Kari Nessa Nordtun was elected Mayor of Stavanger on 21th October 2019. She represents the Labour Party, and is now serving her first four-year term as Stavangers’s 53rd mayor. Prior to her election as mayor, Nordtun served for 8 years in Stavanger Municipal Council.
She has been a member of the Municipal Executive Presidency since 2013 and a Municipal Executive Board member since 2015. Nordtun has a law degree from the University of Bergen, and during her time in university she worked with pro bono legal advice. She also studied European law in Brussels.

Lars Larsen Black has been Head of IT at Tórshavnar kommuna since May 2017 when he moved back to the Faroe Islands after spending 9 years in Copenhagen where he studied E-Business at the IT-University of Copenhagen and working as an IT-Project manager and coordinator both in the consultancy and retail business.

At the IT-department in Tórshavnar kommuna Lars is responsible of a broad range of areas and has the daily management of the departments employees, tasks and objectives including IT Support, Operation and Maintenance, IT-security, Consulting, Network and infrastructure, Process optimization, Project Management, Smart City solutions and Digital Transformation.

Digital transformation has a high priority in Tórshavnar kommuna and Lars believes the, recently started, digital journey for Tórshavnar kommuna has much higher chance of successes by cooperating with the neighbours in the Nordics. He is, therefore, very excited to have Tórshavn beeing a part of the Nordic Smart Cities Network, sharing knowledge and participating in events with Nordic Edge.

Tórshavn is small, probably the smallest capital in the world, and thus it is paramount to share knowledge, participate in projects and such events as Nordic Edge Expo as to ensure the digital journey has a similar backbone as the neighbours in the Nordics whom the Faroe Islands shares so many similarities.

Line Gerstrand has worked strategically with digital transformation, Business Development and Smart Cities since 2005. She is a co-founder of the Smart Aarhus partnership and works as Smart City coordinator in the City of Aarhus. Line was heavily involved in the launch of Denmark’s first open data portal in 2013 and is behind events like Internet Week Denmark and Denmark’s first Sharing Economy Festival. Line was a driver in establishing the Nordic Smart City Network that was founded at Nordic Edge in 2017.

Runa Monstad is the Director of the Stavanger Region European Office. For the last 20 years, Mrs. Monstad has worked in Brussels for the EFTA Secretariat, the EU Commission and EFTA Surveillance Authority, where she has dealt with different areas of the EEA covering topics such as state aid, competition, transport and energy. For a period she also worked in a Spanish law firm in Madrid. Mrs. Monstad has a law degree from the University of Oslo, Norway and the University of Deusto, Spain

Svein began as Managing Director of Nordic Innovation in 2017. Before that, he held various positions in Innovation Norway, including Senior Vice President and Regional Director.

Svein has also been CEO of The Norwegian Seafood Council and an Advisor in the Norwegian Ministry for Local Government. He holds a master’s degree in economics from The University of Oslo.

Dr Andrew Scott is Professor of Politics and Policy at Deakin University, Inaugural Convenor of The Australia Institute Nordic Policy Centre and author or editor of six books including The Nordic Edge: Policy Possibilities for Australia (Melbourne University Press, 2021). He advocates proven social democratic policies to improve prosperity and fairness, through: healthy urban design; affordable housing options encompassing secure, good-quality rental opportunities; balanced regional development characterised by a reasonable spread of medium-sized cities; and support for local employment transitions of workers in regions hit hard by industrial change. He has extensive practical policy experience advising senior parliamentarians at national level, and government at sub-national level; as well as having been a trade union researcher.

Anita majored in communication and marketing, and have worked in areas such as technology, tele communication and pharma, as well as medical tech and diagnostics. Her main strength is brand building, PR, and communication.

She has been Head of Communication in Norway Health Tech since 2015 and focuses on public advocacy, regulatory issues and compliance, public/private collaboration and talent projects. She is often seen as guest lecturer on the innovative ecosystem in health, and as moderator and speaker.

Dr. Anna Clark has worked in the field of urban mobility for 15 years. She works in the innovation team at EIT Urban Mobility based in Copenhagen, and is Challenge Area Lead for Sustainable City Logistics. Before joining EIT Urban Mobility, she worked as a sustainable transport consultant in Sweden (Head of Area Climate, Energy and Environment), and as a project manager for European mobility projects at the city network Polis in Brussels. She holds a PhD in transport from the Institute of Transport Studies at the University of Leeds in England. Anna’s drive is in supporting the shift to sustainable urban mobility, and she is particularly passionate about working on decarbonisation of the transport sector to help us reach our climate goals. She also holds the position of president in the organization Women@EIT.

Anne Romsaas is Chief Adviser on SDG in KS – The Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities, and Chairman of the board in the Norwegian Smart Cities Network. She works to motivate, support and encourage Norwegian Municipalities and Regional Authorities to develop innovative and good services for citizens and inclusive communities through applying the SDGs and Smart City technology, and lobby to strengthen local democracy and enabling environments for local development. Anne Romsaas has a Masters Degree in Sociology, and has worked in the municipal sector for many years, mainly with innovation, technology and competency building actions.

Annemie Wyckmans is the coordinator of CrAFt (Creating Actionable Futures, 2022-2025, HEU-funded), +CityxChange (2018-2023, H2020-funded) and the Joint Programme on Smart Cities of the European Energy Research Alliance. As Professor at NTNU, she is committed to making the transition to climate-neutrality irresistible – with cities and citizens.

Lassila’s architecture combines a sculptural form with traditional materials and innovative techniques. Placing the human being at the center, his work is characterized by a strong interest in developing comprehensive sustainable solutions. 

OOPEAA 2014, founder Anssi Lassila (First office founded by Anssi Lassila in 2001 under the name Lassila Mannberg Architects). OOPEAA works on a wide range of projects from churches and public buildings to housing and urban visions. There is an active focus on research and development with emphasis on solutions that support social and ecological sustainability.

Anssi gratuated from the Oulu Scholl of Architecture in 2002. He is also a Professor at the Oulu School of Architecture (2020 – 2025).

Bjarne Uldal is a brand & business innovator who, over the last 25 years, has been involved in more than 30 start-ups, both as an investor, business developer and brand consultant.  Marrying a deep knowledge of branding with a hands-on approach to entrepreneurship, Bjarne has earned a reputation as a creative, commercially oriented person, who’s always on the lookout for points of differentiation that can be accentuated by compelling storytelling.

Bjarne is one of the co-founders of Nordic Edge, the official Norwegian innovation cluster on smarter cities and communities, and the organizer of the Nordic Edge Expo – the largest annual conference and exhibition in the Nordics on Smart City trends, methodology, new innovation and technology.

In his capacity of being the Chief Innovation Officer at Nordic Edge, Bjarne is responsible for establishing innovation partnerships with companies, organizations and academic institutions around Europe, in China and in the US. Bjarne has also been the main facilitator of the process leading up to the launch of the national Smart Roadmap for Smart and Sustainable Cities and Communities last year. Furthermore Bjarne acts as a facilitator and advisor to a number of cities and municipalities who are determined to build smarter and more sustainable communities.

Børre has been in the energy business for almost 30 years. After graduating with a finance degree from Texas A&M University, he joined Shell in 1992 where he has held various finance, commercial and management roles.

He spent 4 years in London in Shell’s LNG business, and then returned to Norway as commercial discipline lead for joint venture infrastructure agreements. In 2009 he was appointed corporate affairs director in Norske Shell and assumed the role as downstream director in Norske Shell in 2014. He subsequently took the asset management and business development role for Shell Integrated Gas in Russia.

Since September 2020 he has led the setup of Northern Lights JV and assumed the role as the company’s first Managing Director in March 2021.

Børre is married with three grown children. He loves reading, skiing and spending time at his small farm located in Ryfylke outside Stavanger, surrounded by fjords and mighty mountains.

Since March 2020, Casper Klynge is Microsoft’s Vice President for European Government Affairs with responsibility for Microsoft’s government affairs and public policy work across the European continent. Casper leads a team of government affairs professional based in Brussels and across Europe tasked with strengthening relations with European Union institutions, NATO, European governments, and other key stakeholders ensuring Microsoft is a constructive partner in supporting policy makers achieve their goals. Casper reports directly to president Brad Smith and serves on the senior leadership team of Microsoft’s Corporate, External and Legal Affairs group.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Casper had a career in foreign affairs spanning several roles in the EU, NATO, and in government, serving most recently as Denmark’s (& the world’s first) Ambassador to the global tech industry (2017-2020) heading a diplomatic representation based in Silicon Valley, Europe, and Asia. Casper served as Ambassador to Indonesia, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea & ASEAN (2014-2017) and to the Republic of Cyprus (2013-2014). In 2010-2011, Casper was the Deputy Head of NATO’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. From 2003, he worked out of Brussels in various positions under the European Union’s High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, followed by an appointment as Head of Mission of the EU’s civilian crisis management planning mission in Kosovo (2006-2008).

