"Rauda Al Dhaheri is a distinguished professional who is currently serving as the Manager of Research & Development at ADGM Academy. With over 5 years of experience at ADGM Academy, she has exhibited exceptional dedication and expertise in the financial sector.

In her current role as Manager of Research & Development, Rauda has been instrumental in connecting academia with the financial sector, fostering problem-solving and fostering new insights through applied research. She directs her focus towards key domains of significance, including Artificial Intelligence, Digital Transformation, FinTech, Cyber Security, and Big Data Analytics.

Notably, Rauda has effectively managed and executed National Development Programmes launched by ADGM Academy under the Ghadan 21 initiative. Her leadership has significantly propelled the National Employability Programmes, positioning them as a flagship solution for Emiratization. She is deeply committed to empowering young Emirati talent by ensuring sustainable employment opportunities.

Rauda Al Dhaheri is an alumna of Abu Dhabi University, where she obtained her master’s degree in business administration. She also holds a bachelor’s degree from United Arab Emirates University, demonstrating her commitment to education and continuous growth. With her exemplary leadership and dedication to the development of both individuals and the financial sector."

Ariel Neufeld is a Nanyang Assistant Professor in mathematics at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He received his PhD in mathematics in May 2015 at ETH Zurich, where he spent half of his PhD at the Columbia University in the City of New York. Prior to joining NTU he was a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich. His research focuses on machine learning & quantum algorithms and their applications in finance and insurance, model uncertainty in financial markets and distributionally robust optimization, as well as stochastic analysis and stochastic optimal control.

Mr. Silves leads IonQ’s efforts to partner with government agencies and research institutions. He has held executive and advisory roles at quantum technology companies that include D-Wave Systems and Infleqtion since 2016. From 2012 to 2016 he was based in the Middle East with offices in Dubai and Washington, DC. Mr. Silves led P&L and sales efforts at Computer Sciences Corporation, CACI and Vangent (now General Dynamics Information Technology). Earlier in his career, he helped found a global private equity firm based in Boston and worked to commercialize advanced defense technologies. Mr. Silves holds a master’s degree in information systems from George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree from American University, both in Washington, DC. He resides in Florida and, oddly given his residence, has a passion for snow skiing.

Nicole is the Director of Quantum Business Solutions. She and her global team focus on collaborating with clients on their journey to implementing quantum computing applications. She has been actively participating in the quantum computing field for more than 10 years and brings a strong technical background in classical and quantum machine learning that she uses to help clients choose the right quantum applications to remain competitvely relevant. IonQ collaborates with your domain experts (SMEs) to create a quantum journey that meets your business needs. With an MS in Applied Statistics, Nicole spent over a decade working as a data scientist. Prior to IonQ, she worked on the IBM Quantum team as a quantum machine learning developer. Reach out to her with your questions. It’s an exciting time for quantum computing!

Prof. Aolita is Executive Director of the Quantum Algorithms division at the Quantum Research Center in the Technology Innovation Institute, Abu Dhabi. Prior to joining the Institute, he was a tenured Associate Professor of Physics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where he led a group on Quantum Information Theory and was a grantee of the highly competitive Serrapilheira Institute. Before that, in Europe, he has been a Marie Curie Fellow at the Free University of Berlin and a Juan de la Cierva Fellow at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona. His interests are quantum information and computation theory, with current focus on quantum algorithms.

Marco Paini is VP Finance Solutions at Rigetti Computing and focuses on the growth of Rigetti’s financial services practice, including the continued development of proprietary solutions, of an expert team, and of impactful partnerships with finance institutions. Marco has recently been managing the programme to build the first commercial quantum computer in the UK, a collaboration led by Rigetti and sponsored by Innovate UK with Oxford Instruments, Phasecraft, the University of Edinburgh and Standard Chartered.

Marco previously led quantum computing applications portfolio development of QxBranch, a quantum computing software company acquired by Rigetti in 2019. Prior to QxBranch, Marco spent more than eighteen years with Accenture, where he held several roles in technology. In the last part of his career with Accenture, Marco oversaw the AI ecosystem and the development of the quantum computing offering for the Accenture UKI Financial Services Technology Advisory practice.

