Thorsten Neumann is the Technology Lead of SC Ventures, Standard Chartered Bank. He has extensive experience in ICT domain with both strong academic and professional experience, and strong competence for systems and integration. Lead teams in multi-cultural environments to deliver innovation and value-creation within the innovation arm of Standard Chartered Bank. Thorsten engages at senior levels to align technology strategy and delivery optionality for the bank – by enabling Intrapreneurs, enabling the $100mil investment fund, and fostering our corporate Venture Builder in building out disruptive business models. Thorsten Neumann has 22 years of technology, fintech and entrepreneurial experience in his own companies and roles in senior management of listed firms. He has a credible background in technology, operations, and business strategy in Europe, South East Asia, and Africa. Prior to SC Ventures, Mr Neumann founded an SME focused Internet Service Provider, Intdev Internet Technologies (Private) Ltd in 1998. He scaled and successfully exited the business, today a subsidiary of JSE-listed Alviva. Subsequently, Mr Neumann joined early in a Project Developer role at Global Trader, where he led engineering and project delivery of the international expansion of the Equities Swaps (CFD) business. The company was successfully acquired in 2007 by JSE-listed Purple Capital. Mr. Neumann was recruited by Banro Corporation in 2010 to lead the Canadian TSX-listed gold miner’s technology strategy and group-wide ICT program in role of Group Technology Manager. He rolled out enterprise information and communication systems in commissioning two industrial-scale greenfield gold mines. He went onto co-founding Singapore-based fintech Transaction Technologies Pte Ltd (SmartPesa) and served as Director and Chief Technology Officer until June 2019, where he oversaw the roll out the payments platform to thirteen markets. The company was successfully acquired in April 2022 by MYPINPAD. In July 2019, Mr Neumann took on the Managing Director role and Chief Technology Officer at SC Ventures, the innovation arm of Standard Chartered Bank to deliver tangible value creation – in sponsoring entrepreneurs, technology due diligences for the $100 million investment fund, and creation of new disruptive business models. Mr Neumann holds a Masters in Computer Science specializing in Voice Over IP from the University of Pretoria, and Bachelors in Computer Science from the University of Johannesburg. Outside of work, he mentors at the German Accelerator Southeast Asia, an advocate for open-source software, and volunteers at Noah’s Ark Cares animal shelter.

Beethika Tripathi, is a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft, with a Master's in computer science specializing in Data Science. Discover her journey from Data Scientist to successful Product Manager, where she excels in blending technology to provide user-centric solutions. Beethika’s expertise lies in leveraging AI to enhance search and recommendations for enterprise products. Her skill set encompasses defining success metrics, conducting A/B experiments, and winning 14 global and local hackathon awards. With a track record of incubating 21 projects, authoring 6 research articles, and holding 4 patents, she's a proven leader in building products at scale to delight millions of users. Join us to explore her insights and achievements in this exciting field. She will be sharing insights from her journey as a a Product manager, offering a glimpse into the power of technology, innovation, and user-centric thinking. LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beethika-tripathi/

Jeff is the Principal Scientist and solution Architect in Nvidia. He is a HPC specialist with over 25 years of experience in developing, tuning and porting scientific codes and architecting HPC solutions. Jeff’s primary area of expertise is in CFD and in Climate/Weather modelling, having previously worked at the New Zealand Oceanographic Institute (now NIWA), Toyota Motor Corporation, and on FEA/CFD analysis for America’s cup class yachts for Team New Zealand. Jeff leads the CWO research team for the NVIDIA AI Technology Centre’s joint laboratory established at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. There he works on join collaborations with academia and industry partners in the fields of accelerated Climate/Weather research and in the application of AI to Earth Systems Modelling. Prior to joining Nvidia, Jeff worked for SGI for 16 years in Asia, Before that, he worked for various Post Production companies in his native New Zealand as a Visual Effects artist, technical director, and software development roles. Jeff holds a post graduate diploma from the University of Auckland in Computer Science, specialising in Parallel programming and Computer graphics.

Andrei Kulish brings a wealth of expertise to our event as a prominent figure in the cybersecurity realm, specialising in IoT security. With more than 6 years of background in Cyber-Physical Systems and being the driving force behind MicroSec, Andrei has led the development of groundbreaking solutions to tackle the intricate security landscape of IoT. Andrei's contributions extend from collaborating with governments to shaping cybersecurity standards, reflecting an unwavering dedication to securing our interconnected future.

Aishwarya is a third-year PhD candidate at the School of Computing, National University of Singapore, advised by Assistant Professor Vaibhav Rajan. Her research interest lies at the intersection of AI and healthcare, specifically in building treatment recommendation systems for precision oncology. Her primary focus is on utilizing clinical mutations of patients to identify the best course of treatment, by leveraging state-of-the-art AI methods. Her work has been published and presented at conferences like KDD, ICML, ISMB, ESMO and CHITA. Her co-authored papers have also been published in journals like Bioinformatics, JMIR and JBHI. She has served as a reviewer for ICIS, the premier conference in information systems. She is also a recipient of the Research Achievement Award at the School of Computing. Aishwarya is an alumnus of the Master of Computing, General Track program at SoC (graduated in July 2022). Before her master's degree, she worked as a Cloud Engineer at Oracle India Private Limited, Hyderabad, where she was involved in migrating SaaS products offered by the Oracle Construction and Engineering Global Business Unit, to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.