Innovation Days - Agenda and Speaker CVs

Mr Alfredo CALOT ESCOBAR
Registrar, Court of Justice of the European Union

Born 1961 in Valencia (Spain), Alfredo Calot Escobar studied at the Universidad de Valencia (University of Valencia, Spain), where he obtained a law degree in 1984.

In January 1986, he was recruited by the Council of the Chambers of Commerce of the Autonomous Community of Valencia as a business analyst at the Commercial Office of Spain in Toronto (Canada), where he worked until his entry into service at the Court of Justice of the European Communities on 16 July 1986, which he joined after passing an open competition to fill the first Spanish lawyer-linguist posts in the Directorate for Translation.

In 1990, he was promoted to the post of lawyer-reviser, a post which he held until 1993, when he joined the Court’s Press and Information Service.

In 1995, he passed a new open competition for administrators organised by the European Parliament, which allowed him to join the Secretariat of the Institutional Affairs Committee, where he was responsible for preparing various legal reports for Members, in particular in connection with the Intergovernmental Conference that preceded the conclusion of the Treaty of Amsterdam.

In 1996, he was invited to join the Chambers of the Registrar of the Court of Justice, where he held the post of aide until 1999, when he was appointed as a legal secretary to Advocate General Dámaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer.

Such was the varied nature of his professional experience that he re-joined the Court’s translation service in 2000 as Head of the Spanish Translation Division, which he had helped establish 14 years earlier.

In 2001, he was appointed as Director of Translation at a key moment in the history of multilingualism, since preparations were being made for the enlargement of the European Union to include 10 new Member States and, with that, the near doubling of the number of official languages from 11 to 20.

Following a change in the structure of the institution’s administrative services, Mr Calot Escobar was appointed as Director-General of Translation in June 2007.

On 6 October 2010, he was elected as Registrar of the Court of Justice and has served in that capacity since then following the extension of his term of office in 2022, when his second term of office ended.

Ms Raluca PEICA
Director-General of Information, Court of Justice of the European Union

Raluca Peica is Director-General of Information at the Court of Justice of the European Union, member of several EU interinstitutional boards and since September 2022, Chair of the Interinstitutional Committee for Digital Transformation (ICDT).

Before joining the Court in 2017 as Director of Information Technology, she was Head of Unit in charge of the European Schengen information systems for internal security (SIS II), border management (European Schengen VISA) and asylum (EURODAC), within the EU Commission agency eu-LISA; previously she worked within the NATO Headquarters in Brussels.

Ms Natalia ARISTIMUNO
Director DG DIGIT.B Digital Services, European Commission

Natalia Aristimuño Pérez is currently Director of Digital Services at the European Commission's Directorate-General for Informatics. Before her appointment as a Director, she was responsible for the Interoperability Unit. Her past experience combines different Head of Unit positions in the domains of delivering solutions for human resources, decision-making, document and knowledge management. Since she joined the European Commission in 2000, she has been involved in developing user-friendly solutions for public administrations and the European Commission itself. She graduated from Deusto University (Bilbao, Spain) in the field of IT  and has a deep knowledge of the business domains in which she works.

Mr Pēteris ZILGALVIS
Judge of the General Court of the EU

Pēteris Zilgalvis is a Judge on the General Court of the European Union. Previously, he was the Head of Unit for Digital Innovation and Blockchain in the Digital Single Market Directorate in the European Commission and was the Co-Chair of the European Commission FinTech Task Force. He was the Visiting EU Fellow at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford and was an Associate of Political Economy of Financial Markets there. Before that he was Deputy Head of the Bioethics Department in DG Legal Affairs at the Council of Europe. Earlier, he was Senior Environmental Law Advisor to the World Bank/Russian Federation Environmental Management Project and was a Regional Environmental Specialist at the World Bank. His career started in the Latvian ministries of environment and foreign affairs. He completed his J.D. at the University of Southern California and his B.A. in Political Science Cum Laude at UCLA.

Ms Claire CASTEL
Head of the Outreach and Knowledge of IP Service. European Observatory on Infringements of IP Rights. European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO)

Claire Castel joined EUIPO in 2013 to coordinate the design and implementation of awareness campaigns and activities on the value of IP and damages of infringements, as part of the European Observatory on infringements of IPR. She became Head of the IP in the Digital World and Awareness Service in the European Observatory in 2018 and since July 2022, she has headed the Outreach and Knowledge of IP Service (Awareness/Stakeholder/Education).

