Abel Ang

Group CEO
Advanced MedTech

Abel Ang has been the Group CEO of Advanced MedTech Group since 2014. Advanced MedTech is a US$225M high-growth medical device company focused on expanding its substantial operating businesses in urology and nurturing disruptive MedTech innovations. Advanced MedTech is owned by Temasek Holdings, a US$240B global fund.

Abel was formerly Senior Advisor to the CEO of Integer (NYSE: ITGR), the largest contract manufacturer of medical implants in the world. He was President, Asia Pacific for Hill-Rom Inc (NYSE: HRC), where he was responsible for expanding Hill-Rom’s presence in the high growth Asia Pacific markets. Abel also served as Hill-Rom’s Chief Technology Officer where he was responsible for Hill-Rom’s global R&D operations distributed across sites in the US, Mexico, France, and Singapore. He was also Vice President and General Manager of Hill-Rom’s US$420M Global Surfaces and Therapy Business Unit, and Vice President for International Business and Technology Development.

Abel sits on several boards of innovative technology companies, including that of Accelerate Technologies which provides access to the world’s largest pool of intellectual property and knowledge generated by over 5,000 researchers and staff at A*STAR’s research institutes.

Abel is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Nanyang Business School in Singapore and Waseda University in Japan, where he teaches in their respective Master of Business Administration programmes.

David McGinty

Global Director
Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE)

David McGinty manages the fast-growing Secretariat team in the Hague. Previously, he has led public-private partnerships for an international Non-Government Organisation. He was also the head of a private sector development and impact investing advisory firm, and taught management and law at the graduate level.

David holds a Master of Laws degree from Villanova University and Juris Doctorate from Temple University. He spends his time outside of PACE as an angel investor, non-profit board member, and an avid supporter of the arts. He is married with two children.

Dr Mohammad Farahani

Founder and CEO
SEPPURE

Dr Mohammad Farahani is an entrepreneurial scientist who received his PhD in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering from the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is the Founder and CEO of SEPPURE, a Singapore-based startup that provides sustainable solutions to industrial chemical separations.

Recently, Dr Farahani's innovation at SEPPURE has been recognised by the MIT Technology Review, and he received the prestigious title of "Innovator Under 35". His research over the past nine years has resulted in two patents, more than 20 peer-reviewed articles which have been cited for over 850 times, two book chapters, a book, and many international presentations.

Dr Francis Ho

Senior Vice President, Managing Director, and Co-Head
Samsung Catalyst Fund

Francis Ho is Senior Vice President, Managing Directorand Co-Head of Samsung Catalyst Fund, the strategic venture investment arm of Samsung that focuses on Deep Tech, AI, Cloud, and Data-Enabled Services. Francis has worked in venture capital, strategy, business development, and engineering in sectors such as semiconductors, optics, networking, quantum computing, genomics, and digital health.

Prior to Samsung, he held roles at Inphi, McKinsey, JP Morgan Partners, and ONI Systems, and participated in the IPOs for Inphi and ONI Systems. Francis is based in Silicon Valley and holds PhD, MS, and BS degrees in physics from Stanford and Caltech, and seven U.S. patents relating to semiconductor technologies.

• https://samsungcatalyst.com/team/francis-ho/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/francis-ho-b47338/
• Twitter: @fho888

Frederick Chew

Chief Executive Officer
Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)

Frederick Chew is the CEO of A*STAR, Singapore’s lead public sector agency that spearheads economic oriented research to advance science and develop innovative technology to further economic growth and improve lives.

Helming the science and technology agency of over 4,100 research staff, Frederick drives the implementation of A*STAR’s strategies, initiatives, and programmes, and the building of A*STAR’s organisational capabilities. He works to share A*STAR’s mission and vision with public and private sector stakeholders and to strengthen collaboration with partners across the research, innovation and enterprise ecosystem.

Frederick was previously the Deputy Secretary (Technology) at the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF). In this role, he was instrumental in optimising the Defence Technology ecosystem, in particular strengthening MINDEF’s partnership with industry.Frederick also held various key positions in MINDEF and the Singapore Armed Forces, including Director of Joint Operations, Commander of Maritime Security Task Force/Maritime Security Command and Head of Naval Plans.

Kay Firth-Butterfield

Head of AI and Machine Learning and Member of the Executive Committee
World Economic Forum

Kay Firth-Butterfield is the Head of AI and Machine Learning and member of the Executive Committee of the World Economic Forum. In the UK, she is an Associate Barrister (Doughty Street Chambers), Master of the Inner Temple, London and serves on the Lord Chief Justice’s Advisory Panel on AI and Law. In the United States, she has been a Professor of Law and International Relations, co-founded AI Global and was the world’s first Chief AI Ethics officer in 2014 and created the AIEthics Twitter hashtag. Kay is Vice-Chair of the IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems and was part of the group which met at Asilomar to create the Asilomar AI Ethical Principles. She is on the Polaris Council for the Government Accountability Office in the USA and the Advisory Board for UNESCO International Research Centre on AI.

