Operationalizing AI : Safe, Efficient, and Privacy-preserving AI Systems at Scale

Senior Researcher at the CNRS-AIST Joint Robotics Labotatory
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Mehdi Benallegue received the ingénieur degree from the Institut National d’Informatique (INI), Algeria, in 2007, the M.Sc. degree from the University of Paris 7, Paris, France, in 2008 and the Ph.D. degree from Université de Montpellier 2, France, in 2011. He has been a postdoctoral researcher in a neurophysiology laboratory in Collège de France and in LAAS CNRS. He is currently a Research Associate with the CNRS-AIST Joint Robotics Laboratory in National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan. His research interests include estimation and control of robots, biomechanics, neuroscience and computational geometry.

Sorbonne University / CNRS / University of Tokyo
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Philippe Codognet is the director of the Japanese-French Laboratory for Informatics (JFLI), a joint laboratory between CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research), Sorbonne University (Paris), University of Tokyo, National Institute of Informatics and Keio University.
He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Bordeaux-I (France) in 1989, and was researcher at INRIA, with a sabbatical at Sony Computer Science Laboratory (Paris), before becoming professor at Sorbonne University in 1998. He also worked as attaché for science and technology at the French Embassy in Japan (Tokyo) and at the French Embassy in Singapore.

Professor at RPTU, Executive Director at DFKI
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Andreas Dengel is Professor for Artificial Intelligence at RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau since 1993 and Executive Director of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Kaiserslautern. Since 2009, he has also been a Professor (kyakuin) at the Department of Computer Science and Intelligent Systems at Osaka Metropolitan University (OMU). Andreas published more than 800 peer-reviewed research papers, founded a dozen of start-ups and received many awards, e.g., he is a recipient of the most prestigious Order of Merit of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate and of the oldest Japanese order, the “Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon”.

Senior Fellow of CEA (France)
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Dr. Marc Duranton is Senior Fellow of CEA and member of the Digital Systems and Integrated Circuits Division of CEA, where he is involved in realisations (hardware accelerators and software tools) for Artificial Intelligence and for distributed systems from IoT to HPC.
He previously worked in Philips and NXP where he led the development of the family of L-Neuro chips, digital accelerators for artificial neural networks and on several video coprocessors for the VLIW processor TriMedia.
He is in charge of the roadmap activities of the HiPEAC community.

Head of Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Cardiovascular Medicine, Heidelberg University Hospital
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Prof. Dr. Sandy Engelhardt is the Head of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Cardiovascular Medicine at Heidelberg University Hospital. Her research focuses on medical image processing, computer-assisted surgery, and the development of artificial intelligence methods for cardiovascular applications. She leads an interdisciplinary team dedicated to bridging the gap between computer science and clinical practice.

Minister Counsellor for Digital Economy Policy, Delegation of the EU to Japan
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Peter FATELNIG is Minister Counsellor for Digital Economy at the Delegation of the European Union to Japan. Digital Economy is a top-priority for the European Union and he leads a team implementing the EU-Japan Digital Partnership. Peter is committed to a positive European vision for an economy and society taking full advantage of digital technologies in a fair and secure way.

Prior to his current role, from 2018 to 2023, Peter managed the digital economy portfolio at the Delegation of the European Union to the United States. Before joining the European External Action Service, Peter was a senior manager at the European Commission where he started in 1998. Peter began his international career by working on assignments for the advisory firm American Management Systems, and for the European Space Agency, in the Netherlands. Peter holds a Master degree in Communication Engineering from the University of Technology in Graz, Austria.

Senior Researcher, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)
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He is a researcher at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence with over six years of experience in foundational research on generative AI. His work focuses on multimodal generative models, controllable image synthesis, efficient vision and generation algorithms, super-resolution, dataset distillation, and continual learning. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau in 2025, advised by Prof. Andreas Dengel, with a thesis on Controllable Deep Image Synthesis. He has authored over 35 publications with more than 800 citations and previously interned at Adobe Research and Meta AI.

