Speakers and Attendees

Thomas P. Meier has been CEO of Ricola since 2019. He has many years of experience in marketing, sales and general management positions in the consumer goods industry. Before joining Ricola, he was CEO of Franke Coffee Systems, a globally active division of the Franke Group, and a member of the Franke Group Management Board. Prior to that, he held various key positions in the branded goods industry in Switzerland and abroad at Lindt & Sprüngli, Unilever, and Wander AG.

Thomas P. Meier holds a degree in business administration with a specialization in marketing from the University of St. Gallen. 

Evelyne has a track record as an Analyst and Portfolio Manager in energy and resources at GAM Investment Management in Zurich and Capital Research Global Investors in London. She began her career at The Capital Group in Los Angeles, California.

Evelyne holds a Masters degree in Engineering from ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology with concentrations in Food Science, Biochemistry and Biotechnology.

In 2017, together with Tobias Reichmuth, Evelyne founded The Singularity Group with the vision in mind to bring cash flow-based returns to innovation portfolios. Publicly, she has presented as an expert on major international televised networks as well as conferences and is often quoted in the press.

Lukas Hartmann is a nutrition expert with a career spanning over 15 years at major Swiss companies in the field. He joined the Hochdorf Group in 2017 as Head of Development for baby care. In 2021, he transitioned to VP Innovation and R&D. Previously, he was part of a start-up in the area of sustainable probiotic feed supplements and active as a Process Engineer at Nestlé Suisse S.A., where he was responsible for developing, implementing, and commercializing a powdered infant formula. He started his career as a Project Lead in Research and Development at  Nestlé, Orbe, in the Product Technology Center in the area of Infant Cereal Nutrition, where he was responsible for developing and implementing formulations and manufacturing processes in various factories worldwide. He holds a Master’s of Science degree in Food Sciences from the ETH Zurich and an MBA from the University of St. Gallen (HSG).

Shiko guides the company’s proprietary technology and innovation research and leads the Singularity Think Tank—our network of expert advisors. Shiko has almost two decades of experience in researching and consulting companies on organizational innovation processes and has published widely on the topic in leading academic and practitioner outlets. Before joining TSG, Shiko worked as a senior researcher and lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), where he habilitated in 2020, and as an Adjunct Associate Professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Next to his activities at TSG, Shiko holds a position as Associate Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He has a PhD in strategic Management from Erasmus University Rotterdam and a Master of Philosophy in Research Methods. 

Juergen Eck is an entrepreneur, biotechnology pioneer, and inventor holding over 50 patents and patent applications. He is co-founder and former CEO of BRAIN AG, a leading European industrial biotech company specializing in enzymes, performance microorganisms, and bioactive natural compounds for food, feed, cosmetics and industrial applications.

Juergen holds many notable board memberships, including with BIO Deutschland (Association of the Biotechnology Industry Germany), DECHEMA (Society for Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology e.V.), and as a member of the Board of Trustees of MPI (Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology). In 2009 to 2018 he was appointed to the Senate Commission of the German Research Foundation and the European SusChem Core Group. He was awarded "German Entrepreneur of the Year" in 2017.

For over 30 years Juergen has worked as an inventor and technology innovator. Having co-founded BRAIN AG in 1993, he initially established and served as Head of Research & Development, laying the foundation for the success of the company's proprietary technology platform for enzyme discovery, microbial producer strain optimization, and BioActive natural compound discovery and development. Juergen was appointed Chief Technology Officer in 2000 and CEO in 2015, enabling further growth of the BRAIN Group including expanded pipelines of novel biological, enzyme-based, and performance microorganisms products; various spin-offs and acquisitions, and a successful IPO of BRAIN AG at the Frankfurt stock exchange in 2016.

James Khedari is a highly experienced energy industry professional. He brings a unique viewpoint to the clean energy sector, one which is focused on understanding the underlying economics of decarbonization and strong knowledge of emerging biofuels regulations, waste to energy technologies, and co-processing economics. 

James has spent 13 years with Vitol, the worlds' leading energy trading house. His career has spanned across physical energy markets, trading desks as well as the new and emerging carbon and environmental products markets. James has deep experience in the refining sector as well as the trading, manufacturing and development of traditional fossil fuels, and innovative low carbon fuels. After being a Low Carbon Fuels Portfolio Developer at Viva Energy Australia, he moved on to become a Commercial Director at Green Water and Power.

Agnes is Founder and CEO of Mobbot, a startup offering 3D concrete printing solutions.

Before this endeavor, she was Director of Business Development & Innovation and member of the Management team of a precast and construction sector company. There, she founded and led a 3D concrete printing project for two years. She follows the 3D printing advances since 2011. Agnes started her industrial career as a consultant for the Product Innovation and Commercial services of Holcim Group Support Ltd, where she supported the Innovation and Product Portfolio strategy worldwide.

Previously she worked as a scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich and the Natural History Museum of London where she worked on the formation of the solar system and planets.