Before joining EUIPO, she was previously head of the communication team in a public private technology partnership (2009-2013) and member of a communication unit in the European Commission (2006-2009). Previously, she opened the Brussels Office of Publicis Consultants in 1997 and ran it until 2006.

Mr Thomas MARGONI
Professor, KU Leuven, Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP)

Prof. Dr. Thomas Margoni is Research Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the Faculty of Law and Criminology, KU Leuven, and a member of the Board of Directors at the Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP). His research concentrates on the relationship between law, data and technology. Currently, Thomas has been focusing on the changes in the creation, access, transformation, and distribution of knowledge and information brought by technologies like the Internet and AI. Examples of relevant research projects include: the Data Spaces Support Centre (https://dssc.eu/), a Digital Europe funded project dedicated to exploring the needs of data space initiatives, defining common requirements and establishing best practices, where Thomas is KUL PI for the legal aspects; reCreating Europe, the EU H2020 project developing an integrated policy approach to copyright in the EU digital single market, where Thomas leads the task on AI and data ownership; Skills4EOSC a Horizon Europe-funded project to accelerate the upskilling of European researchers and data professionals in the field of Open Science; DAFNE+ the Horizon Europe project focused on the use of blockchain technologies to define novel revenue and business models for the cultural and creative industries; ZOOOM a Horizon Europe CSA focused on awareness-raising in the field of IP generation and management in collaborative innovation ecosystems; and many others. Other areas of interest where Thomas has developed institutional as well as funded research include: the processes of EU copyright and design law harmonisation; Data ownership and AI; Copyright, design rights and additive manufacturing; The digitisation of cultural heritage and the digital public domain; Open access and open science; Online intermediaries, fundamental rights and the platform economy; and the role of property rights in sports.

Ms Kelly-Marie BENNETT PRICE
Knowledge Circle Designs – EUIPO

Kelly has an LLM in IP Law (Magister Lucentinvs) and a degree in Translation and Interpretation from the University of Alicante, Spain. She joined EUIPO in 2000 as an examiner and in this role she examined trade marks and oppositions and wrote decisions on absolute grounds and relative grounds for refusal.

She is now Leader of the Knowledge Circle Designs and a member of the Knowledge Circle Register within the Legal Practice Service of the Legal Department, which is responsible for maintaining and updating EUIPO´s practice on trade marks and designs.

She regularly participates in EUIPO events and webinars, and lectures at the University of Alicante on IP-related topics.

Mr Pierluigi Maria VILLANI
Knowledge Circle Goods and Services
EUIPO Legal Department

Pierluigi is an Italian and EU Trade mark attorney. After working in private practice in Italy, he joined EUIPO in 2014 as a decision taker in cancellation proceedings.

Pierluigi participates as a speaker in EUIPO conferences, webinars and trainings, and he is now in the Legal Practice Service of the Legal Department as a member of the Knowledge Circle Relative Grounds and Knowledge Circle Goods and Services.

He is the coordinator of the ‘Meta-Circle’, a forum formed within the Legal Department that is dedicated to the impact of the metaverse on IP matters and oversees the participation of the Knowledge Circle leaders and representatives from different EUIPO departments.

Day 2- Tuesday 23 May

Mr Joao FERNANDES
Director of IT, Court of Justice of the European Union

Mr. Fernandes is a Master of Science by Research in algorithmic efficiency. He is currently completing a Master of Laws in Data Protection and Cybersecurity. Prior to joining the CJEU as Director of IT in January 2023, Mr Fernandes was the Head of IT at the European Union Agency for Asylum, where he managed the organization's IT services since 2013 and during the 2015/2016 migration crisis. Prior to this professional experience, Mr. Fernandes worked for three years in the Portuguese private sector as a systems engineer and for five years as a specialist civil servant in the Portuguese Navy.

Mr Dragos TUDORACHE
Member of the European Parliament

Dragoș Tudorache is a Member of the European Parliament and Vice-President of the Renew Europe Group. He is the Chair of the Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in the Digital Age (AIDA) and the LIBE rapporteur on the AI Act, and he sits on the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET), the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), the Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE), and the European Parliament's Delegation for relations with the United States (D-US).

