Prof. Dr. Dr. Ayad Al-Ani is an associate professor at the School of Public Leadership at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. He is also a lecturer at the University of Basel and an associate member of the Einstein Center Digital Future in Berlin. He has over 20 years of experience at international consulting companies, including as an Executive Partner at Accenture. Most recently, he was Rector and Professor at ESCP Europe Business School in Berlin.

Urs Eppenberger has a degree in electronics from ETH Zurich. He has worked for the Switch foundation since he graduated, helping to build the Swiss Internet. Today, Urs Eppenberger is in charge of Switch's registry for the top-level domains .ch and .li. He is responsible for the stable operation of the related services, focusing on safeguarding the DNS as a critical infrastructure and protecting users in collaboration with the Federal Administration and the Internet industry.

Dr. Norbert Gaus, Executive Vice President at Siemens Technology, is responsible for Research & Pre-Development at Siemens. After earning a degree in electrical engineering from Technical University Munich, he worked initially as a research assistant at the German Aerospace Center. During that time he earned a Ph.D. in engineering from Ruhr University Bochum. He joined Siemens AG Technology in 1991. Between 1994 and 2001, Gaus held various positions in the Information and Communication Networks Group with the rank of Vice President. In the following four years, he served as President and CEO of Siemens Corporate Research Inc., Princeton, NJ, USA. From 2005 to when he assumed his current position, he held various executive positions in Siemens Healthcare, ultimately as CEO of the Customer Solutions Division (Sales and Service for Siemens Healthcare, HIS Business Unit) of Siemens Healthcare. Since May 2015 he is in his current position at Siemens Technology.

A Catalan-raised, British-born contemporary artist and cyborg activist best known for having an antenna implanted in his skull and for being officially recognised as a cyborg by a government. The antenna allows him to perceive visible and invisible colours via audible vibrations in his skull including infrareds and ultraviolets as well as receive colours from space, images, videos, music or phone calls directly into his head via internet connection. Harbisson identifies himself both as a cyborg; he feels he is technology, and as transpecies; he no longer feels 100% human.

Picture © Hector Adalid

Marco Hoffmann is a renowned speaker and Head of Domain Services at InterNetX GmbH. With 19 years of experience in the domain industry, he is an expert in the field of domain management. Through his expertise, he is largely responsible for the management of more than 5.4 million domains in the InterNetX portfolio.

In addition, Marco Hoffmann plays a key role in the management of domains within the IONOS Group. His expertise and experience make him a sought-after speaker at international events such as ICANN Meetings, NamesCon, CloudFest and various registry meetings.

Thomas Keller is CTO and member of the Executive Board of DENIC eG, the managing organisation of Germany’s ccTLD .de. He is responsible for Product Management, Technology/Security, Marketing as well as Policy & Public Relations. Thomas has been in the Internet industry since 1997. He has been actively involved in the ICANN/ccTLD environment for more than two decades and contributed to a range of working groups in various positions. He also is co-founder and Board member of ID4me.

Sarah Kriesche has been Ö1 science editor since 2010. While she was studying veterinary medicine, she completed several years of speech and voice training with Viktor Handlos (ORF) and gained experience in the computer industry, where she got to know the C (and C++) side of IT. Chance led her to radio, but her love of the medium has kept her there to this day. In 1999 she presented the radio program "Nachbar in Not" for the ORF for the first time, which reported on current events in south-eastern Europe in six languages. Until 2006 she worked as a presenter, comedy author and "Wecker" producer at Hitradio Ö3. After a position at the daily newspaper "Die Presse", where she built up and managed corporate communications, she returned to ORF in 2010. For Radio Vienna she designed the weekly series "Diversity in Vienna", which was honored with the "Prälat-Leopold-Ungar" award. Meanwhile, her focus of reporting is on technical innovations and their impact on society. With contributions for various Ö1 programs, she sheds light on the influence of IT on various areas of society. In 2016 her contribution "History of Surveillance" was awarded the "Surveillance Studies" prize of the University of Hamburg.

Alexander Mayrhofer has been a nic.at team member since 2002. He leads the Research & Development team as well as the technical implementation of the new Top Level Domains (new gTLDs). Additionally, he is active in the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) External Link. Previously, he worked from 1996 to 2002 as a systems engineer at a business ISP and was self-employed.

Andreas Musielak is COO and member of the Executive Board of DENIC eG, the managing organisation of Germany’s ccTLD .de. He is responsible for Finance, Legal and Human Resources as well as Member and End Customer Services and is Co-Managing Director of the subsidiary DENIC Services GmbH & Co. KG. He is actively involved in international meetings of the domain industry within the sphere of ICANN as well as of the Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries, CENTR, and is Chair of the standing Strategic and Operational Planning Standing Committee (SOPC) of ICANN's Country Code Names Supporting Organisation (ccNSO). He also is a member of the Information Economy Committee of the Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Christopher Mondini is Vice President, Stakeholder Engagement, Europe and Managing Director for Europe, stationed in the Brussels, Belgium office. In his role, Mondini oversees ICANN org’s operations in the region and leads ICANN org’s Global Business Engagement initiatives worldwide. Christopher began his professional life as a United States diplomat and later became a corporate investigator with Deloitte. He has investigated the world’s largest corporate corruption cases, while working with NGOs and business organizations on ways to mitigate corruption risks.