Agnes holds a PhD in Sciences with focus on Cosmochemistry and space science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich and a master in Geology Engineering with focus on mining from the University of Lausanne.

Agnes has always been interested in new technologies and startup world. Now she wants to bridge her two passions which are 3D printing and Space Science.

She spends her free time with her two kids and husband and has a private pilote licence and flies on single-engine land aircrafts.

Philipp Schmid is Head Research and Business Development for Industry 4.0 & Machine Learning at CSEM. He holds an engineering degree in Microtechnology focused on Robotics and a MAS in Management, Technology and Economics from ETH Zürich. Before joining CSEM he worked in several industrial companies including Roche and spent one year as research fellow at the ICT Robotics group (CSIRO) in Australia. From his experience as Section Head, he gained a profound expertise in delivering advanced solutions in robotics and machine learning to industry. Now he manages the research, development and industrialization of new technologies. He is member of various expert committees such as SATW and Data Innovation Alliance, works as an innovation coach and is co-founder of the Digital Innovation Hub Raisehub.swiss for Robotics & Artificial Intelligence. In 2022, he was awarded “Digital Shaper” in the category Digital Manufacturers.

Andres Gujan is the co-founder of Carnot Capital, an asset management company specialized in the energy transition and the circular economy. Carnot Capital is seen as a pioneer in impact investing in the listed equity space since it launched the Carnot Efficient Energy fund in 2007. Andres is focused on technologies in the field of renewable energies, smart buildings, power storage, future mobility and industry 4.0.

Previously, Andres was an analyst for engineering, real estate, and electricity companies at Valartis Bank. He was responsible for the investment portfolio of Valartis Bank, worked as a consultant for institutional clients, and was involved in the issuing of derivative investment products. Prior to that, he held leading positions in financial analysis at Bank Vontobel and at Kepler Equities, where he was a responsible analyst for the first share placement of BKW FMB Energy. He started his career at UBS.

Andres is a graduate of the University of St. Gallen (lic.rer.publ.HSG) and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).

Carsten is passionate about shaping the future of health. With his company, he delivers his expertise in healthcare to start-ups and large corporations. He acts as interim CxO as well as consultant and coach to CxOs positions to drive innovation and a sustainable change of the healthcare systems. During his professional career in research and large corporations, he developed an expertise in innovation management, business development, digital health, diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, medical impact, health economics, machine learning and many more. His superpower is being a curious learner and a true interdisciplinary individual, speaking multiple “languages” to enable communication between stakeholders to build sustainable ecosystems. Carsten is a serial intra- and entrepreneur, also holding board positions in and outside the healthcare space.

David Balsar is the General Manager of Innovation and Ventures at Mekorot, Israel’s national water company. In the past four years, David has been leading Mekorot’s investment portfolio and innovation strategy. In addition, he is responsible for the company’s R&D activities in water, wastewater and energy. With a strong entrepreneurial experience and corporate background, David focuses on identifying and marrying relevant technologies and business models with industry needs. David is a lawyer and economist with an MBA from INSEAD and a MA in Philosophy from Tel Aviv University. He lives in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Yulia Sandamirskaya leads the research center “Cognitive Computing in Life Sciences” at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) and is a part-time research scientist at Intel. She worked in the research field of neuromorphic computing and robotics since her Dr. rer.nat. at the Institute for Neural Computation at the Ruhr-University of Bochum in 2010. She led a research group "Neuromorphic Cognitive Robots" at the Institute of Neuroinformatics at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich and led the Applications research team of the Neuromorphic Computing Lab at Intel Labs. She currently works towards commercializing neuromorphic technology for more agile and safe robots.

HonMun Yip is a climate investor and food- and biotechnology expert. He was the Executive Vice President of TurtleTree, a biotech company based in Singapore and California that uses cell-based technology to create sustainable food and dairy. Prior to this, he held C-level positions at listed companies in Korea, Thailand, and a Government-to-Government JV in China. He combines the extensive experience from three decades in running multinationals and managing family-owned companies in the Alternative Protein, Bio-Tech, Telecom and Food Tech space. He has devoted half of this time to working with Temasek Holdings’ portfolio of companies in Merger & Acquisition Integration.He started his career at international technology companies such as Microsoft, Motorola and Nokia. He is a Fellow as well as Senior Advisor for Impact Investment at Leap201, a philanthropic organization working to alleviate poverty in rural Southeast Asia. HonMun is involved in several Alternative Protein and Clean Tech funds including Big Ideas Venture, SOSV/China Accelerator Fund, Unreasonable Group and Good Protein Fund. As an investor in early- and late-stage start-ups, he focuses on the environmental, sustainability and food security sectors. Yip holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University in Indiana, USA.

Tommaso is the Head of Investment Management at Base58 Capital, a technology-driven investment firm specialized in crypto assets. He is a former fund manager at Julius Baer and GAM Investment Management, focusing on emerging and frontier market equities. In 2013, Tommaso discovered Bitcoin and has been an advocate since. He developed a passion for decentralized systems that eventually led him to move full-time into the space during 2016.

