AI Asia Pacific Institute supports an interdisciplinary environment. We believe that a proactive interdisciplinary approach is required to well-respond to new and future challenges imposed by AI.
Our team brings a wide range of disciplines and perspectives who share the vision of encouraging trustworthy AI as a foundation to innovation.
Kelly is passionately building bridges between stakeholders across government, business, academia and broader society to better navigate the risks of artificial intelligence and advance its potential to build a sustainable world.
She is a dual qualified lawyer (Common and Civil Law). Kelly has led the International Law Association (ILA) as President of the Victorian Chapter in Australia. She has also served as one of the ILA founding members in Singapore. Kelly sits on the Founding Review Board - AI and Ethics Journal at Springer Nature and is a member of the IEEE P2863™ - Recommended Practice for Organizational Governance of Artificial Intelligence - Standards Development Group. She is also a board member and investor in technology companies.
Kelly often speaks on topics relating to the intersection of law, ethics and artificial intelligence.
Luis led Element AI’s Asia-Pacific operations as well as manufacturing and industrial vertical. Element AI is a Canadian start-up co-founded in 2016 by Joshua Bengio, winner of the Turing award and one of the god fathers of Deep Learning.
He has 20 years’ experience in Digital Transformation of industrial enterprises and has been involved with over 40 Customers in Heavy Industries (Power, Oil & Gas, Chemical, Mining and Manufacturing) advising on developing and executing their software solutions roadmap within Asia Pacific, North/ South America, Europe and the Middle East.
Luis was the Chief AI Officer of Aaqua, a Social Media Startup, where he leads the Aaqua Learning Technologies Excellence Centre, responsible for building the entire AI capability for the platform with operations in Asia, North America, and Europe.
Advisor to the Veritas Consortium led by Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The consortium has an overarching mandate to implement the FEAT principles (Fairness, Ethics, Accountability, Transparency) as critical considerations for the deployment of Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics (AIDA) technologies within financial institutions.
Luis is the guest lecturer at INSEAD MBA, EMBA MBA, Nanyang Business School and Nanyang Technological University.
Luis has a graduate diploma from MIT with a double major undergrad from University of Victoria in Commerce and Computer Science as well as a specialization in Pacific Asian studies from Chinese University of Hong Kong.
David is the Senior Advisor for Data and Artificial Intelligence at UnionBank Philippines, Chair of Data Committee at Aboitiz Group and acting in capacity of Managing Director for Aboitiz Data Innovation. Concurrently David is an external advisor to Singapore's Corrupt Investigation Practices Bureau (CPIB) in the capacity of Senior Advisor (Artificial Intelligence) and to Singapore's Central Provident Fund Board (CPF) in the capacity of Senior Advisor (Data Science).
Prior to his current roles, David was Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) first appointed Chief Data Officer and Head of Data Analytics Group reporting to the agency Deputy Managing Director for Financial Supervision and subsequently Special Advisor (Artificial Intelligence) reporting to Deputy Managing Director for Markets and Development. In these roles he led the development of the AI strategy both for MAS and Singapore’s financial sector as well as driving efforts in promoting open cross-border data flows. David pioneered the regulator and central bank adoption of data science as well as establishment of the Fairness, Ethics, Accountability and Transparency (FEAT) principles, first-of-a-kind guidelines for adopting Artificial Intelligence in the financial industry, as well as establishing the MAS-backed Veritas consortium.
Vincent is the Co-Founder of FutureWork Studio, a tech and consulting company helping organisations navigate the rapidly changing work-scape by equipping them with the tools and thinking they need to thrive now and in the future.
Vincent has deep expertise in large scale transformations across multiple industries and sectors globally, having been with McKinsey & Company for a number of years before moving into the Corporate sector, where he led the Strategic Capabilities and Future of Work function for Fonterra, a $20bn organisation with more than 22,000 employees globally. As an officer in the French Armed Forces, Vincent also spent more than a decade leading teams in challenging situations across many parts of the globe.
Vincent has a Masters Degree in Statistics and Data Analytics, an MBA from the University of Melbourne, and speaks fluent English and Portuguese in addition to his native French. Vincent was one of two inaugural TEDx Auckland Salon ‘in the Dark’ speakers in 2019, a world first event for TEDx, and is also a member of the SingularityU global expert faculty, speaking regularly on the future of work topic.