Professor for Media and Culture Theory / Vice-President International
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Professor of Media and Cultural Theory and Vice President for International Affairs and Institutional Development. Her research investigates how artificial intelligence, robots and digital infrastructures are culturally imagined, aesthetically staged and epistemologically contested across gender, race and geopolitical difference. Drawing on posthumanist media theory, Science and Technology Studies and Indigenous epistemologies, she develops cross-cultural and critical frameworks for thinking AI, technology ethics and future-making. She has initiated and led international collaborations on desirable AI and critical media culture.

President of the Franco-German University
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Prof. Dr. Philippe GRECIANO is Full professor, Jean Monnet Chair of Excellence, and President of the Franco-German University. He has initiated several tri-national partnerships with Japan.

Enobyte GmbH
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Dr. Hermann Gumpp studied physics and computer science at LMU Munich and earned a PhD in biophysics. In Japan, he worked as a consultant for a German-Japanese corporate group and at the National Institute for Informatics (NII) in Tokyo. He serves on the board of the German-Japanese Society (DJG) in Bavaria and leads the IT working group of the German-Japanese Business Association (DJW). As Managing Director of Enobyte GmbH in Munich, he and his team of data protection officers and IT experts support German and Japanese companies in implementing GDPR compliance and cybersecurity. He is co-author of the Japanese Amazon bestseller “GDPR Guidebook.” Since 2021, he has been a volunteer Special Advisor for Cybersecurity & Data Protection at DJW.

Team lead for data and service ecosystems at German Aerospace Center (DLR)
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Svenja Hainz is leading the team on Data and Service Ecosystems at DLR’s institute for AI Safety and Security. In this capacity she is coordinating and supporting the researchers who are working on creating fair and secure data spaces for different sectors.

In 2017, she joined DLR as a scientific researcher at the Institute of Transportation Systems with her main focus on the integrated impact assessment of railways systems. Afterwards she was DLR’s representative at European level in the field of transportation research.

She holds degrees in transportation planning and operation and in Industrial Engineering and Management.

Principal Researcher, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)
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Goichiro Hanaoka received his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 2002 and joined AIST in 2005. He is currently Principal Researcher at the Cyber Physical Security Research Institute, AIST. His research interests include cryptography, privacy-enhancing technologies, and trustworthy data utilization for data-driven society. He has been promoting the practical deployment of advanced security technologies and studying how privacy and usability can be balanced in real-world systems. He received the Commendation for Science and Technology from the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2018.

Secretary General, Tokyo Centre of the GPAI Expert Community
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Dr. Yuko Harayama is Secretary General of the Tokyo Centre of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) Expert Community, Trustee of Yamaguchi University, and Board Member of Toray Industries. Her career spans government, international organizations, and academia. She has served as RIKEN’s Executive Director for International Affairs, an Executive Member of Japan’s Council for Science, Technology and Innovation in the Cabinet Office, and Deputy Director of the OECD’s Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry. Earlier, she was a Professor at Tohoku University’s Graduate School of Engineering for a decade.

Research group lead Intelligent Software Systems – Institute of Software Technology – German Aerospace Center (DLR)
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Tobias Hecking received his Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the University of Duisburg-Essen, in 2016. Since 2020, he has been the leading the Intelligent Software Systems group of the Institute of Software Technology at German Aerospace Center (DLR). In his research he combines methods of complex network analysis, natural language processing, and machine learning for aerospace applications and beyond. He is active in several national and international research projects in the field. Furthermore, Tobias Hecking is leading the DLR’s research initiative to advance generative AI in various aerospace applications and coordinates the development of the corresponding technology stack.

Researcher, NEC Corporation / Intent Exchange, Inc.
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Florence Ho is a researcher at NEC Corporation, Tokyo, where she is currently a member of the Knowledge Science Research Lab. She is also a researcher at Intent Exchange, Inc.
Previously, she worked as a researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan.
She received her PhD in Informatics from the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI, Japan, in 2020. She also holds an MSc in Applied Mathematics from Pantheon-Sorbonne University, Paris, and an engineering degree from INP-ENSEEIHT, Toulouse.
Her research interests include optimization, multi-agent systems, and intelligent transportation systems.

