Speakers
Prof Dr Blaž Zupan
Faculty of Computer Science and Informatics, University of Ljubljana
Dr Blaž Zupan is a full professor at the Faculty of Computer Science and Informatics, University of Ljubljana, and Head of the Bioinformatics Laboratory. He lectures and conducts research in the fields of data mining, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Prof. Zupan designed the open-source machine learning tool Orange, which is being developed in his lab, and has published more than 200 scientific papers.
Dr Eleanor Drage
University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies
Eleanor is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, where she runs the Desirable Digitalisations project and the In-Depth EU AI Act project, which is building the world’s first free-use auditing tool that helps companies comply with the Act. She also uses feminist and anti-racist ideas to improve society’s understanding of AI, for example, to demonstrate why AI-powered hiring tools can’t de-bias hiring, and why AI can’t make neutral predictions about which protests are likely to turn violent. This work has been covered by the BBC, Forbes, The Telegraph,The Guardian, Glamour Magazine and internationally. She has also spoken about her work on the BBC World Service, BBC Radio 3 & 4, and the Irish National Radio. She is the co-host of the award-winning The Good Robot Podcast (top 5% globally), where she interviews top scholars and technologists about AI ethics, and is a TikToker for Carole Cadwalladr’s All The Citizens’ data rights channel. She’s the author of An Experience of the Impossible: The Planetary Humanism of European Women’s SF (Oct 2023), and co-editor of The Good Robot: Feminist Voices on the Future of Technology (Feb 2024), and Feminist AI: Critical Perspectives on Algorithms, Data and Intelligent Machines (Oct 2023). She has also worked with Deepmind, The Financial Times, The United Nations Data Science & Ethics GroupS, CNN, BNP Paribas, The Open Data Institute (ODI), and the Institute of Science & Technology. Eleanor is a Bye-Fellow and Tutor at Gonville & Caius College.
Fabro Steibel
Executive Director, ITS Rio
Pos-doc in media & technology, and lawyer, Fabro is an alumni at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. He is a former member of the Global Council at the World Economic Forum, has a PhD at the University of Leeds, UK, and his past institutions include UCSD (USA), UN University (China), and UFF (Brazil). He is a member of the National Data Protection Council at the DAP of Brazil, and he is the executive director of ITS Rio.
Prof Dr Ivan Bratko
Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana
Ivan Bratko, PhD, is a Professor of Computer Science at the Faculty of Computer Science and Informatics, University of Ljubljana. He is the founder of artificial intelligence in Slovenia and one of the pioneers of machine learning internationally. He has led research groups at the Jožef Stefan Institute and the University of Ljubljana. His most prominent scientific contributions are in the fields of machine learning, learning in logic, logic programming and learning qualitative models, with applications in medicine, ecology and robotics. More recently, he has been working on interpretable planning, learning from “small” data and automatic estimation of problem difficulty for humans. He is the author of more than 200 scientific papers and numerous books, including Prolog Programming for Artificial Intelligence. He is a member of SAZU, IAS (Slovenian Academy of Engineering), EurAI (EurAI fellow) and Academia Europaea.
Dr Jeni Tennison
Connected by data
Jeni is the founder and Executive Director of CONNECTED BY DATA, an initiative that aims to put community at the heart of data narratives, practices and policies. She is the co-chair of the Data Governance Working Group at the Global Partnership on AI and a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow. She is an adjunct Professor at Southampton’s Web Science Institute, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and an associated researcher at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy where she examines the practice and public policy behind collective data governance.
Jeni was CEO at the Open Data Institute, where she held leadership roles for nine years and worked with companies and governments to build an open, trustworthy data ecosystem. She sits on the Boards of Creative Commons, the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data and the Information Law and Policy Centre.
She has a PhD in AI and an OBE for services to technology and open data. She loves Lego and board games and is the proud co-creator of the open data board game, Datopolis.
Dr Maja Bogataj Jančič, LL.M., LL.M.
Institute for open data and intellectual property, ODIPI
Dr Maja Bogataj Jančič is the founder and head of ODIPI.
Maja is an Associate Research Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Maja co-chairs the GPAI Data Governance Working Group. She is a board member of Communia, an organisation committed to expanding the public domain and access to and re-use of culture and knowledge, and has been the representative and legal lead of Creative Commons Slovenia since 2004.