Over the last 10 years, the crypto asset space has progressed phenomenally fast, and he believes that in the next 10 years, decentralized systems can have the same impact on money, finance and the next generation of digital applications that the internet had on communication and the sharing of information.

Tommaso holds a degree in International Business Studies from the European Business School, London. 

Matthieu Despeisse is Group Leader in CSEM, in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, where he is leading the research activities on new generations of Solar Modules. His work focuses on high performance, high reliability, circularity and a large range of applications and integration of photovoltaics (PV; from mainstream photovoltaics to building integration, mobility/transport as well as Agrivoltaics). He received his degree in electrical engineering from INSA, Lyon, France, in 2002. He then worked until 2008 at the European Organization for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, focusing on novel Ssilicon radiation sensors and electronics. He obtained his PhD degree in 2006 for his work on new generation silicon sensors. He then joined the IMT PV-lab of EPFL in 2006 to lead the research team working on multi-junctions thin film photovoltaics technology. In 2013, he started the crystalline silicon solar cells and metallization activities in CSEM, leading this activity until 2021. He started to head the PV modules activities in 2018.

Simone is a Senior Researcher in the Algorithmic Business Lab at Hochschule Luzern. His main interest is the application of AI in healthcare and medical technologies. Simone completed a PhD in Theoretical Particle Physics with focus on numerical and analytic computational methods at ETH Zürich. His education and professional stations include the University of Milano, Stanford, DESY, and Durham. Since 2019, Simone is working at the boundary between industry and academia, with the goal to translate the most recent advances in Machine Learning into technologies that improve life quality. He supports R&D developers, clinicians, and decision-makers within organisations from start-ups to large corporations in designing AI products, data acquisition, model training and auditing. He regularly lectures and speaks at conferences both for specialists and the general public.

Alexander Stumpfegger is Head of Consulting at CID, a technology firm and innovator focused on Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics and Knowledge Management.

In his almost 20 years with CID, Alexander has developed proprietary technological solutions for web crawling, natural language processing, trend detection, and semantic graphs to support efficient information exploration, signals detection, and insights generation to benefit clients in the automotive, insurance, financial services, healthcare, and professional services industries. His background combines technological expertise with business-oriented approaches to Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Analytics.

In 2008, he co-founded CID™s consulting practice embedded into the enterprise software solutions company to support global enterprises establish innovative, AI-driven business models, provide next generation customer experience, and unlock data potential to better leverage market insight, increase risk awareness, and identify business opportunities.

Endri Dibra, PhD, leads a team of top-tier experts in Visual Computing & AI, Healthcare Marketing, and Business Development at Arbrea Labs, a deep tech start-up in the healthcare sector.

Previous to this, Endri worked for Disney Research, Vizrt Sports, and Compar in the areas of computer vision, robotics, and machine learning. He then moved on to pursue his PhD at the Computer Graphics Laboratory of ETH Zurich, Switzerland. His PhD, at the intersection between Visual Computing and Artificial Intelligence and focused on Reconstructing Digital Human Avatars from Monocular Imagery, led him to co-found Arbrea Labs, a spin-off from ETH Zurich.

Born and raised in Durres, Albania, he earned his bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in Bremen, Germany, and then moved to Zurich. He’s on a mission to revolutionize the healthcare industry by making the Medical Metaverse the meeting point between patients and doctors.

Joscha is a 3D Printing and Advanced Materials expert. A mechanical engineer by training, he’s a co-founder of Liqtra GmbH, a 3D printing-as-a-service company that he launched after dedicating eight years to academic research and science. Liqtra GmbH rents out 3D printers including a proprietary process planning software solution that enables the onsite-printing of plastic parts. These are required for the manufacturing of product prototypes and of technical tools for production and medical application. The company utilizes a novel technology with a patent pending that drastically reduces process times.

Before founding his company, Joscha did research on the development of lightweight components at TU Braunschweig’s Institute of Aircraft Design and Lightweight Structures. Previous to this, he worked as an engineer for conveying technology at Fraport AG Frankfurt. He did a doctorate on the topic of optimization algorithms in the development of lightweight composite structures. He lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.

Tristan is a 3D Printing and Advanced Materials expert. He’s an academic, but also an entrepreneur at heart. Growing up in a family business specializing in metal processing, he set to co-found his own company HoGroTec after finishing his PhD at Leibniz Universität Hannover.

HoGroTec offers 3D Printing-as-a-Service that facilitates the onsite-processing of plastic pellets used for components and small series. A novel technology with a patent pending enables the high precision and speedy production of plastic parts based on pellets. The company also offers 3D printing services via their own online platform.

Tristan holds a bachelor in general engineering science and a masters degree in product development, materials and production from Technische Universität Hamburg. He works and lives in Hamburg, Germany.