Marco studied physics at the University of Pavia, where he collaborated with the Quantum Information Theory Group of the University of Pavia.

David Garvin is Head of Applications, Quantum Finance at Rigetti Computing. David focuses on researching, developing and implementing financial industry applications of quantum computing. Previously he worked in the Quantum Computing Office at NEC and at QxBranch, a quantum applications company acquired by Rigetti in 2019.

David has over 20 years experience as a Front-Office Quant in the Finance Industry. Previously, he served as the Global Head of Quantitative Analysis at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Prior to that, he was a Director at Deutsche Bank and a Quant Analyst at Morgan Grenfell. He has covered all asset classes and been involved in management, modeling, risk and analytics, derivatives and structured products, machine learning and electronic trading.

David holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Cambridge University and an MBA (Exec) from the Australian Graduate School of Management. He has authored articles in finance, physics, engineering, classical computing and quantum computing.

Jayne is the group manager for quantum algorithms and physics at the Institute of High Performance Computing in Singapore. She has previously worked in the quantum tech industry as a principal scientist for the quantum software company, Horizon Quantum Computing, as well as having completing a research fellowship at the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore. Jayne also holds a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Melbourne (circa 2012). She has worked extensively in the field of quantum information, and quantum computing both on developing new protocols as well as the design of quantum programming languages and their software implementation.

Dr. Mattia Fiorentini is the Director of Quantum Applications at Rigetti Computing where he focuses on developing quantum and classical machine-learning solutions for quantitative finance, working with academic partners as well as industry leaders. He is broadly involved in the overall effort of delivering a practical quantum advantage on problems of applied interests and embedding quantum computation in high-performance computing workflows. He matured an almost decade-long experience in developing quantum algorithms for industry problems and implementing them in production-grade software at several quantum computing companies. He has a significant academic track record in quantum physics and condensed matter.

Gu is a New Zealand physicist, who obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Queensland in 2009. In 2012, he joined the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information science at Tsinghua University. In 2016, Gu was named a National Research Foundation Fellow by the Government of Singapore, and is presently Associate Professor at Nanyang Technological University. There, he leads the quantum and complexity science initiative – focusing on topics bridging quantum, complexity and information science. Gu is also a CQT Fellow at the National University of Singapore and a principal investigator in the Singapore-France joint institute, Majulab. Gu’s accolades include the China 100 Talent, IBM Quantum Pitch Contest Winner, Fellow of the Foundational Questions Institute.

Dr Thais Silva holds a BSc and an MSc in Physics from the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil, obtained in 2014 and 2016, respectively. In 2020, she got a Ph.D. in experimental Quantum Optics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she also started working with quantum algorithms, spending two years as a postdoctoral researcher. She joined TII in 2022. Her focus is on quantum algorithms for near-term quantum devices.

Muhammad Shafique (M’11 - SM’16) received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, in 2011. Afterwards, he established and led a highly recognized research group at KIT for several years as well as conducted impactful collaborative R&D activities across the globe. Besides co-founding a technology startup in Pakistan, he was also an initiator and team lead of an ICT R&D project. He has also established strong research ties with multiple universities in worldwide, where he has been actively co-supervising various R&D activities and student/research Theses since 2011, resulting in top-quality research outcome and scientific publications. Before KIT, he was with Streaming Networks Pvt. Ltd. where he was involved in research and development of video coding systems several years. In Oct.2016, he joined the Institute of Computer Engineering at the Faculty of Informatics, Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien), Vienna, Austria as a Full Professor of Computer Architecture and Robust, Energy-Efficient Technologies. Since Sep.2020, Dr. Shafique is with the New York University (NYU), where he is currently a Full Professor and the director of eBrain Lab at the NYU-Abu Dhabi in UAE, and a Global Network Professor at the Tandon School of Engineering, NYU-New York City in USA. He is also a Co-PI/Investigator in multiple NYUAD Centers, including Center of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), Center of Cyber Security (CCS), Center for InTeractIng urban nEtworkS (CITIES), and Center for Quantum and Topological Systems (CQTS).

