Agenda

 Dr. Okan Geray has more than 25 years of experience in consulting and advisory roles across various industries. He has consulted for a number of organizations in Netherlands, France, Italy, Germany, South Africa, Turkey and Dubai. He worked at A.T. Kearney global management consulting firm for 6 years and was a member of the Global Telecommunications and Higher Technology core team before he joined Dubai Government in 2002. He has worked as the Strategic Planning Advisor in Dubai eGovernment, Dubai Smart Government, Smart Dubai Office and recently Dubai Digital Authority. His responsibilities include Strategic Planning, Strategic Performance Management and Policy Making among others.

Dr. Geray is the U4SSC Chair (U4SSC is a UN initiative coordinated by ITU, UNECE and UN-Habitat and supported by other 16 UN bodies, that help support the development of institutional policies and strategies which encourage the use of digital technologies to facilitate digital transformation and ease the transition to smart sustainable cities). He is leading several thematic groups globally for U4SSC namely “Guidelines on Strategies for Circular Cities”, “City Science Application Framework”, “AI in Cities”, “Enabling People-Centered Cities through Digital Transformation”, and “Digital Wellbeing”.

Dr. Geray is the Co-Rapporteur of the ITU Study Group 20, Question 7 on “Evaluation and assessment of Smart Sustainable Cities and Communities”. He is a member of the IEC-ISO-ITU Joint Smart Cities Task Force (J-SCTF). He is Co-Chairing the Working Group “Economic, regulatory & competition aspects” in the ITU Focus Group on metaverse (FG-MV). He was also the Co-Chair of the “Data Economy Impact, Commercialization and Monetization” Working Group, part of the ITU Focus Group on Data Processing and Management.

Dr. Geray holds a double major B. Sc. degree in Industrial and Computer Engineering from Bosphorus University in Istanbul Turkey, an M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. degree in Systems and Control Engineering from the University of Massachusetts in the US. He has published several journal and conference papers and was an adjunct lecturer in management for 15 years.

 Prior to taking up the role of UNU Rector on 1 March 2023, Prof. Tshilidzi Marwala served as Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Johannesburg (South Africa) from January 2018 through February 2023. He had previously served as that university’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Internationalization (2013–2017) and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment (2009–2013).

From 2003–2008, Prof. Marwala progressively held the positions of Associate Professor and Full Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa); from 2001–2003 he was Executive Assistant to the Technical Director at South African Breweries; and from 2000–2001) he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Imperial College (then University of London).

Prof. Marwala has been a visiting scholar/professor at universities in the USA, the UK, China, and South Africa. He has extensive academic, policy, management, and international experience, and is a co-holder of five patents. His research has been multi-disciplinary, involving the theory and applications of artificial intelligence to engineering, social science, economics, politics, finance, and medicine. He has served on a variety of global and national policymaking bodies, and has worked with such United Nations entities as UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO and WIPO.

He holds a PhD degree from the University of Cambridge (UK), a Master of Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Pretoria (South Africa), and a Bachelor of Science degree (magna cum laude) from Case Western Reserve University (USA). He also completed management and leadership programmes at the Columbia Business School and Harvard Business School.

Prof. Marwala is, inter alia, a member of the UN Secretary-General's Scientific Advisory Board, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), the Academy of Science of South Africa, and the African Academy of Sciences.

Prof. Marwala is the author of more than 25 books, including Leadership Lessons from Books I Have Read (2021) and Leading in the 21st Century: The Call for a New Type of African Leader (2021); dozens of book chapters, journal papers, and conference papers; and more than 250 magazine articles and newspaper op-eds.

Among the awards that Prof. Marwala has received are the Order of Mapungubwe (South Africa’s highest honour) and the Academy of South Africa’s Science-for-Society Gold Medal. He was named the "2021 IT Personality of the Year" by the Institute of IT Professionals South Africa, and one of the "100 Most Influential Africans of 2024" by NewAfrican Magazine.

Mr. Gill is currently Under-Secretary-General and Special Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologiesis. He was the Chief Executive Officer of the International Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence Research Collaborative (I-DAIR) project, based at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva.  

A thought leader on digital technology, he brings to the position a deep knowledge of digital technologies coupled with a solid understanding of how to leverage the digital transformation responsibly and inclusively for progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. 

