Speakers 2025

Ms Gaffey is the Director‑General for Digital Services (DG DIGIT). In 2024 she was appointed the first Interoperability Coordinator for the Commission. She leads the Commission's efforts to ensure that digital public services across the EU can seamlessly interact and exchange data across administration levels, sectors and borders. From 2019 to 2022 she was Chair of the independent Regulatory Scrutiny Board. She was also Director of the Paymaster’s Office of the Commission from 2016 to 2019 and before that was Director of Resources in the Directorate‑General for Regional and Urban Policy in July 2015. Veronica Gaffey worked in the area of evaluation for 23 years of her career. 

Anna Lewicka is a lawyer and public sector manager with over 10 years’ experience. As Deputy RIA Coordinator and Deputy Head of the RIA Department at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland, she oversees regulatory impact assessment and scrutiny.

Claudia Oliveira is Programme Manager at DG DIGIT, European Commission, with over 20 years’ experience modernising public administration. She leads work on interoperability monitoring under the Interoperable Europe Act and Digital Decade, and coordinates the Interoperable Europe Community and international cooperation.

Dr Georges Lobo, physicist and digital technologies programme manager at the European Commission, has 24 years’ experience leading innovation in IoT, network technologies, and smart cities. Since 2017, he has worked in the Interoperability and Digital Government Unit, focusing on GovTech, innovation, and semantic interoperability.

Julián Rojas is Postdoctoral Researcher at Ghent University’s imec research institute, specialising in automated data interoperability on the web using semantic knowledge graph technologies.

Ms Sandu leads the Interoperability and Digital Government Unit at DG DIGIT, where she works to build an Interoperable Europe through policies and common platforms developed in close partnership with public administrations across the Member States. With more than 15 years of experience in both the public and private sectors, she has held roles ranging from software engineer to team leader, overseeing the development of data and AI services, mobile solutions, and customer relationship management systems. In 2025, Ms Sandu was included in Apolitical’s “Government AI 100” list, recognising global leaders advancing the responsible use of artificial intelligence in the public sector.

Ms Natalia Aristimuño Pérez is currently Director of Change Management & Resources and Acting Director of Digital Enablers & Innovation at the European Commission's DG DIGIT. Before her appointment as a Director, she was responsible for the Interoperability Unit. Her past experience combines different Head of Unit positions in the domains of delivering solutions for human resources, decision-making, document and knowledge management. Since she joined the European Commission in 2000, she has been involved in developing user-friendly solutions for public administrations and the European Commission. She graduated Deusto University (Bilbao, Spain) with IT background and has a deep knowledge of the business domains she works with.

Suvi Remes is working on information policy at the Ministry of Finance. Her main areas of expertise include information and knowledge management, especially topics such as metadata and data semantics, and information architecture development. She is interested in opportunities and effects open and accessible data and information create in society and the decisions, values and development actions related to this, more and more digital information environment.
 

Brecht is a Linked Data Architect at Sirus, passionate about turning data into interoperable knowledge. He earned his PhD at Ghent University in 2023, where he collaborated with domain experts to make datasets machine-readable and standard-compliant. At Sirus, he designs architectures that automate dataset integration, mainly for public administrations and cultural organisations.

Marta Kotlarska is a Senior Business Analyst at NASK, Poland’s Research and Academic Computer Network. With nearly two decades of experience, she focuses on stakeholder engagement and policy development for digital transformation and interoperability. She combines art, technology, and social insight to promote creativity and co-creation in policymaking.

Alessio Nardin works at the intersection of policy, technology, and law. With a background in international relations, data science, and policy analysis, he supports the Digital-Ready Policymaking Team at the European Commission’s DG DIGIT.B2. His work focuses on Better Regulation, reducing administrative burden through digital technologies, and exploring the convergence of legal informatics, semantic technologies, and generative AI.