Casper holds a M.Sc. in Political Science supplemented by executive education from Stanford University. He is a 2009 Marshall Memorial Fellow and was in 2018 named among the World’s 100 most influential people in digital government. He is a member of the ECFR Council and serves on the Executive Board of Digital Europe, and on the Advisory Boards of Bluetown and Think Tank Europe. Casper is married and the father of two sons.

Cilia Holmes Indahl collects business examples that show how to succeed with sustainability that strengthens the long-term financial result. 

Cilia is an expert on sustainable business models and heads the EQT Foundation, which invests in disruptive sustainability that makes society greener and more inclusive. She has previously led the sustainability-focused VC company Katapult Group, worked as sustainability director for Aker BioMarine and as a climate consultant at KPMG. She started her career as a trainee at the Norwegian UN delegation in New York, where she participated in the negotiations of the UN’s sustainability goals. In recent years, Cilia has been used as a speaker to inspire companies to integrate sustainability into business so that it supports the company’s profitability, and in 2019 was highlighted as one of Norway’s leading female speakers. She never gives the same lecture twice, and is known for improvising and playing with the audience. As a former yoga and aerobics instructor, it quickly happens that she stands on her hands or runs between the rows of chairs to get her points. Cilia thinks a good lecture is entertaining, educational and makes one think new thoughts. She has a master’s degree in economics with a double master’s degree in international business and sustainable development from NHH and HEC Paris. She is convinced that sustainability and profitability go hand in hand, and analyzed over 400 sustainable business models as part of her master’s thesis to better understand how companies can succeed with sustainability. 

Christian Bering Pedersen is the CEO of Holo. Christian has a background in technology consulting and has worked at Holo since 2018.

Avinor AS is a state-owned limited company that operates most of the civil airports in Norway. Avinor owns and operates 44 airports in Norway, fourteen in association with the Royal Norwegian Air Force, and is responsible for air traffic control services in Norway. In addition to the 44 airports, it operates three Area Control Centers: Bodø Air Traffic Control Center, Stavanger Air Traffic Control Center and Oslo ATCC.Avinor has about 3000 employees, including air traffic control, air navigation services, rescue, maintenance, administration and other airport operations personnel.

Christian Øgaarden has broad management experience from the aviation industry and has worked both in airline companies such as British Airways and Braathens and logistics service providers such as Box Logistics (Bring) and Jetpak Group before joining Avinor. Christian is currently Head of Projects & Areal Optimization, Commercial Staff.

Øgaarden holds a Master of Management, Change Management and Project from Handelshøyskolen BI.

David Gershon has overall leadership responsibility for Cool City Challenge. He is co-founder and CEO of Empowerment Institute and directs its Center for Reinventing the Planet. David has spent the past forty years designing and implementing second order change solutions round many critical planetary issues. He has spent the past three decades applying this expertise to climate change worldwide and the past ten years in California. He is author of twelve books, including the award-winning Social Change 2.0: A Blueprint for Reinventing Our World and the best-selling Empowerment: The Art of Creating Your Life as You Want It. Based on his four decades of transformative social change experience, he has architected a global grand strategy called “Reinventing the Planet.” Cool City Challenge is a part of this larger strategy. 

Florian Schneider is a filmmaker, writer, and curator. His work is investigating the border crossings between mainstream and independent media, art theory and open source technology, documentary practices and unconventional forms of curating. Educated as a documentary filmmaker and working for the German-French TV station ‘arte’, he has focused on rethinking documentary practices across disciplines. Since 1993 he has pioneered a wide range of projects — most prominently Dictionary of War (2006-2010). One focus of his research is to reflect critically on the relationships between art and activism, aesthetics and politics.

In 2006 he launched the artistic research project ‘Imaginary property’ which investigates a propertization of images and the increasingly imaginary character of property in the age of digital production and networked distribution. In 2013 he has been appointed at NTNU as a Professor for art theory and documentary practices. Schneider has exhibited and lectured worldwide. In August 2014 he has been appointed as Head of the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art in the Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Since 2019 he is Chair of the COST Action CA 18136 “European Forum for Advanced Practices”. He is one of the three leaders of ARTEC, NTNU’s multi-faculty task force on art and technology.

Gunnar Edwin Crawford is head of Stavanger Smart City, innovating across public-private boundaries, co-creating the smart city of the future.

Gunnar has extensive hands-on experience with innovation and development within the fields of welfare technology, smart homes and smart cities.

He believes strongly in citizen involvement and uses the power of the smart city team to challenge and evolve the democratic processes of today.

He is a patent holder, and winner of a CES Innovation award. He has contributed in several EU projects, including two Horizon 2020 projects – Triangulum (www.triangulum-project.eu) and Invade (http://h2020invade.eu/).

Crawford’s professional background is within ICT, energy and innovation. Gunnar is co-author of the book “Creating Disruptive Ecosystems” (2016 – http://www.disruptiveecosystems.com/ ), about the importance of understanding new digital business models when innovating digital systems and services.

Guro Elgheim Sivertsen is the Head of Sustainable Finance at SpareBank 1 SR-Bank.  She has more than 10 years of experience from the financial industry, ranging from banking, asset management and private investments. Guro has been working with ESG and sustainable investments since 2014.

At SpareBank 1 SR-Bank she works strategically with the credit and investment teams on sustainability issues. SpareBank 1 SR-Bank is one of the leading Norwegian banks and have in the past years increased their focus and efforts within sustainability and adopted this topic as one of the main strategic drivers.

Harald Sævareid is CEO of the Norwegian govtech startup Nivel. Harald is a design engineer with more than 20 years of experience in developing innovative, user-friendly products and services in the private and public sector, with a special eye for sustainable, scalable business models. He has got a strong passion for human-friendly cities.

Helge Sverre Eide was born into a family of entrepreneurs. He learned to operate a Wheel Loader at the age of 10 and has. worked in the Subsea construction business for 15 years as a Business Manager, responsible for Document control, Planning and Cost control. He has been involved in 3 start-ups as an entrepreneur and was involved in the qualification of permanent subsea products for a period of 5 years. Eide has a degree as a certified heavy machinery operator (Fagbrev), and is currently the Partner and Co-founder of Blue Logic, WPC, Subsea USB, and MobiDock AS.

Ingvald Erga is Environmental Manager at Stavanger Airport Sola (Avinor) and works with a broad range of environmental and innovative issues. He initiated the Elnett21 project, at the airport, as a first step in preparing for electrification of aviation. This autumn, a solarplant (1 MWp) will be built as a step on the road to self-sufficiency for the airport and batteries will be implemented as storage, backup and peak shaving.

Other important areas of work are climate certification, energy saving, biodiversity, noise, waste and recycling, discharge permits and environmental monitoring.

Innovation is important part of the green future and Ingvald has initiated signal element in the story about Stavanger airport, such as honey production and a tomato greenhouse in the terminal building. Elnett21 is an important stepping stone for Avinor in materializing the vision that all civil domestic aviation is electric within 2040.

Jan Christian Vestre is CEO of the Norwegian family owned company Vestre, one of Europe’s most successful manufacturers of urban furniture. He took over the family business at the age of 25 and since then the company has established subsidiaries in a number of new countries and more than tripled its turnover.

Jan Christian was awarded ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ in 2019 and was named “Sustainable Leader of the Year’ in 2020. He has a Master’s degree in law studies from the University of Oslo and has previously worked in the Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry and in the Norwegian Parliament. Jan Christian believes that designers and businesses must contribute to achieve the UN’s 17 sustainability goals, and that today’s most important task is to accelerate the green shift and create social and democratic meeting places for all people.

Jaakko Savolainen is a sales minded technical professional. He has a Master´s degree in engineering. In his career he has been involved in fast developing business areas of recycling different raw materials. During the years he has been involved in sourcing material, processing it and in the raw material sales. Also Project management of different investment and R&D projects has been a part of interesting task during the career. The operations have mainly been in Scandinavia, UK, baltics and Russia.

As Chief Innovation Office, Jeff is passionate about the relationship between human experience and design. Working at the intersection of urban governance, business and culture, Jeff delivers projects that promote climate action, and inclusive health benefits for all. With degrees in Architectural Engineering from the US and City Design and Social Science from the London School of Economics, Jeff’s multi-disciplinary background shapes his cross-cutting holistic approach to all projects. He has worked with both public and private clients as well as non-governmental organizations in Europe, USA, Latin America, India and China.

A champion for simulation and complex data visualization with a background as an Industrial Designer, Joel was born and educated in the UK and moved to Ålesund, Norway 12 years ago. He is passionate about using elegant technology and human centred design to reduce cost, find better solutions, increase safety and improve quality of life. After running successful businesses, 6 years ago he was asked to take over as the CEO of Offshore Simulator Centre (OSC). He transformed this business using simulation technology for the offshore oil industry as a key tool for Virtual prototyping.

Joel is passionate about proving the value in simulation and driving the exponential growth of simulation with OSC at the forefront. Only 6 Months ago as well as running OSC he started a daughter company “AugmentCity” using the simulation and visualizing technology developed for the offshore industry, and in tight cooperation with the United Nations smart cities program, as a game changing tool for Smart Cities. He is excited to see where this new journey will take us.