Kay has advanced degrees in Law and International Relations and regularly speaks to international audiences addressing many aspects of the beneficial and challenging technical, economic and social changes arising from the use of AI. She also works as a part-time judge, mediator, arbitrator and business owner.

Dr Patrick Hartley

Leader
CSIRO Hydrogen Industry Mission

Dr Hartley is the leader of CSIRO’s Hydrogen Industry Mission. In this role, he is responsible for developing the strategy and operating model for a major new national initiative which is focused on delivering R&D partnerships which enable the scale-up of Australia’s domestic and export hydrogen industries.

In 2018, whilst leading CSIRO’s Hydrogen Energy Systems Future Science Platform, he worked with the Chief Scientist of Australia, Dr Alan Finkel, leading the task force which delivered the briefing paper ‘Hydrogen for Australia’s Future’ that was presented to the Council of Australian Government’s Energy council in August 2018. This paper laid the foundations for the development of Australia’s National Hydrogen Strategy, which was subsequently delivered and adopted by federal state and territory governments in November 2019.

Also in 2018, he co-led the development of CSIRO’s National Hydrogen Roadmap. This seminal study was the first in Australia to bring together industry and government groups to perform a techno-economic evaluation of Australia’s potential hydrogen value chains (including export). It has been highly cited nationally and internationally. In 2019, he conceived and co-authored the study ‘Hydrogen Research, Development and Demonstration: Priorities and opportunities for Australia’ which was delivered in November 2019 as an input into Australia’s National Hydrogen Strategy.

Since then he has given more than 30 invited, and keynote presentations on topics related to hydrogen, appeared in both print and electronic media and is a frequent advisor to government and industry hydrogen industry initiatives both domestically and internationally.

As a research scientist, Patrick has led research projects focused on developing new technologies for applications in drug delivery, energy storage, water treatment and petroleum recovery. Patrick has occupied senior research leadership roles in CSIRO since 2007. He holds an Adjunct Professorship at RMIT University and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Renee Lo

General Manager — Data and AI
Microsoft

Renee Lo leads specialists across Asia to support digital transformation, leveraging advanced technologies from both Microsoft and its partners. Her team supports Microsoft’s strategic customers, sharing industry best practices and providing technical leadership on advanced technologies.

Before joining Microsoft, Renee championed numerous initiatives at Amazon Web Services and Amazon.com, including building the data and AI team, growing and developing its consumer cloud storage solutions, and launching new Amazon.com services. Her achievements include driving strategic telco partnerships, pioneering different customer electronics integration models and establishing various royalty models for Amazon’s users around the world.

Renee has also held global roles at major technology companies, including Pivotal Corporation and SAP, leading product development teams and developing business and channel strategies.

Prof Robert JT Morris

Chief Technology Strategist
MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation

Prof Robert JT Morris is Chief Technology Strategist at the Ministry of Health Office for Healthcare Transformation (MOHT) he also holds a concurrent appointment as Professor, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore.

​At MOHT, Robert anchors the Data and Technology Enablers. His current focus is on the application of computer and information sciences, including AI, to transform healthcare.

​Until 2017, Robert led all of IBM Research’s Global Laboratories. Before that, Robert was also head of the IBM Almaden Research Center in Silicon Valley, where relational database technology and the disk drive were invented. During this time he led the creation of Services Science, research for IBM’s ThinkPad, and Storage Systems. Earlier he also led advanced systems research at TJ Watson Center in New York, including the Deep Blue chess machine, which defeated world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

​Robert completed his PhD in Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Shobana Kamineni

Executive Vice Chairperson
Apollo Hospitals Enterprise

Shobana Kamineni is the Executive Vice Chairperson of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Limited and a member of its founding family. Apollo Hospitals is the pioneer of private healthcare in India and is Asia's foremost integrated healthcare conglomerate.

Championing Special Initiatives for over seven years, Shobana now steers the organisation's emergence as a proponent of integrated digital first healthcare services in India through Apollo 247. She heads Apollo Pharmacy, India's largest pharmacy chain with a pan-India network of over 3,800+ stores, 27,000+ employees; it serves more than 500,000 customers a day. She was founder and chairperson of Apollo Munich Health Insurance, acknowledged as India's best specialised Health Insurance company for nine years, consecutively and now merged with HDFC ERGO. Shobana is also the Vice-Chairperson of the KEI Group, a diversified logistics, leisure & infrastructure business that she founded with her husband.

As lead Director in Apollo’s research and innovation activities, and cognisant of the convergence between healthcare, pharmaceutical & biotech industries and the academia, Shobana championed the creation and Incubation of a Biobank – a catalogued library of Ethically consented, anonymised bio-samples. The Biobank was recognised as one of the top 10 ideas of the decade in Life Sciences by the Time Magazine.

