Speakers & Organizers 2025

Organizers

Marc-Oliver Pahl
Marc-Oliver Pahl

Marc-Oliver Pahl, Ph.D., IMT Atlantique, France (Expert Cybersecurity)

Prof. Dr. Marc-Oliver Pahl heads the industrial Chair Cybersecurity for Critical Networked Infrastructures (cyberCNI.fr) at IMT Atlantique Rennes, France. The chair hosts 18 professors, 9 PhDs, 4 PostDocs, and multiple engineers and interns. Marc-Oliver is an adjunct professor of Carleton University in Canada. Marc-Oliver is Vice President of the German Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) (germany.acm.org). He heads the Future Education activities of the German-French Academy for the Industry of the Future (future-industry.org). Marc-Oliver’s research focuses on a holistic approach to cybersecurity with an emphasis on collaborative approaches including VR-based cybersecurity interfaces and federated learning. He is an experienced teacher and an eLearning pioneer, holding several teaching awards. He continuously hosts events for larger audience such as the TALK.CYBERcni.fr speaker series and the future-iot.org PhD school series.

Sebastian Steinhorst
(Foto: Andreas Heddergott)

Sebastian Steinhorst, PhD, Technical University Munich (TUM), Germany

Sebastian Steinhorst is professor for Embedded Systems and Internet of Things at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of TUM. The research of Prof. Steinhorst centers around design methodology and the hardware/software co-design of distributed embedded systems for use in Internet of Things, automotive and smart energy applications.

Olivia Pahl

Olivia Pahl, Project Manager Cyber Accelerator at IMT, France

Olivia Pahl is Head of Education Projects at the German-French Academy for the Industry of the Future (GFA) at IMT in France, and Project Manager for the Cyber Accelerator, a national program supporting the internationalization of French cybersecurity startups. Before moving to France, she led the communications department at the Institute for Societal Development (FGW) in Düsseldorf, Germany.


Speakers and Challenge Providers (alphabetical given name)

Mohammad Hamad

Mohammad Hamad, Technical University of Munich

Mohammad Hamad is a Research Group Leader for Security for IoT and Automotive Systems at the Associate Professorship of Embedded Systems and Internet of Things at the Technical University of Munich.

Marc-Oliver Pahl
Marc-Oliver Pahl

Marc-Oliver Pahl, Ph.D., IMT Atlantique, France (Expert Cybersecurity)

Prof. Dr. Marc-Oliver Pahl heads the industrial Chair Cybersecurity for Critical Networked Infrastructures (cyberCNI.fr) at IMT Atlantique Rennes, France. The chair hosts 18 professors, 9 PhDs, 4 PostDocs, and multiple engineers and interns. Marc-Oliver is an adjunct professor of Carleton University in Canada. Marc-Oliver is Vice President of the German Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) (germany.acm.org). He heads the Future Education activities of the German-French Academy for the Industry of the Future (future-industry.org). Marc-Oliver’s research focuses on a holistic approach to cybersecurity with an emphasis on collaborative approaches including VR-based cybersecurity interfaces and federated learning. He is an experienced teacher and an eLearning pioneer, holding several teaching awards. He continuously hosts events for larger audience such as the TALK.CYBERcni.fr speaker series and the future-iot.org PhD school series.

Laurent Toutain

Laurent Toutain, IMT Atlantique and Co-Founder of Acklio, France

Laurent Toutain is a Professor with the IMT Atlantique Graduate Engineering School and a Co-founder and a Scientific Advisor of Acklio. He worked for several years on IPv6 and participated in the creation of the G6 group, which has been gathering researchers and industrialists around IPv6 since 1995. His current research focuses on protocols and architectures specific to IoT’s needs. From 2011 to 2015, he managed the Smart Grid competence center shared by Télécom Bretagne, Texas Instruments, and ITRON. He is the author of several books on networks.


Communication

Samira Franzel

Samira Franzel, Science Communication Specialist at Einstein Center Digital Future, Germany

Samira Franzel has been responsible for science communication at the Einstein Center Digital Future since 2021. She studied American Studies and Political Science at the University of Mannheim, the Free University of Berlin, and the University of Copenhagen. In recent years, she has worked at the Graduate School for North American Studies at the Free University of Berlin, the Goethe Institute, and the Sarah Wiener Foundation, among others.


Staff

Sandrine Frouin

Sandrine Frouin, Assistante du Département SRCD at IMT Atlantique, France

Erkin Kirdan

Erkin Kirdan, M.Sc., TU München, Germany

Research Associate at the IOT Smart Space Team at TU München.

Christian Lübben

Christian Lübben, M.Sc., TU München, Germany (Expert IoT)

Christian Lübben is a research associate and PhD student at the chair of Network Architectures and Services at Technical University of Munich. Within the Internet of Things (IoT) Smart Space Orchestration (S2O) team his research focus lies on optimizing IoT smart spaces using Artificial Intelligence (AI) based advanced data analytics. The S2O team works on new ways of taming the complexity of the IoT. The goal is making a joint orchestration as simple as writing a smartphone App. Challenges include security, usability, resilience, scalability, and performance.