Merijn Backx
IDT General Manager - Safety & Environment, Asset and Technology (SEAT)
Merijn Backx has 26+ years of Shell experience delivering business outcomes that include engineering document management, finance analytics, sales and marketing insights, accounting efficiencies, procurement optimization, maintenance reliability, transforming & automating business processes and industry collaboration & ecosystems.
This track record has been established through a wide variety of IT application development, architecture, project management, operations and business interface assignments in Rotterdam, London, Kuala Lumpur, Houston and The Hague.
In his last role as VP of Enterprise IDT Strategy and Planning, he was accountable for developing Shell’s Enterprise IT Strategy, Planning, Competencies and Operating Model. He worked on Shell’s digitalisation strategy to help enable the net zero energy systems of the future.
Merijn is now IDT General Manager for Safety & Environment, Asset and Technology. He leads the digital transformation required to enable the asset of the future using technologies like digital twin, predictive maintenance and citizen development.
Prashant Soni
Digital Strategist – Operations & Asset Development
Prashant Soni has over 12 years of experience in Oil and Gas sector covering both technical and commercial aspect among other business strategy development and key customer management. He has a Master of Technology degree in ‘Offshore Technology’ along with a PhD in ‘Hydrodynamics of Slender structures’. He has held several management positions in the past and at present contributing to the digital transformation by developing a digitally focused business strategy for the ‘future of operations’. Thereby assisting in accelerating digitalization & innovation efforts at Aker BP.
Fabrizio D'Antonio
Asset Integrity Manager
Master electrical engineering degree, he is currently the Asset Integrity Manager at Raffineria di Milazzo SCpA.
During his time at Raffineria di Milazzo, he has been responsible for Hydrocracker, Hydrogen, HDS, Amine Washing, SWS, MTBE, SRU Production plants, then for Power, Steam generation, Utilities and Waste Water Treatment Production plants.
Following his move to Maintenance, he became responsible for Operative Maintenance and then for Maintenance Engineering.
He has also been Contract Professor at the Università di Messina for a course on Crude oil refining.
Luis Morais
CISO
With more than 15 years of experience in the Cyber field, most of them working and leading national and corporate CSIRTs, I’m currently based at home – the sunny Lisbon (Portugal) – leading the Cyber Resilience capacity of Galp, as their Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).
Pedro Santos
Senior Data Scientist
I’m a senior data scientist, I’m proudly part of the Digital & Data team, which is revolutionising the use of data in TotalEnergies, with data-driven decision making at its core.
We’re everyday improving our processes and incrementally deploying more and more ML-based solutions that ensure our users are always connected and receiving the right information at the right time!
I’ve been working in a variety of projects broadly aimed at minimising emissions and optimising production. They range from digital twins for virtual flow metering to early warning notifications for power generators.
Maan Iskander
Technical Services Department Manager
In August 2019, Maan was appointed as the Manager of Technical Services Department (TSD) of Saudi Aramco’s subsidiary in Europe, Aramco Overseas Company BV (AOC), headquartered in The Hague, The Netherlands. TSD Manager is responsible about the Quality Management Division, Engineering & Technology unit, satellite Research & Development Centers for Upstream and Downstream business lines located in Delft, Paris & Aberdeen in addition to his role as Project Management Team Regional Director covering all Aramco projects in Europe, Africa, Middle East and part of Asia.
Maan graduated from King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KSA) in 2001 with a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering.
Maan started his career at Aramco as Process Engineer in Berri Gas Plant, the 1st gas plant in Saudi Aramco. Thereafter, he joined Shaybah NGL Program where he acted as Project Engineer & Operation Rep working with the engineering contractor’s offices in the UK & South Korea. Later, he joined Facilities Planning Department for five years where he led several capital program and projects for the company and acted as Budget Director and Division Coordinator. On the last two years prior to joining AOC, he was the Energy System Division Head part of Process & Control System Department within Engineering Services.
Dr. Subrata Bhowmik
Principal Engineer –Subsea Digital & Automation
Dr Subrata Bhowmik has a MS and PhD from ETH Zurich and the Technical University of Denmark in Control Systems and Artificial Intelligence respectively. He has more than 15 years of design and development experience in energy industry . Subrata is also a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of IMarEST. He has contributed extensively in Asset Integrity Management, Asset Life Extension, Digital Twin, Offshore and Subsea Structure Health Monitoring and Offshore and Subsea Predictive Maintenance Strategy for various projects. He is currently working as a Principal Engineer-Subsea Digital & Automation in McDermott London office.