Calum Handforth

Advisor — Smart Cities and Digitalisation
UNDP Global Centre for Technology, Innovation and Sustainable Development

Calum has a wide-ranging smart cities and digitalisation background having worked on the delivery, strategy, and management of a range of innovation projects and programmes across Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and South-East Asia. He also has worked on advising and scaling tech-driven enterprises, including startups focusing on secure networks and connectivity, digital identity, and safety and security.

Calum has drafted and led legislation, policy, and strategy to rollout digital initiatives and smart cities; delivered connectivity programmes (3G, 4G, and 5G pilots) and explored Internet-of-Things-related projects. He has also led the development of service delivery initiatives such as chatbots, digital identity projects, and digital inclusion programmes. He has worked in government, strategy consulting, and international development.

More widely, Calum has built strong expertise in driving and measuring the success and impact of smart city, digitalisation, and broader innovation projects and programmes - particularly in lower-income settings. This has included leading digital transformation efforts (and applying 'Agile' principles in international development), measuring behaviour change, exploring the potential of Big Data, building processes and workflows to leverage innovation, and translating findings to inform policy, strategy, and scaling. He is also Co-Chair of the Digital Infrastructure Taskforce, part of the World Economic Forum’s G20 Working Group on Smart Cities.

Jessica Cheam

Managing Director
Eco-Business

Jessica is the Founder, Editor and Managing Director of Eco-Business, Asia Pacific’s leading media platform on sustainable development. She is an award-winning journalist, TV presenter, director, producer, and a social entrepreneur with more than a decade of experience in communications, journalism and sustainable development and is a columnist for national newspapers.

She founded Eco-Business in 2009 with a vision to provide a platform for the region to discuss and advance sustainable, equitable development. Under her leadership, Eco-Business beat other media giants to clinch the Lee Foundation Excellence in Environmental Reporting by a Media Organisation Merit Award at the Asian Environmental Journalism Awards (AEJA) 2013. In 2019, it won an award in the Best News Website or Mobile Service category at the Asian Digital Media Awards by WAN-IFRA (World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers).

She is on the Board of Directors for Singapore-listed ComfortDelGro, one of the world's largest land transport companies, and is an independent, non-executive director.

Mathias Steck

Managing Director
Renewables Advisory Germany DNV GL

Mathias is Head of Renewables Germany. Before this, Mathias held several positions in DNV GL - most recently he was the Regional Manager, Digital Hub Asia at DNV GL — Digital Solutions. Before Mathias was the Regional Manager Asia Pacific, Energy & Renewables Advisory at DNV GL — Energy, he provided advisory services to the energy value chain; including renewables integration and energy efficiency.

From January 2020 onwards, Mathias and his team are driving DNV GL's renewable energy services towards measurements, project development, project engineering, cybersecurity, and digital development. Mathias’ special interest is the impact of digitalisation on the energy ecosystem, as well as cybersecurity. He has taken courses at Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley, HarvardX, MIT Management Sloan School and Saïd Business School/University of Oxford, and attended Leadership Programs at Ashridge Business School and INSEAD.

Prof Subodh Mhaisalkar

Executive Director
Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N)

Professor Subodh Mhaisalkar is the Associate Vice President (Strategy & Partnerships) and President’s Chair Professor in Energy at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Subodh is also the Executive Director of the Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N), a pan-University multidisciplinary research institute for innovative energy solutions. Comprising more than 250 researchers and 95 post graduate students, ERI@N has built up a critical mass of expertise in Energy Systems, Grid Systems, and Urban Solutions; and has set up more than 60 Industry partnership projects, with global industry leaders BMW, Johnson Matthey, Rolls-Royce, and Volvo.

Prior to joining NTU in 2001, Subodh has over 10 years of research and engineering experience in the microelectronics industry and his areas of expertise and current research interests includes semiconductor technology, solar cells, and nanomaterials for energy harvesting and storage. Subodh received his Bachelors’ degree from IIT-Bombay and his MS/Ph.D. degrees from The Ohio State University.

Vaitea Cowan

Executive Director
Energy Research Institute @NTU (ERI@N)

Vaitea Cowan believes hydrogen is the future of energy. After being named “Women Leader” in the World Bank Intern Program, and winning case competitions in University, she moved to Thailand. She met her co-founders in Chiang Mai and helped make the Phi Suea House a communication and collaboration platform for hydrogen in Southeast Asia. Shortly after, they co-founded Enapter, which scales decentralised green hydrogen solutions. The team has grown from 11 to 100 in 30 months. She has focused her energy on hiring more women, and inspiring the next generation of women. She is on the Forbes Under 30 in Energy 2020 list, and has won several awards for Enapter. Today she spearheads the marketing and communications efforts from Berlin. As a Pacific Islander, her mission is to provide clean energy independence to Polynesia.