Professor, CDS, Tohoku University
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Minoru Kuribayashi is a Professor in Center for Data-driven Science and Artificial Intelligence (CDS) at Tohoku University. His research interests include multimedia security, digital watermarking, cryptography, and coding theory. He received the Young Professionals Award from IEEE Kansai Section in 2014. He is appointed as a distinguished lecturer of APSIPA (Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association) in 2025-2026.

Korea AISI (AI Safety Institute)
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Dr. Myuhng-Joo Kim is the founding Director of the Korea AI Safety Institute (AISI), established in November 2024. He earned his BS, MS, and PhD in Computer Science from Seoul National University and served as a professor at Seoul Women’s University for three decades. Trained in computer engineering, he has long been engaged in information security and digital ethics. He developed Korea’s first AI ethics framework, Seoul PACT, earning the Geunjeong Order of Service Merit, and authored AI Has No Conscience (2022). He also serves on the Supreme Court AI Committee and as an expert with the OECD GPAI (Global Partnership on AI).

University of Duisburg-Essen, Research Center Trustworthy Data Science and Secuity
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Dr. Nicole Krämer is Full Professor of Social Psychology, Media and Communication at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, and Director of the Research Center “Trustworthy Data Science and Security”. She completed her PhD in Psychology at the University of Cologne in 2001. Dr. Krämer has been pioneering interdisciplinary research on human-technology-interaction and opinion building in social media for 20 years. Empirical research on human-AI-interaction as well as disinformation is an important focus of her work. She served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Media Psychology and currently is Associate Editor of the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication.

Tenuered Researcher (ISFP) at Inria
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Mohamed Maouche is a researcher at Inria Lyon (ISFP) and member of the PRIVATICS team since 2022. His interest is to build machine learning systems that manage a good trade-off between privacy and utility. This includes working on data anonymization and privacy preserving machine learning. Previously, he was a one-year post-doc whithin the Chaire DSVD supported by Renault and Labex IMU working on privacy issues in Federated Learning. He also spent two years as a post-doc in MAGNET Team (Inria Lille) to work on speech anonymization. He defended his PhD from Insa Lyon in 2019 on the subject of Location privacy.

Advisor the Chairman, Sakana AI
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Matei Mihalca serves as Advisor to the Chairman of Sakana AI. He is the co-founder of Forward Partners, a spin-off from the Center of Research Enrico Fermi (CREF) in Rome. Matei began his career as the Taiwan semiconductors analyst at Merrill Lynch and subsequently served in a variety of roles at Goldman Sachs, AQR Capital, Macquarie Group, and CITIC Capital. Matei was a PhD and MA student at Harvard University, and an exchange student in Beijing, China.

Senior Researcher, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
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Her research is on the philosophical and ethical dimensions of the new circumstances that such technologies will bring about (Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues: ELSI). More broadly, her area of specialty is philosophy of mind. In particular, she works on issues such as self-control, rationality, and moral responsibility, focusing on the role of emotions, using methods based in analytic philosophy. Her approach incorporates the results of cognitive sciences such as psychology and neuroscience in addition to traditional philosophical perspectives when examining various philosophical topics.

RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project
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Takayuki Osa is Team Director of the Robot Learning Team at the RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project (AIP), Japan. His research focuses on efficient and reliable robot learning for scalable physical AI. Prior to joining RIKEN, he served as Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo and Kyushu Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 2015 and was a postdoctoral researcher at TU Darmstadt, Germany from 2015 to 2017.

Deputy Head – DFKI-MAP German Research Center of Artificial Intelligence DFKI
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Dr.-Ing. Alexandra Pehlken has been Deputy Head of the Marine Perception (MAP) research division at DFKI Oldenburg since October 2025. From 2018 to 2025, she worked at OFFIS – Institute for Computer Science as Group Leader for Sustainable Manufacturing. As a renowned expert in raw materials and sustainability, she develops digital tools (with and without AI) to conserve resources. Alexandra Pehlken places particular emphasis on the issue of critical raw materials, with the aim of promoting sustainable practices. She completed her PhD at RWTH Aachen University and spent 23 months as a postdoctoral researcher at Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) in Ottawa.

