ICC 10th Edition, drive your ideas into prototype!

Prof. Hervé Bourlard (Idiap Research Institute)

Professor Hervé Bourlard is Director of the Idiap Research Institute, a not-for-profit research institute affiliated with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL) and the University of Geneva. He is also a professor at EPFL and Director of the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) on Interactive Multimodal Information Management (IM2). He is the author of more than 250 peer-reviewed publications, and manages several large collaborative European Union projects. His current interests include statistical pattern classification, signal processing, multi-channel processing, artificial neural networks, and applied mathematics, with applications to speech and speaker recognition, language modeling, and multimodal interaction. He also initiated several start-up companies, and is the recipient of a few prestigious entrepreneurship awards.

Dr. François Foglia (Idiap Research Institute, Ideark representative)

François is Deputy Director at Idiap Research Institute, Director ad-interim of Ideark SA, company which encourages the creation of start-ups and facilitates the development of business opportunities related to the management of multimedia information and man-machine interfaces and President of the AIM2 association. Involved in several start-ups as board member, François has a long experience in managing scientific projects and start-up ventures. François is the initiator and organizer of the ICC'2012.

Mr. Joël Rossier (TheArk)

Joël is currently innovation project manager for The Ark. He holds a PhD in Computer Sciences from EPFL and worked for several years on diverse projects involving academic institutes and private companies, essentially on hardware acceleration, bio-informatics and biometrics. In his current position, he helps bridging the gap in between academic ideas and commercial products, and promotes innovation through The Ark processes.

Laurent Bischof (Eurofin Ventures)

Entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Laurent Bischof has worked for Mr. Armand Lombard, Private Banker, to develop a network of business angels dedicated to early stage investment. He then managed the operations of a Biotech before joining Bisange, an investment consulting company, as partner. He participated also to the launch of an Investment vehicle in Luxemburg, which had as objective to invest in young companies in Europe with a multi-sector approach. He serves today in several start-up boards and acts as COO of Eurofin Ventures SA. He has over 10 years experience in the Private Equity field.

Jasmine Abarca-Golay (InnoPark Genève)

Jasmine Abarca-Golay is Director of InnoPark Center Geneva. InnoPark is a Federal program supported by SECO (Secretariat d’Etat à l’Economie). Lending expertise to entrepreneurs for project management in a variety of fields, by qualified professionals who are available on the job market.

Daniel Rüfle (CimArk)

The company CimArk helps SMEs to improve their competitiveness and provides professional support for start-up companies. By drawing on a vast network of excellence encompassing regional, national and international partners, CimArk offers proactive support not only in consolidating your current position, but more particularly in developing potential areas of new business. Positioned between AR&D and the companies, CimArk possesses established industrial experience in the use of specific tools and in active monitoring of the market. CimArk, formerly Cimtec, was founded in 1991. It consists of a team of 22 engineers and economists.

Patrick Biro (Program Manager Venture Kick)

After having studied micro-engineering at EPFL, Patrick worked 3 years in the space sector as sales engineer responsible for large proposals management, contract negotiation and business development. To challenge his entrepreneurial skills, Patrick joined a Web startup based in Madrid which objective was to develop an online recruitment platform for students and graduates. He worked there one year and half as head of product and also part of the founding team. Wishing to move back to Switzerland, Patrick joined IFJ AG as Program Manager for the Venture Kick program since August 2016.

Prof. Stéphane Marchand-Maillet (Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Geneva)

Prof. Stéphane Marchand-Maillet is Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, where he leads the Viper group. His research is directed towards large-scale, high-dimensional distributed machine learning and information mining and indexing, with applications to data modelling and prediction. He has authored, co-authored or edited a number of publications on these topics. He and his group are part of several national and European and international projects in the domain. He is Senior PC Member of the International Joint Conference on AI (IJCAI, one of the oldest established conferences in AI). He was general co-chair of the International Conference of the ACM-SIG on Information Retrieval in 2010 (ACM-SIGIR 2010) and general co-chair of the 16th IEEE Conference in Business Informatics in 2014 (IEEE-CBI 2014).

Nicolas Loeillot (Chief Innovation Officer, Groupe Mutuel)

Nicolas Loeillot has been an entrepreneur in Artificial Intelligence for the last 20 years.

After years at Accenture R&D, he founded a computer vision company in Japan in 2003 that he sold to a GAFA in 2017.

He pioneered in cloud-based deep learning solutions and served thousands of Fortune 500 clients with innovative A.I. solutions. Nicolas Loeillot also owns patents in the human-machine interaction realm.

In 2018, Nicolas Loeillot joined Groupe Mutuel to organize their innovation strategy, accelerate deployments of A.I. and craft a data-driven future.

Since 2010, he also runs the Tokyo Interaction Center, a private incubator in central Tokyo, focused on very early stage deep technologies.

Gilles Burnier (Senior Business Engineer and Innovation Coach, Groupe Mutuel)

Gilles Burnier is a trained telecom engineer and holder of a MAS in quality, innovation and strategic management.

Before joining the Groupe Mutuel, he participated to the foundation of an IT startup and worked for one of the biggest European industrial companies where he could collaborate on many patent deposits.

His current activities are mainly related to business engineering and innovation with a focus set on delivering efficient, cost-effective and ideally disruptive solutions to complex issues.

He has a very broad and deep knowledge of the the Swiss health environnement and business and is thrilled to participate, as an active member of the core-team, to the definition of the new SHIP (Swiss Health Information Processing) standard and to the shaping of what he hopes will be the future of health insurance industry in Switzerland.

Christophe Saam (Fondateur et CEO P&TS SA.)

Christophe Saam has a degree in electronic engineering from the EPFL, (The Swiss Federal Institute for Technology, Lausanne), and a degree in European patent litigation from the University of Strasbourg. He is a Swiss patent attorney and was admitted as European Patent Attorney with the European Patent Office (EPO).

Nadine Reichenthal (Expert in business processes and management of international projects)

Focus on Entrepreneurship! Teach, train and coach entrepreneurs. International Board Member & Keynote Speaker

- Teach,Train and Coach in Entrepreneurship Teeanagers, Students, Startups and SME's in Switzerland , Africa and Asia.
- Cultivate a wide range of knowledge around Entrepreneurial Scene and Startups Resources in Switzerland and abroad.
-Specific focus on Women Empowerment with dedicated training and initiatives around the globe.

Gaspard Couchepin (Attorney-at-law admitted to the bar)

Doctor of Law (Ph.D.), Gaspard Couchepin is an attorney-at-law as well as a notary, and one of the partners of MCE Avocats.