Jon is currently a technology advisor at Microsoft, focusing on the Norwegian healthcare industry. Previously he was a cloud data architect for 5 years, and has been in Microsoft for 12 year.

Jon has been a regular speaker at tech events since the mid 1990’s.

Prof. Ondiviela is the Microsoft Western Europe Public Sector Government Industry Advisor for Cities&Regions. Frequent speaker at International events like SmartCityExpo, Mobile World Forum, TEDTalk, EU Events… he is also UNESCO SmartCities SME Consultant.

Telecommunications Engineer MS at UPM Madrid, Human Sciences MS at UFV Madrid, Enterprise and Institutional Communication Management MS at UAB Barcelona, and Financial Business MS online INSEAD. PhD at UFV, Madrid with Thesis “Beyond SmartCities: How to create an Attractive City for Talented Citizens”. Associate Fellow Researcher and Director of WW Observatory for Attractive Cities at UFV (Universidad Francisco Vitoria, Madrid)

Karlis is a Member of Cabinet with the Commissioner for Energy Ms Kadri Simson. He is responsible for energy performance in buildings, including energy efficiency and storage, and the renovation wave. Having gathered experience in EU level negotiations and policy in Brussels for over a decade, he has covered internal market, transport and energy affairs.

Prior to his current position, he worked in DG ENER on energy efficiency and was part of a national administration.”

Head of the United for Smart and Sustainable Cities Implementation Programme (U4SSC IP). Secretary General of the Organization for International Economic Relations, Austria, Vienna www.oier.pro and Leader of the UN`s United for Smart and Sustainable Cities U4SSC Implementation Program https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/ssc/united/Pages/default.aspx which is supporting cities, regions and communities worldwide in identifying needs, finding sustainable solutions, partnerships and investments https://news.itu.int/un-collaboration-supports-smart-city-action/

Vice Chair of the ITU Focus Group on Environmental Efficiency for Artificial Intelligence and other Emerging Technologies (FG-AI4EE)

Board member of the World Council for SDG 11, the Real Estate Advisory Board (REM) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, the H22 project of Helsingborg, Sweden and The North West, Aalesund, Norway.

Karin Ebbinghaus is the CEO of the innovative company Elonroad, which contributes to the system shift into to a more climate-friendly society. Elonroad enables acceleration into electrification of the transport sector by providing a novel kind of charging infrastructure.  Karin has a background as a lawyer and investor but fell for Elonroad and their inspiring approach to tackling the climate challenge with new thinking and belief in technology.

About Elonroad
Elonroad is a company within e-Mobility developing, manufacturing, installing and operating technology to charge electric vehicles while driving or being parked. The company was founded in 2014 and has its office in Lund, Sweden with 12 employees. Their electrical road  technology has been tested in several  years on private roads and is being tested since 2020 with a project with the Swedish Transport Administration for city buses in Lund as well as a project with stationary charging with DHL. Together with its new investor Bring, additional projects will be launched within short.

Knowledgeable in policies related to: SMEs, startups and scaleups in the single market and across regions; innovation, digitalisation; technological and social innovations for societal challenges and transformations. I am a practitioner in civic participation, outreach to stakeholders and citizens, new forms of collaboration, co-creation and leadership. Interested in how entrepreneurs,  change-makers and public services can work together in solving societal challenges. How ‘values’ based economy – made up of companies and organisations who ‘do well because they do good’ – can deliver environmental and climate sustainability and socio-economic inclusion at the same time. Currently responsible for the European Climate Pact – where every action or every citizen and organisation counts and no action is too small. In the European Commission since 2005, before worked in international sales, business development and journalism.

Kristin Solhaug Næss is an advisor on citizen participation for the municipality of Trondheim, and head of the citizen participation group in the Norwegian Smart Cities Network. She is an urban designer with a passion for co-creation. Her focus for the past few years has been working with how technology and digital participation can support how we develop our cities and society. She has been working with the piloting and use-case of Decidim for both Trondheim and the other municipalities in the Norwegian Smart Cities Network since 2019.

Kristin Støle Kalgraff is a Communications Lead with the Lyse Group. She joined Lyse 10 years ago and has acquired extensive communications experience within the group’s energy business, externally as well as internally.

She has demonstrated outstanding skills in telling the good and informative stories about renewable energy, with a particular emphasis on hydro power, but also about other energy related infrastructure and business solutions provided by Lyse.

She is a former journalist, and she graduated from the University of Bergen. Working with communications for the last fifteen years has also brought Kalgraff to the screen as an excellent storyteller and news reporter, as moderator and as a host for all-sized internal and external events.

Kristina Kloberdanz is Mastercard’s first Chief Sustainability Officer. In this role, she is responsible for leading Mastercard’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy. As CSO, she collaborates with leadership across the business to integrate sustainability initiatives shared among business units and position them to be enterprise-wide drivers of growth – in advancing inclusive growth, ensuring a workforce that is inspired by a sense of purpose, limiting its impact of climate change, and putting ethics, data privacy and security first.

Kristina’s role at Mastercard rests on two decades of experience from her work at IBM, most recently serving as Corporate Responsibility Leader, overseeing IBM’s global corporate responsibility strategy and brand reputation.

Kristina has served on a variety of nonprofit boards and advisory councils, locally and internationally, lending her expertise in sustainability, marketing, strategic planning and fundraising. A former professional ballerina, she also loves an adventure and can be found traveling the globe from the peaks of Kilimanjaro to the mountains of the Himalaya.

Kristina has completed executive education courses at Harvard University and graduated from Southern Methodist University with a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing. With a passion for wellness, Kristina is a certified Holistic Health Coach. Most recently, Kristina was listed on GreenBiz’s 25 Badass Women Shaking up the Climate Movement in 2020 and Forbes: 46 Sustainability Leaders (Who Are Also Women), 2018.

Lena Lundgreen is Regional Lead for Government in EMEA in Microsoft, covering Central and Regional Government, Critical Infrastructure, Public Finance, Safety & Justice, and Public Health & Social Services. She has deep knowledge around digitalization and cloud technology, and is passionate about improving public services through technology. 

Mads is educated as a mechanical engineer and has worked five years with product development within the oil sector. With a strong desire to contribute towards a more sustainable society he started Ducky together with two co-founders in 2014. Ducky consists of 28 Ducks and Ducklings who develop technology and services to inspire and empower individuals, municipalities and companies towards sustainable habits that can change our society. 

Mads is especially skilled in concept development and climate data from a consumption perspective. He has also worked a lot on organisational development in an organisation where everyone can be a leader.

Malin is a Senior Advisor for Design and Architecture Norway (DOGA). She works with innovative urban and local development, and how interaction between people and technology can contribute to smarter and more sustainable cities and places. Malin holds a Master’s Degree in political communication from Aarhus University in Denmark.

Marko is leading a research team working on electrical powertrains and energy storage. In addition to electric mobility, the team’s focus includes also stationary energy storage applications. His research topics are mostly related to EV charging, ranging from low-power AC charging to megawatt-level fast charging. He is currently building a national level EV charging testbed initiative. Marko has 20 years of experience in electronics for challenging environments, and control systems, and four years of experience at VTT. He is also a certified project manager (IPMA C).

Malin leads Mastercard’s government engagement in the Nordics and Baltics, focusing on the intersection between digital infrastructure, economic development and sustainability to support countries, governments, and cities for sustainable growth. She also oversees the company’s global government engagement agenda as it relates to green growth; partnering with governments to support their climate transition pathway. Prior to this role, she held various senior positions in the company as Head of Marketing for Nordics and Baltics and Global Retail Lead which included sales, business development, strategy and relationship management for the retail vertical across 210 markets. Previously, she has also held various positions within ICA Group.

Malin has an international portfolio of experience, with 15 years in retail and technology; delivering business transformation, innovation and ‘strategy through execution’ to support the future of commerce and to advance sustainable economic growth and financial inclusion.

Malin has served on nonprofit boards and is today providing her internal growth experience towards nonprofits and startups, primarily focusing on organizations addressing UN’s SDGs / Agenda 2030.

Martin Hadmyr, Head of Landscape Architecture and H22 Architect, is responsible for designing and developing Helsingborg’s public space. His goal is to create exciting and beautiful urban spaces that improve quality of life for all the city’s people. Martin is driven to look beyond the obvious to ensure inclusive and sustainable social development.

Matthew Baldwin is a European Commission official: he is Deputy Director-General of DG MOVE where he has been since July 2016.  Amongst his principal professional activities, he is Manager of the Commission’s Mission for 100 Climate Neutral Cities by 2030; he is the EU Coordinator for road safety and sustainable urban mobility; and he is also managing the Commission’s crisis network of COVID-19 transport contact points.   

In his Commission career of more than 20 years, he has served in the cabinets of President Barroso, Commissioner Lamy, and Commissioner Hill, the last as Head of Cabinet.  He has also been Director of Market Access and Industry in DG Trade and Director of Aviation in DG MOVE. 

He is of Italian and British nationality, has two sons, speaks English, French and Italian and lives in Brussels.  

Morten established and developed the home-hospital treatment model at the section for Children`s Mental Health in 2014.