Pip has spent the last 10 years in Asia and has gained first-hand experience of the region living and working in Taipei, Manila and Mumbai before moving to Singapore.
Throughout her career Pip managed many technology implementations and today supports HR functions and companies with their digital transformation. Pip frequently speaks on the Future of Work and the role HR needs to play in finding synergy between Humans and Artificial Intelligence within organisations. She educates HR on how to map their talent challenges and design their technology ecosystem to meet their challenges today and in the future. Pip also provides specialist support and expertise to emerging HR technology companies as an Advisor.
Pip has been a regular keynote speaker at HR, Technology & Digital conferences across APAC since 2012. She holds an Executive MBA from the #1 ranked Kellogg-HKUST program, a Master of Science in Human Resource Management, a Postgraduate Diploma in Strategy and Innovation from Oxford University’s Säid Business School and a Postgraduate Certificate in Change Management from the Australian Graduate School of Management. Pip is a certified Global Human Resources Professional (GPHR) through the Human Capital Institute and Prosci Change Management Practitioner and holds professional credentials with the Australian HR Institute (CAHRI), UK CIPD (MCIPD) and Society for HR Management in the US (SHRM-SCP).
Barbara Erskine is a community builder, brand strategist and media relations professional. In Paris, she worked on the NYT Foreign Affairs Column with Flora Lewis. She led branding and media relations at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, and created “Barbara’s Davos”, a parallel program for the media in Davos. She was Wired Magazine’s European Editor. With her company, Barbara Erskine Networks, in Geneva, she helped governments, the United Nations, and private corporations launch initiatives; notably focusing on women’s issues at the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society (Paris and Deauville); and geopolitics and finance at Ambrosetti/The European House (Milan and Cernobbio). Current projects on communications and communities now include TBLI (Triple Bottom Line Investing) and the TBLI Better World Prize; R3i Ventures and the 2022 She Loves Tech Competition.
Ben is an expert in new business development and go-to-market strategy, especially focusing on digital & artificial intelligence.
Ben leads clients from strategy formulation to execution in creating B2C and B2B businesses with more than 20 years of experience in global consulting firms, major IT companies, and global artificial intelligence start-ups.
Ben is an advisor for Scale Asia Ventures, LLC in Seoul Korea and Armilla AI in Toronto Canada. A Strategy advisor for STAT (Social Alliance Token) Project and Advisor & Part-time CSO for Joydrone in Seoul & Daegu, Korea respectively. He is also an Advisory Council Member of Harvard Business Review. Ben is a Non-Executive Director with Gwangju Institute of Science & Technology and a startup Mentor to Bigbang Angels Inc in Seoul Korea.
May Leng has worked in the Professional development and education sector for over 15 years. She is an experienced consultant and a subject matter expert in HR and L&D practices in Europe and APAC.
She joined the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in 2006, managing the Professional Membership Team to council and benchmark people management and development practitioners into Chartered Membership. She has also held management roles in the Quality Assurance and Endorsements and Frameworks teams, working with Universities and MNC’s to accredit their learning programmes.
May Leng was relocated to Singapore to help establish a presence for the CIPD as the Regional Head of APAC. She has responsibility for driving CIPD’s partnerships agenda in key international markets by building awareness of the importance of raising capability, skills and mindsets, and the need to strengthen people management and development content and community links. She establishes relationships with key stakeholders and influencers in region across local government, trade unions, employer federations, professional institutes, research bodies and universities to champion better work and better working lives. She works collaboratively with key partners and clients across APAC to help them define and diagnose their learning needs and work with them to create sustainable development programmes.
She is regularly invited to speak across the region on topics such as Trends in HR, The Future of Work and Organisation Development, at conferences, exhibitions and seminars. She also facilitates workshops and panels for a range of audiences including SMEs, MNCs and senior government officials.
May Leng has led the CIPD’s Continuing Professional Development Working Party and represented the institute at the Professional Associations Research Network in the UK. She is currently a Council Member and Office Bearer for the Singapore HR Institute (SHRI).
Janet Wong, CFA is an Investment Stewardship Specialist for the Asia ex-Japan region, based in Hong Kong. She works on engagement with corporate directors and management on investment issues involving stewardship, management incentives, and social and environmental sustainability in Asia ex Japan. She is also responsible for advising analysts and portfolio managers regarding the E, S and G profiles of the companies in which we invest and co-ordinating proxy voting activity.
