Dr. Uros Kerin received his PhD from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2010. From 2004 to 2011 he was a research assistant at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Ljubljana. In 2007, he was a guest researcher at the Austrian institute of technology in the Department of energy in Vienna, Austria. From 2011 to 2017 he was with SIEMENS PTI in Erlangen, Germany. He held a position as a senior key expert and was responsible for consulting services in power system planning and operations. He was involved in numerous commercial projects for the electric power utilities and oil and gas industry. From 2017 he is with the Slovenian transmission system operator ELES. Presently he is the assistant director of the Asset and project management division and head of Diagnostics and analytics center of ELES.

Jan Kostevc works as the Energy Infrastructure Team Leader, dealing with European network development issues, from PCIs, TYNDP and network development scenarios, cost-benefit assessments, to the national development plans and their consistency with the European one. Besides network development, the team is also working on tariffs, gas security of supply and R&I activities of ENTSO-E.

Before joining ACER, Mr Kostevc was employed at the Slovenian electricity transmission system operator, ELES, where he worked as the Team Leader of the Operational Support Service, focusing, amongst other, on smart grid technologies.

Mr. Kalle Kukk has worked for Estonian electricity and gas transmission system operator Elering since 2010. His current focus as a senior advisor is on TSO-DSO coordination matters and digitalization of energy system, including data management projects (like Horizon2020 project OneNet). Before, he was responsible for R&D coordination, risk management and discovering new business opportunities for the company.

He has a master degree in economics. Previously, he worked for the Estonian Ministry of Finance, the IMF Estonia office and for a short term for Eurostat. Main tasks have been related to economic analysis, fiscal policy advice, treasury affairs and financial control.

Senad Aruc is a seasoned cybersecurity professional with more than 22 years of experience in Incident management, CSOC architecture and MDR/MSSP. Evangelist for EDR and XDR solutions and SOAR platforms. Extensive knowledge of malware analysis, early warning, threat intelligence platforms, and anti-fraud & anti-phishing solutions. Researcher and conference speaker about breaking inside botnets. Skills include written & verbal communication in 6 different languages. Taking a leadership role focused on technical design, support & troubleshooting of advanced threats solutions and serving more than 20 years in vital positions, notably North Lead  Architect at Gatewatcher, Lead  Architect Cybersecurity – Advanced Threats Group at Cisco, Principal Advisor, SOC Senior Lead, Senior Security Specialist, and Security Consultant with organizations such as UL-Underwriters Laboratories, ServiceNOW Inc BV, Reply / Communication Valley S.p.a and DfLabs S.r.l. Senad’s educational background covers multiple study subjects and learning about modern developments in organizational leadership, cybersecurity, and information security. Published more than 20 research articles focusing on botnets and malware research.

Dr. Rok Lacko is the Head of Energy Services Development at GEN-I. Since 2016 he is responsible for demand response services and research project management. He contributed to the implementation and running of the 200 MW virtual power plant licenced in two countries, establishment of real-time IoT control centre and management of several research and innovation projects. His passion is delivering continuous improvement by combining research findings and real-life experiences.

Branislav Pilát is Senior Electrical Engineer at Slovenska Elektrizacna Prenosova Sustava (SEPS), where he’s responsible for creation and maintenance of company standards and conformity assessment of project documentation and equipment documentation with international standards.

Dr. Helena U. Vrabec works on Palantir Technologies’ legal team and is based out of New York.

Dr Vrabec holds a master’s degree in law from Ljubljana University, an LLM from Tilburg University and New York University, and a PhD in data protection law from Leiden University.

In 2018 Dr Vrabec served as a resident fellow at Yale Law School and was part of the research center Information Society Project, supervised by Prof. Dr. Jack Balkin. Before her time at Yale, she worked three years as a researcher and a PhD candidate at Leiden Law School (the Netherlands). During the years in Leiden she also served as a European Commission ethics expert and gave lectures on privacy law for students and legal professionals. Prior to that, she worked as a privacy advisor for Ernst & Young in Amsterdam where she collaborated with the world’s leading corporations on implementing data protection mechanism.

