BELGIUM

Arthur Limpens

Founder at Allocacoc DesignNest

Arthur Limpens is a Belgian industrial designer. He is also an experienced Co-Founder of Allocacoc DesignNest with a demonstrated history of working in the consumer goods industry. He received his Master of Science in Industrial Design and Strategic Product Design from Delft University of Technology. He has been living in Shanghai since 2015.

DesignNest is a crowdsourcing platform that supports product designers with funding but also beyond that. Once a project is funded on DesignNest, the DesignNest Team will provide free support with manufacturing and distribution. DesignNest is also a subsidiary from Allocacoc which provides the design knowledge, sourcing, production and assembly, distribution and sales as well as seed funding through its platform.

CANADA/QUÉBEC

Gilles Vincent

Special Advisor of the Executive President, Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden

Gilles Vincent was appointed as the Special Advisor of the Executive President of Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden by the Shanghai Landscape & City Appearance Bureau of the City of Shanghai in 2014. He received the Master of Science in Botany from the University of Montréal in 1983. He was appointed as the Director of the Montreal Botanical Garden in 1997.

Gilles Vincent is a renowned specialist in biotechnology, specifically in the use of aquatic plants for wastewater treatment. As director of the Garden, a position that has allowed him to combine his solid background in botany with his management skills, he has initiated and contributed to numerous special events and projects. He also led a research group in phytotechnology, especially in constructed wetland and soil rehabilitation. He has 30 publications in peer-reviewed journals.

FRANCE

Pierre Angot

Co-Founder, ProtectorChain

Pierre Angot is an entrepreneur formerly trained as a data science engineer. He started a tele-health company in 2016 that got acquired later on and then worked as an AI consultant. He is now focusing on Blockchain and, together with his international associates, runs ProtectorChain, a comprehensive solution for supply chain traceability using blockchain.

ProtectorChain is a Shanghai based blockchain startup that enables supply chain participants to share information securely in order to provide end-to-end traceability and anti-counterfeiting services along the supply chain. They use open source blockchain technology as well as proprietary methodology to integrate seamlessly with existing supply chains along with collecting and interpreting complex data sets in order to provide our clients and their customers with actionable insights.

LUXEMBOURG

Laurent Kneip

SIST, Shanghai Tech University

Laurent Kneip obtained a Dipl.-Ing. degree in mechatronics from Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg in 2009. He owns a PhD degree from ETH Zurich. He was granted a Discovery Early-Career Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council and became a senior researcher at the Australian National University after his PhD.  Since 2017, he is an Assistant Professor tenure-track within the School of Information Science and Technology at ShanghaiTech University, where he founded and directs the Mobile Perception Lab.

Laurent Kneip is an expert in computer vision and try to enable autonomous systems and mobile applications to use cameras for real-time 3D perception of the environment.  He was a member of the ARC Center of Excellence for Robotic Vision. The group follows up on his continued research efforts around vision for intelligent vehicles, a journey that started as a member of the V-Charge project in 2013. In 2017, Laurent Kneip was awarded the Marr Prize best paper award (honourable mention).

SWITZERLAND

Laurent Coulot

Co-founder & CEO, Insolight

Laurent Coulot is co-founder and CEO of Insolight, a startup based at the EPFL Innovation Park in Lausanne, Switzerland. He obtained his Master in Micro and Nanosystems at EPFL in 2012 during which he developed a strong interest in solar energy. He co-founded Insolight in 2015 with the goal of developing highly efficient solar modules.

Insolight brings the most efficient rooftop solar panels to the market and combines its own patented planar intelligent optical system and space grade photovoltaic cells – typically used in satellites. This combination allows for efficiency approaching 30% compared with an average of 17-19% for current standard silicon products.