Taming the Black Swan
Managing Global Socio-Economic Complexity
21-23 September 2022 | Center for International Governance Innovation | Waterloo, Canada
2022 Next 100 Speakers
Adam Pease
Adam Pease is CEO and principal consultant of Articulate Software. His research is centered on the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology, and Sigma ontology environment. Video blog. For the past 20+ years he has been developing a specification of tens of thousands of relationships, processes and objects in an expressive mathematical logic. This allows them to perform data development in a similar way to the development of procedural software development - through massive reuse of existing code, instead of development from scratch. Because of the use of an expressive logic, they can use automation to check for the consistency of the definitions of concepts, in the same way that we can check modern software languages for consistency of types, but with the full power of an expressive logic instead of a simple set of types. These explicit definitions mean that no longer do developers have to rely on their intuitions about the meaning of terms, or to seek out the colleagues who created them in order to understand intended semantics.
Adriana Ilavska
Adriana's prior experience includes positions as a Mobile Application Manager and Event Development Assistant at the GLOBSEC Security Forum and the GLOBSEC Tatra Summit. She also participated in the Masaryk University Model United Nations organisation team as a member of the Crisis Committee. Adriana holds a Master's degree in Mathematical Engineering from Brno University of Technology and a Master's degree in International Relations from Masaryk University in Brno. Her thesis "Cooperative Game Theory in Local Conflicts", was evaluated by the Czech representative at the NATO Modelling & Simulation Centre of Excellence. She is currently a Ph.D. student at Masaryk University, Faculty of Social Studies. In her dissertation project, she is focusing on conditions of conflict escalation and incorporating various methodological approaches from linear modeling and game theory to qualitative comparative analysis and network analysis. Adriana is part of the research team working on a grant project “Methodology of prediction, early warning and threat prevention of threats resulting from regional armed conflicts for the internal security of the Czech Republic“ supported by the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic.
Ann Fitz-Gerald
Ann Fitz-Gerald is the Director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs and a Professor in Wilfrid Laurier University’s Political Science Department. She has worked at both at King’s College, London University’s International Policy Institute, and at Cranfield University, where she was the Director, Defence and Security Leadership. During her time at Cranfield, Ann led the UK-Government funded Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform and Cranfield’s Centre for Security Sector Management. She also designed and developed the Masters programme in Security Sector Management, which is delivered in both the UK and East Africa. Ann is widely published on issues concerning conflict, national security and security sector governance. She holds Visiting Professor at other universities including Nkumba University (Uganda), Jimma University (Ethiopia), Njala University (Sierra Leone) and Queen’s University (Canada). Ann has advised, and has been seconded to work with, a number of countries on issues relating to national security policy/strategy issues including Ukraine, Lebanon, Canada, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Nepal, Botswana, Jamaica, Indonesia, Sierra Leone, Albania, Montenegro and Nigeria. She has also supported internationally sponsored peace talks including support to the AU High Implementation Panel during the post-referendum peace talks between North and South Sudan. In 2018, Ann was appointed as a Senior Research Associate at the Royal United Services Institute in London. In 2013, she became a Senior Security and Justice Adviser for the UK Government and she was appointed Visiting Professor of Global Security Management at Queen’s University. In 2012, the Government of Canada awarded Ann the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for her contribution to post-conflict resolution and national policy dialogue. In 2011, Ann was invited to become the McNaughton-Vanier Visiting Professor at the Royal Military College of Canada.
Bob Fay
Robert (Bob) Fay is the managing director of digital economy at CIGI. He is also a member of the 2020–2021 Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC) Ad Hoc Strategic Advisory Committee, providing feedback on the priorities the IPC will focus on over the next five years. Prior to joining CIGI, Bob held several senior roles at the Bank of Canada (BoC), most recently as senior director overseeing work to assess developments and implications arising from the digitization of the Canadian economy. He has also led the BoC’s Canadian short-term forecasting team and set up and led its first research division related to structural analysis, focusing on labor markets, productivity and exchange rate analysis. Bob was also special assistant to BoC Governor Mark Carney, serving as the governor’s chief of staff.
Claudia May Del Pozo
Claudia Del Pozo is the Director of the Eon Resilience Lab at C Minds. Her work equips individuals with the knowledge and key skills they need to take advantage of the impact of new technologies, working with companies and governments to guarantee a fairer and more inclusive future for all people. She is working on a practical guide for the development and ethical adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) systems within Latin American companies, is co-designing an agenda for the future of work in León, Mexico, and is leading a prototype of public policies for more transparent and explainable AI systems in collaboration with Facebook and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) with the support of the National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data Protection (INAI). She has just published a paper in the digital magazine Agua de Limón on the impact of product standardization and automation on gender equality. Claudia is a Ted speaker, has previously worked at IBM Germany, and is a graduate at Warwick Business School in the UK.
