During the SEEDIG 6 week, we will host a series of SEEtalks featuring 1:1 interviews with experts in various Internet and digital policy issues. The SEEtalks will be connected with the SEEDIG 6 sessions and will be framed as:
Member of Parliament | Parliament of Romania
Varujan Pambuccian is a mathematician, PhD in Mathematics of the Faculty of Mathematics of the Bucharest University, where he is also involved in the teaching activity.
He is a Member of Parliament and of the Committee on Communications and Information Technology of the Chamber of Deputies, where he initiated a number of draft laws which influenced the market of electronic communications equipment and services.
SEEDIG Executive Committee
Senior Programme Officer | United Nations
Yu Ping Chan leads the Digital Cooperation team in the Office of the Special Advisor to the Secretary-General at the United Nations. There, she coordinates and oversees the team’s work on follow-up to the Secretary’s General High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation and Roadmap for Digital Cooperation; as well as advocacy, engagement and coordination efforts to strengthen global digital cooperation.
She previously led the Policy and Regional Support teams in the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism’s policy, knowledge management and coordination branch. Prior to this, she worked in the Policy and Mediation Division of the UN’s Department of Political Affairs, and in the New York Office of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Before joining the UN Secretariat, Yu Ping was a diplomat in the Singaporean Foreign Service. She served at the Singapore Mission to the United Nations in New York as Singapore’s expert representative on the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) and Sixth Committee (Legal) of the United Nations General Assembly, as well as her Embassy’s Press Officer. Before her posting to New York, Yu Ping worked in the Singaporean Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ department overseeing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and regional political and strategic issues.
A Singaporean national, Yu Ping has a Bachelor of Arts (magna cum laude) from Harvard University, and a Masters of Public Administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Lodz University of Technology
Director | Strategic Projects, Microsoft Defending Democracy Program
Dave Leichtman is a strategist for Microsoft's Defending Democracy Program. As part of the company's Digital Diplomacy efforts, he assists campaigns with security and technology and works with elections officials in the US and internationally. Dave leads the company's internal coordination around US election security and readiness as well as international strategy for his group. He also leads the Microsoft Dems and Civic Engagement employee volunteer clubs. Previously, Dave worked as a Vice President at Salsa Labs, one of the largest progressive non-profit advocacy tech vendors. Prior to that, he started both the Training and Analytics practices at Blue State Digital and served as the company's liaison to the Obama Campaign in 2008. Dave is a recognized thought leader in the Democratic tech ecosystem, working regularly with state parties and the Democratic National Committee to address their tech needs. He also served two terms as a Vice-chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia and is now a statewide Virginia representative to the DNC. Dave hold a B.S. in Physics and Computer Science from William & Mary and an M.S. in Particle Physics from University of Washington. He lives in Arlington, VA with his wife and two daughters.
DiploFoundation
Project Manager | Management4health GmbH
Arunakiry Natarajan holds a Master’s in Medical Informatics from Technische Hochschule Deggendorf in Germany. He was the recipient of the Deutschlandstipendium for the year 2017, and the received the best master thesis award. Additionally, he holds a bachelor’s and Master’s in Dentistry with specialization in Oral Medicine and Radiology from India.
He was a successful clinician for 12 years and also lectured dental students in a dental school in India. Following his career in academics and in clinical dentistry, Arunakiry moved into healthcare data science. He also holds multiple certifications in the field of Data Science, including certifications from IBM, and underwent rigorous quantitative training, and essential statistical and computing skills needed to manage and analyze health science data, to address important questions in public health and biomedical sciences. He followed this career with an immense belief that apt use of health data, analytics, automation, and responsible AI can spark a digital metamorphosis in health systems across the global healthcare ecosystem.
He joined management4health in the year 2018 as a Project Manager and a Digital Health Data Specialist and is the primary lead on the use of information technology in m4h’s healthcare projects across the globe. In his role as a project manager, he is responsible for the identification, preparation and implementation of projects, as well as liaising and co-operating with partners and experts for these projects. As a data specialist at m4h, he plays a key role to understand the existing projects’ processes, then identify the underlying problems, and then attempt reaching solutions through data-driven technologies to streamline the processes for better outcomes.
Additionally, he provides volunteering support for the development of AI-based medical solutions by building pipelines, data labelling, providing domain expertise and by liaising with various stakeholders at market and academic level.
SEEDIG Executive Committee
The SEEtalks will be conducted live (preferably) or pre-recorded, depending on the availability of the experts. Live SEEtalks will include a short Q&A section at the end, allowing SEEDIG 6 participants to ask questions.
The SEEtalks will be integrated in the SEEDIG 6 programme, in the time between two main sessions (i.e. between 12:00 and 15:00 CEST). The length of each talk will be agreed on with the guest; it could range between 15 and 30 minutes.
Each talk will then be announced via SEEDIG communications channels and the community will be invited to suggest questions and issues to be raised with the guest.
All SEEtalks (live and pre-recorded) will remain available on the SEEDIG 6 website, as recordings and podcasts to be later watched/listened to by anyone interested. They will later on be transferred to the SEEDIG main website, as we intend to run the SEEtalks as a continuous SEEDIG project.