Online Trust And Safety Forum 2024

Professor Nathaniel Persily

James B. McClatchy Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Co-Director, Stanford Cyber Policy Center

Speakers' Biography:
Nate Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of Political Science, Communication, and the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies.  He is the Founding Co-Director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center and its Program on Democracy and the Internet, as well as the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.  Professor Persily’s scholarship and legal practice address issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration – all topics covered in his coauthored election law casebook, The Law of Democracy (Foundation Press, 6th ed., 2020). He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for many states.   He also served as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. His current work, for which he has been honored as a Guggenheim Fellow, Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, examines the impact of social media and artificial intelligence on political communication, campaigns, and elections.  His most recent book is a coedited volume with Joshua Tucker, Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field and Prospects for Reform (Cambridge Press, 2020).  For 2024, Professor Persily is focusing his research on questions concerning AI and democracy and on forms of AI regulation.   Professor Persily is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and served as a commissioner on the Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age.  He received a B.A. and M.A. in political science from Yale (1992); a J.D. from Stanford (1998) where he was President of the Stanford Law Review, and a Ph.D. in political science from U.C. Berkeley in 2002.

Mr Arup Angle

Managing Director, TrustLab Inc

Speakers' Biography:
Arup Angle is the Managing Director at TrustLab Inc, a startup which is creating innovative technology and partnerships to achieve a vision of safer internet with empowered users and trusted platforms. At Trust Lab, Arup drives product work across Generative AI Safety, Risk Analytics, Threat Detection & Emerging Risks. Trust Lab works with very large, mid size & small platforms, marketplaces and public sector organizations to tackle challenges related to online safety and compliance. 

Previously as a Director at Meta Platforms, Arup built teams solving trust & safety problems across organic content, ads, developer & API products. As the global org leader, he was accountable for Integrity & customer support of Meta’s Developer platform. Arup influenced & led the charter of the first cross functional leadership group on Developer Integrity & Privacy. His teams, comprising over 350 full time employees - people leaders, product & data analysts, policy & operations specialists, engineers and program managers, ensured safe and trusted connections among millions of people, businesses, and developers. During his tenure at Google, he managed content growth and risk teams spanning both monetized and non-monetized products. These teams focused on strengthening publisher partnerships, developing policies and managing product risks. Arup led the working group that built Google's first cross-product abuse fighting framework. 

Presently, Arup holds advisory board positions at Bondee, a next-generation social media platform, and Firstsource, a business process management company. In collaboration with industry leaders and scholars, he contributes to the development of innovative solutions to tackle the evolving challenges of the digital landscape. Arup is a graduate in Computer Science and holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Mumbai. He is passionate about teaching and has delivered lectures in executive programs on digital leadership, future ready leadership and leadership in complexity at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

Mr Lee Huan Ting

Director, Information Policy Division, Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI)

Speakers' Biography:
Lee Huan Ting is the Director of the Information Policy Division at the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) where he is responsible for content regulation matters and contributes to building a safer and trusted online society in Singapore. He and his team that worked on amendments to the Broadcasting Act in 2022 to regulate online communications services, including social media services, and strengthen protections for Singapore users against various forms of online harms. He is also responsible for dealing with the other major problem of the internet age – online falsehoods and misinformation.

Prior to MCI, Huan Ting was the Special Assistant to the Minister for Home Affairs & Law, and was also part of the team in the Ministry of Home Affairs which modernised the Penal Code to address technology-enabled crimes.  He also spent more than a decade in law enforcement with the Singapore Police Force where he held various roles, including in policy, intelligence, and operations. He last held command as the Deputy Commander of Central Division in the SPF.
Huan Ting graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Economics.

Mr Ben Chua

President & CEO, Cyber Youth Singapore

Speakers' Biography:
Ben is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Cyber Youth Singapore (CYS), a registered charity focused on empowering youths with skills and opportunities to shape Singapore’s digital future. The organisation was established in 2019 with Ben as its first CEO. Through 2019 till present, Ben has successfully led and developed CYS into Singapore’s leading youth tech movement, with over 30,000 youths impacted since. Ben is the recipient of the Singapore Computer Society’s IT Youth of the Year Award 2020, he is recognised through the award, for his outstanding contributions to Singapore’s technology industry. Ben completed his national service in August 2022, serving across multiple roles within the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF), specifically value adding the RSAF’s digitalisation efforts. Ben was awarded the National Servicemen (NSF) of the Year Award 2021 for his outstanding contributions. Ben graduated from Singapore Polytechnic with a Diploma in Infocomm Security Management with Applied Psychology in 2020. He is currently reading Law at the Singapore Management University.