She joined from IHS Markit as the APAC lead of ESG, M&A and corporate governance advisory. Prior to that, she was part of Federated Hermes Equity Ownership Services (EOS)’ London team responsible for proxy voting, public policy advocacy and ESG engagement with listed companies. Her lead on the ESG theme AI Ethics and Data Governance was shortlisted as UNPRI Stewardship Project of the Year 2020. She started her career in HSBC Global Banking Hong Kong overseeing global banking relationships of Hong Kong conglomerates. She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Global Business and Management from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and a Master of Public Administration degree in Social Impact from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Wendy Bonython is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at Bond University in Queensland, Australia. Her research interests include technology law and regulation, privacy, and human rights law, with a particular emphasis on health related technologies. In addition to her legal skills, qualifications and experience, she also has a PhD in Molecular medicine, and previously worked in health administration and policy within the public sector.
Peter is a private sector development specialist who has worked over the past 35 years on industrial and technological development, foreign investment, public-private dialogue, and government policy issues in Central, South-East and North Asia. He has led programs on private sector development, public-private partnerships, contributions of business to social development, and business environment reforms in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and beyond. On a practical level, Peter managed a venture capital fund in Thailand, founded a securities firm in Thailand, established a private equity fund in Cambodia, ran several policy consulting operations (including the Brooker Group which he listed in 2001 on the Market for Alternative Investment in Thailand), and set up a Mekong-wide handicraft operation. Peter's PhD thesis dealt with productivity growth in Thai companies and his work has since blended his technical knowledge with practical real-life applications. He successfully completed the Directorship Certification Program at the Myanmar Institute of Directors.
Following leadership assignments with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Cambodia and Myanmar from 2010-2016, during which time he developed comprehensive engagement strategies and undertook detailed economic and inclusive growth analyses for both countries, Peter joined the UKAid 25 million pound DaNa Facility as Team Leader in December 2016. Peter led DaNa to be the leader in Myanmar on promoting corporate governance, responsible business, impact investing, and inclusive business, on strengthening financial inclusion and the ecosystem for fintechs, on stimulating public-private dialogue mechanisms to catalyze economic policy reform, and on supporting policy reforms to enhance business environments around the country. Following the onset of COVID-19, Peter handled the DaNa Facility’s extensive and responsive COVID-19 response activities. In May 2021, following the Myanmar military coup in February 2021 and extensive COVID-19-related UKAid budget cuts, the DaNa Facility closed down and Peter returned to the UK, from where he undertakes selected consulting assignments in the private sector development arena.
Leesa is the Founder and Managing Partner of R3i Capital, a seed-stage VC fund with metaverse accelerator hubs in Singapore, Luxembourg, Silicon Valley and Texas. Leesa is the lead investor for R3i in companies including Quantum Brilliance, MGA Thermal, Viewmind and Stratificare.
As a Xennial, born with an analogue childhood, and digital adulthood, Leesa has served over 400+ multinationals and a plethora of start-ups in 19 sectors across Europe, the Asia-Pacific, and the Americas as a leader in deeptech innovation, digital transformation, and reputation risk management.
A venture builder and pioneer, she has led companies from seed to USD 14B into new markets and supported raising over USD200M in Seed to Series C investments. Leesa has had one IPO and several exits and knows the hard knocks of lessons learned. She holds deep domain expertise in smart cities, financial services, insurance, healthcare, MedTech, agritech and fashion, beauty, and luxury. With a team of the world's best humans on purpose to make a difference, her group R3i includes the ecosystem builder R3i Ventures and its House of DeepTech and House of MedTech. R3i Impact Foundation is its engine of philanthropic impact.
With her purpose to "make a difference", she has had 15+ years of Digital Director and Board Advisory experience in the not-for-profit, academic and private sectors, empowering boards with best-practice reputation risk management and enabling companies to accelerate their digital transformation and impact. Her pride is empowering more than 200 endowment funds, Asset Managers, Exchanges, Corporate VCs, and Pension funds with data-driven strategies for responsible investment. Today responsible investment makes up 1/4 of the world's assets under management, transforming capital flows for impact.
