reality, artificial intelligence, multimodal interfaces, human-AI collaboration and human factor monitoring to enhance workers' capabilities, safety and well-being.

She has extensive experience coordinating international research projects and transferring human-centred interactive solutions to industry.

Dr Muhammad Ahsan Mahboob is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Sustainable Mining, University of Johannesburg, specialising in digital mining, geospatial intelligence, remote sensing, GeoAI and emerging mining technologies.

He holds a PhD in Mining Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand and has contributed to multidisciplinary research and innovation programmes with industry, technology and academic partners.

His work focuses on integrating sensing, Earth observation, spatial analytics, artificial intelligence and digital technologies to support safer, more sustainable, resilient and human-centred intelligent mining systems.

Director of Syxis since 2022, Founder and CEO of Holonix since 2010.

He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Management and Industrial Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Milan.

He is the author of more than 40 articles and three books.

His main know-hows are PLM, Serious Games and IoT (Internet of Things) applied to the product/service, sustainability, predictive maintenance and Zero Defects.

He is an ambassador for IDSA – International Data Spaces Association.

Dr Panagiota Tsarouchi is Innovation Programmes & EU Funding Manager of the Copper Segment at ElvalHalcor, leading strategic innovation, AI and EU-funded initiatives that support industrial transformation, sustainability, circularity and digitalisation.

She brings 14 years of experience across industry, applied research and European innovation ecosystems, with expertise spanning industrial R&D, robotics, automation, advanced manufacturing and collaborative innovation.

Her career includes experience as an R&D Industrialisation Engineer at BIC, as a researcher at the Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems & Automation of the University of Patras, and as Head of EU Projects & Strategic Initiatives.

She is an Electrical and Computer Engineer, holds a PhD in Industrial Human–Robot Collaboration, and serves as an Expert Evaluator for the European Commission, a role she has held for more than eight years.

Graduate of the Department of Automation, with more than twelve years of experience in the design, implementation and support of industrial automation systems. I specialize in the development and optimization of PLC/SCADA architectures, in the electronic maintenance of industrial equipment, and in the integration of IT/OT infrastructures in high-availability environments.

I have extensive experience in industrial protocols, OT cybersecurity best practices, as well as in solving complex problems in heavy industry facilities, where precise control, reliability and continuous operation are required.

Dr. Milan Kumar is a distinguished figure in the field of global technology as a Global Chief Information and Digital Officer (CIO & CDO), renowned as a TEDx speaker, educator, international author, and startups mentor. He is currently Member of the Board at Datafaktory AG and CIO & CDO at Switzerland Innovation PBB.

He served previously as the CIO of ZF Commercial Vehicles, a leading supplier of technologies and services that enhance the safety, efficiency, and connectivity of commercial vehicles, based in Bern, Switzerland.

Dr. Kumar has a wealth of experience in senior IT leadership roles, having previously acted as the CIO and CDO, as well as a board member at WABCO (NYSE: WBC). He also served as the CDO and CIO at NTL (a NTT Group company), where he consulted numerous Fortune 1000 companies with their digital transformation journey.

Before this, Dr. Kumar held several high-ranking IT leadership positions within the VOLKSWAGEN group in Europe and India, including CIO/Director and Board Member of Volkswagen IT Services IPL, where he co-founded Volkswagen's global IT delivery center in India, supporting various brands like Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Scania, MAN, and others worldwide in their manufacturing plants and dealership networks.

Throughout his career, Dr. Kumar has supported technology transformation of many Fortune 500 companies such as VOLKSWAGEN Group, ZF Group, BMW Group, General Motors, British Airways, Reliance, Atlas Copco, VISA, Morgan Stanley to name a few.

Member of the Board: Dr. Kumar also holds Board Member role at Swiss CxO Forum, ETH Zurich AI strategy lab, UNIL AI Lab, INCIT Singapore.

Dr. Kumar's academic achievements include a PhD in AI Management and completion of the "Driving Growth Through Innovation" at the Harvard Business School. He has been recognized with numerous awards, including the "Swiss CIO of the Year," "Global Digital CIO," and "CIO Excellence Award" from Economics Times.

Additionally, Dr. Kumar is a TEDx & Global Keynote Speaker and an avid technical writer with his articles being published in various CIO magazines, Springer, World Economic Forum (WEF), MIT etc. He has also authored three internationally acclaimed books as part of his CIO Series – "Smart Factory", "Immersive and Augmented Analytics", "Intelligent Robotics PA", "Kumar-de-Brabandt AI Data Economy Model" a copyright/patented framework.