Franz Josef Reischenböck is Managing Director of Ledl.net GmbH (Domaintechnik.at) and responsible for day-to-day business operations. He is a member of the nic.at Round Table as a registrar representative. Franz Reischenböck is a certified data protection expert, member of the ISPA legal and security working groups and participant in the NIS2 working group of Denic eG.

Michael Riedl was appointed CEO of Team Internet, formerly known as CentralNic in December 2022. With strong financial and operational knowledge from his time as Chief Financial Officer and various managing positions within the group companies, Michael is positioned well to lead Team Internet to an even brighter future. Michael is an alumnus of the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. He holds two Master’s degrees; a LLM from the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management and a Master of Science in Business Administration from European Business School. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from James Madison University, Virginia and is a Chartered Management Accountant. Michael was recently appointed to the Board of Directors of ESGai Technologies. ESGai combines the power of artificial intelligence with real-time data to highlight opportunities to maximise ESG scores along with actionable insights informed by industry trends, analytics, and dynamic modelling.

Robert Schischka has been CTO of Austria’s official domain registry nic.at since September2003. nic.at administers all domain names with the endings .at. co.at. and or.at. Robert Schischka also is CTO of nic.at’s sister companies tldbox GmbH and ipcom GmbH. Additionally, he has been director of the national Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT.at GmbH), a subsidiary of nic.at, since 2008. His professional focus as managing director is on IT strategy, IT architecture and infrastructure and IT security. Robert Schischka studied business economics at the University of Economics in Vienna, specialising in commercial information technology and controlling. He gained his profound experience as a security expert during his occupation in a subsidiary company of the Austrian National Bank and as a consultant with the internationally active IT-consulting company CSC.

Thomas Rickert is the managing partner of Rickert Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH, based in Bonn. The law firm, which currently has 10 professionals, specializes in issues relating to the digital economy. Thomas Rickert advises clients in Germany and abroad on domain law, trademark law, data protection law, copyright law and IT law. In addition, Thomas Rickert heads the Names & Numbers Forum at the eco Association of the Internet Industry, which represents the interests of association members from the domain industry at national and international level and provides information and an opportunity to exchange ideas through regular events and publications. Thomas Rickert was a member of the GNSO Council at ICANN from 2011-2015 and is currently a member.

Alexander Riepl is a security analyst for the Austrian computer emergency response team, CERT.at. With a focus on threat intelligence, he puts the complex technical analyses of his colleagues into an operational and strategic context.

Barbara Schloßbauer is Head of the legal department since April 2001. Her field of activities include the representation of nic.at and the affiliated companies in legal issues, the analysis of national and EU-wide draft legislation, the drafting of contracts and the legal consultation of projects within the company. She is a speaker at seminars and events on the topics of Domain and Internet Law. Barbara Schlossbauer studied law at the faculty of law in Salzburg. She is also project manager of Stopline, the Austrian hotline against Child Sexual Abuse Material and Endorsement of National Socialist Ideology on the Internet. www.stopline.at.

Georg Schönberger is Team Leader DevOps and Security Engineer at XORTEX eBusiness GmbH. He studied computer/media security and secure information systems in Hagenberg and is also a certified Information Security Manager according to ISO/IEC 27001. For over 10 years, his focus has been on the development and operation of web applications. His areas of responsibility range from secure programming to CI/CD and hosting of all XORTEX projects. As an interface between "Dev" and "Ops", he is happy to provide support for open questions and give advice on his favorite topic "Linux".

Fritz Tupy is an experienced Managing Director with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. Skilled in Enterprise Risk Management, Banking, Sales Management, Management and Corporate Governance.

Richard Wein has been Commercial Manager of Austria's official domain registry nic.at since 2000. nic.at administers all domain names with the endings .at. co.at. and or.at. The state-certified Business Economist can look back on several years of experience in the fields of controlling and commercial management in different industrial enterprises. At nic.at, he is responsible for Finance, Administration and Marketing & Sales. In this role, he regularly attends international meetings of the domain sector (ICANN, CENTR, etc.). Richard Wein also is Managing Director of nic.at's sister companies tldbox GmbH, ipcom GmbH with the product RcodeZero DNS and of CERT.at GmbH. tldbox GmbH offers backend registry services and consulting for new gTLDs. RcodeZero DNS is an Anycast Service provided by nic.at and targeted at corporations, Internet service providers and Top Level Domains.

As a student back in 1990 Peter Zinn had a dispute with his professor about the future abilities of AI agents. That dispute still isn’t resolved, but it did lead to the presentation Peter will give at Domain pulse. AI and cyber security, and what it means for you. A presentation that needs to be updated every half hour, if you believe the hype. With both a degree in computer science and a background in theater Peter Zinn knows how to combine content and form into an unforgettable mix. He has over 10 years experience as a cyber security thought leader in law enforcement, has worked with Interpol, Europol, the FBI and other agencies, and has spoken at Microsoft, RSA, Kaspersky, and many others. End 2016 he switched to being a full-time speaker, trainer and advisor. One of his very first talks as an independent speaker: Domain pulse 2017.