Professor Lim Sun Sun

Professor of Communication and Technology and Vice President (Partnerships and Engagement), Singapore Management University (SMU)

Speakers' Biography:

Professor Sun Sun Lim is Vice President, Partnerships & Engagement and Professor of Communication and Technology at the Singapore Management University. She has extensively researched the social impact of technology, focusing on technology domestication by families, future of work and AI ethics. A prolific scholar, she has over 100 academic publications including Digital Parenting Burdens in China: Online Homework, Parent Chats and Punch-in Culture (Emerald, 2024), Transcendent Parenting: Raising Children in the Digital Age (Oxford University Press, 2020) and The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Communication and Society (Oxford University Press, 2020). Her articles have been published in top journals such as Nature, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication and Big Data & Society. She is a Fellow of the International Communication Association and serves on fourteen journal editorial boards. She also serves on the Media Literacy Council, SkillsFuture Research Advisory Panel and Singapore Environment Council. From 2018-2020, she was Nominated Member of the 13th Parliament of Singapore, raising issues such as governance of the use of big data, priorities in digital literacy education, and digital rights for children. She is an honoree of the inaugural 2024 Top 50 Asia Women Tech Leaders Award and the 2020 Singapore 100 Women in Tech list. She is a Fellow of the Singapore Computer Society where she is also Vice President of the Women in Tech Chapter and Executive Committee member of the AI Ethics and Governance Special Interest Group. She frequently offers her expert commentary in international outlets including Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg, Guardian, Scientific American, South China Morning Post and writes a monthly technology column in Singapore’s largest circulation broadsheet The Straits Times. She has won eight awards for excellent teaching. 

Professor Preslav Nakov

Professor and Department Chair for Natural Language Processing, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence

Speakers' Biography:

Preslav Nakov is Professor and Department Chair for NLP at the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence. He is part of the core team that developed Jais, the world's best open-source Arabic-centric LLM, as well as part of the LLM360 team at MBZUAI. Previously, he was Principal Scientist at the Qatar Computing Research Institute, HBKU, where he led the Tanbih mega-project, developed in collaboration with MIT, which aims to limit the impact of "fake news", propaganda and media bias by making users aware of what they are reading, thus promoting media literacy and critical thinking. He received his PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley, supported by a Fulbright grant. He is Chair-Elect of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL. Formerly, he was PC chair of ACL 2022, and President of ACL SIGLEX. He is also member of the editorial board of Computational Linguistics, TACL, ACM TOIS, IEEE TASL, IEEE TAC, CS&L, NLE, AI Communications, and Frontiers in AI. He authored a Morgan & Claypool book on Semantic Relations between Nominals, two books on computer algorithms, and 300+ research papers. He received a Best Resource Paper Award at EACL'2024, a Best Paper Award at ACM WebSci'2022, a Best Long Paper Award at CIKM'2020. He was also the first to receive the Bulgarian President's John Atanasoff award, named after the inventor of the first automatic electronic digital computer. His research was featured by over 100 news outlets, including Reuters, Forbes, Financial Times, CNN, Boston Globe, Aljazeera, DefenseOne, Business Insider, MIT Technology Review, Science Daily, Popular Science, Fast Company, The Register, WIRED, and Engadget, among others.

