The AIconics Awards Europe 2025

Dr. Corey O’Meara

Dr. Corey O'Meara is the Quantum Computing Lead at E.ON Digital Technology GmbH. In his current role, he is managing the E.ON efforts in finding immediate and useful applications of quantum technologies to the energy sector. Prior to E.ON, he led the Applied AI team at the German Space Operation Center, where his team developed AI solutions for German satellites. He holds his Ph.D. in quantum computing from the Technical University of Munich, Germany.

David Fearne

David heads up generative AI for Cognizant's global Artificial Intelligence and Analytics (AIA) practice, leading efforts to deliver value from Generative AI. He is pioneering the application of enterprise cognitive architecture with generative AI and is currently working on several papers to share Cognizant's research and innovation in this space. In 2017, David was recognized as one of the 50 most influential people in data, winning his category with the innovative "How Happy is London?" project, a technology platform that was one of the world's largest real-time open-source implementations for large-scale data analytics and AI.

David Norris

As Chief Growth Officer at Holiday Extras David oversees growth, marketing and trading and leads on strategy. He started his career in tour operating, first overseas and then in the UK. From the year 2000 onwards he felt the draw of the internet and worked with various online travel companies in product, marketing and operations including a role at Expedia.co.uk as Website Operations Director. He then worked in several growth-stage startups as a COO. Prior to joining Holiday Extras he was in Venture Capital, investing and helping early-stage companies get started. He is a fellow of the London COO Roundtable, has a Diploma in Company Direction from the Institute of Director and recently published his first book on growth, "Growthadox: Embracing Paradox to Unlock Personal and Business Growth".

Richard Davis

Richard is responsible for enabling data and analytics capabilities across Ofcom. His key strengths are in building expert teams of data scientists that are able to challenge businesses to adopt the most up-to-date techniques and help them adopt data driven decision making in all areas of their work.

He has given expert advice in international forums on the development of data science products for businesses and establishing analytics and data science functions in large multinational companies.

Dr. Corey O’Meara

Dr. Corey O’Meara’s work has covered various ways quantum computers could help contribute to solutions around managing the future decentralized energy grid. His work showcases several results relating to optimization problems which have an emphasis on renewable energy integration.

Valerii Babushkin

Valerii leads the team that created Blockchain's A/B testing platform. With this platform, businesses can easily set up and run experiments without the need for specialized technical knowledge or expertise. It leads to better user experiences, increased customer satisfaction, and ultimately, greater revenue.

Valerii's work continues to the shopping experience of more than 100 million people, and he is also a proud of Kaggle competition Grandmaster,  taking top places in some of the international ML competitions 

Amit Arora

Amit is a globally recognized product management evangelist with 22 years in AI & automation-led proven monetization. Amit holds multiple awards and patents, which have led to new AI-led product creation in Telecom, Insurance & Life Sciences verticals, cumulatively generating over $1.2B in new revenues for his employers.

Ashley Casovan

As Executive Director of the Responsible AI Institute, Ashley has been leading the organization in establishing the first independent certified framework aligned to standards and regulations.

It is rare to see a non-profit organization set to impact an industry as much as Ashley and team are primed to impact the AI world to help AI provide better, fairer, and more inclusive outcomes.

Ben Dias

Ben is not only a pioneer in the data science field, building teams, managing projects, and leveraging AI for the acceleration of EasyJet (and a trend-setter for the travel and aviation industry), but he is also a true advocate for diversity, helping the tech ecosystem reach its full potential.

Ana Echeverri

Ana designed and launched the first open-source educational project focused on Data Science/Machine Learning for Academia. This is a curriculum kit that helps academic institutions around the world accelerate the creation of their Data Science, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence programs at the undergraduate or graduate level. The project is hosted here.

This first-of-its-kind project was her brainchild, funded by IBM and with a built-in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania. It now runs as an open-source project under the Linux Foundation.

Gina Schaefer

Recognizing an unmet opportunity in the market, Gina championed the creation of the US Intelligent Automation practice five years ago, where she specializes in helping large enterprises embrace AI-enabled automation technologies and process re-imagination.

Within a year, the practice exploded from zero to a headcount of 200. Since then, Gina’s market-driven guidance has grown the practice to 500 strong, established scaled delivery capabilities, and generated nearly $500m in sales.

In recent years, Gina witnessed unprecedented change in the automation ecosystem. Her anticipation of these changes led to strategic investments in technologies such as Intelligent Document Processing, chat, and Auto ML.

Bjorn Austraat

At Truist, Bjorn has spearheaded the implementation of a holistic policy modernization project, providing a solid foundation for all AI and analytics innovation including best-in-class agile methodologies and auto-ML-driven deployments. Providing executive leadership to fund crucial implementation of industry-leading ModelOps solution that will provide significant acceleration for a broad set of stakeholders, including machine learning experts and the companies ‘citizen data scientists.’

Dr. Seth Dobrin

Dr. Dobrin has created a new methodology for the design and execution of AI strategies at IBM that aims to address the most urgent challenge...

Ankit Chajer

Ankit has pioneered use of Conversational AI and Robotics across NatWest and supported millions of customers with most complex banking needs specially during COVID-19. He leads the strategy and AI team at NatWest that has increased the adoption of our virtual assistant Cora by over 400% now supporting over 25 million customer conversations.

David Kuder

Described as ‘trustworthy’ and ‘uniquely intelligent’, the AI Innovator of the Year title went to David Kuder, Principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP.

Demonstrating that he had dedicated his career to tackling the industry’s biggest challenges with heart, David’s nomination demonstrated many accomplishments over the span of his 20+ year career, from growing sales revenue, to empowering AI talent with curated learning/development curriculum.

David has incubated a Conversational AI business leveraging multiple platform providers, launched a new AI Foundry business and grown the AI Insights and Engagement market offering within Deloitte significantly.

Cambridge Consultants

Quantum technology promises a disruptively large jump in technical capability, revolutionising products, services and even our everyday lives. This inspired the Cambridge Consultants team to develop a novel quantum algorithm that can be ported to a classical computer to bring real-time calculation to task that have previously taken hours, or even days. To demonstrate this, they created a recommender that analyses the likes and dislikes of millions of users in real time.