Michela Magas

Chair, Industry Commons Foundation

Michela Magas bridges the worlds of science and art, design and technology, and academic research and industry, with a track record of over 30 years of innovation, including as innovation advisor to the European Commission and the G7 leaders, member of President von der Leyen’s High Level Round Table for the New European Bauhaus, and member of the Advisory Board of CERN IdeaSquare – the CERN space for frontier innovation. She created the Industry Commons concept in 2015 whilst co-chairing the Innovation Ecosystems WG for the Alliance of Internet of Things Innovation (AIOTI). She was Innovation and Sustainability Manager for the first of the Industry Commons EU-funded projects – OntoCommons – an ontology ecosystem for cross-domain interoperability. This resulted in the creation of the Knowledge Graph Alliance where she has served as President since its inception. She is the Founder of MTF Labs, a global community platform of 9000 creative innovators and scientific researchers. The platform provides a test case for innovation in areas as diverse as neuroscience, forestry and microcomputing, and has been hosted worldwide by partners including Microsoft Research New England, Centre Pompidou in Paris and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Over 20 years she ran Stromatolite Design Lab in London with global clients such as Apple, Nike and Nokia. In 2017 she was awarded European Woman Innovator of the Year and in 2016 she was presented with an Innovation Luminary Award for Creative Innovation by the European Commission and Intel Labs Europe.

Martin Curley

Chair, EU Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group

Martin Curley is former Vice President of Intel Corporation and Director of Intel Labs Europe, the company’s network of more than 40 research labs, development centres and open innovation collaborations in the European region. He is the Director of Digital Transformation and Open Innovation at Health Service Executive in Ireland and is founder and co-director of the Innovation Value Institute, an industry-academic open innovation research consortium and Professor of Innovation at Maynooth University. He was chair of the EU Open Innovation and Strategy Policy Group (OISPG) which has now become part of the Industry Commons Foundation. He also served as a senior principal engineer at Intel Labs Europe. Martin is the author of several books on technology management for value, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Pia Erkinheimo

Partner, Chief Corporate Relations & ESG Officer, Nordic Nano

Pia Erkinheimo is a European leader in deep-tech innovation and industrial sustainability, currently serving as Partner and Chief Corporate Relations & ESG Officer at Nordic Nano. In this role, she orchestrates the industrial scaling of sustainable material technologies. She is an expert in the governance of innovation ecosystems, serving on the board of LUT University (Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology) and the nature-tech venture studio Atlan. Pia brings extensive experience from the public capital sector as an alumna of the executive team at the Finnish Climate Fund (Ilmastorahasto), where she served as Director of Customer & Dealflow prior to the fund’s consolidation into Tesi. A long-standing adviser to the European Commission on innovation funding, she is also an active member of the Finnish Business Angels Network (FiBAN) and is finalising her PhD in Industrial Management at Aalto University.

Bror Salmelin

Founder, European Network of Living Labs

Bror Salmelin was, until his recent retirement, the adviser for Innovation Systems at the European Commission, Directorate General for Communications, Network, Content, and Technology (DG CONNECT) where he was responsible for Open innovation and Modern innovation systems. He managed the activities of the Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group (OISPG), an industry-led group advising on strategic priorities for open and service innovation. As a head of unit, he developed the concept of European Network of Living Labs, which has grown through EU presidencies to a 150+ sites innovation network for ICT-intense services. Previously, He held the position of Deputy of the ICT Section in Technology Development Centre and served as the Finnish representative at ESPRIT/IST programme of the EU.

Björn Larsson

Chair at APNC Sweden

Björn Larsson brings a wealth of experience from the global pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical technology sectors. His career encompasses leadership roles as CEO, board member, and adviser for both established corporations like AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, and Medtronic, as well as numerous startups. His passion for health data and its transformative potential to drive innovation and business traction is currently reflected in his roles as Chairman at APNC Sweden, specialising in clinical statistics, and Interim CEO and Board Member of Medfield Diagnostics, pioneering AI-driven stroke diagnostics. He also serves as Head of Business Development at MultiD, focusing on qPCR data analyses, and advises Rethink Capital, a private equity firm investing in AI-driven health tech and deep tech. Björn excels at fostering the transversal application of enabling technologies and building bridges between people, capabilities, and emerging business opportunities across industry sectors.

James Barlow

Professor of Technology and Innovation Management (Healthcare), Imperial College

James Barlow is a Professor of Technology and Innovation Management (Healthcare) at Imperial College Business School and a member of School’s Centre for Health Economics and Policy Innovation. He is also a Carl Bennet Visiting Professor at Halmstad University (Centre for Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Learning), Sweden, and an Honorary Professor at University College London (Bartlett Real Estate Institute). James has worked on healthcare innovation issues for 25 years, and on innovation in the built environment sectors. He is particularly interested in the challenges companies and healthcare organisations face in ensuring their innovations become embedded in everyday practice, and in the policy and other mechanisms to facilitate this. He has led many research projects in UK and abroad. He advises and consults for government, healthcare services and companies from the health technology and construction sectors. James is an associate director of research for Imperial College Health Partners and a member of the management team for the NIHR Policy Innovation and Evaluation Research Unit. He also sits on several advisory boards, including AGE-WELL Canada, Deloitte Healthcare Innovation Observatory, and the International Academy for Design and Health. He has published widely in leading journals and his latest book is Managing Innovation in Healthcare.

Bianca Muntean

Executive Director, ARIES Transilvania

Andrew Dubber

Director, MTF global innovation community

Andrew Dubber is the Director of the 9000 MTF global innovation community, Humanities Professor of Music Industry Innovation, author and broadcaster. Dubber is a Media Ecologist, sociologist and cultural theorist, focusing particularly on both technological and social innovation. Until 2015, he was Professor of Music Industry Innovation at Birmingham City University’s Centre for Media and Cultural Research, and a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Knowledge Transfer Fellow. As an academic he led and contributed to practice-based research and Knowledge Exchange projects focusing on digital mediation and the creation of meaning from media objects within social and cultural networks. Dubber is the author of several books and numerous articles about media, music, innovation and the social and industrial impact of digital technologies. As an early adopter of new media platforms, Dubber has been blogging since 2002 and podcasting since 2004. He established pan-European digital music strategy think tank and consultancy New Music Strategies in 2006.