Professor Zhu Feida

Associate Professor & Associate Dean, School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University (SMU)
CATOS Adjunct Senior Principal Scientist

Speakers' Biography:

Prof. Feida Zhu is currently a tenured Associate Professor and Associate Dean at the School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University. His research interests include AI and collaborative intelligence, blockchain, data asset and AI governance, with emphasis on their application to business, financial and consumer innovation. He was the founding director of both the Pinnacle Lab for Analytics with China Ping An Insurance Group and the DBS-SMU Life Analytics Lab, focusing on social media and mobile data mining and analysis for financial industry with millions of dollars of support. Prof. ZHU is also the Founder and Chief Scientist of SYMPHONY, a Web3 blockchain-based protocol to empower a data-driven economy by democratized and collaborative data Intelligence with privacy by design.  Prof. ZHU has over 100 peer-reviewed research publications at top international venues, including ICDE, VLDB, SIGMOD, KDD, WWW, JMLR, TODS, TKDE, etc, with multiple Best Paper Awards (ICDE’07, PAKDD’07, DASFAA'16, WAIM'16). He won the Early Career Award of PAKDD’19 and is the General Co-Chair of IEEE ICDM’18 and ACM SIGKDD’21. Prof. ZHU obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2009. 

Mr Mimrah Mahmood

VP Enterprise and Partner, Meltwater

Speakers' Biography:

Mimrah Mahmood is the VP and Partner at Meltwater. With over 20 years of experience in digital media, Mim is a seasoned consultant who provides strategic guidance to Public Sector organisations, helping them achieve their milestones in PR, reputation management, and public engagement. His expertise lies in future-proofing workflows, methodologies, and the utilisation of digital technologies to ensure organisations remain at the forefront of innovation. He is dedicated to training and advocating senior stakeholders in the public sector, enabling them to fully leverage earned, owned, paid, and search media to maximize their impact.

Mr Tan Bing Wen

Founder, CheckMate

Speakers' Biography:
Bing Wen is a geek at heart who likes learning about things, building things, and making things better. In his day job, he is lucky enough to get to do all of this as part of CPF Board’s Frontier Products Team, which he leads. Outside work, he is a volunteer at Better.sg who founded and drives a tech for social good initiative, checkmate.sg. 

Mr Tan Congyuan

Assistant Director, Data Science and AI Division, GovTech

Speakers' Biography:
Congyuan leads the policy and partnership efforts at GovTech’s Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Division, a capability center with the charter to drive digital transformation through DSAI across whole-of-government. In this role, he drives strategic initiatives and fosters collaboration amongst the DSAI ecosystem - across research, industry and government entities. At GovTech, Congyuan and his team builds and implements AI-driven solutions for public good. He is concurrently the product manager for an AI tool that facilitates the early detection of dementia cases in the community. Congyuan has more than a decade’s experience in the public sector technology space. Prior to GovTech, he was in strategy roles at A*STAR and ST Engineering.

Professor Ian McLoughlin

Professor & Cluster Director, InfoComm Technology Cluster, Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT)
CATOS Adjunct Senior Principal Scientist

Speakers' Biography:
Professor Ian McLoughlin joined SIT in early 2020 and has served as Cluster Director for InfoComm Technology in the university since 2021. He was in the electronics R&D industry for over 10 years and spent 20 years in academia so far. He has consulted and worked in 5 countries on three continents, written over 300 academic papers and four textbooks with Cambridge University Press and McGraw-Hill. He won the global Innovation in Engineering award in 2005, became a Chartered Engineer in 1998, became a Fellow of the IET in 2013 and was twice a Chinese Academy of Sciences Presidents’ International Fellow. His research covers AI for speech and audio, embedded computing systems, and has been funded by Google, Huawei, NRF, MOE, MOH as well as governments in New Zealand, United Kingdom and China (including a Hundred Talent Program from Anhui Province). He was one of the founding PIs of the Earth Observatory of Singapore, and was the designer of the computers powering Singapore’s fist satellite, X-Sat, including building the first cluster computer in space. He serves as OTS Research Theme Lead for Early Detection.

Dr Usman Naseem

Lecturer (Assistant Professor), School of Computing, Macquarie University

Speakers' Biography:

Dr. Usman Naseem is an Assistant Professor at Macquarie University, Australia, specializing in Natural Language Processing (NLP). He earned his PhD in computer science from the University of Sydney, Australia, prior to transitioning to academia after more than a decade of industry experience in various technical and leadership roles.
 

His research spans NLP, multimodality, and social computing, with a focus on developing socially aware methods for applications like online trust and safety. Dr. Naseem actively contributes to the academic community by serving on the program committees, including as an area chair, for prestigious conferences such as ACL, EMNLP, COLING, WSDM, Webconf, SIGIR, ACM MM, and IEEE Transactions.