David Welch
David A. Welch is University Research Chair and Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. At BSIA, he is part of the Conflict and Security and Global Institutions, Diplomacy and Justice research clusters. His 2005 book Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change (Princeton University Press) is the inaugural winner of the International Studies Association ISSS Book Award for the best book published in 2005 or 2006, and his 1993 book Justice and the Genesis of War (Cambridge University Press) is the winner of the 1994 Edgar S. Furniss Award for an Outstanding Contribution to National Security Studies. He has also authored several other books and publications.
Edward Wilson-Smyth
Edward Wilson-Smythe is an entrepreneurial executive with proven success in establishing and leading high-growth technology and consulting businesses focused on digitally-accelerated business model, product, pricing, customer, channel, sales and marketing innovation. With diverse experience as a management consultant, innovation strategist and industry practitioner, Edward is a trusted strategic advisor to corporate, government and technology leaders. His work focuses on harnessing the power of innovation to drive sustained competitiveness, superior business results and improved social outcomes, through the definition and execution of digital innovation strategies, integrated solutions and innovation partnerships for strategic clients. Edward is a frequent speaker at leading innovation conferences, author published in major business and technology media, and a co-author of the Amazon best-seller – “Digital Singularity: A Case for Humanity”. Edward has a Master of technology law from the University of Southampton, and a Doctorate of Business Administration from California Coast University.
Florian Kerschbaum
Associate professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo (since 2017), a member of the CrySP group, and NSERC/RBC chair in data security (since 2019). Before he worked as chief research expert at SAP in Karlsruhe (2005 – 2016) and as a software architect at Arxan Technologies in San Francisco (2002 – 2004). Florian holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (2010) and a master's degree from Purdue University (2001). He served as the inaugural director of the Waterloo Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (2018 – 2021). An ACM Distinguished Scientist (2019) and a winner of the Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Award from CS-Can/Info-Can (2019). Interested in security and privacy in the entire data science lifecycle. Florian extends real-world systems with cryptographic security mechanisms to achieve (some) provable security guarantees. His work is used in several business applications.
Frederick Bordry
Frederick Bordry served as the director for Accelerators and Technology at CERN until December 2020. He is an electrical engineer who has spent years teaching and conducting energy conversion research. Bordry came to CERN in 1986, joining the group working on power converters for the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP). In 2009, Bordry was promoted to Head of the CERN Technology Department - responsible for technologies specific to existing particle accelerators, facilities and future projects – where he remained until 2013. From 2014 he acted as the Director for Accelerators and Technology, where he is responsible for the operation and exploitation of the whole CERN accelerator complex, with particular emphasis on the LHC and for the development of new projects and technologies.
Hans Pung
Hans Pung is president of RAND Europe, a not-for-profit public policy research organization that helps improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis. Pung joined RAND as a policy analyst in 2002 and continues to lead and deliver research projects, particularly around industrial economics and security policy issues. Before joining RAND, Pung served as an engineer officer in the United States Army with responsibility for logistics, personnel, and operations and overseas service in the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Germany. His recent projects include Cost Modeling and Skills Analysis, European Defense Industrial Base Analysis, Future UK Military Capability Requirements, Improving Counter-Violent Extremism Intervention. Pung is a mathematics graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point where he commanded the United States Corps of Cadets as a senior. He also holds advanced degrees in mathematical modeling and modern history from Oxford University, which he attended as a (George C.) Marshall Scholar.
Jatin Nathwani
Professor Jatin Nathwani is the founding Executive Director, Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy (WISE) at the University of Waterloo. As the inaugural Ontario Research Chair in Public Policy for Sustainable Energy (2007-2020), he has led research initiatives on accelerating energy transitions for a zero-carbon economy through systems assessments of technology, financing strategies, risk management and public policy. He also co-Directs with Prof Joachim Knebel (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany) the Global Change Initiative – Affordable Energy for Humanity (AE4H). The consortium comprises 150+ leading STEM and social science researchers, energy access thought leaders and practitioners from 50 institutions in 30 countries committed to eradicating energy poverty by 2030. His organization, WISE, aims to foster research and development for clean energy solutions that remain accessible and affordable for all. Professor Nathwani has also worked in a leadership capacity in the Canadian energy sector for 30 years.
