Jan van Erp is Professor of Tangible User Interaction with a special interest in using discriminative touch in haptic and tactile displays and social touch in mediated communication and interaction with virtual agents and robots. Jan has a part time appointment with HMI and is also with The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research TNO as principal scientist.

Current technology is often inefficient, ineffective and even frustrating. Jan believes that technology should support people in their performance, safety and strive for happiness and that people and technology co-evaluate and add up to more than their sum. His mission is to develop user-system symbiosis: Human Computer Interfaces that are of benefit to both entities.

Prof. Van Erp has a MSc degree in Experimental Psychology and a PhD in Computer Science. His expertise is on advanced Human Computer Interaction including multisensory interaction, brain-computer interfaces, and interaction robotics. His publications are listed in Google http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3W1xn9EAAAAJ, and the TNO repository http://repository.tudelft.nl/search/tno/?q=creator%3A%22Erp%2C%20J.B.F.%20van%22. Jan has directed large research consortia and chaired and participated in expert groups of amongst others ETSI, NATO and ISO. He is the current vice-president of the Eurohaptics Society (http://eurohaptics.org/), a board member of the i3B foundation (ICT for Brain, Body and behavior, http://i3b.org/), editor at the Brain-Computer Interfaces journal (Taylor & Francis http://www.tandfonline.com/tbci) at the Frontiers in Human-Media Interaction journal (Frontiers, http://www.frontiersin.org/human-media_interaction), and editor of the ISO standard on tactile and haptic interactions.

As Executive Director of Prize Operations, David Locke brings nearly two decades of Operations and Management experience with a focus on producing large-scale, international competitions and events that drive technological breakthroughs and positive social impact. Over the course of his ten plus years at XPRIZE, David has orchestrated an eclectic slate of competitions with topics ranging from robotics (ANA Avatar XPRIZE) and Moon exploration (Google Lunar XPRIZE) to oil spill recovery (Oil Cleanup XPRIZE), water (Water Abundance XPRIZE) and safety (Women’s Safety XPRIZE) among several others.

Prior to joining XPRIZE, David was part of a small team at Sony Pictures Television responsible for orchestrating the global production of all television movie and mini-series for the studio. In addition, David has coordinated a number of award-winning network and cable TV programs, feature films as well as music videos and commercials.

David earned his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Television Production with a Minor in Business Administration from Loyola Marymount University and his Project Management Certification from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Neal Y. Lii is the Domain Head of Space Robotic Assistance, and co-founding head of the Modular Dexterous (Modex) Robotics Laboratory, at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. Prior to joining DLR, he worked in the Automotive sector in the Silicon Valley, and at BMW in Germany, where he studied drive-by-wire systems. Neal received his BS from Purdue University, MS from Stanford University, and PhD from University of Cambridge.

Neal works on telerobotics and the different modalities of user interface (UI) for space and terrestrial applications. His hope is to enable people to effectively and effortlessly command complex robots and robotic teams. Aside from diving into hand-arm and other multi-modal UI systems that can give users an immersive experience down to the fingertips, he has also served as the principal investigator of two space telerobotic experiments, METERON SUPVIS Justin, and Surface Avatar. These experiments look at how astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) can command different robots on Earth through variations UI designs and command modalities, and by extension, how we can command teams of robots in future space missions.

Tiago H. Falk is a Full Professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, Centre on Energy, Materials, and Telecommunications, University of Quebec, where he directs the Multisensory/multimodal Signal Analysis and Enhancement Lab. He and his team have published over 300 scientific papers on the use of signal processing for improved machine learning applications in real-world settings. Prof. Falk works closely with national and international industry partners to assure their applications operate reliably “in the wild”. He has several patents covering sensor quality measurement and enhancement methods. Several of his tools have been used as benchmarks in IEEE Challenges and have received Best Paper Awards at leading international conferences, including IEEE ICASSP and IEEE SMC. He is Co-Chair of the Technical Committee (TC) on Brain-Machine Interface Systems of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC) Society, member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society TC on Audio and Acoustics Signal Processing, member-at-large of the IEEE SMC Society Board of Governors, a founding member of the IEEE Telepresence Initiative, and Academic Chair of the Canadian Medical and Biological Engineering Society. He is co-Editor of the book “Signal Processing and Machine Learning for Biomedical Big Data,” published by CRC Press in 2018.

Maria Palombini, MBA is the Life Science Practice Lead for the Global Business Strategy & Intelligence Unit of the IEEE-Standards Association and an advocate for empowering all patients with the right to agency of personal data. As the lead for the Life Science Practice at the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers – www.ieee.org) Standards Association, the world’s largest technology association with a core mission of advancing technology for humanity. The overall mission of the Life Science practice is to build a global community of passionate stakeholders who openly collaborate to build consensus on solutions that will drive adoption of breakthrough technologies that are viable in preserving, sustaining and protecting life.