Dragos began his career in 1997 as a judge in Romania. Between 2000 and 2005, he built and led the legal departments at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the UN missions in Kosovo. After working on justice and anticorruption at the European Commission Representation in Romania, supporting the country’s EU accession, he joined the Commission as an official and, subsequently, qualified for leadership roles in EU institutions, managing a number of units and strategic projects such as the Schengen Information System, Visa Information System, and the establishment of eu-LISA.

During the European migration crisis, Dragos was entrusted with leading the coordination and strategy Unit in DG-Home, the European Commission Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs, until he joined the Romanian Government led by Dacian Cioloș. Between 2015 and 2017, he served as Head of the Prime Minister’s Chancellery, Minister of Communications and for the Digital Society, and Minister of Interior. He was elected to the European Parliament in 2019. His current interests in the European Parliament include security and defence, artificial intelligence and new technologies, transatlantic issues, the Republic of Moldova, and internal affairs.

Mr David REICHEL
Project Manager, Justice, Digital and Migration Unit, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights

Dr. David Reichel is a project manager at the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). He is responsible for managing FRA's research on artificial intelligence and on online content moderation, resulting in several reports, such as FRA’s report on artificial intelligence and fundamental rights ‘Getting the future right’. Prior to joining FRA in 2014, he worked for several years at the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD). In addition, he has been teaching several university courses on human rights, migration and research methodology. He has published numerous articles, working papers and book chapters on issues related to human rights, migration and citizenship.

Ms Irina ORSSICH
Head of Sector AI Policy, Unit A2: Artificial Intelligence Policy Development and Coordination

Irina Orssich works for the European Commission, at the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT). She is Head of Sector for Artificial Intelligence Policy. Her responsibilities include regulatory and socio-economic aspects of Artificial Intelligence. She studied law in Freiburg i. Br., European law in Saarbrücken, and passed the second state law examination in Berlin. Previous responsibilities have included posts in the audiovisual sector and as legal adviser for competition and state aid law.

Ms Mireille HILDEBRANDT
Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Mireille Hildebrandt is a Research Professor on ‘Interfacing Law and Technology’ at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB), appointed by the VUB Research Council. She is co-Director of the Research Group on Law Science Technology and Society studies (LSTS) at the Faculty of Law and Criminology.

She also holds the part-time Chair of Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law at the Science Faculty of the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS) at Radboud University Nijmegen.

​Her research interests concern the implications of automated decisions, machine learning and mindless artificial agency for law and the rule of law in constitutional democracies.

​Hildebrandt has published 5 scientific monographs, 23 edited volumes or special issues, and over 100 chapters and articles in scientific journals and volumes.

She received an ERC Advanced Grant for her project on ‘Counting as a Human Being in the era of Computational Law’ (2019-2024), that funds COHUBICOL. In that context she is co-founder of the international peer reviewed Journal of Cross-Disciplinary Research in Computational Law, together with Laurence Diver (co-Editor in Chief is Frank Pasquale).

In 2022 she was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA).

Personal website at Berkeley Press and SSRN. See also her Google Scholar profile and her postings on ArXiv, e.g. here or here.

Mr Ermanno CAVALLI
Senior Data Scientist, European Food Safety Authority

Ermanno Cavalli is a Senior Data Scientist in EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) and is currently leading a project aimed at joining forces from European Union Agencies in deploying Artificial Intelligence. He joined EFSA in 2006 and held several managerial positions in Information Technology.

Prior to joining EFSA, Ermanno worked for Siemens Mobile from 1993-2006 as a Software Development Manager and led several large projects concerning the development of software for managing large telecommunication networks.

He started his career in Olivetti in 1985, as a System Software Developer, a role he carried out until 1993. During this period he collaborated in several projects aimed at software development for operating systems and relational databases.

Ermanno received his Master’s Degree in Computer Engineering from University of Bologna (Italy) in 1985, and a certificate in Corporate Innovation from Stanford University in 2016.

Mr Sorin BANU
Head of the Innovation Lab, CJEU

Sorin Banu is the lead of the Innovation Lab of the CJEU, with a big passion for IT emerging technologies and innovation. Surrounded by a great number of supportive colleagues, the Innovation Lab is helping all the different departments in the CJEU to discover, analyse, prototype and implement innovative solutions based on new technologies, including in collaboration with external partners.

Prior to the CJEU, Sorin worked for 20 years in IT consultancy, software architecture and project management, with involvement in several emerging technology projects in the domain of artificial intelligence (in natural language processing, image and video analytics, and speech processing), robotic process automation, augmented reality and blockchain.