The department has established a simulation-center for a broad spectrum of training programs, including topics for both clinicians, patients, relatives, leaders, administrative personnel and cooperative partners of the department.

Morten is also a member of Holocare-project, developing holographic solutions for clinicians. One of these solutions, Theraport, is aiming on real-time holographic clinical sessions between patient and clinician, with integrating clinical protocols and other therapeutic tools.

He is also project leader at OUS, cooperating with NHS I England regarding the topic of “clinical engagement” in the development of health organizations.

In addition to the above, Morten is highly interested in the field of developing new solutions for data-analysis for health-organizations, through use of KPI-dashboards and machine-learning. 

Per Harbø is Programme Director at Norway’s National Programme for Supplier Development (LUP). Harbø has led the work on public-private innovation and supplier’s development through a large number of innovation processes. He holds a management background from the private sector, and an educational background in economics and communication with an emphasis on relations and liaison skills. Harbø leads a team of 10 dedicated innovation brokers in Norway, all with the mandate to accelerate innovations and development of new solutions through the strategic use of public procurements, while at the same time contributing to new market opportunities for these innovations.

Dr. Petri Mononen is a Principal Scientist at VTT and has a PhD in Industrial Engineering and Management. He is the leader of the UAV Excellence Node at VTT, consisting of 40 VTT experts involved in UAV related research. Prior to VTT Mononen worked in University of Oulu Faculty of ICT as a Research Manager and as member of the faculty management board. He has also worked as team leader and member of company management group in Liidea Ltd. Before that he was employed by Mott MacDonald Group (UK) and Jaakko Pöyry Group.

He holds an International Project Manager Certificate IPMA C. His main expertise areas include Urban Air Mobility, large scale national and international project lead & coordination, socio-economic impact evaluation, co-innovation and business ecosystems, ITS in general and evaluation frameworks for ecosystems and information services. He has been the coordinator for several EU FP7 and Horizon 2020 projects (incl. TeleFOT IP, TeleFOT-InCo, AiRMOUR) and large Business Finland projects (SmartRail2, Drolo). He was awarded the 2013 iMobility Award for excellence in ITS implementation activities by the European Commission and iMobility forum at den Haag Netherlands; and also the VTT STOR TIC award for outstanding work as leader in strategically important large scale European projects with high visibility.

Massterly is the world’s first company set up to operate zero emission, autonomous vessels.
Their aim is to enable a shift in transport from road to sea; through cost-effective, safe and environmentally friendly logistics. Massterly is a joint venture between Kongsberg Maritime and Wilhelmsen; a unique partnership between a leading technology provider and an innovative shipping and logistics group.

Pia Meling has broad management experience from shipping and the maritime industry; both within chartering and commercial management of vessels at the leading dry bulk operator Klaveness, as the General Manager of Nav/Com service provider Radio Holland, the Marketing & Communications Manager for scrubber manufacturer Clean Marine and as Area Sales Director for Marine Products in Wilhelmsen Ships Service.

Pia serves on the Board of TECO 2030 ASA (a maritime engineering company with focus on a cleaner environment), on the Board of port logistics provider Westport AS and she is a member of the Ocean portfolio board in The Research Council of Norway.

Meling holds an MBA from the Norwegian School of Economics.

Pirita Lindholm is the Director of ERRIN, the European Regions Research and Innovation Network, since September 2017. ERRIN is a Brussels-based platform bringing together over 120 regional stakeholder organisations, with an aim to strengthen the regional and local dimension in the EU Research and Innovation policy and programmes.
Pirita has some 20 years of experience working in European organisations representing cities and regions. Before joining ERRIN, she was the Director of Climate Alliance’s Brussels Office (2007-2017), where she and her team worked on European policy, projects, and initiatives such as the Covenant of Mayors. She served as an expert in the European Commission H2020 Advisory Group on Energy (AGE) between 2013 and 2016 actively contributing to the development of the research and innovation agenda. Between 2002 and 2007 she worked for the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR).

Urban-Air Port is a UK based start-up committed to designing, developing and manufacturing innovative Zero-Emission ground infrastructure for future Urban Air Mobility (UAM). Our mission is to remove the largest single constraint to sustainable air mobility, i.e. the lack of infrastructure, and to significantly cut congestion and air pollution from passenger and cargo transport.  Our design is an ultra-compact, multi-functional operations hub for manned and unmanned vehicles providing aircraft command & control, charging & refuelling and cargo & passenger loading.

Our design is intended to integrate this exciting new form of transport into our smart cities of the future and combine with our existing transport and logistics infrastructure as part of a consolidated city-wide multi-modal network.

Ricky founded Urban-Air Port Ltd after a distinguished 20 year career in architecture, including 16 years as equity Partner with award-winning architecture & design practice Foster + Partners.  Ricky sets out the vision, supports his management team, works closely with UAP’s major corporate, governmental and technology partners, and liaises with investors.

Ricky holds a BA (Hons) from Nottingham University, an award winning Diploma of Architecture (Dip Arch) and a Master of Architecture with Distinction (MArch) from the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, during which he also spent a semester at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).

YAGO is a test arena for autonomous mobility solutions and offers the physical and digital infrastructure to test a range of autonomous technologies such as bicycles, cars, pods, busses, robots and drones for passengers and goods. YAGO serve both as a test arena and as a show room for suppliers and other stakeholders.

Steinar Meling has broad management experience from the oil and gas industry covering upstream, mid-stream and downstream, national and international, and from both the operator and supplier side. After leaving the oil and gas industry Steinar served as COO of NORCE Norwegian Research Centre and played a key role in establishing the institute through the merger of 7 research institutes.

Steinar also has extensive board experience from companies in various industries such as property development, construction, logistics, health and oil and gas.  

Currently Steinar holds the position as CEO of YAGO AS and as Project Manager in Nordic Edge with special focus on mobility.

Meling holds a BA with Honours in Economics and Finance from Strathclyde University.

Stine Lise Hattestad Bratsberg is a pioneer in sustainability and social responsibility consulting and a trusted advisor for some of the largest companies in Norway. She has long experience working with both private and public sector, and partnership between NGOs and the private and public sector.

Her expertise on strategic implementation of the UN Sustainability goals is internationally recognized. She has more than 20 years’ experience from the consulting industry and has founded two startups. Her company Pure Consulting was acquired by KPMG in 2020 and she is now Partner and Head of the fast-growing advisory unit KPMG Pure Consulting. Her passion is developing vivid and profitable sustainability strategies that “move and make a difference”.

Stine Lise also works with the United Cities International Centre for Sustainable Cities and Community, a non-profit organisation with headquarters in Vienna, running programmes with international organisations, the public and global business and financial markets to collaborate effectively in uplifting cities and communities worldwide as the world’s primary engines to realize prosperity and achieve the UN Sustainable Goals by 2030. More information can be found here.

Svein Kvernstuen is the Founder and CEO of the, technology company Beyonder AS, focusing on development of new battery technology and nano carbon material. He has an engineering and business education and has worked in the oil and gas industry for over 15 years.

Svein is a serial entrepreneur with expertise in technology development, marketing, sales and business development. He is owner and angel investor in several companies.

Thea Maria Rytterager is 29 years old and live in Kongsberg with her 4 year-old son. She is currently studying a bachelor’s degree in Hotel Management. She is the Deputy leader in ‘Mental helse ungdom’ Mental Health for Youth) in Kongsberg. She has been part of the organisation since 2016.

Thea is passionate about a more inclusive society – and that everyone has a mental health that we need to take care of!

Thore Sekkenes has 30 years of experience at management positions in system business related to electric power conversion within ABB and Bombardier Transportation.

He has consistently been working with technologies enabling the transformation to sustainability in the power and transport sectors.

Thore joined InnoEnergy February 2019 and leads the EBA 250 with the responsibility to develop the European battery industry.

Tor Eigil Hodne is Senior Vice President in Statnett has worked in the North Sea energy field for a decade and heads the Secretariat of Roundtable for Europes Energy Future – REEF. REEF is a cross sector European alliance, containing leading European energy companies and technology providers.

Experienced policymaker with substantial experience working on ICT, digital, privacy and it-security policy, politics and media and communication strategy with management, companies, NGOs, Government and politics.

Founder and Co-Founder with a demonstrated history of working in the management consulting industry. Strong entrepreneurship professional skilled in Negotiation, ICT Strategy, and Management.

Øyvind Tanum is head of Smart City in the municipality of Trondheim, in central Norway. He has a background in finance, and has spent his recent years working with smart and sustainable development.
He is an advocate for how technology and data can contribute to sustainable value creation, and has been working to establish Decidim as a national platform on digital participation.

Alan Goodliffe works for the UK Government’s Department for International Trade (DIT), based at the British Embassy in Stockholm. Having worked with export promotion for almost ten years, Alan focuses on the infrastructure, construction and transportation/mobility sectors, with the aim of matching UK products and expertise with Swedish opportunities. In addition to this, Alan also contributes to the embassy’s wider mission, namely maintaining and strengthening the bilateral relations between the UK and Sweden, often by sharing best practice and good ideas.