Recognized for his contributions, he has received numerous national and international awards, grants, and fellowships, including Best Paper Awards from IEEE Transactions in 2022 and at the EMNLP 2023 workshop, as well as the DAAD AINet fellowship in 2023.
 

Dr Reuben Ng 

Assistant Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

Speakers' Biography:
Dr. Reuben Ng is an Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Lead Scientist at the Lloyd’s Register Foundation Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk, NUS. A behavioural and data scientist trained at NUS, Oxford and Yale, Reuben spent 16 years in government, consulting, and research. In government, he was in the Prime Minister’s Office driving evidence-based policymaking through data analytics and Singapore's Smart Nation strategies. In consulting, he co-built the advanced analytics practice at a top firm, and implemented complex analytics capabilities across industries and functions.  In research, he is an expert in quantitative social sciences, social gerontology, and credited with creating innovative techniques to measure societal perceptions that are applied to strategic policy communications. His work achieved international media coverage at The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Forbes, BBC, and CNN.  He delivers masterclasses on Blended Innovation that integrates Data Analytics, Behavioural Insights, and Design Thinking; and served on advisory boards in finance, defence, education and sustainability. Reuben is the first Singaporean and Oxonian to win the International Fulbright Science and Technology Award, and the first from Asia to be honoured with the prestigious Harkness Fellowship since its inception in 1925—a "reverse Rhodes" for mid-career professionals. Reuben was ranked in the top 2 per cent of scientists globally by Stanford researchers since 2022. Details: www.drreubenng.com

Mr Ng Song Yeong

Deputy Director, Smart Nation Strategy Office, Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI)

Speakers' Biography:
Song Yeong is Deputy Director at the Smart Nation Strategy Office in the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI), helping to develop and drive Singapore’s Smart Nation agenda. He also assists the Ministry in identifying strategic priorities and developing policies on matters relating to online trust and safety, security and resilience, and information policy. Prior to his current appointment, Song Yeong helped lead the advisory team at the Legal Services department in MCI, advising on regulatory, policy, and legislative matters in areas including cybersecurity, cybercrime, telecommunications, and legacy and new media. He was a member of the secretariat for the Committee of Inquiry into the Cyber Attack on SingHealth in 2018, and assisted in operational and crisis management for events including the COVID-19 crisis, 2020 General Elections, and 2023 Presidential Elections. 

Ms Cheryl Tan

Director, Programmes & Partnerships, SHE

Speakers' Biography:
Cheryl is a Director of Programmes and Partnerships at SHE. She oversees SHE’s programmes on online harms and empowerment women and girls, including facilitate conversations and mindset change on attitudes relating to the role of women at home, work and in society. She served in the Singapore Public Service and prior to joining SHE, she was the Deputy Director at the Ministry of Social and Family Development working on policies to strengthen marriages and families. She has also worked with the Ministry of Education, focusing on communications planning and higher education planning. She also has experience working on elderly and disability policies. Cheryl graduated from National University of Singapore, double majoring in social work and psychology.

Professor May Oo Lwin

Professor, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University (NTU)
CATOS Adjunct Senior Principal Scientist

Speakers' Biography:
May O. Lwin, President's Chair Professor of Communication Studies at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication (WKWSCI), College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences is the Chair of WKWSCI and also serves as the Director of NTU University Scholars Programme. Professor Lwin’s expertise lies in strategic and health communication. Her work in digitally mediated health communication systems to improve public health has been piloted in various communities, schools and hospitals. On the infectious disease research front, her research portfolio has covered diseases like Zika, Dengue, Influenza and COVID-19. She is also an expert on food and nutrition communication and behaviours. A Fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA), she has received many awards such as the Fulbright ASEAN Scholar Award, Ogilvy Foundation International Award for Academic Leadership and the Outstanding Applied Researcher Award from the ICA. Professor Lwin serves on Women@NTU Advisory Board.

