BDVA Leadership Team

Thomas Hahn
BDVA President
Chief Software Expert SIEMENS AG
Supporting Organisation

Contact President@core.bdva.eu
Responsibilities President of BDVA General Assembly and Board of Directors represents the Association vis-à-vis political institutions and other stakeholders at high level and on important occasions and important matters. President chairs every General Assembly and Board of Directors meetings.
Profile Thomas Hahn, born in 1960, has been Chief Software Expert at Siemens AG since 2011. After studying computer science at Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen he joined the company in 1986 and worked as a product developer in the field of industrial networks in Erlangen. In 1993 he moved to Nuremberg, where he worked in product management for SIMATIC and as a project manager responsible for development of SIMATIC STEP 7. From 1997 he worked as Head of Development at Traffic Control Systems in Munich for two years. In 1999 he returned to Nuremberg, where he was Head of Software Development for Industrial Automation Systems. He held this post until 2011. In addition to his function as Chief Software Expert, he was Head of the Business Analytics and Monitoring technology field from 2011 to August 2013. Beyond his activities at Siemens, Thomas Hahn is a member or board member of various bodies, including the OPC Foundation, Big Data Value Association, Openlab CERN and Platform Industrie 4.0.
Laure Le Bars
BDVA Vice-President
Research Project Director at SAP Research & Innovation
Supporting Organisation
Contact Laure.le.bars@sap.com
Responsibilities Vice President will represent the President in his/her absence, chairing the General Assembly and Board of Directors meetings and representing the Association in front of political institutions and other stakeholders at high level.
Profile Laure Le Bars is a Research Project Director at SAP Research & Innovation. She started an initiative on Quantum Computing @SAP. She is working on several projects like Big Data Value Association (Board of Directors and Vice-President), Smart Data Innovation Lab , EIT Digital or Academy Cube. She is also involved in the French-German cooperation on Digital Economy.
Before that, she set up SAP Labs Canada and was the Managing Director of the lab since its inception in 1997 until 2008 (450 persons). In parallel, she conducted an analysis for a lab in Central & East Europe in 2004, established the lab in Budapest and was the Managing Director of SAP Labs Hungary until 2007 (250 persons).
She won in 2007 the Stevie Award for Women in Business in category “Best executive–non-services-under 2500 employees”; and was nominated in category “Best Canadian Executive”. She was sitting on the Industrial Advisory Board of SWEBOK (Software Engineering Body of Knowledge www.swebok.org), a joint initiative of IEEE Computer Society and UQAM to achieve international consensus on the body of knowledge in software engineering.
Laure Le Bars holds degrees in Mathematics, Computer Science and Economics from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Informatique pour l’Industrie et l'Entreprise, Groupe Centrale, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, in France. Her thesis dealt with Operation Research for Artificial Intelligence at GERAD (Groupe d'études et de recherche en analyse des décisions) in Montréal, Canada.
Edward Curry
BDVA Vice President
Insight Research Leader
"Big data is no longer a buzzword; it is becoming a ubiquitous practice necessary for survival. The BDV PPP foster the development and wide adoption of big data technologies, value driven use cases, and sustainable business models through a Big Data Ecosystem"
Supporting Organisation
Contact edward.curry@insight-centre.org
Responsibilities Vice President will represent the President in his/her absence, chairing the General Assembly and Board of Directors meetings and representing the Association in front of political institutions and other stakeholders at high level.
Profile Edward is a Research Leader the Insight Centre for Data Analytics. Edward has worked extensively with industry and government advising on the adoption patterns, practicalities, and benefits of new technologies. Edward has published over 100 scientific articles in journal, books, and international conferences. He presented at numerous conferences/events and has given invited talks at Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT. In 2010 he was a guest speaker at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium to an audience of 600+ CIOs and senior IT executives. His research projects include studies of sustainable IT, energy intelligence, semantic information management, event based systems, and collaborative data management. He was a member of the primary contributor team for both the BDV cPPP proposal and the BDV SRIA 1.0 He is a member of the scientific leadership committee of Insight, and was a member of the group to devise the University’s Strategic Plan 2015-2020. He has a PhD from the National University of Ireland Galway.
Prof. Dr. Milan Petković
BDVA Vice President
"Innovative digital propositions powered by (big) data technologies have great potential to make real breakthrough in many Industrial sectors. Philips applies them to transform healthcare and achieve the triple aim: increased quality, cost efficiency and wide access to healthcare"
Supporting Organisation
Contact milan.petkovic@philips.com
Responsibilities Vice President will represent the President in his/her absence, chairing the General Assembly and Board of Directors meetings and representing the Association in front of political institutions and other stakeholders at high level.
Profile Prof. Dr. Milan Petković heads the Data Science department which conducts innovation projects for Philips in the domain of machine learning and big data analytics. He is also a part-time full professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology, at the department of Computer Science, but contributing to the Data Science Center too. His interests are in data science, big data, artificial intelligence and information security and privacy. Next to being the Vice President of the Big Data Value Association, Prof. Petković served in boards of directors of several alliances (such as Trust in Digital Life) and participated in many Advisory Groups (such as EC advisory groups for FP7 and H2020, ENISA, etc). Next to Philips internal projects, Prof. Petković is also active in the EU and Dutch national collaborative projects. He has led several big FP7 and Dutch national projects (e.g. AU2EU collaboration with Australia) and participated in many. He has published many papers as well as several books.
Ana García Robles
BDVA Secretary General
"Big data is transforming everything in our lives: from industry and businesses, to healthcare, agriculture, policy-making and entertainment. BDVA has developed a European data community of technology providers, researchers, academia and users, that closely collaborates with the European Commission in fostering European big data technology leadership for job creation and prosperity. I believe BDVA is playing a fundamental role in Europe to realize business and societal value, overcoming existing barriers to unlock the full potential of a data-driven economy"
Contact SecretaryGeneral@core.bdva.eu
Responsibilities Day to day operational management of the Big Data Value Association.
Profile Ana Garcia Robles, currently Secretary General of the Big Data Value Association (BDVA), holds a Masters Degree in Telecommunications Engineering and an International Executive MBA. Ana has a strong ICT industrial background in the Telecommunications sector, with over 10 years’ experience in the design, implementation and configuration of large-scale telecom networks and services, and, in the research and techno-economical assessment of new technologies and solutions for large-scale implementation. Ana has specialised in Innovation management and ecosystems, and she has an extensive experience at both local/regional and international level in Open innovation ecosystems, Living Labs, and socio-economic impacts of technology with over 5 years’ experience managing international associations and projects in this area. Ana has participated in multiple research and innovation collaborative projects and programmes in the areas of Smart cities and urban innovation, Open and Big Data, IoT, Open Platforms, Digital social innovation, e-Health, Digital cultural Heritage, ICT for Education, ICT for food, and Intelligent mobility. She is speaker in conferences, inventor, and contributor to different research papers and publications in the field of Smart Cities and innovation ecosystems.. Ana joined BDVA as appointed Secretary General in September 2016 being currently an imec-SMIT employee.
Dr. Andreas Metzger
BDVA Deputy Secretary General
"The BDVA will boost European big data research, development and innovation to deliver value from data"
Supporting Organisation
Contact info@core.bdva.eu
Responsibilities Deputy Secretary General will support the Secretary General in the organization of the day-day management of the Association. This includes support on public relations and communications, promotion, organisation of meetings and events, liaisons, membership management and finance.
Profile Andreas is senior academic councillor at Paluno, where he manages the research activities on big data software engineering, including predictive analytics and adaptation of data-intensive cloud systems. He is BDVA Deputy Secretary General and NESSI ETP Steering Committee vice chair.