Speakers

Currently spearheading Digital initiatives and also managing Maker's Lab (Innovation lab) at Tech Mahindra. Leading Digital transformation for different customers in RPA (Robotic Process Automation), AI/Chatbots, BlockChain and IoT. MBA (Strategy & Finance) with 15 yrs of demonstrated career in Strategic Planning, Business Development, Alliance Initiation & Partner Management, IT Transformation, Service Delivery, Client Engagement & Program Management across various domains. Worked across different geographies e.g. US, UK, Canada, Ireland and India. Develop growth strategy and business development for RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and IoT practice under Digital Enterprise Services. A proactive and diligent service leader who strives to ensure IT services deliver maximum value, with the ultimate aim of becoming a trusted business partner within the clients. Speaker at World RPA, Coginitive and AI Summit, Hyderabad in Sep'19 on Future of RPA and AI. Speaker at 1st International Conference of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing at MLR Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. Speaker at RPA Conference, Hyderabad in Feb’18. Spoke on “Imperatives of Successful RPA transformation”. Guest Speaker at RPA Summit, Hyderabad chapter in May’18. Spoke on “COMBINING RPA WITH COGNITIVE CAPABILITIES” Panelist in Blockchain Panel Discussion around theme 'Digital Transformation: Enabling World Class Sustainable Organizations'. This was organized by www.dynamiccio.com Helped customers in driving Digital transformation, establishing CoE. Defined large-scale strategic IT transformations that met both short and long-term business and financial objectives. Successfully worked with senior management teams (including MDs/EDs, VPs and Divisional heads) for clients Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Lehman Brothers, Chevron, Verizon, AT&T and Eircom. Specialties: Digital Initiatives, Growth Plan Strategy, Program Management, IT Transformation, Service Delivery, Business Development Industries: BFSI, Retail, Telecom, Energy & Utility, Insurance, Oil & Gas

Ram leads the digital architecture practice in KPMG Australia's Technology Advisory team. He is a seasoned senior management executive with over 17 years of experience in leadership roles with various consulting service providers. He has hands-on experience in technology-driven business transformation programs for organisations across various industry sectors. He specialises in defining modern architecture led business models to digitally enable organisations. He has deep domain expertise in supply chain management and has led several supply chain optimisation programs for organisations across the globe. His technology expertise is diverse and includes cloud enterprise applications, artificial intelligence platform, blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, quantum computing and micro-services paradigms. He is a certified agile leader and design-thinking facilitator. He is also a public speaker, sharing thought leadership in conferences globally on technology-related topics. Outside of work Ram is an aspiring writer and movie critic. He also likes learning about various cultures and loves diversity.

Sushmita Ruj is Senior Lecturer at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW, Sydney. Her research interests are in applied cryptography, blockchains, cybersecurity and data privacy. Before joining UNSW, she was a Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO's Data61, an Associate Professor at Indian Statistical Institute and an Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Technology, IIT, Indore. She was a visiting researcher/faculty at NTU, Singapore, KDDI R&D Labs, Japan, INRIA, France, Kyushu University, Japan and intern at Microsoft Research Labs, India. She received her B.E. degree from Indian Institute of Engineering, Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur, India and master’s and Ph.D. from Indian Statistical Institute, India, all in Computer Science. She was a member of the “Blockchain For Cybersecurity” working group of the National Blockchain Roadmap of Australia and the Blockchain working group founded by the Reserve Bank of India. She has collaborated with researchers across five continents and has delivered over 85 technical lectures around the world. Sushmita serves on the Editorial board of Elsevier Journal of Information Security and Applications (JISA) and Pervasive and Mobile Computing (PMC). She served as a Program Co-Chair for ACISP 2021 and Indocrypt 2019. She won best paper awards at ISPA 2007, IEEE PIMRC 2011 and IEEE ANTS WIE'17. She received Samsung GRO award, NetApp Faculty Fellowship, Cisco University Research Grant, OCSP grant from IBM Research. Sushmita is a Senior member of ACM and IEEE. More details can be found on her Homepage: https://research.unsw.edu.au/people/sushmita-ruj

Simon leads business development globally at Vauld. Vauld is a global crypto yield, lending, and trading platform, with market leading UX design and customer service. Prior to joining Vauld, Simon was Asia Lead and Head of OTC Markets at Celsius. He is Vice Chair of the ACS Blockchain Committee, and a Global Expert with the Blockchain Founders Fund. He has interned with the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at Cambridge University's Judge Business School, and spent two years at the Australian Consulate in New York, where he worked with two crypto unicorns throughout 2020, on their Australian market entry strategies, and ran Australia's trade mission to Consensus 2019. He holds an MBA from AGSM, and a Master of Science from Carnegie Mellon.

Corien Vermaak started her career as a technology law specialist within the telecommunication space and soon fell in love with Data Privacy and the legal structures governing Cybercrime. In her career, Corien specialised in Cybercrime legislation and Data privacy while representing large multinational on these matters. She holds a master’s degree in law specialising in Cybercrime and Data privacy. She has been involved in the writing of legislation in this regard as well as consulting to Africa Union and Interpol on issues relating to Cybercrimes and privacy. Corien is a Qualified Digital Forensic Auditor, Lead ISO 27001 auditor and C|CISO. She has used her lab and investigative experience to instruct and develop training focused on educating children on the dangers in the digital world. She has been running a pro-bono campaign educating over 52 000 children on cyberbullying and digital privacy. Corien is one of the global heads of Cisco Woman in Cyber Security and has been both an executive and non-executive board member for Woman in ICT.  Corien is currently a Security Architect for the Cisco Security center of excellence in APJC where she leads CISO advisory and market leadership projects.

NFT’s bring a layer of democratic empowerment previously not seen. The layer of full auditability, transparency and accountability together with the programmability of money through De-Fi (Decentralized finance) presents new blended business and finance models that open up: - mainstream audiences to permanently confirm ownership of collectible digital assets. - struggling creatives, so often ravaged by digitisation, to seize a fresh landscape of new opportunities. - publishers and producers to breathe fresh air into tiring models and - disenfranchised communities to express their powerful, artistic voices more effectively, secure in the knowledge that the financial transactions are secure, transparent and auditable.

Zubair Baig is an Associate Professor in Cyber Security at the School of Information Technology, Deakin University. His research interests are in the areas of cyber security, artificial intelligence, digital forensics, smart cities and the Internet of Things. He is a cyber security mentor, architect, researcher, analyst, course content designer, research supervisor, team leader and a public speaker. He has led and co-investigated complex and mission critical research projects in the past, and has an impeccable track record with; +95 peer-reviewed research publications, 2 US patents, >$2.5M of research funding across 12+ multidisciplinary research projects, supervision of 8 HDRs to completion, 25+ national and international keynote talks and editorial responsibilities with 3 international peer-reviewed journals. He was listed in the World's Top 2% Scientists in the Stanford University 2021 citation indicator report.