Dr Gulizar Haciyakupoglu

Research Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU)

Speakers' Biography:
Gulizar Haciyakupoglu is a Research Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Her research concerns influence operations, and online harms and activism. She is the co-editor of the volume titled Gender and Security in Digital Space: Navigating Access, Harassment, and Disinformation. Her publications appeared in various academic and policy outlets, including the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication and Defence Strategic Communications. She holds a PhD from the National University of Singapore (NUS), Communications and New Media Department (CNM), and an MA in Political Communication from the University of Sheffield. She received her bachelor’s degree in Global and International Affairs from the Dual-Diploma Programme of the State University of New York (SUNY) Binghamton, and Bogazici University, Turkey.

Dr Priyanka Bhalla 

Head of Safety Policy, APAC, Meta 

Speakers' Biography:
Dr Priyanka Bhalla is Head of Safety Policy (APAC) with Meta, based in Singapore. Previous to Meta, she worked for fifteen years in the international development and humanitarian space, with numerous UN agencies and the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. Her focus was always addressing children and women’s protection concerns with an emphasis on gender-based violence prevention and response. Dr Bhalla also worked with a tech start-up in Singapore for two years, studying online misogyny, youth wellbeing and misinformation on different topics across social media platforms. She holds a PhD in Public Policy, a Masters in International Affairs and a BA in Cultural Anthropology and French. 

Mr Chong Zunjie

Director, Joint Operations Management and Policy,  Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA)

Speakers' Biography:

Zunjie, also known as Zee, is currently Director, Joint Operations and Policy, in the Ministry of Home Affairs. As part of his portfolio, Zunjie oversees issues related to Home Team operations, investigation and enforcement policies, and regulatory policies. He has also worked on the Online Criminal Harms Act, which was passed in Parliament in July 2023.
 

Zunjie spent most of his career as a Police officer in the Singapore Police Force, where he went through different postings in investigations, operations, policy and command. Prior to his current posting, he was seconded to the Infocomm Media Development Authority where he worked on the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act, online content regulation and media policy. During the early part of his career, he was seconded to the then-Ministry of Environment and Water Resources where he worked on climate change policy. 

Mr Mohamed Irshad

Founder and President, Roses of Peace

Speakers' Biography:

Mohamed Irshad is the Founder and President of Roses of Peace (ROP) an interfaith not-for-profit organisation that seeks to build a harmonious, cohesive, and resilient Singapore. Since its inception in 2012, ROP has effectively reached out to over 100,000 people and engaged over 12,000 youths. The unique programmes of ROP have united the hearts of people across faith, race, nationality, and cultural traditions by building bridges, deepening understanding and strengthening trust.

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Professionally, Mohamed Irshad is the Head of Corporate Affairs for ASEAN at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) a global leader in consulting, business solutions and IT services. He spearheads strategic partnerships, government relations, public affairs and sustainability-related initiatives for TCS across ASEAN. He is also an Adjunct Faculty of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University (SMU). He holds a Bachelor in Business Management (BBM) and a Master of Science in Communication Management (MCM) from SMU.

In 2018, Mohamed Irshad was appointed by the President of Singapore as one of the youngest Nominated Member of Parliament and served in the 13th Parliament of Singapore representing the Civic & People sector functional group. He is also a member of the International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief (IPPFoRB), ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) and The Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers.

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In recognition of his exemplary contributions to the nation, he was awarded the President's Volunteerism & Philanthropy Award and the MUIS50 Inspiring Youth Award in 2018. He was conferred the esteemed 7th Abdeali Tayebali Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019 and is a Generation T honouree in the Gen.T List 2019 by Tatler Singapore. In 2023, he was awarded the inaugural Interfaith Youth Leadership Award by Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam and was featured on The Peak Power List 2023.

Dr Carol Soon

Principal Research Fellow and Head of Society and Culture department, Institute of Policy Studies
CATOS Adjunct Principal Scientist

Speakers' Biography:

Dr Carol Soon is Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies where she heads the Society and Culture department. She is also Adjunct Principal Scientist at the Centre for Advanced Technologies in Online Safety (CATOS) at the Institute of High Performance Computing (A*STAR) and Principal Investigator at NUS Centre for Trusted Internet and Community (CTIC). Her research interests are in media regulation and digital policy, digital literacy and web 3.0. Dr Soon also specialises in policy communication and the design of public engagement. Her work is supported by public, private and philanthropic institutions. Her most recent publication, “Mobile communication and online falsehoods: Trends, impact and practice” published by Springer Nature, addresses existing gaps in research and practice in the management of online falsehoods on instant messaging platforms in Asia. Dr Soon is also Associate Director of the Asia Journalism Fellowship and Vice Chair of Singapore’s Media Literacy Council. She also served on the Singapore Ministry of Communications and Information’s Digital Readiness Network, Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth’s Youth Conversations Advisory Panel, and the YouTube News Working Group. She is a recipient of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Research Excellence Award and the Australian Endeavour Award.