Dr. Amela Karahasanovic is a Senior Research Scientist at SINTEF and Associate Professor at the University of Oslo, Department of Informatics. She holds a PhD in Software Engineering from the University of Oslo. Her expertise in the area of human-computer interaction, software engineering, interaction design and innovation. She has a broad experience from national and international research projects, published more than 60 peer reviewed publications in academic journals, conferences, and books within HCI, and serves as the reviewer and the advisory board member for EU projects. Currently she leads a research and innovation projects focusing on modelling user behaviour and interaction design for smart transport systems.

Anne Marthine Rustad, PhD, is Research Manager in SINTEF, where she leads the activities and research group on artificial intelligence. She has extensive industrial experience, and has previously worked at DNV GL, Boston Consulting Group and Aker Solutions. She holds a Master in Technology in Engineering Cybernetics and a PhD in Marine Cybernetics, both from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), including a research stays at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She has also been Adjunct Associated Professor at NTNU.

Anthony van de Ven (M) is the Head of Office in the Eindhoven Brainport EU office and in this capacity has responsibility for, among others, the European project activities, the city of Eindhoven and other partners in the Eindhoven region engage in. He has over 25 years of experience in policy advocacy and project acquisition and project management in a wide variety of European funding programmes, ranging from the various EU Structural Funds programmes to the EU Research Framework programmes. Along the years he gained valuable experience in working on advocacy initiatives and projects across EU borders, an essential skill for those engaged in EU projects. Due to his position, and the fact that he works on the broad issues of energy and climate change, urban health and well-being, digitalization in an urban context, with both the public sector as well as with business partners in the region and the knowledge organizations (TU/e and KIC INNO-ENERGY) he is able to grasp quickly the various sustainability aspects facing local authorities. As he is based in Brussels and part of an extensive network of public sector colleagues from across the EU, he is able to share knowledge quickly and easily.

Astrid Gjeraker Misje er prosjektleder for prosjektet «Øygarden modellen». Prosjektets hovedmål er å utvikle en ny veiledningsmodell, styrket av teknologi. Hun har lang erfaring fra NAV, ungdomsarbeidsledighetoppfølging, oppbygging og koordinering av ungdomsledighetsteamet i NAV Øygarden. Fokus har alltid vært viktigheten av kommunikasjon og forbedring av kvaliteten på veiledning både til enkeltpersoner og i prosessovervåking. Astrid er en del av veiledningsnettverkene i NAV.

Bjørn Laksforsmo is a division director with the Norwegian Road Administration and has a background as director for sea transport with leading ferry operator Torghatten, as well as various management positions with Hurtigruten. Bjørn is passionate about smarter ways of working and he is an experienced change manager. His vast experience from the ferry sector coupled with his impactful role at the Norwegian Road Administration (a large and innovative purchaser of ferry services) makes for useful input to the autonomous water shuttles discussion

Christoph Gollner is Programme Manager for the SET Plan Action 3.2/JPI Urban Europe Programme on Positive Energy Districts and Neighbourhoods for Sustainable Urban Development (PED Programme) at the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) since 2018, coordinating operational programme activities, stakeholder involvement and content-related development of the PED Programme. As graduate engineer in spatial and urban planning he has been working for the Austrian Academy of Sciences and in urban revitalization for the City of Vienna.

Dagfinn joined Lyse in 2006 coming from the Telenor group, where he had different roles in business units and the R&D department. He holds two master degrees (MSC and MoM) from Stavanger University and Norwegian Business school BI. His first role in Lyse was as Chief Product Officer and then Chief Innovation Officer in Altibox, before becoming Head of Innovation in the Lyse Group in 2012. Having a profound interest in the field of new digital business models, where he published a book on this theme in 2016; www.disruptiveecosystems.com He also contributed with a business oriented chapter in the book “Responsible innovation in digital health” published in 2019.

Daniel has been with GTAI for eight years, having previously worked in England, the USA and South Africa. he holds an MBA from the University of Leicester.
Finance and Incentives is a part of GTAI’s Investor Support Services department, offering advice and data for macroeconomic considerations, information on Germany’s different regions, the German taxation system, employment aspects, legal administration and financing opportunities. All GTAI’s services are free of charge.

David is an architect and co-founder of DRDH Architects, an award-winning practice based in London and Antwerp. DRDH are known in Norway for Stormen, a Concert hall, theatre and library in Bodø, which received the Norwegian State Architecture Prize 2015 and the A C Houen Diploma for Outstanding Architecture 2019.

The practice has recently completed a new concert hall for the Bijloke Music Centre in Belgium and ongoing public work includes the remodelling of the Bourla Theatre in Antwerp, the restoration and extension of the Ghent Opera House and a new public library in London. Specialist residential projects have included housing for the elderly and community facilities in Aarschot Belgium, build to rent housing in London and a number of ongoing urban masterplan projects, including Antwerp docks and Nyhavna Trondheim.

Eddy Hartog is the Head of Unit for Technologies for Smart Communities in DG Connect. He is from Utrecht in the Netherlands and he has a degree in political economics from the Erasmus University and a post-graduate degree from the College of Europe. Hartog has worked in the European Commission since 1989, first in Trade policy, then in Regional policy and in Maritime policy, and then as Head for International Relations in the Directorate General for Information Society and Media.

Eeva Astala is Archinfo Finland’s social advocacy expert. Astala has solid experience in the fields of architecture policy, architectural education and civic activism. At Archinfo she focuses on projects that strengthen the position and importance of architecture in society, such as promoting the architectural policy programs. 

Archinfo Finland is a collaboration and intermediary organisation in the field of architecture. Its objective is to make Finnish architecture visible and known worldwide and to increase the social impact of architecture. Archinfo Finland is one of the eight information centres for art supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture of Finland. Promoting architecture education is one of Archinfo Finland’s missions.

Elisa Lähde is Assistant Professor of Landscape architecture and also a practicing landscape architect. Her interest lies especially in green infrastructure and urban sustainability and she is eager to pilot new solutions and tools to optimize the benefits provided by natural processes in the built environment. As a researcher and designer, Elisa can quickly see the big picture and she is able to combine effortlessly abstract frameworks into practical solutions in an innovative way.

Eric is Chairman of Centaur Robotics, a next generation personal electric vehicle service provider.  He volunteers as an Expert Advisory Board member to Royal College of Art’s Design Age Institute and Honorary Associate Professor of Primary Care Innovation at De Montfort University.  He also volunteers as the UK’s Ambassador to Aging2.0.

Previously, Eric helped to launch the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund – Healthy Ageing as the Interim Director.  Following this role, Eric went on to become a co-founder of the Secretariat to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Longevity.

Eric studied Economics at the University of Pennsylvania and has an MBA from New York University.

Centaur Robotics

Francisco works as an Innovation Manager for Granlund where he leads the development of different digital solutions in the Innovation team. His education is in civil engineering/construction and for the last 10+ years he has been working in different innovation projects in Finland and internationally. He has lived and worked in Bolivia, USA, Norway, Spain and Finland. His main interest is in developing digital solutions that can provide real value for the built environment and change the way we design, build and operate city infrastructures. Additionally, he is the representative for Granlund in Latin America and strongly believes in the fusion of the Nordics and LATAM. 

Giacomo joined Polis in May 2015. He is the coordinator of the Polis Urban Freight Working Group. He works on several EU projects, including SolutionsPlus, VitalNodes, BuyZET, ASSURED, Clean Mobile Energy, MORE. He is the moderator of the CIVITAS Urban Freight and Logistics Thematic Group. He has previously worked as policy advisor for Éupolis (the research institute of Lombardy Region in Milan), and collaborated with ISFORT, the Italian research and training institute for transport. He also gained experience at the European Commission Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE). Giacomo holds a PhD in urban transport governance from the University of Roma Tre, and a Master degree in European economy and business law from the Tor Vergata University in Rome.

Han Vandevyvere is a senior researcher and project manager at VITO-EnergyVille and associate professor of NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology).  He does research and manages projects with a focus on the energy transition of the built environment.  These mainly include EU funded smart city projects (FP7, Horizon2020), the EU Smart Cities Marketplace and assignments by the Flemish government and by Flemish cities, such as the climate action plans for the cities of Roeselare (2018) and Bruges (2021).  He holds a PhD on sustainable urban development and researched and taught sustainable building techniques and sustainable urban design at the engineering faculty of KU Leuven from 2006 to 2013.  He served as the scientific coordinator of the city project Leuven Climate Neutral 2030 (2011-2013).  Before his full-time scientific occupation he combined research with practicing as an architect, in Belgium and in Spain, allowing him to explore the relation between research and practice in particular.

Hanna Maria van Zijp is an urban planner, ferry nerd and director of public affairs in Zeabuz. Nordic tech company Zeabuz develops autonomous systems for clean, blue mobility solutions in sustainable cities of the future.

Helen Roth is CEO of VIA – Vital infrastructure arena, and has helped build the cluster from scratch back to 2016 when it was established as the Norwegian Tunnel Safety Cluster. She has a background from media and from public administration and has for many years worked with business development, business development, research and innovation.

