Steering committee

Dorothee Bär has been Federal Minister of Research, Technology and Space since May 2025. Dorothee Bär became a member of the CSU executive committee in 2001 before being elected to the German Bundestag in the 2002 general election. From 2009 to 2013, she served as Deputy Secretary-General of the CSU as well as spokesperson for the whole CDU/CSU parliamentary group on matters pertaining to family affairs, senior citizens, women and youth. She was Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure from December 2013 until March 2018. From March 2018 until December 2021, she was a Minister of State at the Federal Chancellery and Federal Commissioner for Digitalization. From 2021 to 2025, she held the position of Deputy Chair of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group for matters pertaining to family affairs and culture.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jan Wörner has been President of acatech - German Academy of Science and Engineering since 2021. He was Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA) from 2015 to 2021 and Chairman of the Executive Board of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) from 2007 to 2015. Prior to that, the civil engineer with a doctorate was president of the Technical University of Darmstadt, professor of civil engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt, and held various positions as a civil engineer in practice. Jan Wörner is a recipient of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1st class, and holds honorary doctorates from various universities in Europe and Asia.

Professor Quinn is spokesperson at the International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW) at the University of Tübingen and Director of the university’s Center for Gender and Diversity Research (ZGD). She is the founder and head of the “Ethics and Culture” work area and the “Security Ethics” research focus. Professor Quinn is chair of the Scientific Program Board Security Research at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Martin Böhm has been a member of the Ottobock Executive Board since 2021 and, as the company's first Chief Experience Officer (CXO), combines the areas of marketing and IT. In this role, he continues to develop the digital user experience, particularly in social media, e-commerce and CRM, thus driving forward the digital transformation and the associated cultural change in the company. His responsibilities include building a data-driven, user- and customer-centric platform that provides personalized solutions for everyday life. Before joining Ottobock, Böhm was Chief Digital Officer at Beiersdorf.

Ralf Klinkenberg is the co-founder and head of research of the predictive analytics software supplier RapidMiner, a company established in 2007 as a follow-up to the RapidMiner open source project which he had co-founded. He received the European Open Source Business Award in 2008 and the European Data Innovator Award in 2016 in recognition of his expertise the fields of data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, machine learning and big data.

Dr. Jaroslaw Kutylowski is the founder and CEO of DeepL SE, based in Cologne. Born in Poland, he started programming at the age of ten and worked as a passionate developer on personal projects that he found useful and suitable for everyday use. He earned a doctorate in computer science with a focus on mathematics and worked for various technology companies. His passion for languages and innovative technologies led him to the world of AI communication. Under his leadership, the team at DeepL developed what they claim is the world's most accurate machine translator. Today, DeepL is used by thousands of companies worldwide across a wide range of industries.

Dr. Hanna Köpcke is Senior Solution Architect at Vistex Inc., a leading global provider of pricing, commerce, licensing and incentive management solutions. In November 2021, the US company acquired Webdata Solutions GmbH, a startup co-founded by Hanna Köpcke and a leading technology provider for AI-based pricing and product decisions in Germany. Hanna Köpcke has also been Professor of Data Management Systems and Distributed Data Management at Mittweida University of Applied Sciences since January 2023.

Nino Romano has been Chief Technology Officer of the independent Automotive sector at Continental since the beginning of 2025. In this position, he is responsible for Technology and Operations. Nino Romano has been with Continental since 1993 and, after holding various positions in research and development and as Director of Customer Centres, took on the role of Head of Development for Electronic Brake Systems in the Vehicle Dynamics business unit in 2011. Romano has been a member of the Management Board in the Automotive sector since 2020, initially as Head of Quality & Environment and since 2024 responsible for Quality and Operations.

Elke Reichart is member of the Management Board of Infineon Technologies AG and Chief Digital and Sustainability Officer (CDSO). Among other things, she is responsible for the Group-wide digitalization strategy. Elke Reichert holds a degree in Romance Studies and Economics as well as a postgraduate degree in Applied Computer Science from the University of Giessen. She began her professional career in 1991 at Hewlett-Packard Inc. from 2013 to 2017 as Vice President HP Restructuring Program, Corporate Strategy at the company's headquarters in Palo Alto. In 2018, Elke Reichert joined TUI Group AG as Chief Digital Officer.

Frank Riemensperger was Senior Managing Director of Accenture in Germany, Switzerland and Austria until march 2022 and responsible for the market and strategy development in the German-speaking countries. The IT expert is on the Executive Board of BITKOM, Germany’s digital association and of VOICE, the federal association of IT users. He is also a member of the Senate at acatech – National Academy of Science and Engineering, Vice-President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany (AmCham), and member of the Baden-Baden Entrepreneur Talks (BBUG).

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr. h.c. mult. Wolfgang Wahlster is an AI professor and one of the shaping minds of AI in Germany and Europe. As founding director of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and later as chairman of the executive board, he developed DFKI into the largest research institution in this field by 2019. He currently heads the steering group for the national AI standardization roadmap. Wolfgang Wahlster was appointed to the Digital Council of Saarland and the BDA. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Nobel Academy, the Leopoldina, acatech, BBAW and AdW-Mainz. For his research successes, he has been awarded the German Future Prize and the Grand Cross of Merit by the German President. He also serves on ten industrial supervisory boards and as a board member of the International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley, USA.