Mark Wittfoth is the Head of the Observatory in the Europol Innovation Lab. In this capacity, he leads a team of foresight experts and is responsible for assessing the impact of key emerging technologies on law enforcement. Previously, he held various roles in Europol’s Operations Department.

María Montserrat Marín López has held various leading operational and strategic roles for 26 years in a wide range of policing areas such as forensics, public safety, money laundering, drug trafficking, and irregular migration. She had been serving as Commissioner of Police since 2017. Ms. Marín López, who has broad experience in police training and education, studied Psychology and graduated with honours from the CEPOL European Joint Master Programme in 2019.

Andrei Lințǎ was born in Romania in 1985. He joined the Romanian Police Academy in 2003 and graduated as police officer in 2007, obtaining a degree in law and another in finance, as well as a Master’s Degree in ‘The Management of International Police Cooperation’.

This is not Mr Lințǎ’s first foray at Europol, as he previously served as the Romanian Member of Europol’s governing body, the Europol Management Board, from 2017 to 2023 and as Chairperson of the Management Board from 2019 to mid-2020.

Between 2007 and 2023, he served at the Romanian National Police, starting as a police officer and a European Affairs expert. In 2011, he became the Head of the European Affairs and International Relations Unit. From 2012 to 2015, Mr Lințǎ was the Head of the European Affairs Unit within the National Police, responsible for negotiating and implementing European policies and working with international experts to develop tools to enhance international police cooperation.

From 2015 to 2017, Mr Lințǎ was the Director of the Project Implementation Department, where he coordinated and implemented projects to further develop the police as an organisation. From 2017-2021, he was Director of the International Police Cooperation Centre which is responsible for the coordination of international police cooperation with the Romanian National Police.

In 2021, Mr Lințǎ reached the position of Deputy of the General Inspector of the Romanian National Police, taking responsibility for the direct coordination of operational and support departments within the police, strategic development and information management, as well as cooperation with international and EU partner agencies.

The Council of the EU appointed Mr Lințǎ to his current post as Deputy Executive Director of Europol responsible for the Capabilities Directorate. He took up his functions in August 2023.

Greg Mounier (PhD) is the Head of the Europol Innovation Lab, which leads research and development projects for innovative investigative tool with national LEAs. The Lab also hosts the EU Innovation Hub for Internal Security.
Greg worked as policy advisor in the office of the Director of Europol and led Europol’s External and Strategic Affairs team. Greg was also Head of Outreach at the European Cybercrime Center (EC3) where he was responsible for the cooperation with the private sector. He led Europol's engagement on Global Internet Governance (encryption, DNS, IP space) and represented Europol at ICANN, RIPE and IETF.

In the years 2009-2013 she was Director for Immigration and Asylum, in the years 2014-2019 Director for Strategy and General Affairs in the Directorate- General Justice and Consumers.

Between 2004 and 2009 she was Deputy Head of Cabinet of the European Commissioner responsible for Regional Policy, Danuta Huebner.

Between 1996 and 2004 she served as First Counsellor in the Polish Mission in Brussels, then Polish Permanent Representation to the European Union.

In 1993 she joined the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she worked as Head of the European Law Section in the Legal and Treaties Department.

Born in Krakow and of Polish nationality, she graduated in Law and Languages from Jagiellonian University in Krakow. She obtained a Diploma in Community Law by the College of Europe in Bruges and in European law and policies by European College in Parma.

Zsolt currently is working in Brussels, at the Permanent Representation of Hungary to the EU and chairing the Working Party for Information Exchange during the Hungarian Presidency. He is also co-charing the Steering Group for the EU Innovation Hub. He has been the member of the Management Board of eu-LISA from the beginning and he chaired the Board between 2018 and 2024. As the Chair of the Board, he actively participated in the setting up of the new governing structure of the Agency. In the Ministry of Interior of Hungary, he is responsible for managing the whole Interoperability Programme including all related projects (EES, ETIAS, SIS, VIS, ECRIS TCN, interoperability) in the area of the Home Affairs. 

Previously he worked for the Hungarian National Election Office as the Deputy Head of the Election Department and later as Head of IT department in the Ministry of Interior. From 2006 till November 2010, he worked for the European Commission as a Seconded National Expert on the area of Home Affairs. In 2011 he was the Chairman of a working group in the Hungarian EU Presidency team.

Zsolt holds a BA in Public Administration and completed a post graduate course in Business Management at the Budapest University of Public Service.

Dr. David Reichel is a Project Manager at the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). He works in the Data & Digital Sector and is responsible for managing FRA's work on artificial intelligence and on online content moderation. He was responsible for several FRA reports, including the reports on AI and fundamental rights, Getting the future right and Bias in algorithms, as well as on Online content moderation. Prior to joining FRA in 2014, he worked for the research department of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD). He has been teaching for several years at the University of Vienna and other universities. He has published numerous articles, working papers and book chapters on issues related to migration statistics, citizenship and human rights.

Babak Akhgar is Professor of Informatics and Director of CENTRIC (Centre of Excellence in Terrorism, Resilience, Intelligence and Organized Crime Research). He has a PhD in Strategic Information Systems. He has written, edited and co-edited 16 books on security-related topics and published more than 150 publications. He is PI and CoI of 18 large scale security projects . Professor Babak Akhgar has been awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in June 2022, the second highest order of the British Empire award, in recognition of his services to security research.