Jeffrey Saunders
Jeffrey Saunders is the CEO of Nordic Foresight and is an expert in strategic futures studies and foresight with 18 years of experience. He. He formerly served as Director, Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, and led their Strategy and Innovation. He also served as an onsite advisor at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Stability Operations. He further served as a policy analyst and advisor at the Strategic Assessment Center at SAIC, where he advised the Office of Net Assessments at the Department of Defense and other government agencies. He has conducted foresight exercises for Fortune 100 organizations and governments. He has authored over 30 articles, reports, book chapters, etc., on the future work and the future of the built environment. He also authored 17 ethnographic analyses of subnational and organizational cultures along the Andean Ridge, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Jim Balsillie
Jim Balsillie’s career is unique in Canadian business. He is a former Chairman and co-CEO of Research In Motion (BlackBerry), a Canadian technology company he scaled from an idea to $20 billion in sales globally. He is the co-founder of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI), the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and the CIO Strategy Council. He currently chairs the boards of CCI and CIGI and a co-Chair of CIOSC. He is also the founder of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Arctic Research Foundation and the Centre for Digital Rights. He is a member of the Global Advisory Board of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and an Honorary Captain of the Royal Canadian Navy. Mr. Balsillie was the only Canadian ever appointed to US Business Council and the sole private sector representative on the UN Secretary General’s High Panel for Sustainability. He is the only Canadian member of the US Council on Competitiveness and an internationally renowned voice on innovation strategy, competitiveness and international economic policy. He testified to the US Senate on America Innovates Act, a landmark legislation for management of intellectual property. Mr. Balsillie holds degrees in a Bachelor of Commerce from University of Toronto, an MBA from Harvard Business School and is a fellow with Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario. His awards include: several honorary degrees, Mobile World Congress Lifetime Achievement Award, India’s Priyadarshni Academy Global Award, GSMA Lifetime Achievement Award, Canadian Business Hall of Fame, Time Magazine’s World’s 100 Most Influential People and three times Barron’s list of "World’s Top CEOs.”
Josef Urban
Distinguished researcher at the Czech Institute of of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics (CIIRC) heading the ERC Consolidator project AI4REASON. Before that he was a postdoc researcher in the Foundations Group of ICIS at the Radboud University, Nijmegen, an assistant professor at the Department of Theoretical Computer Science and Mathematical Logic at Charles University in Prague (co-founded the Prague Automated Reasoning Group), and a Marie-Curie fellow at the Department of Computer Science at University of Miami. (Scientific CV). Interested in automated reasoning in large semantically specified knowledge bases (some people call this "strong artificial intelligence"). It involves automated deductive reasoning (automated theorem proving), inductive reasoning (machine learning and discovery) and their combining. Also involved in formalization and computer-verification of mathematics (see the QED Manifesto), especially in Mizar.
Marjory Blumenthal
Marjory Blumenthal is a senior fellow and the director of the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focuses on technology trends, impacts, and policy, with an emphasis on information and communications technologies and extending to biotechnology, health, and more. Before she joined the Carnegie Endowment, Blumenthal led the experimental Science, Technology, and Policy Program as a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, before which she was the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology at the White House. Some of her recent publications include a pair of RAND reports on the safety of motor vehicles that depend on artificial intelligence, Safe Enough: Approaches to Assessing Acceptable Safety for Automated Vehicles and Measuring Automated Vehicle Safety: Forging a Framework, and another pair of RAND reports on citizen science, Community Citizen Science: From Promise to Action and The Promise of Community Citizen Science.
Nestor Maslej
Nestor Maslej is a Research Associate at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). In this position, he uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies to conduct research for the AI Index and Global AI Vibrancy Tool. Nestor also leads research projects that study AI in the context of technical advancement, ethical concerns and policymaking. In developing tools that track the advancement of AI, Nestor hopes to make the AI space more accessible to both policymakers and citizens. His work is also oriented towards building knowledge about AI in a way that facilitates more productive dialogues surrounding its future and can lead to its development in ethically responsible ways. Prior to joining HAI, Nestor worked in Toronto as an analyst in several startups. He graduated from the University of Oxford in 2021 with an MPhil in Comparative Government, where he used machine learning methodologies to study the Canadian Indian Residential schooling system and Harvard College in 2017 with an A.B. in Social Studies.