Roy Rusaa
Chief Digital Officer
Roy has worked in the oil industry since 1979. With more than 20 years at Equinor and 2 years in Baker Hughes. He started in Petoro in 2002, where he was VP of Technology for many years. Taking on the role of CDO in 2019 Roy has been instrumental in driving fast and broad implementation of new work processes both in Petoro and the wider industry.
Harald Wesenberg
Specialist IT
Harald Wesenberg is an IT specialist specializing in software innovation with more than 20 years of experience working at the Equinor Research Centre in Trondheim, Norway. His current focus is on the utilization of blockchain technologies in the oil and gas industry, where he has been the technical lead for Equinors blockchain efforts for the past three years. Prior to his current role as a software innovator, he worked for more than 8 years as an advisor to the Statoil CIO on enterprise architecture methods and practices. His primary interests are in using digitalization to enable new business models and explore new business and technical opportunities. He is a regular speaker at conferences and workshops both domestically and internationally and has published several scientific papers of his prior research.
András Buti
Automation and Process Intelligence Manager
András leads the Automation & Process Intelligence team in MOL Duna Refinery.
Prior to this role, he led the Process Information & Automation team in Slovnaft. Earlier, he held various positions in MOL Group HQ and in Honeywell.
He has 15 years of experience – as a subject matter expert – in process control, APC, OTS, Alarm management, IIoT, digitalization; and 8+ years of experience in leading expert teams.
His work is also his passion. Besides his daily job, in his free time, he is an enthusiastic home network, IoT and home automation developer.
Christian Møller
Chief Product Officer
Christian Møller is Chief Product Officer of Aize, an industrial software company established by Aker in 2020. An industry veteran with deep expertise in scaling fast-growing technology companies, Møller joined Aize in August 2021 from the position of Vice President and Chief Technical Officer at Kongsberg Digital where he led the development of Kongsberg’s Digital Twin and Digital platform and Services. He has previously worked at Microsoft’s research department on the development of a number of products, as well as on the assessment of new technology and technology companies. Møller has doctorate degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory and University of Cambridge in 3D technology, as well as a Master’s degree in optics, electronics and computer engineering from Cambridge.
SVP, Energy
Paula Doyle is senior vice president of oil and gas at Cognite. Before coming to Cognite, she spent 15 years working in a variety of roles within the oil and gas industry for companies such as ABB and Siemens, including in Norway and the Middle East. Doyle has a Ph.D. in industrial automation from the University of Limerick.
Martin Green
Head of Business Development
Martin Green has 25 years experience in process and industrial automation, working internationally in the chemical, energy and manufacturing sectors. Prior to joining Cellnex, Martin held senior positions at Emerson, Control Techniques and Brush Industrial Controls, gaining valuable insights working with some of the world’s best known industrial organisations. Martin is a long-standing member and contributor at the InstMC and regularly participates in speaking engagements.
Espen Krogh
CEO
Espen Krogh is Chairman of the Board of Prediktor AS and CEO of Prediktor Medical. He joined Prediktor in 1997 and pursued Prediktor membership in the OPC Foundation the same year. Prediktor is based in Norway and has a subsidiary in China. Espen was the key architect behind Prediktor’s industrial IT platform, APIS.
Marco Geerinck
AVP EMEA Enterprise Sales
Marco Geerinck is the Area Vice President for EMEA at Udacity and is responsible for helping Global 2000 companies transform existing talent to meet their strategic digital transformation goals.
He has over 25 years of experience in leading international sales teams and has worked at multiple innovative software companies in the Cybersecurity, Automation, and SaaS space, such as BMC Software, MicroStrategy, and IBM.
Marco joined Udacity to manage Northern, Central and Southern Europe, as well as the Middle East & Africa. In his role, he regularly meets with leading energy enterprises to discuss how to hire the right digital skills for jobs of the future, how to motivate and retain talent through ongoing development programs, and how to ensure the companies continue to innovate at a fast pace to optimize their digital transformation strategy.
Peter van Amsterdam
Sales Manager Advanced Inspection Services South/West Europe
Experiences 12-years general manager RVI & robotic inspections
Øyvind Skjervik
Chief Architect
With more than 30 years’ experience within the Telecom industry ranging from innovative startups to large service providers, Øyvind is proficient in the implementation, design, integration, and management of voice, video and data grade communications networks.
Experienced in numerous digital transformation processes where technology being the main player bringing the operational efficiency and sustainability to the next level, Øyvind has spent the last decade focused on mobile transformation and how to best utilize this technology in new areas previous not exposed to this level of communication.
