Ole Dokka is a multidisciplinary leader and strategist, working in the intersection of innovation, design, technology and digital business, since the beginning of the internet economy in 1995. He has held leadership positions in several big companies in Norway, among them Telenor and the global energy company, Statoil.

In Statoil he was responsible for developing and implementing digital and media strategies, new visual and interactive brand identity and a new global marketing programme. This work received multiple Norwegian and international awards. From 2012 he joined the corporate innovation team and headed up Statoil´s open innovation efforts, globally.

He left Statoil in 2014 to take up a new position as Strategy Director in We Are Int., a digital business design & development company based in Oslo and Stavanger. In March 2016 he left We Are Int, in order to develop a new meeting arena and cross-industrial conference, Spaceport Norway. The yearly conference was arranged for the first time in 2017 and is now the biggest space business meeting arena and event in the Nordics. The next conference will be arranged in Trondheim, Norway, 4 and 5 September 2019.

In addition to the position as Executive Director for Spaceport Norway, he also took up a position as Chief Strategy Officer in the strategic event company Conventor in 2018.

Ole Dokka is based in Stavanger, Norway, where he lives with his family of 5 + 2 cats and a lot of surfboards, skateboards, snowboards, golf clubs and tennis rackets.

Christian Hauglie-Hanssen is the Director General of the Norwegian Space Agency, a position he has had since June 2018.

Mr. Hauglie-Hanssen was previously Director of Space & Surveillance at Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace. He has more than 30 years of experience in management and business development within defence programmes, civilian products and space. He has also held the presidency of NIFRO, the advocacy group for the Norwegian space industry.

Mr. Hauglie-Hanssen was educated at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, earning a degree in civil engineering. In addition he acquired a Master of Science degree in physics at the University of South Florida.

In his spare time Mr. Hauglie-Hanssen is an active mountaineer. Mount Kazbek in Georgia, Ama Dablam in Nepal and Denali in Alaske are some of the peaks he has climbed.

Simonetta Di Pippo is Director of UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). Prior to joining UNOOSA, she served as Director of Human Spaceflight at ESA, and Director of the Observation of the Universe at ASI. She is an Academician of IAA and member of its Board of Trustees.  She is member of WEF Global Future Council on space technology since 2016.  She co-founded Women in Aerospace Europe in 2009.  In 2017, she became a UN International Gender Champion. She holds a Master’s Degree in Astrophysics and Space Physics from University “La Sapienza”, and Honoris Causa Degree in Environmental Studies, and an Honoris Causa Degree of Doctor in International Affairs. In 2008, IAU named asteroid 21887 “Dipippo” in honour of her contribution to space activities.

Juan Garces de Marcilla has been since 2015 Director of Copernicus at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECWMF). Prior to that, Juan hold the position of CEO of Thales Alenia Space Spain, a company that designs and manufactures satellite systems and equipment. Previously, Juan held the role of Director of Satellite Engineering and Procurement at Eutelsat of Paris, a worldwide leading telecommunication satellites operator, and spent his early carrier years with the European Space Agency in The Netherlands (ESA/ESTEC). He holds a degree in engineering and a MBA.

Maurice Borgeaud is Head of Department at the European Space Agency (ESA), responsible for science, applications, and climate activities in the Earth Observation (EO) Directorate. His main tasks are to interact with both the scientific community and industry in order to propose new and innovative EO satellite missions. He also participates in the definition of the long-term EO exploitation strategy to be realized via a coherent programmatic framework that addresses the full spectrum of EO user communities. He is managing the ESA effort on climate change including the development of essential climate variables, promotes the use of EO data to monitor the UN SDG’s, and represents ESA in the Board of the International the International Charter Space and Major Disaster.

Borgeaud earned an Engineer Degree from EPFL, Lausanne and a Ph.D. Degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and associate Editor for the “IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing”.

Dr. Aksel A. Transeth received his PhD in robotics from the Department of Engineering Cybernetics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in 2008. His PhD thesis was entitled "Modeling and control of snake robots". During his PhD he was a visiting researcher at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), USA, and at the University of Zürich (ETH Zürich), Switzerland.   After his PhD, Dr. Transeth has worked at a Norwegian research institute, SINTEF, with projects on robotics ranging from the subsea to the space domain – and with applications within petroleum, space, manufacturing and search and rescue. Within snake robotics, Dr. Transeth has been a key resource in two research projects on snake robot locomotion, as well as two ESA projects on snake robots for space applications. Other areas of expertise and interest include motion estimation, modeling and business development. 

Graduated M.Sc. in Engineering Cybernetics (1994) from NTNU (previously NTH). Background from Marine Cybernetics (acquired by DNV GL in 2014) as Chief Market Officer, where establishment of the market for third party testing of control software in the oil and gas was the primary objective. Spent several years at SINTEF MARINTEK developing control systems and simulator technology. Spent the first years at Kongsberg Defense & Aerospace developing one-shot mine disposal underwater vehicle for mine counter measures.

Prof. Martens has worked as method developer in multivariate soft modelling for more than 40 years, particularly wrt spectroscopy and other multichannel instrumentation types. His holds a MSc in industrial biochemistry and a dr.techn in chemometrics. He has done R&D in a wide range of fields, in universities and companies around the world (https://scholar.google.no/citations?user=60HNWsYAAAAJ&hl=no ). As professor he currently participates in building the new field of Big Data Cybernetics at NTNU. As entrepreneur he heads a development team in the startup company Idletechs AS, concerning new methods in edge computing, hybrid modelling and interpretable machine learning, for  industrial and aerospace  applications.

Stefan Gustafsson has more than twenty years of experience in technology and applications development. Since 2009 he is working for the European Space Agency, initially in the Business Applications programme where he was responsible for activities aiming at developing innovative services using earth observation, satellite navigation, and satellite communication. Currently he holds the position of Technology Transfer Officer, being responsible for ESA’s business incubation and technology transfer activities in a number of ESA’s member states.

Prior to joining ESA, Stefan was active as project manager and consultant in the telecom industry, working for several of the major European telecom operators as advisor on new wireless communication technologies. He also contributed to the standardisation of 3^rd generation mobile networks. The methods he has developed for mobile network design and optimization have been patented worldwide and been applied in several European countries.

Stefan holds a Master of Science from Linköping University (Sweden) in Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering, and a PhD from Aachen University of Technology (Germany) in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology.

Kristine Løvflaten Koslung is the project manager of European Space Agency Business Incubation Centre Norway (ESA BIC Norway), and the Norwegian Ambassador for ESA’s Business Application Platform.  She scout for startups with potential for participating in the BIC,  facilitate for collaboration between Norwegian industry and ESA, gives business advice to entrepreneurs and is responsible for the daily operation of ESA BIC Norway. Employed by Kjeller Innovasjon, she works as a business developer with startups and young entrepreneurs spinning out of universities, research institutes and existing industry. Ms. Koslung is also an experienced journalist with a history of working in the media production industry. In addition to her bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism, she holds a master's degree in the field of Innovation and entrepreneurship from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.

Former enthusiast of communicating hard news to the world, current enthusiast of exposing startups for the opportunities beyond and outside of mother earth.