Yaron Hazan is Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at ThetaRay, a leading provider of AI-powered transaction monitoring technology for financial crime prevention. Based in Dubai, Yaron leads the ThetaRay business in the Gulf region with a focus on the UAE and Bahrain, working closely with both customers and regulators to tailor AI-based AML solutions to their needs. He also works on developing solutions for new use cases such as capital markets, blockchain, and human trafficking. Yaron also delivers professional training to employees and customers, and mentors sales and marketing on how to evangelize the benefits of AI to the public and private sectors.
Yaron has over 20 years of diverse and broad experience in financial crime investigations. He has vast experience in Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing, with extensive knowledge in world-class standards across the financial sector. In previous roles Yaron has held positions including Head of Compliance at HSBC Israel covering both Financial Crime Compliance and Regulatory Compliance; Compliance & Forensics leader as part of the PWC’s global leadership at PWC Advisory Israel; Lead investigator for terrorist financing and security cases at the Israeli Police within the national unit for international and severe crimes and point of contact with FBI; and an intelligence position in his military service.
Dr Antonio Feraco is the Senior Advisor Industrial Strategy (MD) for the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development in the United Arab Emirates. With a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, a MSc in Industrial Engineer and a PMP®, Antonio ran successful projects in IOT and I4.0 for Oil and Gas, Mining and Pharma, and has joined several international and large initiatives in EU and ASEAN, as a Digitisation and Industry 4.0 expert. He worked with R&D, consultancy and technology advisory sector before and has comprehensive experience in AR and VR, AI, business process optimisation, project management, energy efficiency and robotics.
Dr Antonio Feraco, was the Managing Consultant for Industry 4.0 at TÜV SÜD. He was responsible for supporting the process manufacturing sector, in adopting technologies within the Industrial Internet of things and Industry 4.0 space to enable end to end integration, improve HSE and optimize efficiency.
Antonio is also an Adjunct Professor of Innovation Process Management at the University of Vitez since 2013. He also delivers talks for industry and academia in both Technical topics such as Predictive Maintenance, and non-Technical ones like Management of Innovation Processes and Technology Transfer Strategies.
Chiew Yu Sarn is a lawyer based in Singapore. He is a founding and Co-Managing Director and Head of the Corporate and Commercial Department at Yusarn Audrey LLC, one of Singapore's leading law firms. With nearly 30 years’ experience in legal practice, Yu Sarn is recognized for his expertise in corporate and commercial law and intellectual property (IP), specifically focusing on the commercialization of IP. He has advised numerous clients, including technology companies, venture capital and private equity fund managers, multinational corporations, and foreign and local law firms, among others.
Yu Sarn's areas of practice encompass a wide range of legal issues, such as venture capital and private equity investments, mergers and acquisitions, IP acquisition and sale, joint ventures and strategic alliances, technology law, licensing, franchising, and financial regulatory advice. He also provides strategic IP consultancy services to companies, institutions, and government agencies, helping them develop IP strategic planning and governance policies, enhance their in-house IP management capabilities, and raise capital and financing using their IP. Moreover, Yu Sarn is an accredited Certified Licensing Professional (CLP) and has been recognized by IAM 300 as one of the world's leading IP strategists for four consecutive years (2019-2022).
Apart from his legal work, Yu Sarn also serves on the Board of SEEDS Capital and is a member of the Singapore Institute of Directors. He holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from the National University of Singapore. He is admitted to the Singapore Bar as an Advocate & Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Singapore and entered in the rolls as a Solicitor in England and Wales.
Professor Heo is a public law professor at Seoul National University Law School. He teaches administrative law, environmental law, and law and economics. He received his Ph. D. in law and L.L.M. degree from Seoul National University Graduate School of Law, and he received his bachelor's degree in economics from Seoul National University Economics Department.
He is interested in the research topics of economic regulation with the analytic tools of economics. Recently, he is mostly interested in the field of AI Ethics and Law, climate change and energy law, food safety law, IT & privacy law, and judicial system. He also participated in the process of framing the Green Growth Act and the Emission Trade Act, and revision of the Data Protection Law in Korea.
Before joining the SNU Law School as a faculty member in 2006, he served as a judge of Seoul Central District Court in Korea. He was a presiding judge of specialized panel for the intellectual property law cases in the Seoul Central District Court from 2005 to 2006. He stayed as a visiting scholar at Stanford University Asia Pacific Research Center in U.S. from Aug. 2010 to Aug. 2011. He also stayed at Munich University College of Law in Germany from Dec. 2009 to Feb. 2010.
