Evarist Bartolo took office as the Minister for Education and Employment on 13 March 2013.

In 1975 Bartolo graduated from the University of Malta with a B.A. (Hons) degree in English Literature and continued his studies in journalism at Stanford University. He also read for a Master’s in Education at the University of Cardiff.

He spent three years teaching at De La Salle College as well as working with the national broadcasting station and editor of numerous media organisations.

A member of parliament since 1992, he worked mostly in Education, European affairs and Tourism as well as serving as Minister of Education and National Culture under a Labour government between 1996 and 1998.

Minister Bartolo is known for being a proponent of civil rights in Malta.

Vivek is currently the business lead for Bose AR, the world’s first audio augmented reality platform, where he is responsible for advanced planning, strategy, and key partnerships for the business.

He previous led the audio team at Jawbone, where he led the product development from concept to launch of DROP, a social music app that allowed your friends to tweet song requests to your JAMBOX, that launched on-stage at Twitter Flight’s Mobile Developer Conference in 2014. Before that he co-founded NoiseToys, a TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield company that created a social radio service that sold to Jawbone in 2013.

Outside of technology, Vivek is a passionate singer and composer. After graduating from Stanford, Vivek composed with Bollywood producer AR Rahman on a number of his movies in India, including the Oscar-winning score for Slumdog Millionaire.

Dr. Nick Fuller is Director of the Cognitive Services Foundations organization at IBM Research, New York.  In this role, Nick leads the global research strategy and technology incubation of IBM’s global technology services business which accrues ~ $30B in revenue annually. Some of the disruptive technologies include: artificial intelligence, blockchain, augmented reality and cloud-based deployment – many of which are applied today in the IBM Services Platform with Watson; critical for managing enterprise clients’ hybrid workloads and providing technology support.

Nick obtained his PhD in Applied Physics from Columbia University in 2002 and joined IBM as a Research Staff Member that same year.  In his 17 years at IBM, Nick has held multiple technical and leadership roles driving innovation in the following areas: semiconductor and microprocessor technology for IBM Systems and OEM clients, cloud native technologies for IBM Cloud and, currently, technology services innovation for IBM Services and Cognitive Software.

Nick is a 1997 Summa Cum Laude graduate of Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA holding a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics and Math and a 1992 graduate of Fatima College, Trinidad and Tobago holding A-level distinctions in Physics, Math, Further Math and Chemistry.

Nick is an IBM Master Inventor, is the holder of over 60 patents, has co-authored over 80 technical publications and has been referenced on over 1800 occasions. He lives in Long Island, New York with his wife and two sons and in his spare time loves playing football (soccer), listening to music and writing.

Roni Rosenfeld (B.Sc., mathematics and physics, 1985, Tel-Aviv University; M.Sc. 1991, Ph.D. 1994, computer science, Carnegie Mellon University) is head of the Machine Learning Department and professor of machine learning, language technologies, computer science and computational biology, in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He also holds a courtesy appointment at the Heinz School of Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon, and an adjunct appointment at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Rosenfeld has been teaching machine learning and statistical language modeling since 1997. He has taught thousands of undergraduate and graduate students, has been a mentor to four post-doctoral students and an advisor to about a dozen Ph.D. students and a score of Masters and undergraduate students. Professor Rosenfeld’s current interests include tracking and forecasting epidemics, using speech and language technologies to aid international development, using machine learning for social good, and advancing data numeracy for all. He has also performed research in statistical language modeling, machine learning, speech recognition and viral evolution. He has published well over 100 scientific articles in academic journals and conferences. Rosenfeld is a recipient of the Allen Newell Medal for Research Excellence and of the Spira Teaching Excellence Award.

Jeff Pulver changed the way the world communicates. Throughout his highly successful international career, Jeff Pulver contributed to helping to launch the VoIP industry in 1995 and helped grow it to what has now become a two trillion-dollar global industry in 2019. As an Internet Pioneer known for his work in VoIP, Jeff literally helped change the way the world communicates. Jeff launched the first phone network on the Internet known as Free World Dialup in 1995; launched the VoIP Industry Trade Show VON in 1997; founded the company which is now known as Vonage in 1998 and worked with policy makers in Washington, D.C. which resulted in the landmark order issued by the FCC in 2004 known as “The Pulver Order.”

Jeff Pulver can be described as: Internet Pioneer, VoIP; Entrepreneur, Investor, Mentor, Strategist, Astrophotographer, Futurist. He helped shape the worldwide market acceptance of VoIP; Founder / Co-founder of numerous startups including: Free World Dialup, pulver.com, VON, Vivox and Vonage. Veteran of the Tradeshow industry; producer, host, curator of events. Jeff is also involved in public policy advocacy and is the founder of both the VON Coalition and the Blockchain Token Association.

Known as a globally renowned Internet thought leader,  in 1995 he defined “VON” to stand for Voice/Video on the Net. From 1997 to 2008 he hosted the VON Conferences and drove the growth of the global VoIP Industry.

His work in Washington is the reason services like: FaceTime, Telegram and WhatsApp are free. Jeff has influenced the creation of numerous other startups, investing in over 400 startups himself. He is currently exploring the intersection of Blockchain and Finance.

As Co-Founder of The Local Group, Jeff is a passionate advocate of Programmable Securities such as Security Tokens. Strategic adviser to Blockchain projects.

Mr. Pulver is committed to the future of the Internet and is featured in the media as an expert in his field.

— The Pulver Order —

On February 12, 2004, Mr. Pulver’s petition for clarification declaring Free World Dialup as an unregulated information service was granted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This landmark decision was the first decision it made on IP communications. Now referred to as “the Pulver Order”, the ruling provides important clarification that computer-to-computer VoIP service is not a telecommunications service. By doing this, the FCC delivered a strong signal to consumers and capital markets that the FCC is not interested in subjecting end-to-end IP Communications services to traditional voice telecommunications regulation under the Communications Act.