Board of Advisors
Behind the scenes, our Advisory Board brings seasoned judgment and strategic clarity to our most important decisions.
Distinguished Professor Neeraj Suri
Professor Suri holds the Distinguished Professorship and Chair in Cybersecurity at Lancaster University (in UK and at Leipzig, Germany) where he co-directed the university-wide Lancaster Security Institute. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Dept. of CS at UMass-Amherst. Suri previously held the Chair Professorship on “Dependable Systems & Software” at TU Darmstadt, Germany. Following his PhD at UMass-Amherst, he has held positions at AlliedSignal/Honeywell Research, Boston Univ, Saab Endowed Chair Professorship, multiple sabbaticals at Microsoft Research, and visiting positions at the Univ of Texas at Austin, Academia Sincia, PolyU Hong Kong and Technion.
His research broadly spans the design, analysis, and assessment of trustworthy (dependable & secure) systems. His current focus is on a) Compositional Security, b) Robust and Secure ML and c) Secure Autonomous Systems including threat profiling and the quantification of security.
His research has received extensive trans-national funding from the UK: PI for EPSRC Trustworthy Autonomous Systems node on Security (TAS-S), EPSRC National Edge AI Hub for Real Data: Edge Intelligence for Cyber-disturbances and Data Quality & the Lancaster lead for the EPSRC Programme Grant SCULI: Securing Convergent Ultra-large Scale Infrastructures, UK GCHQ, UK DSTL, EU: EC FP6/FP7/H2020 (CONCORDIA, NECS, CIPSEC, ESCUDO-CLOUD, SLA-READY, SPECS, ABC4TRUST, BIC, INDEXYS, COMIFIN, INSPIRE, INCO-TRUST, THINK-TRUST, GENESYS, DECOS, RESIST, DBENCH, NEXTTTA), German DFG/BMBF/DAAD/Loewe, Swedish SSF/VINNOA/NUTEK, US: NSF/DARPA/DHS/ONR/AFOSR, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Apple, Google, Boeing, GM, NASA, Airbus, SAP, NEC, Hitachi, Saab, Volvo, Daimler among others.
Suri’s professional services span the Associate EIC for IEEE Transactions on Dependable & Secure Computing, editorial boards for IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering, IEEE Trans. Big Data, IEEE Trans. Cloud Computing, IEEE Trans. on Parallel and Distributed Systems, ACM Computing Surveys, IEEE Security & Privacy, etc. He has PC-chaired multiple dependability conferences (e.g., DSN, ICDCS, SRDS, HASE, the upcoming ICDCS ‘25). He is the co-organizer for the 2020 Dagstuhl seminar on ‘Characterizing & Modeling Residual Software Bugs.’ Suri is a member of IFIP WG 10.4 on Fault Tolerance and Dependability and served on multiple US/EU/Asian industry and academic advisory boards for IBM, Intel, NASA, Uppsala University, EC’s RISEPTIS Board for Trust and Security, and a member of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board (TCAAB). Suri is an IEEE Distinguished Visitor. He chaired the IEEE Technical Committee on Dependability and Fault Tolerance, and its Steering Committee. He recently chaired the Steering Committee for the IEEE Intl. Conf. on Cloud Engineering. Suri is a recipient of the NSF CAREER, Microsoft and IBM Faculty Awards.
David Wightman
David Wightman is a Scottish born technology executive and multiple-exit entrepreneur, currently based in Asia after 3 decades of holding top level management positions across 3 continents. David was also a member of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission and it’s impactful follow up work. David founded Edgies / Creative Edge in Scotland before a successful exit and moving to Los Angeles, Mainz and Stockholm to hold senior management positions in charge of hundreds of employees at Respawn Entertainment, Ubisoft and Avalanche Studios. David has been responsible for over $1b worth of business development.
