Femma Ashraf is the Founder and CEO of Astronomical AI, a company founded in May 2019 that is developing a deep learning application to help oncologists with cancer diagnosis and treatment. The company describes her as an artificial intelligence expert with more than 15 years of industry experience, a technology innovator and an advocate for diversity.

Dr Karim Bahou is Head of Innovation at Sister, Manchester's new innovation district. In this role, he spearheads the global development of Sister's ecosystem, working with senior leaders from Bruntwood SciTech and The University of Manchester to accelerate the growth of ambitious start-ups in Manchester and beyond.

Karim brings over a decade of experience at the intersection of academia and industry. He holds a PhD in organic chemistry from Imperial College London and has conducted research at Imperial, CSIRO in Australia, and the University of Liverpool. Alongside his academic career, he has held senior consulting roles at Plexal and FIS360 Ltd., where he specialised in building partnerships between government, academia, industry leaders, and SMEs to drive technological innovation.

David is Professor of Machine Learning at University College London and Director of the Science of Fundamental AI Research Lab (SOFAIR) that aims to create new Frontier Model capabilities. He has a BA in Mathematics from Cambridge University and a PhD in theoretical physics from Edinburgh University. He cofounded the startups re:infer (acquired by UiPath), humanloop (acquired by Anthropic) and vectify.ai.

Will Bushby is an Investor at the UK's Sovereign AI Fund, the £500m government-backed venture fund investing in British AI companies. He spent more than a decade in credit markets, including senior risk-taking roles as a Director at Bank of America and Head of Senior Financials Trading at RBC. He studied medical microbiology and virology before entering finance, later stepping away to complete an MSc in International Public Policy at UCL focused on AI governance.

Giovanni Coletta is the Founder of Quantidal, bringing around ten years of experience in risk management and AI governance. He has worked for major technology firms and global risk consultancies, advising financial institutions, energy companies and large conglomerates on major transactions, and has strengthened corporate security and compliance programmes in the EU and US. His expertise spans risk consulting, intelligence analysis, open-source intelligence, due diligence, investigations and disinformation, with a focus on AI governance, risk and compliance. He holds degrees in intelligence, risk and AI, and is a member of AIPIA.

Aidan Corley OBE leads UK Government Affairs at Cohere, focusing on AI governance and regulation. Previously, he was Chief of Staff at Cleo AI and led economic public policy at Google UK. Formerly at No.10, he worked on political strategy as Head of Research and Messaging, advising Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and served as Special Adviser to Theresa May and the Digital Secretary.

Roger Dickinson is an AI strategist at Cisco, with a career spanning systems engineering, cloud architecture, emerging technology, developer relations, and AI go-to-market strategy. He works across executive leadership, sales, product teams and strategic partners to shape customer conversations and help enterprise leaders navigate the shift from AI pilots to production-scale adoption.

A chemical physicist by training, Simone is Product Manager at Nu Quantum, building the networking hardware essential to scaling distributed quantum computers. She earned her PhD in physics from the University of Cambridge, specialising in quantum optics and nanoscale sensing; and previously studied a Master of Research in Nanoscience also at Cambridge, and a Master of Chemical Physics at Edinburgh University. Beyond research, Simone has worked as a freelance writer and broadcaster covering science and technology for radio, podcasts, and magazines. During her PhD she was awarded the SPIE DJ Lovell Scholarship by the International Society of Optics and Photonics (2021) and shortlisted for the Institute of Physics' Early Career Communicators Prize (2024).

Samantha is the Programme Director for the Industrial Strategy Priority Programme in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Her role plays a key part in delivering the Digital and Technologies Sector plan, implementing UKRI's contribution to the AI Opportunities Action Plan which aims to secure UK strategic advantage in AI. The AI Industrial Strategy Programme will invest over £1bn in research and innovation aligned to government priorities and economic opportunities over the spending review period. Her role works across sectors and with key stakeholders in BIST and across government to understand the overlaps and areas of complementary activities.

