Gaute has more than 14 years of executive-level experience in Nanomaterials, Energy, Mining, and Venture Capital in London, Norway & Italy. He has an additional 6 years of experience as CEO of electronics technology companies in Florida and California. His background includes previous positions at General Electric Capital Corporation and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in the U.S. He was also an Associate Professor in Finance and Economics for the MBA-program at the University of Phoenix in California.
He has an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School, an MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the Norwegian Institute Of Technology and a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University Of California, Santa Barbara.

Jan Erik had a successful 16-year career in the oil & gas industry, working with leading energy companies, including Shell and Statoil. This was followed by 13 years working as senior advisor on technology development projects in Brussels, including 4 years as a project officer in the European Commission. He has a Ph.D. in energy technology, from Aalborg U. & UC Berkley. An MSc in Petroleum chemistry from the University of Oslo & the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

From 2013 to 2015, Claudio was responsible for all global customer engagement, sales and product and application development at European graphene industry leader Applied Graphene Materials plc. as its Business Development Director. Prior to that he was Open Innovation Director and later Business Management Director for Nokia Research. Before joining Nokia, Claudio was Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Cambridge for Advance Nanotech, a US seed investment fund specializing in academic spin-offs. Other previous roles include Senior Research Associate in photonics at the Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge. Claudio holds a Laurea degree in Physics from the University of Trieste, Italy, a Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering from the University of Bristol and an MBA from the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge.

Tim (CEng) received his BE (Elec.) from Canterbury University, New Zealand (1989) and his PhD from Magdalene College, Cambridge (1994). He is currently a Reader in Photonic Engineering in the Engineering Department and a fellow of Jesus College. He has been working in optics for over 15 years and has filed several patents and authored and co-authored over seventy refereed journal papers on optical applications, processing and devices. He is currently responsible for spatial light modulator (SLM) and liquid crystal device fabrication at Cambridge, running a class 100/1000 liquid crystal device fabrication unit.

Jon holds a PhD in Civil Engineering from Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim and is a graduate of the Royal Norwegian Military Academy. He is a specialist in rheology, construction materials & industrial innovation, including the use of graphite and nanomaterials as additives for construction materials. He has been a Professor of Materials Science at NTNU. Prior to that he was an R&D director with Heidelberg Cement (including Aker / Scancem) and Director of Business Development for Saint-Gobain Weber.

Prof. Haugen is a Professor at the Dept. of Geology and Mineral Resources Engineering, at the NTNU. She was previously the Mine Manager at Boliden’s Renström and Petiknäs mines in Sweden, and a senior project manager and the head of the mining technology section at the R&D department at Boliden Mineral AB. Prior to that she was the Quality Manager and Mine Superintendent at Europe’s longest operating flake graphite mine; Skaland in Troms, Norway. She holds a PhD and a MSc in Mining Engineering from NTNU, is Six Sigma Black Belt certified, and an author of numerous scientific publications on mining.

Dr Niklas Traub is Managing Partner of IID Partners, a boutique investment firm. He is one of the co-founders of TEDx Bermuda and works with several Bermudian organizations to attract new business to the island, increase power independence and improve the economy. Niklas was a co-founder of Foundation Capital Strategies, a successful highly- quantitative equity hedge fund based out of Bermuda. The founders spun off from Ross Capital Markets, at the time one of the largest hedge-funds in the world. Niklas has worked in the City of London as well as in several UK-based tech start ups. He was one of the founding hires at European Silicon Structures, an early pioneer in custom silicon chip manufacturing and one of the largest European startups at that time. He also taught for several months in Beijing. Niklas has a Bachelors degree from the California Institute of Technology in Engineering and Applied Science with an emphasis on Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Following his graduation, he was one of the first wave of hires at Microsoftt. He left Microsoft to pursue a PhD in Mathematical Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh.