Roberto di Cosmo is a computer scientist, and in 2010 he was the first director of IRILL – Initiative de Recherche et Innovation sur le Logiciel Libre – an initiative for innovation and research with regard to free and open software. After a decade of teaching at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, he became a tenured professor of computer science at University Paris Diderot in 1999. He is active in research in the field of theoretical computing, especially functional programming, parallel and distributed programs, programming language semantics, system types and linear logic. He now focuses on new scientific problems created by the ubiquitous use of free and open-source software, which was core to the European research project Mancoosi. He is monitoring the social changes induced by information technology with great interest, is a long-time proponent of free software, and contributed to its establishment with a bestselling book, Le Hold-up planétaire (The Planetary Hold-Up) in 1998. In 2007 he founded a thematic group for free programming at Systematic, which has led to the creation of more than 60 open-source research and development projects over the last decade. Di Cosmo was an early member of AFUL, the French Linux society. His most known contribution to Linux is the first live distribution of Linux (2000 to 2002), demolinux, which enabled running Linux from a CD-ROM. In 2015 he established and now leads Software Heritage, an initiative for creating a universal archive of all publicly accessible source code.
Primož Jakopin was born on June 30, 1949 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, into a family of linguists. His father Franc was a professor of eastern Slavic languages with publications in the field of grammar and onomastics, while his mother Gitica translated more than 50 novels from English, German, French, Russian and Polish. Because his main extracurricular activity was caving he intended to study geology, but followed his father’s advice with a degree in mathematics at the University of Ljubljana in 1972. In 1981 he received a Master’s degree in information science with the study “Entropy of Names and Family Names in Slovenia” at the University of Zagreb, and in 1999 a PhD in information theory for “Upper Bound of Entropy in Slovenian Literary Texts” at the University of Ljubljana. From 1972 to 1984 he constructed a numerical model for the approximation and visualization of karst caves. It was used to compute the volume of several caves and collapsed dolinas in Slovenia, and the results were reported at the 8th International Congress of Speleology and 3 rd European Symposium of Stereology. After he failed to continue this research at the Karst Research Institute in Postojna, Jakopin changed his area of interest to language technology, closer to his parents field of work. Another great passion was also computer programming, and with software he developed mostly at home he managed to make a career in computational linguistics, both in research, as head of the Corpus Laboratory at the Fran Ramovš Institute of Slovenian Language, from its foundation in 2001 until 2012, and in teaching, at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana (1993–2012) and at the School of Humanities in Nova Gorica (2012–2016). The major pieces of software he worked on include: STAT (statistical package, Control Data Cyber, 1977), IBIS (software package for data of variable length, mainly used for handling secondary library information such as data on books and articles, Digital DEC 10, 1981), INES (text editor with database and graphics, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, 1985, widely used in ex-Yugoslavia), STEVE (16-bit character text editor with database, graphics and DTP, ATARI ST, 1987–1992, distributed in ex-Yugoslavia, Germany, Benelux and Norway, with manuals in English, German, Slovenian and Serbian/Croatian), EVA (text editor with database and language technology that features, 135,000 lines of code in C, for DOS in 1992 and Windows operating system in 1996–), NEVA (EVA-based search engine for Windows servers, 1999–).
A legal counsel by education, a hacker at heart, Matija Šuklje feels most at home at the crossing of both those worlds. Since the late 1990s he has dedicated his skills to FOSS (Free & Open Source Software) and collected a vast array of experience in the field in the public, NGO and private sectors. He spent many years leading the largest global network of legal experts, specialized in open-source topics, where he is still an active member. He currently holds the position of Senior IP Counsel at Liferay.
Boštjan Špetič is Head of Museum Collections at the Computer History Museum, Software Heritage Ambassador, entrepreneur and start-up mentor, currently living in Slovenia, but keeping close connections with New York, where he lived for most of the past decade. Boštjan Špetič co-founded, built and sold two products within the same start-up, Zemanta. The first was a personal assistant based on semantic web technologies, which was acquired by an independent publishing-technology company Sovrn, the second product was the first programmatic advertising platform (DSP) specialized for native advertising, and was acquired by Outbrain. Boštjan currently works in Outbrain’s development group as a product specialist, is a mentor to several entrepreneurs worldwide, and a board member of Rock Content.
Saša Divjak is the author of various program applications, and lead and collaborator on a series of international and local projects in the field of computer automatization, robotization and multimedia technologies. He has been active on the boards of various international and local professional associations. He was head of the Department of Electrotechnics at the Institute Jožef Stefan, assistant to the CEO of Iskra Delta, Dean of the Faculty for Computer Science and Informatics at the University of Ljubljana, and Director of the Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Multimedia. He was a lecturer for the subjects Programming 2, System Software, Operating Systems, and Computer Graphics.
Silvana Žorž, Master of Digital Humanities (KU Leuven) and Master of Economics (Master in Business and Administration – IBM, University of Ljubljana). In her Master’s thesis, she researched the discovery of discriminatory factors in software design, under the mentorship of Dr B. Berendt (KU Leuven, Belgium). She obtained her Master’s cum laude, and dedicated her work to the value system in software design methodology. She has collaborated with many companies (Google and Outfit7, among others) in the field of digital marketing, digital product development, market research and consumer habits. She is currently a senior advertiser with the digital agency Red Orbit.
Dr Nataša Milić-Frayling is a founder and the CEO of Intact Digital Ltd, a company that provides a platform and services for hosting legacy software installations to enable long-term readability and use of digital data. Intact Digital works with highly regulated sectors such as pharma and life sciences to support compliance with data integrity regulations, reconstruction of research studies and reproducibility of data analyses, including machine learning and AI.
Nataša Milić-Frayling has 25 years of experience in computer science research and innovation, including 17 years at Microsoft Research (MSR). She has authored over 100 research publications and has dozens of approved patents to her name. Besides her research, Nataša has also led the MSR Research Partnership Programme, promoting collaboration with innovation partners on strategic challenges, including digital preservation and long-term access to digital content (PLANETS and SCAPE EU projects). She is Professor Emerita at the University of Nottingham, where she spent five years serving as Chair of Data Science, contributing to the university’s research strategy on data science and AI.
She is actively engaged with the broader professional community on critical issues that arise from the prolific use of digital technologies, ranging from professional ethics, privacy and design transparency to digital obsolescence and responsible innovation. She is a member of the Preservation Sub-Committee within the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme and serves as Chair of the Research and Technology Working group for the UNESCO PERSIST project. Nataša is an active member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). She served on the ACM Europe Council and as Chair of the ACM Women Europe Executive Committee.
Franc J. Zakrajsek is a mathematician, senior researcher, computer programmer, and consultant, working since 1970 developing geographical information systems in urban planning and related areas. His work focuses on innovative approaches, methods, simulation models, and introducing artificial intelligence in e-planning. He was a member of the expert group on digitization and digital preservation established by the European Commission until 2015. He was one of the founders of the Register of Cultural Heritage in Slovenia. He participated in several EU projects introducing geospatial information and 3D modeling in the field of cultural heritage, museums, libraries, and archives as a part of the Europeana-European digital library and developed the Europe-wide eCultureMap. He also led numerous local and national projects and was appointed as a lecturer by UNDP, UN-HABITAT, and TAIEX. He was a consultant for the InterAmerican Development Bank and has published more than 500 articles and other publications.