Previously, he was the Executive Director and Co-Lead of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation (2018-2019).  In addition to delivering the report of the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, Mr. Gill helped secure high-impact international consensus recommendations on regulating Artificial Intelligence (Al) in lethal autonomous weapon systems in 2017 and 2018, the draft Al ethics recommendation of UNESCO in 2020, and a new international platform on digital health and Al. 

Mr. Gill was India’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva (2016-2018).  He joined his country’s Diplomatic Service in 1992 and served in various capacities in disarmament and strategic technologies and international security affairs, with postings in Tehran and Colombo.  He was also a visiting scholar at Stanford University.  

Mr. Gill holds a PhD in Nuclear Learning in Multilateral Forums from King’s College, London, a Bachelor of Technology in Electronics and Electrical Communications from Panjab University, Chandigarh and an Advanced Diploma in French History and Language from Geneva University.  He is fluent in English, French, Hindi and Punjabi. 

Shazade Jameson is a Project Officer in UNESCO’s Ethics of AI Unit. Her specialty is connecting perspectives for public interest organisations, and specifically facilitating the design and implementation of AI policy and data justice for public administrations. Currently she is leading the work the Flemish regional government. She was lead co-author of the UN-Habitat and Mila Quebec AI Institute report “AI and Cities: Risks, Applications and Governance”, and worked with GPAI on the Diversity in AI. Her PhD analyses technology policy in Singapore, as part of the Global Data Justice project at the Tilburg Institute of Law, Technology, and Society. She has collaborated with the Global Observatory on Urban Artificial Intelligence, as well as with the ITU United For Smart Sustainable Cities initiative. She is a passionate advocate for agile approaches in policy and research for more effective and humanistic collaboration

 Before joining UNU, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Caen Normandie (France) and a researcher in the UMMISCO international joint research unit of IRD (French Research Institute on Sustainable Development) Sorbonne University.

Over the years, Serge developed an innovative research program about modelling and simulation of complex systems at the intersection of several scientific disciplines applied to developing countries’ issues. His research interests are domain-specific languages and tools that ease the tasks of non-computer experts to model, simulate and analyse complex systems. He has applied his work to Epidemiology, Environmental Monitoring and Disaster Management.

From 2008 to 2012, he worked in Hanoi, Vietnam, on the AROUND (Autonomous Robots for Observation of Urban Networks) programme, which deals with deploying simple mobile autonomous sensors during disasters in the context of southern countries. He has also been an invited Professor at Kyoto University to work with Japanese experts on Rescue Robotics.

In 2017, he was based in Cameroon. With colleagues from the University of Yaoundé, he worked on Complex System modelling and Artificial Intelligence applied to applications like epidemiological surveillance and environmental monitoring in collaboration with IRD and CIRAD research institutes.

From 2018 to 2018, Serge was the Principal Investigator of GDRI Sense-South, an international research network of teams from Senegal, Cameroon, Vietnam and France working on “Innovative Sensors and IoT Telecommunication Networks for Environmental Surveillance in Southern Countries”. Sense-south funds actions like the “Smart Clean Garden” project to control the water purification in soils and the sustainable city project of Douala (Cameroon) with a local climate change observatory.

He organised and co-organized more than 50 workshops and conferences on topics such as Software Engineering, Modelling and Simulation, Rescue Robotics, Disaster Management, and Complex Systems, … and supervised more than 20 PhD/Masters students from various countries (Chile, Vietnam, Cameroon, Senegal, etc.).

 Her expertise lies in Digital Governance, digital government, emerging technologies, smart cities, digital innovation, and research policy.
She leads the research line on "Digital transformation, innovation, and emerging technologies", where she explores the potential of emerging technologies like Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, and Data Analytics. Her work investigates the impact of these technologies on transforming urban centres, settlements, and government and public services. Soumaya and her team are actively researching "leapfrogging strategies with emerging technologies in Africa" and exploring the implications of recent Govtech, emerging technologies such as Metaverse and Generative AI on government and public service, and open data and government and public services capabilities.

Committed to advancing smart cities and digital governance for sustainable development, Soumaya's work encompasses various dimensions of urban transformation. She is involved in several global projects and research initiatives. Currently, she is the project lead of the global survey assessing the responsible use of AI in cities in collaboration with UN-HABITAT and IDRC, which examines the implementation, use and governance of cutting-edge technologies for urban development.

As the lead contact for UNU-EGOV's collaboration with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Soumaya has coordinated various working groups under the U4SSC (United 4 Smart Sustainable Cities Communities). She is currently leading the FAIR cities Working Group.