Dr Vrabec regularly publishes in peer-reviewed journals on the topics in relation to data protection, big data and law & technology, and gives talks at national and international conferences. Her book “Data subject rights under the GDPR” was published earlier this year by Oxford University Press.

Michael Schoepf is Business Development Manager for the German software company Venios. The Venios solution helps grid operators to get transparency over low and medium voltage grid levels. Michael studied Industrial Engineering and did a PhD in Energy Economics. Before he joined Venios, he had been working as Research Associate for the Fraunhofer Organization and the University of Luxembourg and was involved in several research projects in the energy sector.

Aleš Glavina graduated in 2008 from Faculty of Computer and Information Science at the University of Ljubljana. He is very interested in mechanics, mechanical design, agriculture, and how to combine computer science with these segments. He started working in the energy segment in 2008 as a developer of a data collection system, moving into the role of Product Manager in 2016 and taking over the SW product management in 2020. He has also been a member of Esmig since 2016. He is currently working with customers from the energy sector in Europe, India, the Middle East, and Latin America.

After graduation, she worked as a young business researcher at Iskratel. After gaining her doctoral degree, she was employed by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the University of Ljubljana, where she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information and Communication Technologies and where she managed the 4PDIH Digital Innovation Hub. 4PDIH is a partnership between the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and the Association of Municipalities of Slovenia that raises awareness of the importance of digitalisation, provides support in the development of digital knowledge and skills, and helps decision makers design appropriate digitalisation policies.

From February 2018 to October 2019, she was the Executive Director of the Digital Innovation Hub Slovenia. Between 2014 and 2016, she was the Director of RAZ:UM, which implemented the Demola Slovenia project as part of the international Demola network, which has been recognised by the OECD and the World Bank as a best practice example for innovation policymakers.

She has coordinated several national and international research and development projects on the use of new digital technologies for innovation in and the development of cities, villages and communities. She has worked in several thematic groups of the European Commission on the topic of digital innovation hubs and rural development. She participates in an international team of researchers that has developed the SEROI+ methodology for measuring and monitoring the societal, economic and environmental return on investment of digital products and services.

She has authored and co-authored a number of scientific and professional publications concerning digital transformation. She was the first President of IEEE’s “Women in Engineering Slovenia”.

She is strongly committed to increasing the number of young people studying engineering – especially women – who will later remain active in their sectors and dare to take up leadership positions in science and engineering. As such, she was one of 50 women in ICT leadership positions selected to participate in the #HiddenNoMore multi-regional programme funded by the US State Department for empowering women in STEM fields.

She was a finalist for the “2018 Woman Engineer of the Year” in Slovenia and a nominee for Slovenian Woman of the Year 2021.

She is also the first Slovenian woman representative at the Global Young Academy and a member of the European Research Area Working Group within ALLEA – All European Academies. She was a member of the Board of Directors of the Slovenian Research Agency, a member of the Expert Council of the Employment Service of Slovenia and a board member of the international organisation Forum Synergies.

René Kerkmeester is CEO of Equigy, a joint venture of leading European TSO’s aiming to decarbonise the European energy flexibility markets by unlocking distributed smaller flexibility assets such as home batteries, heat pumps and electric vehicles.

Previously, René was CEO at the APX Group, Europe’s premier provider of power exchange and clearing services for the wholesale market, operating transparent platforms in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Belgium.

René served at the Board of Directors of Powernext, a regulated investment firm based in Paris, which designs and operates state-of-the-art electronic trading platforms for spot and derivatives markets in the European energy sector.

Bojan Miličić is an xperienced manager in international (EMEA) business development, with a technical background. He is driven by the ability to provide added value with state-of-the-art tech. An M.Sc. in telecommunications who spent one-third of his career in the energy sector working on digitalizing energy infrastructure. He has also challenged many different industries in his last 5 years on how to bridge the gap between old ways and new approaches resulting in new “data-driven” solutions and business cases. Now he is responsible for business development in the UN-recognized AI solution provider company Medius.