Odessa Primus
Odessa Primus is the Executive Director of the Global Arena Research Institute, as well as the Coordinator of its flagship annual event the Next 100 Symposium and global youth programme ReDefine Next 100. She is also the main host of GARI's podcast Last Week on Earth with the Global Arena Research Institute. She is the holder of numerous awards and distinctions as a young leader including Young Leader for Europe at the European Commission’s European Development Days 2017, European Forum Alpbach - as an Erste Foundation & National Endowment for Democracy fellow; Advisor on the UNSC Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace & Security at the European Regional Consultation in Brussels, a One Young World scholarship holder, among others. Until January 2017, she worked as a humanitarian worker on initiatives in response to the 2015/16 refugee and migration situation in Europe. In 2017, Odessa founded Go Think Initiative, a think tank that focused on the development of media and its impact on politics and society, analyzing trends in communication technology and trends, analyzing the media environment of Central Europe, namely the Visegrad countries.
Patricia Goff
Patricia Goff is an associate professor of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University. Prior to Prior to joining Laurier, she taught in the Political Science Department at the University of Utah (2000-2003). She has held visiting positions at School of International Relations at the University of Southern California and at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. She is interested in international political economy, international relations theory, and international organizations. Within international political economy, she focuses on the politics of trade and researches the intersection of cultural claims with the economic mandates of international organizations.
Peter Bauer
Peter Bauer is the Director of Destination Earth at ECMWF and responsible for implementing ECMWF's contribution to this European Commission funded flagship action. This responsibility requires a strong engagement with the European Space Agency and with wider stakeholder communities from academia, national research centres and meteorological-hydrological services across the EU. Peter began as a scientist for the ECMWF, then becoming Heads of divisions for a number of years before becoming Director in January of 2022. Peter has a Master’s degree in meteorology from the University of Cologne, Germany, and a Doctorate degree in meteorology from the University of Hamburg, Germany.
Theresa Kushner
Theresa Kushner is the Head of the North American Innovation Center for NTT DATA Services. For over 25 years she has led companies - like IBM, Cisco Systems, VMware, Dell/EMC, and NTT DATA - in recognizing, managing, and using information and data. Using her expertise in journalism, she co-authored two books on data and its use in business. Theresa has a Master’s in journalism from the University of North Texas which she has turned into a career in technology.
Tim Palmer
Tim Palmer is a Royal Society Research Professor in Climate Physics, and a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Martin Institute. He was involved in the first five IPCC assessment reports and was co-chair of the international scientific steering group of the World Climate Research Programme project (CLIVAR) on climate variability and predictability. For a large part of his career Tim has developed ensemble methods for predicting uncertainty in weather and climate forecasts. In 2020 Tim was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences. His work explores questions around where climatic processes on different space and time scales interact. He has also developed and worked on the application of weather and climate forecasts systems for malaria prediction, flood forecasting, crop yield estimation, and more. Most recently his research has focused on simulating climate at extremely high resolution.
Tomas Mikolov
Internationally recognized capacity in artificial intelligence research, who has worked to improve the Google translator, among other things. His arrival at CIIRC ČVUT was also possible thanks to the project of the new RICAIP center, by which CIIRC ČVUT, together with partners from the Czech Republic and Germany, wants to strengthen its role in the European field of artificial intelligence and robotics research for advanced industry. Tomáš Mikolov is known to the scientific community and the general public mainly for his leap improvement in the functioning of language recognition and processing applications, such as the Google machine translator. He succeeded in creating new models of neural networks that significantly surpassed previous approaches to language modeling. The improvements that have taken place in the field of natural language processing have been the greatest in the last few decades. At the beginning of 2019, he won the Neuron Award for Significant Discovery in Computer Science.
Tony Curzon Price
Tony Curzon-Price is the Senior Advisor at the UK Cabinet Office (which supports the Prime Minister and ensures the effective running of government). Before this, he was the Economic Advisor to the Rt Hon Greg Clark MP, Secretary of State for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy. He worked closely on the elaboration of the UK's Industrial Strategy White Paper, as well as on government responses to GAFA, climate change policy and competition and consumer policy. He has previously worked for the Financial Conduct Authority and the Competition and Markets Authority. He founded Arithmatica, a Silicon Valley design company, and spent five years building the company in the Bay Area. He was also editor-in-chief of the UK political website openDemocracy, where he transformed openDemocracy into a not-for-profit editors’ cooperative for comment, analysis and investigation. He wrote his PhD on game theory and market design with Ken Binmore at UCL.