Henrik Gudmundsson, Ph.D. is a Senior Consultant on transport in CONCITO’s program ‘Future Cities’. Henrik is an expert in sustainable transport planning and assessment. He has had leadership positions in several research projects and working groups. He has published extensively on sustainability indicators, urban mobility, transport policy and transport decarbonization. Most recently he authored CONCITO’ reports on decarbonizing road freight and urban logistics. Before joining CONCITO, Henrik was a transport specialist at the Danish Ministry of Environment and later served 10 years as Senior Researcher in transportation policy analysis at the Technical University of Denmark.  

Inge Kjønnøy head up the Norwegian Branch of Mastercard. He started working with Mastercard in 2015 by opening the local office in Norway, and in his role actively engage across the payment value chain with partners, customers, business development and strategic planning.

Inge has 25 years + of experience from the payments industry working with the Norwegian bank DNB and American Express. Prior to Mastercard he held the position as Managing Director of the American Express Branch in Norway in parallel with a Nordic responsibility for business development. He has held various leadership roles since 1999.

His education is from Norwegian School of Management.

TGS ASA is a global leader in market intelligence and data-driven solutions supporting investment decisions and operational performance across the energy value chains. Already the owner of the world’s most extensive subsurface data library, the company in February 2021 announced a new global business unit offering data-driven solutions for renewable energy, CCS and deep-sea mining. In May 2021, TGS acquired 4C Offshore Limited, the world’s leading market intelligence company specialising in offshore wind. TGS is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange (OBX) and has its main offices in Oslo, London (Woking) and Houston.

Janne Rinne works as a project manager at Forum Virium Helsinki, the innovation company of the city of Helsinki. Currently, his main project is Jätkäsaari Mobility Lab, which promotes smooth, safe and sustainable urban mobility through piloting and experimentation. He coordinates co-creation and living lab activities, agile piloting programme, and stakeholder co-operation with companies, planners, local residents and other stakeholders. Before diving into hands-on innovation projects, he worked several years as a researcher in Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), focusing on environmental policy and governance.

Janne Rinne works as a project manager at Forum Virium Helsinki, the innovation company of the city of Helsinki. Currently, his main project is Jätkäsaari Mobility Lab, which promotes smooth, safe and sustainable urban mobility through piloting and experimentation. He coordinates co-creation and living lab activities, agile piloting programme, and stakeholder co-operation with companies, planners, local residents and other stakeholders. Before diving into hands-on innovation projects, he worked several years as a researcher in Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), focusing on environmental policy and governance.

Jason is passionate about innovation and emerging technologies and how they can be utilized towards more sustainable and liveable cities. His strong technical foundation in systems development is combined with a creative drive for exploring new and better solutions and the ability to bring ideas to realization. Jason holds a degree in engineering specializing in computer systems, and an MSc in information systems management. He started as CTO at Hyke – Hydrolift Smart City Ferries in 2021 bringing with him broad cross-industry experience with several roles at management level. Jason’s’ career includes over 14 years of experience from Kongsberg Maritime that included the concept and technical development of autonomous systems.

Jenny Simonsen, is Director for Operations and New Mobilities at ITS Norway. Simonsen has over 15-years of international management experience from the Automotive and Intelligent Transport Systems business sectors.  

She works with ITS Norway’s members to foster the development of new technologies and services in the mobility sector.  She pays attention to emerging technologies and is very interested in smart city solutions and the building of public-private partnerships.  

Simonsen is a member of the board of Sustainable Autonomous Mobility Systems (SAMS) and the Norwegian Cluster for Applied AI. Further, she heads up the action group for Maritime ITS and Smart City and is the contact point for members and associated clusters. Under Simonsen’s management, the ITS associations in the Nordic countries have established ITS Nordic+. She also manages the Nordic Pavilions at the ITS World Congresses each year.   

Jenny Simonsen has degrees from Global Sales Strategies and Marketing from the Arca University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki and ESADE Business School in Madrid. 

Johan is a co-founding partner in Beta Mobility, a Nordic mobility startup studio and consultancy. Prior to this Johan has founded and invested in several mobility companies. He is an advocate for open data and collaborative work between cities, public transport and technology companies, he provides a unique Nordic perspective on mobility as key to make optimal use of existing infrastructures.

Jonas Carsten Jeppesen is a doctor, who strongly believes in the power of Selfcare. As a specialist in general and family medicine, and with a sub specialization in cognitive behavioral therapy he has extensive experience in helping people understanding their mind and body, and how it is connected. His philosophy is that in relation to NCD’s, the most important healthcare provider is the human being itself.  Through his work he has seen that there is basic need for people to organize, handle and most importantly understand their health information. He founded Zyberia AS, a health tech company, to provide HealthB, a selfcare platform for personalized precision care with absolute patient centric approach.

Jo Skjermo Ph.D. is a Senior Advisor at SINTEF Community, Mobility and Economics. He has led and participated in collaborative research and innovation projects in the field of transportation research for more than 10 years in academia, research institute sector and a governmental agency (NPRA). He has a specific focus on ITS, applied Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality.

Kaisa Spilling (MSc. Econ) works as a Development Manager at Forum Virium Helsinki, a city owned innovation company. She is an innovation accelerator with + 10 years experience with cities, digitalisation & urban innovation. Her expertise lies in public-private-people collaboration and business development. She has been driving innovation platform development in Helsinki’s Innovation Districts, contributing to the national city network 6Aika and the Nordic Smart Cities Network.

Karin Ebbinghaus is the CEO of the innovative company Elonroad, which contributes to the system shift into to a more climate-friendly society. Elonroad enables acceleration into electrification of the transport sector by providing a novel kind of charging infrastructure.  Karin has a background as a lawyer and investor but fell for Elonroad and their inspiring approach to tackling the climate challenge with new thinking and belief in technology.

About Elonroad
Elonroad is a company within e-Mobility developing, manufacturing, installing and operating technology to charge electric vehicles while driving or being parked. The company was founded in 2014 and has its office in Lund, Sweden with 12 employees. Their electrical road  technology has been tested in several  years on private roads and is being tested since 2020 with a project with the Swedish Transport Administration for city buses in Lund as well as a project with stationary charging with DHL. Together with its new investor Bring, additional projects will be launched within short.

Kenny Jansson is the coordinator of Uppsala’s work to become a more age-friendly municipality. He is responsible for the municipality’s program and action plan for an age-friendly municipality. Uppsala municipality joined the WHO Age Friendly Cities project in June 2016 and the development of the action plan has been based on citizen dialogue and 360 degree feedback from the elderly community in Uppsala. Kenny has a background in Human Geography and prior to his current role he was a researcher at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University.

Kerkko Vanhanen is the Programme Director for Smart City Kalasatama Helsinki. He works for Forum Virium Helsinki, an innovation company owned by the City of Helsinki. Before Kerkko has worked as CEO for Traficon Ltd – A traffic planning and consulting company – and for Helsinki Region Transport (public transport authority) as the Head of Information Systems Group leading all development projects around digital passenger information and open data.

Kerkko’s special competence is in smart mobility and digital service design around mobility. He has strong interest also in smart energy solutions and generally in any innovation that makes urban life easier and causes less negative impacts on nature. Kerkko has M.Sc. in Civil Engineering (Aalto University, former Helsinki University of Technology) and he has also studied minor in the department of architecture about Urban Planning.

As Director Network & Projects at Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC), Lea works with a community of +150 cities, towns and rural areas worldwide supporting them in their digital transformation.Since 2019, she coordinates the pilot deployment of the DUET Digital Twin project in three European cities and regions – Athens, Pilsen and Flanders. As part of her job, Lea also oversees the development and implementation of the network’s projects as well as the CITYxCITY Festival, Academy and Catalogue. 

Louise is positioned as Director of Research and Insights at IS IT A BIRD, a human-centred innovation agency based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Louise is a business anthropologist specialised in defining valuable deep insights in human behaviour and turning them into new business opportunities and innovation potentials.

Louise holds a track record of collaboration across industries counting VELUX, NOVO, NIKE and The Danish National Railway Company, DSB, and has core expertise in smart city development, contributing to the field with a human lens and the point of view that technologies change fast whereas fundamental human needs do not. At IS IT A BIRD, Louise has developed a solid innovation toolkit for addressing the fundamental human needs in the smart city context, operationalising how to involve humans as key to succeed with any future smart city solution.

IS IT A BIRD

Through involvement in various Belgian and European projects, Lucija’s mission at Th!nk E is to create an enabling framework for energy transition in electricity, heating and mobility sector. As part of European Commission’s Smart Cities Marketplace Lucija brings perspective and experiences of European cities. Lucija has a PhD in electrical engineering from KU Leuven and a masters degree in mechanical engineering from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Mads is a partner and entrepreneur in Æra and spends much of his time on open and strategic innovation projects where many actors create together, and the degree of complexity is high. He is the initiator of the cross-sectoral innovation program Floke, which creates innovation opportunities out of society’s biggest challenges, and was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Environmental Award in the autumn of 2018. He has long and broad experience as an innovation consultant and business architect for the many major brands in Norway, including: Varner Group, Ruter, TINE, Norsk Gjenvinning, Nortura, Hansa, Hafslund, Energi Norge and Bakehuset. Mads is a Kaospilot and certified Design Thinker from IDEO and Improve Consultant of the EU. He has a combined background from both economics and psychology studies.