Research Scientist, Inria and Senior Research Fellow, University of Oxford
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Carina Prunkl is a Research Scientist at Inria’s REGALIA project and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI. She is also Lead Writer of the 2026 International AI Safety Report and Co-Investigator of the UKRI-funded project CHAILD. Her research focuses on agency, autonomy, and human oversight, as well as evaluation standards and the governance of AI more broadly. Carina holds a BSc and MSc in Physics from Freie Universität Berlin, an MSt in Philosophy of Physics, and a DPhil in Philosophy from the University of Oxford. She was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Future of Humanity Institute and the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford, and an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University.

Keio University School of Medicine
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In his quest to understand life, consciousness, evolution, disease and ageing, Professor Kazuhiro Sakurada has conducted research in industry and academia. In 2008, he shifted his focus from regenerative medicine and drug discovery to AI medical data science. There, he developed key technology for disease foundation models and organism mechanical theories. His book The Origin of Subspecies, published in September 2020, was highly acclaimed for offering a novel perspective on life.

University of Lille & Inria (French Institute of Computer Science)
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Juliette Sénéchal is Professor of private law, specialised in Digital Law, at the University of Lille, and Deputy Scientific Director of Inria (French Institute of Computer Science) in charge of Humanities and Social Sciences. She is also member of the european Alliance Neurotech.EU. Her current topics of research focus on legal aspects of individual and collective impacts of artificial intelligence, digital services and neurotechnologies.

Director, RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project / Professor, The University of Tokyo
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Masashi Sugiyama received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, in 2001. After serving as an assistant and associate professor at the same institute, he became a professor at the University of Tokyo in 2014. Since 2016, he has also served as the director of the RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project. His research interests include theories and algorithms of machine learning. He was awarded the Japan Academy Medal in 2017 and the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan in 2022.

Professor, Tohoku University
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Jun Suzuki is a Professor at the Graduate School of Information Sciences and Director of the Center for Language AI Research at Tohoku University. Before joining Tohoku University, he was a Researcher and later a Distinguished Researcher at NTT Communication Science Laboratories. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering from the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in 2005. He was previously a Visiting Researcher at MIT CSAIL and Google, and currently serves as a Visiting Researcher at RIKEN AIP and a Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Informatics. His research focuses on natural language processing, machine learning, and AI.

Professor of Nature-Inspired AI for Science at Leibniz Universität Hannover and TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology
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Sahar Vahdati is Professor of Nature-Inspired AI for Science at Leibniz Universität Hannover and TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology. Her research explores nature-inspired intelligence for science, focusing on adaptive reasoning, abstraction, human cognition, and knowledge infrastructures. She develops AI systems that learn efficiently, discover rules, reason over scientific knowledge, and collaborate with humans in scientific workflows. Her work connects ARC-AGI, knowledge graphs, LLM reasoning, and science integrity to build trustworthy AI for discovery and scholarly communication.

Research Director at CNRS-Inria
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Serena Villata is a research director at the CNRS within the I3S Laboratory. She has held a chair at the Institut 3IA Côte d’Azur since 2019, has served as the institute’s deputy scientific director since 2021, and has been the scientific director of the IA Cluster since November 2025. She leads the MARIANNE research team at Inria. In November 2021, she received the “Young Researchers” Award from Inria and the French Academy of Sciences. In 2010, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Turin (Italy) for her work on computational reasoning in Artificial Intelligence. Her research field is artificial intelligence (AI), and her current work focuses on computational argumentation, with a particular emphasis on legal and medical texts, political debates, and harmful content on social media (abusive language, misinformation). Her work combines argumentation-based reasoning frameworks with natural language arguments extracted from texts. She is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the ERC Consolidator Project PANDORA, which begins in June 2026.