Nikos is a Production and Management Engineer and has a PhD in Robotic Vision Systems.

Since 2014 he has been working on the adoption of Industry4.0 and how these technologies can be applied in the factories seamlessly and effectively, participating in more than 70 EU funded projects. He has collaborated with more than 150 top organisations and manufacturers succeeding more than €80Million of funding for innovative Industry4.0 solutions.

His vision is to make innovation easy for individuals and organisations by providing access to infrastructure, funding, data, network, experts, and live demonstrations so that they meet their true potentials.

In 2016 Nikos co-founded CORE Innovation aiming at providing this opportunity to people and in 2020 co-founded CORE Innovation Center having succeeded more than €30M of funding.

Now, he is working to build the Greek Smart Factory, a trusted platform to test and demo new technologies by joining forces with Academia, Tech providers, and industry.

Nikos is a certified SIRI Assessor, able to assess manufacturing facilities and help companies in their Industry 4.0 journeys.

Stefanos Kokkorikos holds an Electrical and Computer Engineering Diploma from the National Technical University of Athens with a focus on electronics, telecommunications and computer systems.

Stefanos uses his extensive experience in deep tech project implementation to design new solutions for the industry, addressing challenges in operations, maintenance and energy management. His interests lie in technologies of Industry 4.0, business modelling and new product development, applied in the manufacturing, mining and infrastructure industries.

His CORE vision is to provide the appropriate tools bridging the gap between research, market and society.

Stefanos is a certified SIRI Assessor, able to assess manufacturing facilities and help companies in their Industry 4.0 journeys.

Dominic Gorecky is a partner and executive board member at Switzerland Innovation Park Biel/Bienne AG. He co-founded and leads the Swiss Smart Factory, Switzerland's first and foremost test and demonstration platform for Industry 4.0.

He also founded the International Smart Factory Academy (IFSA) and co-founded the Swiss Cobotics Competence Center (S3C), where he serves as President of the Board. S3C is a national hub for industrial and academic partners to collaboratively develop and test next-generation robotic solutions.

Previously, Dominic was the head of research for the Innovative Factory Systems department at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Kaiserslautern, Germany. In this role, he coordinated R&D for the living lab SmartFactoryKL.

Dominic contributes to the World Economic Forum (WEF) agenda and advises several Industry 4.0 start-ups. He co-founded the Swiss CxO Forum and chairs the International Smart Factory Summit.

In 2022, he was recognized as a Digital Shaper in Switzerland.

Dominic is passionate about driving responsible digital transformation for a sustainable society. He teaches various technology topics, including digital twins, cobotics, and IIoT in manufacturing. His PhD focused on the use of semantic technologies in the context of the digital factory.

His dream has always been to put state-of-the-art research into the real world. After his PhD in human-robot collaboration, he has gained strong knowledge on what it takes to combine multi-disciplinary research for making robots smarter and easy to use.

Having gone through the pain of robot integration, he is an advocate of why ease of use should be of equal importance to core functionalities.

Passionate about building advanced online vision inspection systems for Smart Factories. Specializing in Industrial PCs, 3D Scanning, Sensors, and Barcode Reading to boost automation and quality.

Experienced General Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the industrial automation industry. Skilled in Machine Vision, Industrial Distribution and Sales Management.

After 23 years as an international Sales Engineer (ABB, ASBIS Robotic Solutions, SOL Group, Frost & Sullivan, RED), Haris helps B2B tech and automation companies adopt favorable positioning and build solid revenue streams with higher profit margins, avoiding price wars.

His academic background includes an MEng in Electrical & Computer Engineering (neural networks thesis), an MSc in Data Communication Systems, and an active role as a Digital Transformation Technologies professor at one of ESCP Business School's Executive Master's programs.

As a speaker at Core Innovation Days 3, he will focus on bridging technology innovation with substantial business outcomes.

Dr. Charalampos (Babis) Manousiadis is a Researcher and Scientific Project Manager at the I-SENSE Group of ICCS/NTUA, specializing in regional development, circular economy, industrial symbiosis, regional resilience and decision-support systems.

He holds a PhD in Regional Development from the University of the Aegean and an M.Eng. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from NTUA.

He is Lead Project Manager of the Horizon Europe THESEUS Hubs4Circularity project and is actively involved in European research and innovation initiatives related to sustainable industrial transformation, regional competitiveness and circularity.