Wolfgang Drechsler is a Public Administration and Management, Innovation Policy and Political Philosophy scholar. He is Professor of Governance, and one of the founders and directors of the Technology Governance program, at the Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia, where between 2010 and 2016 he also served as Vice Dean for International Relations at its Faculty of Social Sciences. Since 2017, he is also affiliated with Harvard University, as a Davis Center Associate and for six years a member of the center’s Advisory Board, and since 2019, with University College London, where he is Honorary Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) and Principal Investigator of the John Templeton Foundation "Islamic Public Value" project.
Established in 1918, Tallinn University of Technology is the only technical university in Estonia. TalTech, in the capital city of Tallinn, is a university for engineering, business, public administration and maritime affairs. TalTech has colleges in Tartu and Kohtla-Järve. Despite the similar names, Tallinn University and Tallinn University of Technology are separate institutions.
Mart Laar is an Estonian politician and historian. He served as the Prime Minister of Estonia from 1992 to 1994 and from 1999 to 2002. Laar is credited with having helped bring about Estonia's rapid economic development during the 1990s. He is a member of the centre-right Isamaa party.
Calestous Juma was a Kenyan scientist and academic, specializing in sustainable development. He was named one of the most influential 100 Africans in 2012, 2013 and 2014 by the New African magazine. He was Professor of the Practice of International Development and Faculty Chair of the Innovation for Economic Development Executive Program at Harvard Kennedy School. Juma was Director of the School's Science, Technology and Globalization Project at Harvard Kennedy School as well as the Agricultural Innovation in Africa Project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. His last book, Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies, was published by Oxford University Press in 2016.
Taavi Veskimägi is a former Estonian state official and politician and the managing director of the Estonian electric power transmission system operator Elering.
Rainer Kattel is an Estonian academic and science administrator. He is Professor of Innovation and Public Governance at Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, UCL, and Research Professor and Chair of Innovation Policy and Technology Governance at Tallinn University of Technology. In 2015-16, he was a Visiting Professor at Columbia University's Earth Institute.
Ismail Serageldin, Founding Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA), the new Library of Alexandria, inaugurated in 2002, is currently, Emeritus Librarian, and member of the Board of Trustees of the Library of Alexandria. He serves as Chair or Member of a number of advisory committees for academic, research, scientific and international institutions and civil society efforts, and serves on the Advisory Committee of the World Social Science Report for 2013 and 2016, as well as the UNESCO-supported World Water Scenarios (2013) and the executive council of the Encyclopedia of Life (2010) and Chairs the Executive Council of the World Digital Library (2010). He also co-chaired the African Union's high level panel for Biotechnology (2006) and again for Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) in 2012–2013, and was a member of the ICANN Panel for the review of the internet future (2013).
Henning Kagermann is a German physicist and businessman. He was the former chairman of the Executive Board and Chief Executive Officer of SAP.
Charles Peter Mok, JP is a Hong Kong-based Internet entrepreneur and IT advocate who formerly represents the Information Technology functional constituency on the Hong Kong Legislative Council.
Augustine Ong Soon Hock is a Malaysian scientist, academic, and board member. He is internationally recognized in the field of lipid chemistry.
Dorothee Gisela Renate Maria Bär is a German politician of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU) who has been serving as a member of the German Bundestag since 2002. From 2014 to 2021, she served in various capacities in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Christoph Matthias Schmidt is a German economist. He has been President of RWI - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research in Essen since 2002 and also holds the Chair for Economic Policy and Applied Econometrics at the Faculty of Management and Economics at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He was a member of the German Council of Economic Experts from 2009 to 2020 and its chairman from 2013 to 2020. Since 2019 he has been a member, and since 2020 co-chairman, of the Franco-German Council of Economic Experts. From 2011 to 2013, he was a member of the Enquete Commission "Growth, Prosperity, Quality of Life" of the German Bundestag. From 2020 to 2021 he was a member of the "Corona-Expertenrat" of the Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia. He has been a member of acatech – Deutsche Akademie der Technikwissenschaften since 2011, a member of the presidium since 2014, and vice president since 2020. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature and the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Paul Garrett Kaminski is a technologist and former U.S. government official, best known for his leading role in the development of stealth aircraft.
The Estonian Information Technology College (EITC) was a private non-profit institution of professional higher education in Estonia, located in Tallinn. EITC provided Estonian applied higher education diploma-level education in information technology in four main programmes, carried out shorter-term vocational training programmes as well as various R&D-oriented activities. In 2017 it merged with the Tallinn University of Technology.
Alexander von Gabain is a microbiologist, academic, founder of several biotech firms and board member of venture capital firms. He has worked at the intersection of the healthcare industry, academia and research throughout his career. He was one of the founding board members of EIT in 2008 and began his involvement in EIT Health in 2015.
Tan Sri Zakri bin Abdul Hamid has had a distinguished career in science as a researcher, educator, administrator and diplomat.
The European Innovation Council (EIC) was introduced by the European Commission to support the commercialization of high-risk, high-impact technologies in the European Union. The fully-fledged EIC was launched March 2021 under Horizon Europe and is incorporated within the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA). Its goal is to aid researchers, start-ups and SMEs bring their innovations to market by providing funding, networking and partnership opportunities, and business acceleration services. In its latest form, the concept has been put forth by the EU Research Commissioner Carlos Moedas in mid-2015. The EIC has a budget of €10.1 billion to support innovations throughout the lifecycle from early stage research, to proof of concept, technology transfer, and the financing and scale up of start-ups and SMEs.
Remo Holsmer is an Estonian former basketball player and politician who represented the Estonian Reform Party in the Riigikogu from 2011 to 2018. He was a player for BC Kalev, and later, was the manager of the team from 2005 to 2009.
e-Governance Academy is a non-profit foundation that assists public sector institutions worldwide in digital transformation. The organization was founded in 2002, by a joint initiative of the Government of Estonia, Open Society Institute (OSI), and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
James M. Manyika is a Zimbabwean-American academic, consultant, and business executive. He is known for his research and scholarship into the intersection of technology and the economy, including artificial intelligence, robotics automation, and the future of work. He is Google's first Senior Vice President of Technology and Society, reporting directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. He focuses on "shaping and sharing" the company's view on the way tech affects society, the economy, and the planet. In April 2023, his role was expanded to Senior Vice President for Research, Technology & Society and now includes overseeing Google Research and Google Labs. He is also Chairman Emeritus of the McKinsey Global Institute.