Maja is a copyright expert; her recent work focuses on open science, open data, data governance and artificial intelligence, as well as open science issues and the copyright and data legal framework for research and science. Maja is the National Coordinator for Slovenia and the Regional Coordinator for the 6 Western Balkan countries of the Knowledge Rights 21 project. Maja has been appointed by the Minister as the ERA (European Research Area) Action 2 promoter for Slovenia; ERA 2 actions focus on the impact of copyright and data regulation on research and innovation.
Prof Dr Marko Milosavljević
Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana
Professor Marko Milosavljevič has a Ph.D. in Journalism and he’s a full professor at the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Social Sciences, where he also leads the Department of Communication. Professor Milosavljevič is a current member of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on Media Resilience and Sustainability, and of the Strategic Council for the Prevention of Hate Speech within the Slovenian government. His past roles include Vice-Chair of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on Media Environment and Reform, Chair of the Communications Law and Policy section of the European Communication Research and Education Association, and a member of the Core Experts Group for Media and Culture, advising the European Commission. His vast experience encompasses various research projects across Central and Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans, and roles as an evaluator and lecturer in the region.
Dr Pika Šarf
Information Commissioner and Institute of Criminology Faculty of Law in Ljubljana
Dr Pika Šarf works at the Information Commissioner’s Office, where she focuses on international cooperation and oversight. She is also a researcher at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, where her research focuses on topics at the intersection of law and technology, in particular the protection of personal data and the exercise of other rights in the digital world.
Prof Dr Vasilka Sancin
Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana
Vasilka Sancin is Professor of International Law, Head of the Chair of International Law and Director of the Institute of International Law and International Relations at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana. She is currently a member of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council (2022-2025), and previously (2019-2022) she was a member and Vice-Chair of the UN Human Rights Committee and its Special Rapporteur on the follow-up process to the Concluding Observations. She is, among others, an ad hoc judge at the European Court of Human Rights; an arbitrator and member of the Bureau of the OSCE Conciliation and Arbitration Tribunals; and President of the International Parvo Association for Slovenia. In 2021-2024, she is leading a basic research project entitled The Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Light of the Negative and Positive Obligations of the State to Guarantee the Right to Life (J5-3107), co-funded by the Public Agency for Research and Innovation of the Republic of Slovenia.
Dr Žiga Škorjanc
Faculty of Law, University of Vienna
Žiga Škorjanc is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law at the University of Vienna, Managing Director of lexICT GmbH Austria, member of the Legal Expert Group of the Observatory of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), and member of the Advisory Board of the Digital Asset Association Austria (DAAA). Previously, he worked at a law firm in Vienna (bar exam, Vienna Regional Court of Appeal). He specialises in IT law, intellectual property law, data and data protection law and the application of technological innovation in the financial sector.
Guests of the round tables and the moderator
Andraž Tori
Outbrain
Andraz Tori is Chief Product Officer at Outbrain, leading the company’s product and AI teams to deliver on product innovation and meet the evolving needs of clients and partners. Before joining Outbrain, Andraz was Co-Founder and CTO of Zemanta, a demand-side advertising platform acquired by Outbrain in 2017. Following the acquisition, he headed Outbrain’s data science department focusing on state-of-the-art recommendation systems.
Previously, Andraz co-founded Kiberpipa, a prominent hack lab, and hosted a TV show popularizing technology on national television. He is active in the Slovenian start-up community and is a co-founder of Slovenia-based investment fund, Silicon Gardens.
mag. Dušan Omerčević
Founder of Cleanshelf and investor in AI
Mag. Dušan Omerčević was the founder of Cleanshelf, a cloud software management company that was acquired by SAP LeanIX in 2021. Prior to that, he held senior product and engineering roles at Zemanta (acquired by Outbrain) and Najdi.si (acquired by Telekom Slovenia). He holds a Master’s degree in Computer Vision and is working towards a PhD in Artificial Intelligence.
Fotograf Tine Eržen.
