John Baekelmans obtained a Masters degree in Computer Science from the University of Antwerp, Belgium & spent 21 years at Cisco where he held various global leadership positions within Engineering, Services & the M&A departments & has authored numerous US & European patents. John was also the co-founder of a Belgian residential solutions startup called Fifthplay.

Based in Eindhoven, John is currently Managing Director for the Netherlands & Vice President at imec.

Imec develops technologies for wireless autonomous sensing solutions, innovative health solutions & flexible electronics in an open innovation setting & in dedicated research trajectories. As Managing Director for the Netherlands, John is responsible for the overall business & operations, focussing on Smart Buildings & Smart Cities among other things.

As an innovator & engaging speaker who always thrives to push the status quo, John will passionately speak about the explosive growth of IoT applications within Smart Cities. These give rise to many challenges that call for creative research efforts from both academia & industry, especially for the development of efficient, scalable & relevant Smart City deployments.

Gert Bergen is the deputy head of cabinet of the Flemish minister of work, economy, innovation & sports Philippe Muyters. He is mainly active in digital innovation projects such as ‘the City of Things’ IoT living lab in Antwerp in collaboration with Imec. He is also active in driving the Flemish start-up and scale-up policy through the Flemish investment companies PMV & LRM.  As representative of the Flemish government he is also a member of the board of directors of Flanders innovation & enterprise, the main government agency supporting entrepreneurship & innovation and the Flemish funding agency for fundamental research, FWO, as well as being director at Imec iStart & the Imec Xpand fund.