ADVISORY BOARD

Dr. Al Kuwaiti has appointed into the Cabinet as the Head of the Cyber Security for the UAE Government since 2020. As the Head of the Cyber Security, his mandate includes being the Chairman of the UAE Cyber Security Council as well as Managing Director of the National Data Centre under the Supreme Council for National Security. As the Head of Cyber Security for the UAE Government by investiture, Dr. Al Kuwaiti has legal authority over all aspects pertaining securing the cyberspace for the entire Nation.

In his current role, Dr. Al Kuwaiti is tasked with the responsibility of charting a cyber security strategy for the Nation that not only ensuring that the UAE will be entering into the digital era with fully capable of dealing with the new threat landscape brought about by the pandemic, but also to ensure UAE’s leadership in cyber security globally towards establishing the UAE as the world’s leading trusted digital hub supporting the Nation’s digital transformation agenda and the digital future of all residents who made UAE their home. Towards that end, he led the Council to put together an implementation plan to protect the UAE cyberspace through emerging technologies such as Cloud, Big Data and AI in a wholeof-government approach coordinating and orchestrating efforts between Emirates or government entities via a unified platform built and managed by the Council.

Under Dr. Al Kuwaiti’s leadership, the UAE has advanced 42 positions in the ITU Global Cybersecurity Index, rising to 5th place globally from 47th place in the last assessment. Dr. Al Kuwaiti has also led UAE to many first, including Guinness World of Records for having the most users in a cyber capture the flag (CTF) competition and the largest bug bounty competition, all initiatives that aims at supporting capacity building in Cyber Security and improving the technical competencies of cyber security professionals and enthusiasts. More importantly, he is most instrumental in advocating for realizing the value of cyber security by demonstrating cyber security as a critical business enabler. Since 2021, Dr. AlKuwaiti plays the role of an ambassador for collaboration between the government and cyber agencies, helping to bridge the discussion between the two major stakeholders in the digital economy ecosystem. Under his chaperone, key public-private partnerships were established between the UAE Cyber Security Council and leading local and international cyber security organizations with the goal of making a positive contribution to the UAE cyber agenda and be a major force that will benefit the global cyber security industry. Additionally, bilateral agreements established with countries both within the region and across the world contributed towards mutual information sharing, capacity development and legal assistance aid treaties, all key outcomes as a result of the National Cyber Security Strategy that he has put in place in realizing the vision of the UAE for the next 50 years.

Dr. Al Kuwaiti also sits on the Boards of the UAE Council for Digital Wellbeing, Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA), Federal Geographic Information Center and is on the Advisory Committees of the College of Information Technology under United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) and Emirates ICT Innovation Center (EBTIC) under Khalifa University. Additionally, he is an Adjunct Professor under the Homeland Security Program at Rabdan Academy and a visiting lecturer on Cyber Security at universities such as Khalifa University and National Defense College in Abu Dhabi.

Prior to his current appointments, Dr. Al Kuwaiti was with the National Electronic Security Authority in various appointment and capacity since 2013 where he was most recently Executive Director of Government Operations managing National and International government relations. He had served as the Chief Technical Analyst at the Ministry of Interior where he had held other positions, such as Operations Director and CTO of the Counter Terrorism Center. Dr. Al Kuwaiti started his 20 year-long career as a Defense, Air, and Naval Military Attaché with the Embassy of The United Arab Emirates based in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Al Kuwaiti has published numerous papers and keynoted at many conferences such as IEEE, RSA, Cyber Warfare Europe, Tele Strategies, ISS World MEA, IDEX, International Anti-Cyber Crimes Conference, Future War Summit etc., He is a highly sought after speaker internationally and have provided the main keynote address for more than 50 international, regional, and national cybersecurity events such as GITEX, GISEC and the World Government Summit, and had presented the UAE Cyber Security Framework at INTERPOL Global Cyberspace and Cybercrime Complex located in Singapore. Dr. Al Kuwaiti holds a Doctorate in Computer Engineering and Network Security from George Washington University in the U.S. and a master’s degree in Telecommunications and Computer Networks. He also holds a M.A. degree in International and Civil Security. Dr. Al Kuwaiti is an honorable member of Society of Engineers, IEEE Society, Golden Key National Honor Society and Computer Society. His research interests are detecting, monitoring and responding to cyber warfare, Network Forensics, Corporate Governance & Process, and national cyber policy.