Dr. Shafique has demonstrated success in obtaining prestigious grants, leading team-projects, meeting deadlines for demonstrations, motivating team members to peak performance levels, and completion of independent challenging tasks. His experience is corroborated by strong technical knowledge and an educational record (throughout Gold Medalist). He also possesses an in-depth understanding of various video coding standards and machine learning algorithms. His research interests are in AI & machine learning hardware and system-level design, brain-inspired computing, neuromorphic computing, approximate computing, quantum machine learning, cognitive autonomous systems, robotics, wearable healthcare, AI for healthcare, energy-efficient systems, robust computing, machine learning secrity and privacy, hardware security, emerging technologies, electronic design automation, FPGAs, MPSoCs, embedded systems, and quantum computing. His research has a special focus on cross-layer analysis, modeling, design, and optimization of computing and memory systems. The researched technologies and tools are deployed in application use cases from Internet-of-Things (IoT), Smart Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), and ICT for Development (ICT4D) domains.

Dr. Shafique has given several Keynotes, Invited Talks, and Tutorials at premier venues. He has also organized many special sessions at flagship conferences (like DAC, ICCAD, DATE, IOLTS, and ESWeek). He has served as the Associate Editor and Guest Editor of prestigious journals like IEEE Transactions on Computer Aided Design (TCAD), IEEE Design and Test Magazine (D&T), ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing (TECS), IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing (T-SUSC), and Elsevier MICPRO. He has served as the TPC Chair of several conferences like CODES+ISSS, IGSC, ISVLSI, PARMA-DITAM, RTML, ESTIMedia and LPDC; General Chair of ISVLSI, IGSC, DDECS and ESTIMedia; Track Chair at DAC, ICCAD, DATE, IOLTS, DSD and FDL; and PhD Forum Chair of ISVLSI. He has also served on the program committees of numerous prestigious IEEE/ACM conferences including ICCAD, DAC, MICRO, ISCA, DATE, CASES, ASPDAC, and FPL. He has been recognized as a member of the ACM TODAES Distinguished Review Board in 2022. He is a senior member of the IEEE and IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS), and a professional member of the ACM, SIGARCH, SIGDA, SIGBED, and HIPEAC. He holds one US patent and has (co-)authored 7 Books, 20+ Book Chapters, 350+ papers in premier journals and conferences, and over 100 archive articles.

Dr. Shafique received the prestigious 2015 ACM/SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award, the AI-2000 Chip Technology Most Influential Scholar Award in 2020, 2022 and 2023, the ATRC’s ASPIRE Award for Research Excellence in 2021, six gold medals in his educational career, and several best paper awards and nominations at prestigious conferences like CODES+ISSS, DATE, DAC, ISLPED, and ICCAD, Best Master Thesis Award, DAC'14 Designer Track Best Poster Award, IEEE Transactions of Computer "Feature Paper of the Month" Awards, and Best Lecturer Award. His research work on aging optimization for GPUs featured as a Research Highlight in the Nature Electronics, Feb.2018 issue. Dr. Shafique was named in the NYU’s 2021 Faculty Honors List. His students have also secured many prestigious student and research awards in the research community.

Dr. Davide Venturelli has worked since 2012 in the NASA Quantum AI Laboratory (QuAIL) under the NASA Academic Mission Service, invested in research projects dealing with quantum optimization applications and their implementation in a hardware-software co-design approach. He has authored more than 50 publications and 9 patents on the subject of AI, Theoretical Physics, Quantum Computing, and Robotics. He teaches Quantum Integer Programming as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University Tepper's School of Business. He has experience winning, managing, and leading multi-million dollar R&D projects as Principal Investigator or co-PI, sponsored by DARPA, NSF, and DOE. He is the co-lead of the Ecosystem task of the National Quantum Initiative Superconducting Quantum Materials and System (SQMS) Center at Fermi National Laboratory. In 2021 he was elected member of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) steering committee, the organism coordinating 100+ companies involved in building the supply chain for the emergent quantum technology industry.