Andre Tiwari
Andre N. Tiwari is an American and Swedish dual citizen, U.S. Navy combat veteran, and seasoned leader with 15 years of combined enlisted and officer service. A graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School with an M.S. in Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation, his Master’s Thesis identified a critical U.S. Navy capability gap in countering small boat and swarm attacks, leveraging simulation to validate solutions.
Following his military career, Andre applied his leadership, operational planning, and technical expertise to the private sector, driving success in technology, simulation, and game development organizations. He has created simulations for hunters (GAIM Compact) as well as non-public training simulations for the Swedish police and military. Additionally he created simulations for training of students and municipal workers in Swedish drinking water and waste water management.
He has led teams of over 100 personnel, managed multimillion-dollar projects, and built high-performance organizations from startup to global scale. His experience bridges defense, simulation, and commercial innovation, with a focus on mission success, process optimization, and strategic growth.
A father of two adult children, Andre brings a steady, mission-driven leadership style honed in high-pressure environments, with a deep commitment to delivering results.
Stefanie Grundner
Stefanie is the founder and managing director of Panaglobo, a consulting firm specialising in space applications and security. Stefanie has a diplom (MSc) in Geography and Earth observation from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. She has since worked across diverse organisations, from companies and start-ups to government agencies and NGOs. Since 2017, she has focused her expertise on space resilience and cybersecurity, addressing critical challenges in protecting space-based infrastructure and operations.
Arthur Van Der Wees
Arthur is managing director of Arthur's Legal, Strategies & Systems headquartered in Amsterdam (ARTHUR), the independent, global strategic legal firm and knowledge partner. It covers the unique combination of technology, strategy, impact, ethics, policy and law focusing on (inter)national, regional and global strategy and policy aspects in this Digital Age and Space Era.
Arthur is expert advisor to both public sector (both national, regional and local) and private sector (and other) organisations within EU, EEA, UK, NATO allies and friends. Its daily domains are addressing societal challenges, co-creating digital ecosystems, data architectures, governance, IoT, AI, autonomous systems, space and other highly complex critical infrastructures, computing, spectrum, dynamic attributes, risk, safety, cybersecurity, privacy, trust, advanced supply chain ecosystem governance, continuous monitoring, dynamic assurance, digital sovereignty, accountability and rule of law.
Arthur is member and Co-Chair of the European Commission’s Alliance for Industrial Data, Cloud & Edge (and Leader of Digital Sovereignty Taskforce, Cybersecurity Taskforce & Common Trust Principles). ARTHUR is Strategic, Security, Ethics Advisory Board Member respectively Partner to over 30 European projects on Data, Trust, Security, Privacy, Ethics, Accountability & Risk in Digital Ecosystems.
Arthur is expert member of Expert Group of European Commission on Data Sharing & Computing Continuum (Article 41 Data Act), and board member of several institutes including the Institute for Accountability the Digital Age, the New Trust Foundation, and the Institute for Future of Living.
Furthermore, he was Chair of the Advisory Board of UKRI TAS-S: Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node in Security.
Brian Gregory
Brian is a seasoned board member with a proven track record of guiding leadership teams through their high stakes decisions, rapid growth within organisations whilst contending with industry and operational uncertainty. Drawing on a unique background that spans the British military with service in the Scots Guards, public sector leadership and commercial entrepreneurship, Brian brings clarity, composure and strategic focus when it matters most.
As founder of one of the UK’s leading fire safety consultancies, with a successfully exit in 2018, Brian understands first hand the pressures and pivots required in fast moving environments. He now serves as a Chair, Non-Executive Director, Executive Director as well as the Director of the Entrepreneur in Residence Programme at Lancaster University with an international cohort of 91 business people globally. Brian supports both founders and boards to lead with confidence, build and execute strategy whilst delivering sustainable results.
Brian excels in helping organisations cut through complexity so they can move forward with purpose. He has a leadership style that is grounded, commercially aware and geared towards turning vision into action, especially when the path is unclear