Dr Joey Zhou

Deputy Director (Acting) and Principal Scientist, Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC), Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR)
CATOS Joint Principal Scientist (Joint Appointment with CFAR)

Speakers' Biography:

Joey Tianyi Zhou is a Deputy Director (Acting) and Principal Scientist with the A*STAR Centre for Frontier AI Research (CFAR), Singapore.  He is also holding an Associate Professor (adj.) position at NUS. Before working at CFAR, he was a senior research engineer with SONY US Research Center in San Jose, USA. Dr. Zhou received a Ph.D. degree in computer science from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. His current interests mainly focus on improving the efficiency and robustness of machine learning algorithms.  In these areas, he has published more than 100 papers and received the Best Student Paper Nomination at the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV'16),  Best Paper Award at IEEE SmartCity 2022, respectively. 

Dr. Zhou regularly organizes workshops/tutorials at top-tier international conferences like CVPR, IJCAI, ICDCS, etc. He is serving on an Editorial Board for many leading journals like AIJ,  IEEE Transactions, etc., and Area Chairs in top machine learning conferences like ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS, IJCAI etc.  He is listed in the Top 2\% Scientists Worldwide 2023 by Stanford University.

Ms Raneeta Mutiara

Associate Faculty, Public Safety & Security (PSS) Program, Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS)

Speakers' Biography:
Raneeta Mutiara is an Associate Faculty member in the Public Safety and Security (PSS) Programme at the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS). She teaches in the fields of preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) in Southeast Asia, transnational crime, and restorative justice under the School of Humanities and Behavioral Sciences. She is also pursuing her Ph.D. at the same university. 

Holding a master’s degree in Southeast Asian Studies from the National University of Singapore and a bachelor's degree in International Relations from the University of Indonesia, her intellectual approach is rooted in social and political sciences. Her research interests revolve around preventing radicalization in both online and offline spheres, religiopolitical movements, Islamist feminism, and the gender-sensitive approach to deradicalization. Her goal is to contribute to the academic and policy discourse of the region regarding P/CVE.

Ms Asha Hemrajani

Senior Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU)

Speakers' Biography:

Asha Hemrajani is Senior Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for National Security at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, a leading think-tank. Her areas of research include cybersecurity, telecommunications, critical infrastructure, AI safety and governance as well as the role of AI in disinformation. Her work experience spans mobile telecommunications engineering, domain names, cybersecurity and consulting, in global and regional roles. She was previously a member of the Board of Directors at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a global non-profit organization that manages and coordinates Internet resources worldwide. She holds a ModularMaster in Cyber Security by Design, a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, as well as a Certificate in International Management.

Dr Li Qian

Manager, Transformation and Research Analytics, Public Transport Council (PTC)

Speakers' Biography:
Dr. Li Qian is the Manager of the Department of Transformation & Research Analytics at the Public Transport Council. She is a highly accomplished professional with a diverse background in urban planning and management, data science, and IT and research projects. Dr. Li holds a Ph.D. in Engineering with a major in Urban Management from Kyoto University, Japan. Prior to her current role in the public sector, she held positions at Kyoto University and Singapore Management University as a research fellow. With over a decade of research and working experience, Dr. Li has demonstrated her leadership abilities by guiding teams in developing algorithms and data visualization dashboards to support policy decision-making. Her expertise has been instrumental in spearheading projects related to online surveys, fare setting software, sentiment analysis platform. In addition to her professional roles, Dr. Li has made significant academic contributions, with numerous publications to her credit. Her work has been presented at prestigious international conferences and published in reputable journals, showcasing her expertise in AI algorithms, data analytics, and traffic simulation modelling.

