Dr. Maritza I. Espina, serves as Dean and Professor of Management at the College of Business at St. Ambrose University. Maritza is also the Executive Director & Program Chair for the Sustainability, Ethics, and Entrepreneurship (SEE) Conference & Consortium. From its inception in 2012, the SEE (seeconf.org) continues to build a worldwide community connecting entrepreneurship scholars who recognize that sustainability and ethics are growth engines not just acts of compliance.

Dr. Espina received a Ph.D. in Management and a Master´s in Operations Research and Statistics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. The integration of business and technology has been a common thread through her research projects, including the intersections of intellectual property, entrepreneurship, sustainability, and social innovation. Recently she edited the volume Social Innovation and Sustainable Entrepreneurship, part of The Johns Hopkins University series on Entrepreneurship. Her research has been presented at international academic conferences including the Academy of Management, Strategic Management Society, and Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference and published in the Academy of Management Perspectives, the Journal of Management, and others.

Peter Gianiodis is the inaugural holder of the Merle E. Gilliand Professor in Entrepreneurial Finance. He received his PhD from the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, and has spent the past 10 years at Clemson University. He researches at the intersection of entrepreneurship, technology management and strategy. His scholarly work appears in the Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Management, Journal of Business Venturing, Academy of Management Perspectives, and recently in the California Management Review.

Dr. Gianiodis' research has explored market entry across several contexts, including new venture entry into mature markets, and technology commercialization from university start-ups. In addition to his scholarly work, he serves on the board of several journals, including the Academy of Management Perspectives. He has taught capstones course in entrepreneurship and strategic management at both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as courses on innovation management.

Roman Batko is a professor in Management Science at the Jagiellonian University and Military University of Land Forces in Wroclaw, an expert in the Future Industry Platform.

He is the founder and CEO of two companies – Energreen and Adminis.

He participated in the international team implementing the projects "Digital Technologies, Transformations and Skills: Robotics and EU Perceptions" (D3REU) and "European Union Jean Monnet Project Grant, Discourses on European Union I4.0 Innovation (DEUI4I)".

He specializes in process management and digital transformation management. He conducts research on issues related to organizations of the future: AI, robotization, new forms of communication, changes in the labor market, and the creation of technological networks in which the position of a human changes radically.

Paula Fraga-Lamas (IEEE Senior Member) is a senior researcher and lecturer at the Computer Engineering Department of the University of A Coruña (UDC), Spain. She received the M.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering in 2009 from UDC and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in the joint program Mobile Network Information and Communication Technologies from five Spanish universities: University of the Basque Country, University of Cantabria, University of Zaragoza, University of Oviedo and University of A Coruña, in 2011 and 2017, respectively. She holds an MBA (best student record) and postgraduate studies in business innovation management (Jean Monnet Chair in European Industrial Economics, UDC) and in sustainability and social innovation (INDITEX-UDC Chair of Sustainability). 

Since 2009, she has been working with the Group of Electronic Technology and Communications (GTEC), Department of Computer Engineering (UDC). The GTEC research group has raised more than 10 million euros in funding since its inception and it was recognized by the Xunta de Galicia as Grupo de Referencia Competitiva in 2012 and 2016. She is also affiliated to Centro de Investigación de Galicia 'CITIC', a research center focused on technology transfer. CITIC was awarded the distinction of Distinguished Research Centre in Galicia, 2016-2019 and 2019-2022. She has participated in more than 35 research projects funded by the regional and national government as well as R&D contracts with private companies like ADIF, Siemens, Indra Sistemas, or Navantia, analyzing mission-critical scenarios (public safety, disaster relief, defense, and critical infrastructures), and industrial sectors (automotive, railways, ports or shipbuilding).

She was the PI/coordinator of one collaborative project of the CITIC during 2018-2019. She has over 90 contributions (h-index 27, i-10 index 41, over 2.500 citations) in indexed international journals, conferences, and book chapters, and holds 3 patents. She has been awarded the iThings Conference, Exeter, UK, 2017 Best paper award, and a national review paper award (IEEE Blockchain Spain, 2020). Three of her recent papers are highly cited paper in Web of Science (WoS) in the “Engineering” field, one is also considered as a Research Front paper. She was a recipient of the 2018 BBVA BritishSpanish Society Award, outstanding MBA graduate and Best Ph.D. thesis  from the UDC. Paula Fraga-Lamas has co-supervised 6 bachelor's and master's thesis, two of them received the award of the Best Master Thesis of the Galician Computer Scientist Association (2019, 2020). She is actively involved in many professional and editorial activities, acting as regular reviewer of 35+ international top-ranked journals, guest editor, member of editorial boards and TPC member of international conferences.

She has worked as an expert evaluator and advisor of several national and international agencies. From 2012 to 2015, she was part of the exploratory team IST-ET-068 of the IST (Information Systems Technology) panel of NATO STO (Science and Technology Organization) to explore the potential applicability of commercial technologies to the next-generation tactical networks. Her current research interests include mission-critical scenarios, Industry 4.0, Internet of Things (IoT)/Industrial Internet of Things (IoT), Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR), fog and edge computing, blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), and cybersecurity.

Francesco Cappellano (Ph.D., Research fellow) works a Post-Doctoral Researcher at UEF - Karelian Institute. Adopting a perspective on the edge of economics and spatial planning, he has been conducting research about the spatially-led public policies towards innovation. He uses to apply that perspective on cross-border regions, delving into modern innovation approaches (e.g. Mission-oriented approach) across the EU and the US , contending the directionality of innovation policies.

His main scientific interests convey in the field of innovation-led economic development including strategic alliance, and territorial cooperation in border regions.

Since 2017, Francesco has been conducting research about border regions in North America, namely San Diego/Tijuana region at the Southwest US/Mexican border and the Northwest US/Canadian region including Washington State and the British Columbia province. Therein, he has implemented an interdisciplinary perspective to his work, using social science and economics perspectives to understand urban/regional development issues.

Francesco earned his Ph.D. in Urban regeneration & Economic development from the “Mediterranea” University of Reggio Calabria in 2016. He has worked in several international universities including the Northeastern University of Boston; the San Diego State University; the Western Washington University in Bellingham, the University of Victoria in Canada, and the School of Advanced Studies Sant'Anna in Pisa, Italy. Since 2018 he has been working as a Consultant at Taso Desarollo s. l. in the field of heritage-led urban regeneration within the "ROCK - Regeneration and Optimization of Cultural Heritage in creative and Knowledge Cities", funded under H2020 Research and Innovation plan.