Mette Lindstrøm Lage is Deputy Permanent Secretary at the Danish Ministry of Digital Affairs. She leads a national taskforce on Artificial Intelligence, dedicated to accelerating the implementation of AI across the public sector.

Thibaut Kleiner is Director for Future Networks at DG CONNECT, European Commission. An economist by training, he holds a Master’s from HEC Paris and a PhD from the London School of Economics. Since joining the Commission in 2001, he has held senior roles in competition policy, digital policy, and research strategy, including Deputy Head of Cabinet to Commissioner Oettinger and Director for Policy, Strategy and Outreach.

Martin Brynskov, PhD, is Scientific Director for AI and Data at the University of Copenhagen, overseeing AI in Science. A leading expert in digital standardisation, smart communities, and GovTech innovation, he has led major European initiatives on data spaces, AI, and local digital twins. As a founding board member of Open & Agile Smart Cities & Communities, he bridges research, policy, and practice to advance citizen-centric digital solutions. He co-chairs the EU group on Trusted Data Transactions in Data Spaces, chairs the Danish Standards Committee on Data Management, and represents Denmark in UN work on IoT, Citiverse, and Smart Sustainable Cities.

Leyla El Khamlichi is a Senior Data Scientist at the Employee Insurance Agency (UWV) in the Netherlands, where she works on a range of data-driven projects. With a strong background in deep learning, language models, and graph-based analytics, she focuses on modelling skills and occupations through semantic and ontological frameworks to better understand labour-market dynamics. Her research explores how semantics, graphs, and AI can uncover hidden data patterns and translate them into actionable insights for policymakers.

Franck Noël is Director for Access to and Reuse of Public Information at the Publications Office of the European Union. With nearly 30 years of experience in information technology, artificial intelligence, and digital transformation, he has worked across both the public and private sectors. Throughout his career, he has held roles in IT development, project management, AI research, and policy-making, as well as leading IT, library, and archiving services.

Brooke Tapsall is a Remote Sensing Scientist and specialises in multi-platform sensing for GeoIntelligence applications and Defence.

Piotr Sowiński is the CTO and Co-Founder of NeverBlink, a deep-tech startup from Poland specialising in streaming knowledge graphs and neurosymbolic technologies. He is the creator of Jelly-RDF, a high-performance streaming protocol for knowledge graphs designed to enable faster, more efficient data exchange.

Adam Arndt is a Senior Adviser with 20 years of experience working with public sector data in Denmark. He currently serves as coordinator of the NoBaReg forum, fostering collaboration on base registries across the Nordic–Baltic region.

Dr Aida Kamišalić Latifić is State Secretary at the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Slovenia. She holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from the University of Maribor, where she is also an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and a member of the Data Technologies Lab and Blockchain Lab. With nearly 20 years of experience in research and project work, her expertise spans data technologies, big data, blockchain, and medical informatics. She co-founded the award-winning EduCTX initiative and has published widely in leading journals. She is also the co-inventor of a blockchain-related patent and was named Engineer of the Year in 2019.

Richard Stevens is an ICT researcher with more than 20 years of experience in enterprise software development, specialising in data management and interoperability. He is the General Coordinator of the SAGE Green Deal Data Space project and its precursor, GREAT, and has contributed to five additional EU dataspace initiatives. He has led international teams and EU studies on data governance, information architectures, and middleware.

Ingrid Aukrust Rones is Senior Policy Officer for digitalisation at the Nordic Council of Ministers. Working at the intersection of policy and technology, she brings over a decade of experience from the public and private sectors in London, Brussels, and the Nordic region. Her work focuses on advancing cross-border digital cooperation and strengthening modern, user-centred public services.

Sander Van Dooren is a Belgian software architect and long-time contributor to Europe’s semantic interoperability landscape. As part of the Interoperable Europe / SEMIC team at the European Commission, he works on the development and evolution of data specifications and the broader semantic and architectural frameworks that underpin cross-border digital public services.