Soumitra Dutta has been Dean of Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford since June 2022. Previously he was the founding Dean of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University. He is the President of Portulans Institute, Chair of the Board of the Global Business School Network and member of the Global Board of Dassault Systemes.

Professor Dutta is an authority on innovation in the global knowledge economy. He is the co-editor and founder of the Network Readiness Index, published by Portulans Institute and the Global Innovation Index, published by the WIPO.

Professor Dutta received a B. Tech. in electrical engineering and computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi a MS in both business administration and computer science, and a PhD in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley. In 2017 he was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus from his alma mater IIT Delhi.

Dr. Keri E. Pearlson is an expert in the area of managing and using information, specializing in cybersecurity leadership. She's serves on the Board of Directors of several organizations and has worked with CIOs and executives from some of the largest corporations in the world. Dr. Pearlson is a thought leader in cybersecurity culture, resilience, strategic advantage, supply chain, and board leadership. She specializes in helping IT executives prepare to participate in the strategy formulation processes with their executive peers. She’s a skilled relationship manager, an accomplished meeting facilitator, an entertaining public speaker, an often-sought-after information resource, a published author and a proven leader.

Her most recent work has been published in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, the Wall Street Journal, and many academic and practitioner outlets. She has also published many books on aspects of managing and using information systems. She has a doctorate in business administration (in MIS, management information systems) from the Harvard Business School and master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Stanford University. She’s the Executive Director of a research group at MIT's Sloan School of Management, Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan (CAMS), and the President of KP Partners, a CIO advisory services firm.

ABDULMOTALEB EL SADDIK is the acting chair of the computer vision department at MBZUAI and is a Distinguished Professor with the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa. He has supervised more than 150 researchers. He has co-authored ten books and more than 550 publications and chaired more than 50 conferences and workshops.

He is the founder of two spinoffs (inspiratio.io and uTouch.ca). His research interests include the establishment of digital twins to facilitate the wellbeing of citizens using AI, the IoT, AR/VR, and 5G to allow people to interact in real time with one another as well as with their smart digital representations in the metaverse.

He is a fellow of Royal Society of Canada, an ACM Distinguished Scientist, and a fellow of IEEE, the Engineering Institute of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Engineers. He received several international awards, such as the IEEE I&M Technical Achievement Award, the IEEE Canada C.C. Gotlieb (Computer) Medal, and the A.G.L. McNaughton Gold Medal for important contributions to the field of computer engineering and science.

Professor Duan is the Chairman and a co-founder of Criat. He is also a professor emeritus of the National University of Singapore (NUS). Prior to his retirement in June 2023, Professor Duan helmed the Asian Institute of Digital Finance and held the Jardine Cycle & Carriage Professorship. Among his many accomplishments, the Credit Research Initiative (CRI) stands out. CRI is a public good undertaking via developing and maintaining a digital platform for assessing credit risks. Since its launch in 2009, CRI has been continuously providing daily updated individual corporate default probabilities on a global scale. A world-renowned expert on derivatives pricing and credit risk analytics, Professor Duan is an academician of Academia Sinica and a fellow of the Society for Financial Econometrics and serves on the advisory council of the International Association of Credit Portfolio Managers, among others. He received a PhD in Finance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, once helmed the Risk Management Institute at NUS, held the Manulife Chair Professorship at the University of Toronto, and taught at the Hong Kong University Science & Technology and McGill University.

Jay K. Rosengard, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), has forty-five years of international experience designing, implementing, and evaluating development policies in public finance and fiscal strategy, tax and budget reform, municipal finance and management, intergovernmental fiscal relations, banking and financial institutions development, financial inclusion, micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) finance, mobile banking, and public administration.

Rosengard is Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government's Financial Sector Program, which focuses on the development of bank and nonbank financial institutions and alternative financing instruments. In addition, Rosengard is a Faculty Affiliate of both the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Center for International Development. At the Ash Center, he is Academic Director of the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia and Faculty Chair of the HKS Indonesia Program.