Dr Roy Lee 

Assistant Professor, Information Systems Technology and Design, Singapore University of Design and Technology (SUTD)
CATOS Adjunct Senior Scientist

Speakers' Biography:
Roy Ka-Wei Lee is an Assistant Professor at the Information Systems Technology and Design Pillar, Singapore University of Technology and Design. His research focuses on the intersection of data mining, machine learning, social computing, and natural language processing. His particular interest lies in understanding user behaviours across multiple social networks and promoting online safety. He is currently leading the Social AI Studio, a dedicated research group that strives to develop cutting-edge social artificial intelligence systems. His work has been published in top conferences and journals such as TKDE, TNNLS, TCSS, ICDM, ACM MM, ACM SIGKDD, IJCAI, WWW, ACL, EMNLP, COLING, among others. He also actively contributes to the academic community by serving on organizing committees and acting as a reviewer for these conferences and journals.

Dr Avi Jager

Director, Child Safety and Human Exploitation, ActiveFence

Speakers' Biography:

Dr. Avi Jager serves as the Director of Child Safety and Human Exploitation at ActiveFence, where he leads a global initiative across four continents to enhance trust and safety on major user-generated content (UGC) platforms. 

Mr Miguel Fernandes

Technical Partner, Resaro.ai

Speakers' Biography:
18+ years of AI consulting experience in BCG GAMMA, Deloitte and Accenture. Built global AI teams and helped multinational clients across different sectors deploy AI models at scale globally. Wrote the test protocol  and evaluated the performance of AI models in regulated environments (such as Financial Services) to ensure deployment safety. Ran the R&D and implementation functions of a Singapore based climate-tech start-up helping global companies decarbonise.

Dr Jolene Jerard

Executive Director, Centinel  
Adjunct Senior Fellow, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies 

Speakers' Biography:

Dr. Jolene Jerard is the Executive Director of Centinel, a public safety and management consultancy firm headquartered in Singapore. The firm provides authoritative perspectives on the threat of terrorism and extremism, its impact on public safety and strategies to prevent, manage and mitigate threats against states, businesses and the global community. 
 
Formerly the Deputy Head of RSIS' specialist International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, she is additionally serves as an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. 
 
She received her PhD in International Relations from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK. She specialises on terrorist and extremist groups in Asia. She has held several positions as a Visiting Research Fellow at Afghanistan's Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies (CAPS) and an Assistant Professor in the Homeland Security Programme at Rabdan Academy in the United Arab Emirates.  
 
She has conducted field research in several threat zones including Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Southern Philippines, Southern Thailand and the insurgent areas of Bangladesh. In that connection she interviewed numerous leaders and members of terrorist and extremist groups in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. 
 
Over the last 17 years, she has been leading training programmes in Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia for security, intelligence, and counter terrorism professionals. She has taught at the NATO Centre for Excellence - Defence Against Terrorism (COEDAT) in Ankara, Turkey, and has consulted for the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute. She is on the list of specialist instructors for the European Union’s Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) in Europe. In addition to her work as an author, she has co-edited a number of books on counter terrorism, social resilience, and community engagement.

Mr Phang Ye Sheng 

Senior Health Policy Analyst, Ministry of Health

Speakers' Biography:
Ye Sheng completed his undergraduate studies in Biomedical Engineering and gained extensive experience working as a medical device engineer in various startups before joining mindline.sg. A passionate builder with a heart for medical device innovation, Ye Sheng participated in over ten hackathons during his university days, securing top places in countries such as Israel, Korea, Canada, and Singapore. As a data scientist at the MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation (MOHT), Ye Sheng leads the data analysis and AI integration efforts on mindline.sg and Let's Talk. Let's Talk is an initiative under mindline.sg, a youth mental health forum developed by MOHT to provide mental health support to youths in Singapore. In line with the National Mental Health and Well-being Strategy, mindline.sg serves as a first-stop touchpoint to guide individuals to the most appropriate support or services to meet their needs.
 

Ms Rachel Teo

Deputy Director, Innovation & Enterprise, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)

Speakers' Biography:
Rachel Teo serves as the Deputy Director of Digital Services & Solution Industry Cluster at Innovation & Enterprise Group, A*STAR, where she is managing the industry partnership portfolio for the media and digital technology sector. She has diverse experience across several functional portfolios, including business development, project management, technology commercialization/ IP proliferation and product development.