Filip Dobranić
The Institute of Contemporary History and Today is a new day, Institute for other studies
Filip is a philosopher, sociologist of culture, hacker and responsible for hacking and <3 at the Today is a new day institute. With the Institute, he develops publicly available tools, sometimes based on artificial intelligence, and thinks critically about technology and the power relations that guide its development. In 2022, he joined the Institute for Contemporary History and became a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Computer Science and Informatics, University of Ljubljana. As part of his doctoral studies, he is researching Slovenian newspapers of the 19th and 20th centuries using computer vision and natural language processing technologies.
dr. Jelena Burnik
Head of International Cooperation and Oversight at the Information Commissioner’s Office
Dr Jelena Burnik is Head of International Cooperation and Oversight at the Information Commissioner’s Office, where she coordinates the IP’s cross-border cooperation in inspection and the IP’s participation in the European Data Protection Board. She focuses on cross-border supervision, personal data protection in modern information and communication technologies and digital marketing, data transfers to third countries, certification and awareness-raising activities on personal data protection. She has also represented IP in the Article 29 Working Party and at the Council of Europe and coordinated the EU projects CRISP (on certification of security products and services), ARCADES (on privacy education in schools) and iDecide (awareness-raising on personal data protection). She holds a PhD on behavioural advertising in electronic communications and privacy protection. She holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science. More info at: https://www.ip-rs.si/o-poobla%C5%A1%C4%8Dencu/vodstvo
Nina Slaček
Journalist at the First Programme of Radio Slovenia
Nina Slaček is a journalist at Radio Slovenia’s First Programme, where she focuses primarily on science and technology, in particular artificial intelligence, space and climate change. She produces and hosts the weekly science programme Images of Knowledge for the Ars programme. She is also co-host of the ApolloLajka podcast, dedicated to space topics.
Rok Kocjančič
Študent 4. letnika na Pravni fakulteti Univerze v Ljubljani
Rok je študent 4. letnika na Pravni fakulteti Univerze v Ljubljani. Ob študiju je aktiven tudi kot tutor in je trenutni koordinator tutorjev na Pravni fakulteti. Ima več delovnih izkušenj in se dodatno izobražuje na konferencah ter izobraževanjih v Sloveniji in tujini.
Tjaš Jelen
Študent 1. letnika na Fakulteti za računalništvo in informatiko Univerze v Ljubljani
Tjaš je študent prvega letnika na Fakulteti za računalništvo in informatiko. Na praksi Erasmus+ na Malti je pridobil vpoglede v mednarodno okolje in sodeloval v projektnem timu ter izdelal program za prepoznavo zapisa registrkih tablic. Navdušujejo ga področje strojnega učenja, globokih nevronskih mrež, analize podatkov in etičnih vidikov umetne inteligence.
Uroš Cvetko
Celtra
Uroš has been employed at Celtra as Chief Operating Officer since 2022. He is responsible for all post-sales processes (customer care, technical customer support, creative solutions and business intelligence). Previously, he worked in large Slovenian companies (Zavarovalnica Triglav, Mercator) as Executive Director for Business Intelligence, taking care of customer relations and CRM systems. Uroš also has many years of experience in business analytics and marketing consulting – for ten years he was the head of Valicon, the largest Slovenian marketing consulting and research company, and he also gained his experience at McKinsey. He was an active member of the DMS association, regularly lectured at marketing events in Slovenia and the region, and was a lecturer and mentor in CEED programmes for high-growth companies. He graduated in Economics and Management from Oxford University.
Uroš Čop
Law Firm Senica
Uroš is an expert in Constitutional Law and Public & Regulatory Law. He focuses mainly on Public and Regulatory Law, Public and Regulatory Law Dispute Resolution, Constitutional Law, White-Collar Crime, Data Protection and Cybersecurity Law, Fintech and IT, Intellectual and Industrial Property Law. During his career he advised and represented clients in many of the most complex Public and Regulatory disputes, defended clients in prominent White-Collar criminal procedures and participated in all major M&A’s concerning the Intellectual and Industrial Property. He is a co-author of Extensive scientific commentary of Criminal code of the Republic of Slovenia which was recognised as an excellent achievement in science in 2019 by the Slovenian Research Agency. Uroš is the Manager of the Adriatic Legal Network which was co-founded by the Law Firm Senica & Partners, Ltd.
Ursula Lavrenčič
KOBI
Ursula Lavrenčič is an entrepreneur, designer, award-winning artist and co-founder of Hopalai – the startup behind the KOBI project. Her mission and passion is to invent, design and develop tools that help children learn to read. As a mother of three, she deeply understands the importance of a good education. Before co-founding Hopalai, she worked at the intersection of design, art and science and has managed various projects in the art and business worlds.