He has also served as Faculty Chair of four executive education programs: FIPED (Financial Institutions for Private Enterprise Development), which focuses on sustainable and effective MSME finance; ComTax (Comparative Tax Policy and Administration), which addresses key strategic and tactical issues in tax design and implementation; VELP (Vietnam Executive Leadership Program), which is an innovative policy dialogue with senior Vietnamese leadership; and Transformasi (Leadership Transformation in Indonesia), which is designed to assist Indonesia in its decentralization initiatives.

Rosengard is currently Director of the Harvard University Thai Studies Program and serves as Senior Technical Expert for the Better Than Cash Alliance. Together with Noble laureate Joseph Stiglitz, he is co-author of Economics of the Public Sector, 4th ed.

Professor Markos Zachariadis holds the Chair of Financial Technology (FinTech) and is Full Professor of Information Systems at Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS), at the University of Manchester. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Financial & Monetary Systems; Chief Fintech Advisor to the President of the Hellenic Competition Commission, Greece’s competition and markets authority; and a FinTech Research Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Digital Innovation (CDI), University of Cambridge. Professor Zachariadis’ research sits at the cross section of economics of digital innovation, financial technology studies, and network economics, and has studied extensively the economic impact of ICT adoption on bank performance, the diffusion of payment networks, and the role of data & standards in payment infrastructures (SWIFT), financial markets (LEI), and digital banking (Open Banking), among other things. His research has been published in top academic journals such as MIS Quarterly and Research Policy and has been awarded the NET Institute Award (NYU Stern Business School) for his study on the economics of payment networks, and the SWIFT Institute, SMS, and GRI Awards for his research on Open APIs and Digital Transformation in Banking. He is also co-author of The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT): Cooperative governance for network innovation, standards, and community (London: Routledge 2014), and co-editor of The PAYTECH Book published by Wiley (2020).

Prof. Zachariadis is a board advisor, mentor, and international keynote speaker and has been invited from various global organizations to present his research insights, give talks at international events, and judge at international competitions (Bank of England, UK Parliament, European Commission, US Federal Government, World Bank, SIBOS, Money2020, GRI Summit, Microsoft, Bank of Canada/Payments Canada, SWIFT, Innovate Finance Global Summit, Central Bank of Seychelles, IBM, Financial Times, EY, etc.). He was also the organizer of an international conference in London on PayTech innovation which was funded by Gates Foundation, MasterCard, and Capco. As a recognised expert, Markos often shares his work and perspectives with media outlets such as The Times, World Finance, Financial Times' Banker Magazine, Bloomberg, Fortune Magazine, BBC, CNN, The Telegraph, Sky News, Wired Magazine, USA Today, ITV News, The Conversation, among many other.

Prior to joining AMBS, Prof. Zachariadis was Associate Professor in Management Information Systems & Digital Innovation at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick – where he also directed the Executive Education Diploma in Digital leadership – Visiting Professor in Financial Technologies (FinTech) at Ivey Business School, Western University, Research Associate at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, Visiting Scholar at London Business School, and Research Economist at the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics. He studied economics at the University of Patras, Department of Economics and holds an MSc and PhD from the London School of Economics, Department of Management. Before turning to academia, Markos worked for multinational companies in the technology and financial services sector such as Hewlett Packard Inc. and UBS Investment Bank in Greece, Spain and the UK.

Kimmo Soramäki is the Founder and CEO of FNA and the co-author of the book ‘Network Theory and Financial Risk’.

Kimmo started his career as an economist at the Bank of Finland where in 1997, he developed the first simulator for optimizing intraday liquidity in interbank payment systems. In 2004, while at the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he was among the first to apply methods from network theory to improve our understanding of financial systems.

During the financial crisis of 2007-2008, Kimmo advised several central banks, including the Bank of England and European Central Bank, in modeling interconnections and systemic risk. This work led him to found FNA for making systemic risks visible and financial market infrastructures and institutions more resilient and efficient.

Kimmo holds a Doctor of Science in Operations Research and a Master of Science in Accounting (Finance), both from Aalto University in Helsinki.