Magnus Blinge is Research manager in the area of Transport systems solutions at the Innovation Office at Scania CV with a focus on Urban logistics. He also holds a position as Adjunct Professor in Sustainable Logistics at Linköping University, Sweden. Magnus has worked in collaborative research and innovation projects in the field of sustainable freight transport solutions for more than 25 years in academia, at a governmental agency (Vinnova) and in the private sector. 

Malin leads Mastercard’s government engagement in the Nordics and Baltics, focusing on the intersection between digital infrastructure, economic development and sustainability to support countries, governments, and cities for sustainable growth. She also oversees the company’s global government engagement agenda as it relates to green growth; partnering with governments to support their climate transition pathway. Prior to this role, she held various senior positions in the company as Head of Marketing for Nordics and Baltics and Global Retail Lead which included sales, business development, strategy and relationship management for the retail vertical across 210 markets. Previously, she has also held various positions within ICA Group.

Malin has an international portfolio of experience, with 15 years in retail and technology; delivering business transformation, innovation and ‘strategy through execution’ to support the future of commerce and to advance sustainable economic growth and financial inclusion.

Malin has served on nonprofit boards and is today providing her internal growth experience towards nonprofits and startups, primarily focusing on organizations addressing UN’s SDGs / Agenda 2030.

Mari Patronen is a Director of Elderly Services at the City of Tampere. She has several years of expertise in providing services for the elderly, mainly in the public sector. She leads the city’s largest service field with more than 2,500 employees. Her key strengths include development and innovation: how services and living environments for older people can be improved and how services for older people can contribute to this support. She thinks that an age-friendly city is a city for everyone and it requires decision-making together at all levels and sectors of planning.Mari holds Masters’ degrees both in Social Sciences and in European Issues from the University of Tampere and the University of Leuven. She also has an EMBA degree from the University of Jyväskylä.

Marianne Hagaseth, (MSc/Computer Science) works as a senior research scientist at SINTEF Ocean in the field of maritime ICT and cybernetics. Her research covers information exchange and data integration in maritime transport, information systems for maritime transport and logistics, short sea shipping, maritime single window and ship-shore interaction for autonomous ships. She is involved in standardization activities as a committee member of IEC/TC80 on Common Maritime Data Structure and on Digital interfaces for navigational equipment within a ship, with the ISO standard 28005 on Electronic Port Clearance (ISO/TC8) and as an active contributor to IMO’s Expert Group on Data Harmonization (EGDH).

Marie Paldam Folker is Director of Centre for Telepsychiatry. Marie is an expert digital mental health practitioner and has worked in the healthcare technology field for over 10 years specialising in technological interventions for physical and mental health, incorporating service design, implementation and evaluation. Originally trained as an anthropologist, Marie is passionate about making a difference to people with mental illness and involving people with lived experience to inform and shape the development of digital mental services.

At Centre for Telepsychiatry Marie is responsible for the development and implementation of digital mental health interventions in the Mental Health Services in the Region of Southern Denmark. Her role is also to identify and facilitate strategic partnerships to ensure that digital mental health services are developed and deployed in a way that maximizes benefits for end-users – both patients and mental health care providers.

Centre for Telepsychiatry, Mental Health Services, Region of Southern Denmark – read more here

Matthew Sattler is a transportation and startup problem solver focused on solving hard tech challenges. Matthew currently leads Infrastructure and Ecosystem Partners at Hyundai UAM and is responsible for creating partnerships that will enable a future mobility ecosystem. Prior to joining Hyundai, Matthew helped commercialize autonomous airplanes at Reliable Robotics and led sales for Boom Supersonic, a startup building a new supersonic airliner.

Mette is the Head of Business Development department in Rogaland County Council, a county that has smart societies as one of four strategic pilars. As a former head of innovation in Sandnes Municipality, she has previously worked with smart cities in the region. Mette holds a aster in Political Science from the University of Agder, and an excecutive master of management at the college of South-Eastern Norway

Minna Koskelo is a pioneer of futures design in Finland with almost 20 years of working history. Futures design is a new participatory, human-centric domain, which includes business, design and foresight approaches all rooted in systems thinking. 

Koskelo is also a co-founder and leader of Futures Finland Association, which promotes futures thinking in Finland, develops the industry further and builds community for futurists. Additionally Koskelo is a co-founder of Futures Day, which promotes futures awareness and is targeted for everyone: citizens, companies and municipalities. Futures day got a National foresight award in 2019. 

Currently Koskelo is writing a book about futures design in decision making that will be published later this year.

Nic Palmarini is the Director of UK’s National Innovation Centre for Ageing (NICA) a world-leading organisation, created with an investment from UK Government and Newcastle University, to help create a world in which we all live better, for longer. The Centre brings together world-leading innovation experts, scientists, industry, and the public, to design, develop test and bring to market innovative business models, services and products which enhance and improve the several holistic dimensions along our life-course. Before, he was research manager at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, and leader of the AI for Healthy Ageing practice at IBM Research. He holds a decade of experience in research on supporting older adults’ autonomy and independence. He is an author, teacher, applied research scientist. The work of his teams has been awarded two times with the Computer Honors Award, and at the United Nations for Aging Initiative.

Nina Egeli is heading up the Smart mobility and green transport initiatives at Nordic Innovation. Internationalisation, innovation and business development support, in combination with a strong background in strategy and policy development are main pillars in Nina’s career. She holds academic degrees in Political Science and Management.  Nordic Innovation aims to make the Nordics (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) a pioneering region for sustainable growth and works to promote entrepreneurship, innovation and competitiveness in Nordic business. Nordic Innovation is an organisation under the Nordic Council of Ministers.

Olav introduced self-driving vehicles to Norway the spring 2016 and has responsibility for over 20 operations in Norway and Europe with autonomous vehicles and automated transport.

He has the coordination responsibility of the National Testarena in Kongsberg with autonomous transport integrated with Public Transport. The test arena is integrated with municipality, county administration, transport operators and the National Public Road Administration.

Olav has an Honours degree within information technology, statistics, and administration from the University of Bergen (1989), followed by a series of business management courses from Europe’s prestigious and leading business school INSEAD (1999), in Paris, France.

His background shows a balanced mix of management roles within the telecom, banking, and finance sectors.

He therefore is fully aware of the complexity of working internationally, and of how to connect heterogeneous systems and actors to support automated solutions and sustainability.

Currently I work as a research director and researcher at the Tampere University, Faculty of Social Sciences and at the University of Jyväskylä, Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, Finland. My central tasks are linked to the activities of the Centre of Excellence in Research on Ageing and Care (CoE AgeCare 2018-2025, www.jyu.fi/agecare) in which I act as the co-leader of the Tampere University group.

My research covers disciplines of social gerontology, sociology of health and illness, geographical and environmental gerontology, care studies, old age care and housing policies. In recent years my research has focused on linkages between living environment and wellbeing, communal senior housing models, emerging hybrid housing models combining ordinary housing and service housing, and sustainable senior housing solutions.

Paul Chaffey har vært statssekretær i Kommunal- og moderniseringsdepartementet siden 2013. Han kom da fra jobben som administrerende direktør i Abelia.

Chaffey har studert statsvitenskap og historie, og har tidligere jobbet i Statoil. Fra 1989 til 1997 var han stortingsrepresentant.

Han har hatt styreverv i en rekke institusjoner, som Amnesty, NUPI, Universitet i Oslo, Næringslivets sikkerhetsråd og programmet Forny 2020 i Norges Forskningsråd.

Since 2003, Paul has led multi-agency urban ageing partnerships, and in 2016 was appointed as the Head of the Greater Manchester Ageing Hub. Paul has had a number of journal articles on ageing published, and given presentations to high-profile events in the USA, Asia, Europe and Australia. Paul has an MA in social gerontology and is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. Paul has been a member of the World Health Organisation’s Global Network of Ageing Friendly Cities Advisory Group, and the Scientific Steering Board for the joint Age-friendly Environments in Europe project.

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4Subsea is a leading provider of technology and services that help operators optimise energy production from subsea oil & gas fields and offshore wind farms. They combine domain expertise with data analytics and digital services to maximise lifetime of assets, reduce operational cost and optimise future projects through data-drivendesign.

what3words is the simplest way to talk about location. The location technology company is enabling people around the world to identify and share any precise location using just three words. what3words has taken the globe, and divided it into a grid of 3m squares, giving each one a unique 3 word address, made of three words from the dictionary.

Phoebe Parry-Crooke is a Partnerships Manager at what3words; helping businesses and organisations make use of their technology. Her main focus is around supporting infrastructure and UAV companies to integrate the technology and get their consumers using it. 

Rasmus is well-experienced in health care and urban development, and co-manages the “Life Science and Health Tech”, “Health, Demography and Quality of Life” and “Nordic Sustainable Cities” programs at Nordic Innovation. He has extensive international experience in complex project management, predominantly within health care system development. Prior to joining Nordic Innovation, Rasmus worked at LHL International for nine years where his last four years were as CEO.

