Wolfgang Pointner

Director of AI & Emerging Technologies, AGILOX

Wolfgang Pointner is Director of AI & Emerging Technologies at AGILOX, a leading Austrian manufacturer of autonomous mobile robots. He brings more than fifteen years of research and industry experience in autonomous systems and robotics, spanning cooperative research at the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, a research stay at Stanford University, numerous peer reviewed publications, and several patents in vision based methods. His current focus spans autonomous robotic fleets, intralogistics orchestration and communication, and the use of AI in real-world applications.

Benedikt Geib

Project Engineer, SEW-EURODRIVE; Doctoral Researcher, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Benedikt Geib is a Project Engineer at SEW-EURODRIVE and a doctoral researcher at KIT's Institute for Control Systems. Over the past 15 years, he has gained extensive experience in industrial automation, spanning embedded software, mechatronics, and control engineering. His research centers on secure software lifecycle management for industrial OT systems, with a strong focus on automating software update planning and deployment. Using digital twins, he develops methods to analyze dependencies, assess risks, and optimize update strategies for complex automation environments. Additional research areas include OT cybersecurity, certificate management, containerized virtual PLCs, and AI-assisted engineering based on Retrieval-Augmented Generation.

Frank von Schoettler

Doctoral Researcher, SEW-EURODRIVE

Frank von Schoettler received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering in 2023 at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and is currently pursuing his PhD at the company SEW-EURODRIVE GmbH & Co KG. His research interests are industrial communications, wireless channel characterization and modelling, and evaluation of ultra-reliable and low latency communication (URLLC) in wireless technologies.

Soroush Rastegarpour

Principal Scientist, ABB Corporate Research Center, Västerås, Sweden

Soroush Rastegarpour Principal Scientist is Principal Scientist specializing in AI-integrated autonomous systems, model predictive control, and reinforcement learning. PhD in Systems and Control Engineering from Politecnico di Milano with postdoctoral experience across leading European technical universities. Combines academic expertise with more than 4 years of industrial experience in process control optimization.

José Fontalvo-Hernández

Industry Solutions Lead, RealTime-at-Work; Doctoral Candidate, Chemnitz University of Technology

José Fontalvo-Hernández is Industry Solutions Lead at RealTime-at-Work and a doctoral candidate at Chemnitz University of Technology. He develops industrial communication strategies and architectures that enable AI-driven and digital factories while meeting stringent requirements for predictable performance and high availability. His doctoral work builds on research conducted during his previous role at Siemens AG, focusing on the planning and techno-economic analysis of integrated 5G, TSN and DetNet networks for industrial applications. He has also contributed to pre-standardization activities within IEEE, 3GPP and 5G-ACIA. He is an active IEEE member.

Riikka Virkkunen

Professor of Practice, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Dr. Riikka Virkkunen is Professor of Practice at VTT Finland, co-chair of Made In Europe PPP, and board member for EFFRA (European Factories of the Future Research association). She advises several innovation initiatives (like MARC, TSS, and BRTA – the Basque Research and Technology Alliance) and holds an honorary doctorate from Mälardalen University. In Finland, she has contributed to the Finnish AI 4.0 program, led the Finnish Industrial Internet Forum, and now heads VTT’s research on accelerated biosynthetic materials design using AI. She also coordinates VTT’s activities in hybrid computing combining AI, HPC and quantum computing. Previously, she managed VTT’s Industrial Renewal strategy and Systems Engineering research, supervising over 120 researchers. Virkkunen holds a PhD in computational materials physics.

Florian Gramß

Innovation Manager, Siemens

Florian Gramß is Celebrating 11 years at Siemens, I’ve grown from an apprentice electrician into an Innovation Manager driving the convergence of open-source technologies and industrial automation. Leading a cross-national team across Germany and Spain, I focus on turning emerging ideas into real, scalable value for industry.

Florian Gramß is responsible for Siemens’ ROS-focused StartIn, the “SIMATIC Connector for ROS,” and continue advancing our open-source efforts following the successful completion of the aerOS project. We are now fully engaged in the hands-on EU project AMALTEA, focusing on flexible production and expanding the ecosystem of open-source tools that bridge ROS and industrial automation.

Ann-Sofie Sjöblom

Project Leader Standardization, Swedish Institute for Standards (SIS)

Ann-Sofie Sjöblom is Project Leader for Standardization at the Swedish Institute for Standards (SIS), where she advances Swedish participation in international ISO standardization across industrial digitalization, robotics, and additive manufacturing.

She leads standardization groups that bring together Swedish stakeholders from industry, academia, research organizations, and public authorities. Together, they shape global strategies and empower a sustainable and innovative industry through internationally recognized standards.

In the field of machine safety, she represents SIS in a European strategic standardization group that brings together the European Commission and European experts to support the implementation and development of machinery safety standards.

She regularly represents SIS in industry-driven innovation projects promoting the adoption of standards and strengthening the link between research, innovation, and standardization.

Ali Balador

Senior Researcher and Project Manager, Ericsson Research

Ali Balador is a Senior Researcher and Project Manager at Ericsson Research, Sweden. His work focuses on next-generation networked systems, spanning edge and cloud computing, distributed systems, network exposure, and AI-enabled communications.

Prior to joining Ericsson in 2022, Ali spent more than a decade in research and innovation, including five years as an Assistant Professor and Researcher at Mälardalen University. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, where his research focused on wireless communications for vehicular environments.

Throughout his career, Ali has led and coordinated numerous industrial and collaborative R&D initiatives across the automotive, manufacturing, railway, and healthcare sectors. His expertise lies in bridging communications, computing, and industrial automation to enable scalable, intelligent, and resilient digital systems. He is particularly interested in edge-cloud continuums, exposure technologies, distributed AI systems, and trustworthy digital infrastructures for future industrial environments.

Enxhi Ferko

Digital Twin Specialist, Jotne Connect

Enxhi Ferko is a Digital Twin Specialist at Jotne Connect, where she works across customer, internal, and R&D projects, advising on Digital Twin technologies from both strategic and technical perspectives. She contributes to product development, supports pre-sales activities, and collaborates with industrial partners. She holds a PhD from Mälardalen University, where her research focused on interoperability in Digital Twin systems through model-driven engineering and standardization. Her interests span Digital Twins, open standards, data interoperability, model-based approaches, and AI in industrial digitalization. Enxhi has served as an expert member of the Swedish Institute for Standards (SIS/TK 280) and is currently involved in PDES, Inc. (Product Data Exchange using STEP) and the CAx Interoperability Forum (CAx-IF) on behalf of Jotne Connect.

Maarten van Ittersum

Solution Architect, Scania's Smart Factory Lab

Maarten van Ittersum is a Solution Architect at Scania's Smart Factory Lab, an innovation unit in Södertälje focused on automation and digitalisation for production and logistics. His work sits at the intersection of IT/OT integration, AI agents and industrial knowledge systems, with a focus on concept development and architecture rather than day-to-day software delivery. At the lab he leads work on a declarative, model-driven approach to describing and operating the factory, exploring how AI agents can reason and act on a living digital representation of production systems. He also contributes to wider Scania IT initiatives on AI agents, data platforms and internal tooling. His technical background spans various programming languages, industrial data, industrial protocols such as MQTT and OPC UA, and technologies as Kubernetes. Originally from the Netherlands, he has been based in Sweden for nearly four years after obtaining his Master's in Computer Science at the University of Groningen.