He is currently a board member of the Korean Public Law Association, the Korean Environmental Law Association, the Korean Law and Economics Association, and the Korean Regulation Law Association. He used to be the chief-editor of the Korean Journal of Law and Economics from 2015 to 2019.
Dr Leong is an AI Specialist and Senior Lecturer with the School of Computing, Singapore Polytechnic where he teaches Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Concurrently, he is a consultant in the Data Science and Analytics Centre (DSAC), where he works on industry projects in Data Science and AI. He worked on a consultancy project implementing Explainable AI for AI-driven HVAC optimization.
Dr Leong has conducted an executive course on Machine Learning and AI at the PWC Academy in Sri Lanka where he trained senior managers and executives in the telco, manufacturing and banking industries. In his previous role, Dr Leong was the Centre Director for the Applied ICT Research Centre in Singapore Polytechnic where he formed a new team of researchers creating innovative ICT applications for industry partners. Prior to joining academia, Dr Leong was a technopreneur and he was Director of R&D in an internet software start-up and CTO in a communications hardware startup. Being passionate about AI and Big Data, he keeps up to date with the latest research breakthroughs and participates actively in technical communities including the SGTech AI HPC Chapter and Singapore ISO/IEC JTC1/SC42 Artificial Intelligence Standards Technical Committee.
He is a founding member of the AI Professionals (AIP) Association. He was a reviewer for the AI Ethics and Governance BOK by Singapore Computer Society.
Hardeep has over 21 years of experience in analytics and data science technology in the financial services. He serves as the Head of AI Engineering for Temus (A Temasek and UST joint venture). Hardeep's expertise extends to the design and implementation of scalable data systems with embedded intelligence. He has been instrumental in numerous client engagements, including the MAS Veritas initiative, which focuses on enhancing internal governance around the application of AI and the management and utilization of data.
Hardeep has also served as the head of AI in financial services at Element AI in Singapore and completed a brief stint in Accenture where he was responsible for the creation of an AI Lab focusing on financial services use-cases. Hardeep spent more than a decade working in AI and Analytics teams in banks including Standard Chartered, JP Morgan, and Barclays.
Hardeep has a graduate degree in Computer Science and MBA in Finance. He serves as advisor for a few startups in the region and is a regular speaker at events in Singapore on the topic of AI in financial services.
Marianne Winslett has been a professor with the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign since 1987 (assistant, associate, full, adjunct, research, and emerita). Since 2020, she has also been a venture partner at R3i Ventures, which is based in Singapore. She served as the director of the Advanced Digital Sciences Center, a research outpost of the University of Illinois, from 2009 to 2013. Her research interests include information management, high-performance computing, and security.
Professor Winslett is a Fellow of the ACM, and she received the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation in 1989. She and her coauthors have received best paper awards from Very Large Data Bases (VLDB), USENIX Security, the International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), and IEEE BigData. She has served as an officer of ACM SIGMOD and ACM SIGAI, and on the editorial boards of ACM Transactions on Database Systems, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, the Very Large Data Bases Journal, ACM Transactions on Information and System Security, and ACM Transactions on the Web, where she also served as co-Editor-in-Chief. She received a Ph.D. degree in computer science from Stanford University in 1987 and an A.B. in math from Harvard in 1980.
With a BA in Audio Design & Production from Columbia College Chicago, Jordan has over 7 years of experience in sound design, dialogue editing, and mixing.
Xenia is a passionate Communicator, PR and Event Planner that has helped orchestrate the regional launch of multiple Deep Tech startups like Element AI as Managing Director of IMTAGE Communications, and AKUOS within the BriteBirch Collective network.
She is currently working with technology startups in Singapore helping plan, and produce their brand and product launches in Asia. Xenia has 20 years of experience in the industry, with a background in production of Feature Films (e.g. Percy Jackson, The A Team, The Twilight Saga) and over 20 different TV programs (e.g. Smallville, True Blood). She has an Associate Degree from University of British Columbia, with a Masters Degree in Intercultural Communications from Royal Roads University and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from Yale University.
Xenia has also worked in the launch events with various Film Festivals in Canada and Spain, High Fashion Brands events as well as Food and Beverage Festivals in Singapore and began her career helping run the family’s model agency for TV advertisement in Mexico.