Robert supports international companies in setting up a presence in Germany and is the energy, building and environmental technologies team’s specialist for energy efficiency in buildings and industrial processes. In the last six years he has introduced businesses from different countries and a wide range of fields to the ins and outs of energy efficiency and doing business in Germany.

Chief technology innovation officer / CTIO. Working with technology and project development, business development, innovation in Smedvig Eiendom. Asset Manager for Site 4016 and CEO of Ullandhaug Energy a renewable energy company. MSc in Engineering from University of Stavanger. MSc in Real Estate Management from Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Master of Management from Norwegian Business School.

He has previously held positions at ABB, YIT and Caverion.

Origo Solutions is a technology company, supplier and integrator of control, automation, safety and data management systems and solutions to the offshore and onshore oil and gas, process, marine, and renewable energy production industries and markets.

The company has more than 40 years’ of experience in developing premium safety and automation solutions for monitoring, control and protection of both offshore and onshore facilities. Recently we have received the common SCADA contract for Dogger Bank A, B and C, and developed our own SCADA software called SCADA+.

Signe Riemer-Sørensen, , PhD, is a data scientist and researcher at SINTEF Digital. Her expertise is focused on the development of hybrid machine learning algorithms combining data driven methods and domain knowledge, for use in industrial settings, in particular within the domains of energy, construction and logistics.

Simen Malmin is CTO at Veni where he has focused on developing their Proptech initiatives. He has fifteen years of experience within high-tech commercialization. Projects range from wind energy and medical devices to digital solutions the construction industry.

He has experience with fundraising, both Governmental and public, for early-stage innovation projects and start-ups and has held COO, CEO and board member positions in a number of start-up companies.

Stuart Bloomfield is the Chief Development Officer for Urban-Air Port.  Stuart is responsible for business development & strategic partnerships, site sourcing, marketing & sales.  

Stuart is a Chartered Surveyor with over 20 years’ experience in capital markets, sales & leasing and corporate real estate advisory in the UK and Europe. Prior to joining Urban-Air Port, Stuart worked for some of the largest global real estate advisors including Knight Frank, CBRE and Cushman & Wakefield.

Sture Portvik works as a project manager at the City of Oslo in the Agency for Urban Environment. He is an expert in e-mobility having worked on the implementation of e-mobility in the city for 7 years. His practical experience includes planning and implementation of public chargers (2100), fast chargers (78), mobility houses (2), e-taxis, electric craft and service vehicles, electric freight vehicles and trucks, electric car sharing, and he has also worked in several innovation projects in this field including with wireless/inductive fast chargers, consolidation centres for last mile delivery be electric vehicles. He brings an important perspective and in-depth understanding of the role of the city authority in the transition to e-mobility

Ståle Hagen has held several positions within management, strategy and finance in the transportsector, army, in politics and in companies within CIS/e-learning, education and knowledge and governmental administration and negotiations. Positions has been Deputy director in the Norwegian Railway Directorate, Director of Administration and Economy in the thinkthank Civita, Controller and manager of economics and CIS in the Defence Staff. Political Adviser for the commisioner of Urban development and real estate in the City of Oslo. Project manager and teamleader in an e-learning company within company values and education.

Sertification within Lean Green Belt from Cardiff University and PRINCE2 Foundation.

Specialties: Management, strategy, project management, transportsector, digitalization, politics, public sector, procurement, controller, finance, communication and negotiations (both as a part of a union, as a part of the management and as a politician), political adviser, e-learning and support functions, HR.

Marine Technologies LLC (MT) is a company dedicated to providing superior vessel control solutions to the international offshore and commercial shipping industries. MT’s products include dynamic positioning systems, integrated bridge systems and advanced VSAT communications.

Sverre Konrad Nilsen er en gründer, med doktorgrad i kultur, læring – og kompetanseoverføring. Han har lang erfaring fra forskningssektoren med 14 år i SINTEF både som forsker og forskningssjef, og i det siste har han stiftet Folkeinvest AS, Voxt AS og Læringsliv AS. Hovedfokuset hans er hvordan digitalisering kan styrke enkeltpersoner og øke relasjonskapasiteten – med hovedfokus på individene.

Sølve has focussed on international business development from The European Free Trade Association, to Rolls-Royce and Innovation Norway for over a decade. He’s now on a mission to grow the Norwegian eco-system of green solutions and unlock sustainable commercial opportunities worldwide.

Sølve is responsible for development of Innovation Norway’s portfolio of business services for the green and digtial transition happening in Norway right now. Before joining Innovation Norway, Sølve helped Rolls-Royce Marine restructure the business for a sustainable future of digitally optimized and emssion free maritime solutions.

Earlier, Sølve worked extensively with green transformation programmes in Europe through his work for the European Free Trade Association, where he contributed to funding sustainable development projects across several EU/EEA states.

Tim Barclay joined Appello as Chief Executive Office in Feb 2017 to help the company accelerate its growth in the Telecare Monitoring and Technology-Enabled Care (TECS) markets. Under Tim’s leadership, Appello have focused their strategy on delivering quality of life enhancing solutions to those in later life and/or the vulnerable. Tim was also part of a Healthy Ageing Expert Mission to China in 2019 where he led talks on the subject of improving life experience through the careful and appropriate use of technology. Prior to joining Appello, Tim was Chief Operating Officer for BT’s Global Government & Health organisation where we oversaw their Future Cities, Digital Health, and Strategy teams.

Tobias Rothacher is Deputy Director at Germany Trade and Invest’s (GTAI) Team for Energy, Environment & Resources. He has a special focus on Photovoltaics and Energy Storage technologies. GTAI is a consultancy wholly owned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Headquartered in Berlin, he and his colleagues advise international investors – from start-ups to larger corporations – in the field of Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency and Environmental Technologies in Germany. Prior to his position at GTAI, Rothacher worked as a Business Development and Project Development Manager for the Conergy Group in the Asia Pacific region. He has an academic background in Business Administration and Engineering and received his higher education in Germany and Canada.

Tom-André Sivertsen is CEO and co-founder of Tectal AS. With his master degree in space technology from the University in Narvik, a key skillset withing technological and practical use of new technology is a natural part of everyday. Product development and commercialization of new products have been a vital part throughout his career at well known companies like Oceaneering, GE Oil & Gas and OneCo.

Tor Aanonsen is the project Coordinator for the planning and development of the “Bussveien” project, the longest connected bus route in Europe when finished. Tor has previously worked as a Project Leader within simulation technologies for Aker Solutions and has a master’s degree in digital architecture from the University of Technology Sydney.”

Torun Degnes, CEO at SAMS Norway, a business cluster focusing on the development of systems for sustainable autonomous transport solutions used on land, air, and sea. Degnes has several years of experience within different clusters and over 20 years of experience with innovation and product development from various types of industry. Both as CEO of Techni AS and as consultant in innovation processes for multiple companies. As the cluster manager Degnes is overall responsible for all activities within the cluster and works with partners across the nation as well as across borders. Degnes earned a master’s degree in industrial design from Oslo and has complimentary courses in Innovation, Management and Democracy.

Trond Halvorsen is a researcher with a special interest in the design and implementation of digital innovations in the public health and care services. With a PhD in behavioural economics, he is keenly aware of the challenges that ageing populations pose to the welfare state. Together with engineers, architects, and health experts at SINTEF, he is helping business and care providers to innovate and invent new ways of providing care. His research covers welfare technologies, housing and transportation solutions for seniors and people with disabilities.

Halvorsen is a member of the Norwegian Cluster for Co-Creative Service Design and Innovation (CCSDI) and the HelsA (Health promoting architecture and surroundings) research center. He is also member of the Norwegian Evaluation Association and the COST action From sharing to caring.

IKM Ocean Design is a leading innovative and independent engineering company within the subsea engineering sector with more than 35 years of experience. Cable routing, installation and operation analyses together with cable protection, on-bottom stability and geotechnical analyses being main expertise.

Maritime Robotics is one of the internationally pioneering companies within Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs) and has delivered more than 60 unmanned boats to international customers within maritime data acquisition. Based on their core-technology within maritime control systems, Maritime Robotics is now scaling their technologies into other business areas.

Vegard Evjen Hovstein is the CEO of Maritime Robotics, and has worked in the unmanned vehicle business his entire career since he graduated from the Department of Engineering Cybernetics at the Norwegian University of Science Technology in 2001. Vegard founded Maritime Robotics in 2005, and serves as a board member of the Norwegian Forum for Autonomous Ships (NFAS).  

Wenche is an architect SAR / MSA, Urban Planner and since 1 January 2021 Manager for Urban Development in the City of Gothenburg, in the completely new, Administration for the Elderly, nursing and care. Her work and interest focus on urban development issues in a socio-spatial perspective where housing and urban planning issues are related to urban form, functionally integration and accessibility to the city, and urban life, for the elderly. It will be a natural continuation based on the work in recent years in the City District Angered and issues of urban planning linked to segregation and housing shortages, and its negative effects for people and the local community.