Anil Sethi

I started my first company over 15 years ago. Overcoming many failures and challenges along the way, right from the different mindsets of technology people, to finding the value for customers (it's not the technology excellence), to investor discussions and finding the right ones, to protecting your intellectual property (it goes much beyond patents), to finally selling the company and monetisation of the wealth created, it's been an incredible journey. Starting other technology startups, I raised over $80 m from investors. I have cofounded several other tech startups since then.

I captured my learnings in my first book, "From Science to Startup", published by Springer, which could as easily have been "From failure to successful exit". This was recognised as one of the top five books in the world for entrepreneurship and innovation for 2017.

Over the past decade, I have advised over 500 startups and technology teams with the singular vision of becoming entrepreneurs. Scores have done so. I now actively advise startups on various stages in business strategy, fund-raising, IP, team and go-to-market to capture value.

As entrepreneur-in-residence at ETH Zurich, I advise technology teams (Masters students, PhDs and Professors) who consider taking their technology excellence to market. I also teach entrepreneurship via two courses at ETH Zurich ("Enabling Entrepreneurship" & "Marketing for Startups"). 15 of my student teams have started their own companies in the past 4 years.

I have recently joined Innosuisse as scale-up coach. Here, my mandate is to help some of Switzerland’s best technology startups to scale, capture and sustain value.

I also advise large corporates on innovation & how to retain their competitive advantage .

Ekaterina Prasolova-Forland

Professor at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Ekaterina Prasolova-Førland has been working with educational virtual worlds and immersive technologies since 2002, with nearly 100 publications in the field. She has been involved in developing educational virtual reality simulations for a wide range of stakeholders, from aquaculture industry to the Norwegian Armed Forces.

Ekaterina has founded and is leading Innovative Immersive Technologies for Learning (IMTEL) research group and 'Lifelong learning' VR lab at NTNU, as well as '4 campuses 1 reality' initiative with the goal of connecting the distributed campuses of her university with a network of VR labs. She is co-founder of VR Forum Norway and founder of Women in VR/AR Norway and frequently gives public speeches and interviews on immersive technologies for learning and training. She is currently leading the development of innovative VR/AR solutions for the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration to assist and empower young job seekers.

She is also working on a number of projects on educational applications of immersive technologies in medicine, sports, therapy, career guidance, collaborative work, emergency management and other areas.