Dr Lim Jui

CEO
SGInnovate

As CEO of SGInnovate, Dr Lim Jui has overall leadership of the organisation that is committed to helping entrepreneurial scientists build and scale Deep Tech startups. At SGInnovate, Jui and his team work closely with a wide range of partners and co-investors to back this unique group of founders, who are looking to solve global challenges with their research-based solutions. This is done through equity-based investments, access to the Deep Tech ecosystem and talent network, as well as by providing business-building support.

While he trained in medicine, Jui had spent most of his professional life in the business of science and innovation. He was Director of Investments, Bio*One Capital; CEO of Merlin MD, a medical device company; Executive Director of the Medical Engineering Research and Commercialisation Initiative (MERCI) at the National University of Singapore (NUS); and Programme Director of the Singapore-Stanford Biodesign Programme (SSB), a joint venture between the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) and Stanford University. Before joining SGInnovate, Jui was CEO of NTUitive, the innovation and enterprise company of the Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

Hsien-Hui Tong

Executive Director - Venture Investing
SGInnovate

Hsien-Hui brings his in-depth knowledge and experience in the Business Development and Venture Capital spaces across Australia, Europe, Singapore and the US. As Executive Director, Venture Investing, Hsien-Hui oversees SGInnovate's investments efforts, which target high-potential, deep tech startups working on areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Vehicles, MedTech and Blockchain.

Prior to joining SGInnovate, he was the Managing Partner, Asia Pacific for Wassax Ventures. He has also served as the CEO of the National University of Singapore Society (NUSS) and Vice President at Staples. In the early 2000s, he co-founded a data mining company, which was sold to a global bank two years later.

Pras Ganesh

Project Executive Vice President
Corporate Planning Group
Toyota Daihatsu Engineering & Manufacturing

A lawyer by education from India, Pras pursued his Master in International Relations in Japan and the United States. Thereafter he spent his initial career as an in-house legal advisor and a management consultant in Japan and Australia, prior to joining Toyota.

For the last 18 years he has been in Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan, Europe, and now Thailand, with experience in Human Resources, Accounting & Finance, Global External Affairs, Corporate Planning and Fleet Business Solutions.

During his time in Global External Affairs he was instrumental in the set-up of the Hydrogen Council (launched in Davos in January 2017). Currently, he has responsibility for corporate planning, external & public affairs and fleet business solutions for operations across all of Asia. This includes electrified fleet trials, towards enabling sustainable business models.

Pras is also the Program Director for the Toyota Mobility Foundation (TMF), responsible for the Asia-Pacific Region. In a world with mounting mobility challenges, Toyota Mobility Foundation was set up to use Toyota’s know-how in partnership with stakeholders to address the mobility issues of tomorrow today.

SzeKi Sim

Executive Director - Community and Brand
SGInnovate

To promote Singapore as a place of thriving innovation in Deep Tech entrepreneurship, SzeKi leads the SGInnovate team in spearheading activities to create a holistic ecosystem, providing a platform where founders, researchers, academics, venture capitalists, corporations come together to share experiences in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Tech, Robotics, MedTech and Quantum Tech.

Before SGInnovate, SzeKi’s long career in marketing included leading teams with global technology brands such as Hewlett Packard, Motorola and Nokia regionally and globally. Her 15 years at Motorola saw her in various leadership positions including Executive Director of Marketing – Asia Pacific for Motorola Networks, and Executive Director of Marketing – Asia and Middle East for Motorola Solutions. At Nokia Siemens Networks (now Nokia), SzeKi was the Global Executive Director of Customer Marketing for their Global Services organisation.

Antonia Gawel

Head of Circular Economy & Innovation and Member of the Executive Committee
World Economic Forum

Antonia acts as Deputy Head of the Forum’s Centre for Global Public Goods and is also responsible for its Innovation and Circular Economy programmes. In these capacities, she has been responsible for scaling major public private partnerships, including 2030Vision, which aims to fast-track progress on the global Goals through 4IR technology. Equally, she built the Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy – drawing together over 80 Ministers, CEO and experts to fast-track circular economy implementation; the Global Plastics Action Partnership; and Scale360, focused on circular economy innovation.

Prior to joining the Forum, Antonia worked in Bhutan as an advisor on environment and clean energy; the International Energy Agency (IEA) where she was responsible for IEA’s leading clean energy policy input to the Clean Energy Ministerial and G-20 processes. She was also formerly Deputy Director, Energy and Climate, at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. In 2006, she was selected for the “Young Canadian Leaders for a Sustainable Future” programme of the International Institute for Sustainable Development. She holds a Master’s in Environmental Planning, Policy and Regulation from the London School of Economics and an Hon. BA in Economics from the University of Toronto.