Serish Venkata Gandikota is Co-Founder and Co-Lead of the Frugal AI Hub at Cambridge Judge Business School, where he is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for India and Global Business. He has more than 20 years' experience across Europe, Asia and Africa in frugal AI, impact investing and climate finance. He co-founded InnoFrugal, helped launch the Frugal AI Adoption Labs and co-authored the white paper 'Frugal AI: Driving Sustainable, Inclusive, and Scalable Innovation'. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Lara is a Senior Researcher (Emerging Technology and Industry Practice) at the Ada Lovelace Institute. She has led Ada's work on AI accountability, assurance and evaluation approaches, including how they're used in practice and how they're reflected in standards, law and policy. She is interested in the political economy of governing emerging technologies.

Tom Harris is an Engineering, AI and Data Partner at Deloitte and leads the firm's AI for Infrastructure and Sustainability practice, working with industry leaders at the intersection of AI, digital infrastructure, energy systems, and sustainability. Over more than two decades, Tom has led major transformation programmes across telecommunications, technology, energy, and infrastructure, combining hands-on industry leadership with consulting expertise to support large-scale technology, data, AI, and operational change.

Matthew Hodgson is co-founder of Element, where he serves as CEO and CTO and leads the company's technical direction and vision. He is also the technical co-founder of the open source Matrix project, which he began with Amandine Le Pape and their team in 2014 after leaving Amdocs, and is a Guardian of The Matrix.org Foundation. He holds a degree in Computer Science and Physics from the University of Cambridge.

Chris Jefferson is CTO and Co-founder of Advai, where he leads technology development with a focus on AI security and assurance, testing and robust AI systems. He has broad experience across technology and financial services, including financial risk, regulation and compliance, alongside research into artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Luke leads IBM's Quantum Computing business in the UK and Ireland, helping organisations prepare for and capitalise on the quantum computing era. Combining a foundation in superconducting qubits with commercial leadership, he works with executives across sectors to define quantum strategies, identify high-value applications, and build the capabilities needed to realise business advantage. His mission is to bridge the gap between quantum innovation and real-world enterprise outcomes.

David Kershaw is the Founder and Managing Director of Posterity Global. He is a globally recognised procurement leader whose work focuses on modernising public procurement for the digital era.

William leads, as Executive Chair, MF&P's Midlands Supercluster, a venture to deliver five hyperscaler data centre campuses across the Midlands. William is the Chief Executive Officer of Mactaggart Family & Partners (MF&P). He is a real estate professional with experience executing real estate and corporate buy side and sell side transactions, gaining planning permissions, capital raises (debt and equity) for development and investment, JV structuring and the establishment and execution of divestment and liquidity strategies.

Jonathan Legh-Smith MBE is Executive Director of UKQuantum, the association for the UK's quantum industry, where he sets strategy and represents members nationally and internationally. He sits on advisory bodies including the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme Strategic Advisory Board and the National Quantum Computing Centre Technical Advisory Group. At BT he directed the Strategic Research programme for more than ten years and served as Head of Standards. He was the UK telecoms expert for London's successful 2012 Olympic bid, co-created the national Barefoot Computing initiative and was awarded an MBE in 2024 for services to science and technology.

Piers Linney MBE is Executive Chairman and Co-founder of Implement AI, which he set up in 2023 with Dr Aalok Shukla. An award-winning technology entrepreneur, he has provided technology services to clients ranging from small and medium-sized businesses to FTSE 100 companies, working across sectors including retail and defence.

Zygmunt's mission is to make the world's networks quantum safe. He is one of the co-founders of the GSMA Post-Quantum Telco Network Task Force. PQTN works on the impact of Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) in telecom and he is editor for its publications. He works with government and industry globally on PQC migration and guidance. He also researches the applications of quantum computing for telecom and national security. Zygmunt frequently speaks about Quantum Risk and Post-Quantum Cryptography at international conferences: ETSI IQC Quantum Safe Cryptography, GSMA Mobile World Congress, PKI-C Post-Quantum Cryptography, ETSI Security and IET Cyber Security. Previously as IBM's Telecom Industry Technical Leader he helped to prototype and develop many of the technologies that are now part of 5G: Edge (MEC), Telco Network Cloud (NFV), Orchestration and Open APIs. Zygmunt was educated at Imperial College London, is a Member of the IEEE and holds over 30 patents in computing and telecom.