Maximilian Zocholl works as specialist for innovation and technology solutions in Europol's Innovation Lab focusing on evaluating AI systems and explainable AI. Before joining Europol he worked in the international security domain, holds a doctoral degree in engineering and he is passionate about bringing communities together to realize the values shared within our society. He is contributing to Europol’s mission to strengthen European law enforcement with emerging and disruptive technologies by identifying synergies and developing innovative solutions to improve the way in which competent authorities process data to keep Europe safe.

Sébastien Marcel received the Ph.D. degree in signal processing from Université de Rennes I in France (2000) at CNET, the research centre of France Telecom (now Orange Labs). He is currently interested in pattern recognition and machine learning with a focus on biometrics security.

He is a senior researcher at the Idiap Research Institute (CH), where he heads a research team and conducts research on face recognition, speaker recognition, vein recognition and presentation attack detection (anti-spoofing).

He is lecturer at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) where he is teaching on “Fundamentals in Statistical Pattern Recognition”. He serves on the Program Committee of several scientific journals and international conferences in pattern recognition and computer vision.

He is Associate Editor of IEEE Signal Processing Letters. He was  Associate Editor of IEEE Transaction on Information Forensics and Security, a Co-editor of the “Handbook of Biometric Anti-Spoofing”, a Guest Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and  Security Special Issue on “Biometric Spoofing and Countermeasures”, and Co-editor of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine  Special  Issue on “Biometric Security and Privacy”.

Finally, he was the principal investigator of international research projects including MOBIO (EU FP7 Mobile Biometry), TABULA RASA (EU FP7 Trusted Biometrics under Spoofing Attacks) and BEAT (EU FP7 Biometrics Evaluation and Testing)

With 18 years of distinguished service as an engineering officer in the French Army, she deployed to multiple high-pressure missions across Africa, Central America, the Pacific, and the Balkans, honing her expertise in complex threat environments. Transitioning to the European Union in 2012, she leveraged her unique blend of tactical and strategic experience to the field of critical infrastructures protection. By applying cutting-edge strategic foresight methodologies, she contributed in the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission to forward-looking projects that identified and mitigated emerging security challenges.

Ricardo Neisse is an expert in cybersecurity and biometrics currently working as a Senior Research Officer in Frontex where he leads innovation and operational pilot projects on border management. After obtaining his PhD from the University of Twente in 2012 he worked for several years as a scientific project officer at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and as a scientist in the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering.

Assistant Chief Commissioner in the Directorate of International Security Cooperation of the French Ministry of the Interior (FMI) with nearly 38 years of experience in various police departments. Thierry Hartmann is a graduate of the University of Strasbourg in Political Sciences and of the French National Police Academy. Among the many positions he has held, he was advisor to the Director General of the French National Police (2003-2007), French liaison officer in Switzerland (2003) and in Germany (2011-2015). As Head of Unit and then Deputy Director in the Directorate of International Security Cooperation since 2015, he has acquired a wide range of skills on the main tasks of law enforcement agencies at national and international level. In the field of research and innovation, Thierry Hartmann have been coordinating and supporting the FMI's participation in around 27 European research and innovation projects since 2015. He was the coordinator of the H2020 ILEAnet project on the network of practitioners, which ended in May 2022. Since September 2021, he has been promoted to full-time Innovation Project Manager. Leading a small team, his portfolio of tasks ranges from facilitating and promoting the incubation of EU-funded R&I projects within the FMI and networking with European LEAs and academic and industrial partners, to facilitating and organising the FMI's involvement in the European R&I ecosystem. He is currently coordinator of the Horizon Europe-funded AHEAD project and president of the board of EACTDA (European Anticybercrime Technology Development Association).

Hans-Martin Pastuszka, senior researcher in security and defence for more than 20 years, Deputy Head of Department “Technological Analyses and Strategic Planning” and Co-Head of Business Unit “Defence Technology Foresight” at the Fraunhofer Institute for Technological Trend Analysis INT in Germany. Together with his team, he is conducting defence technology foresight on behalf of and for the German FMoD, identifying and assessing emerging and dynamic technological developments worldwide regarding their potential future defence relevance. In his own research, Hans-Martin focuses on analyses on defence and security research planning, comprising organisational and conceptual issues, the planning processes and related activities (e.g. on the nexus between foresight, R&T and capability development). Hans-Martin holds the military rank LTC (reserve) and serves periodically as desk officer for R&T strategy at the German FMoD.

Christoph Busch is member of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway. He holds a joint appointment with Hochschule Darmstadt (HDA), Germany. Further he lectures Biometric Systems at Denmark’s DTU since 2007.

On behalf of the German BSI he has been the coordinator for the project series BioIS, BioFace, BioFinger, BioKeyS Pilot-DB, KBEinweg and NFIQ2.0. He was/is partner of the EU projects 3D-Face, FIDELITY, TURBINE, SOTAMD, RESPECT, TReSPAsS, iMARS, EINSTEIN and others. He is also principal investigator in the German National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity (ATHENE) and is co-founder of the European Association for Biometrics (EAB).

Christoph co-authored more than 700 technical papers and has been a speaker at international conferences. He is member of the editorial board of the IET journal on Biometrics and formerly of the IEEE TIFS journal.

Furthermore he chairs the TeleTrusT biometrics working group as well as the German standardization body on Biometrics and is convenor of WG3 in ISO/IEC JTC1 SC37.

Frøy Løvåsdal is a Senior Adviser at the National Police Directorate in Norway. She has worked for the Norwegian Government for 25 years, in different agencies, mainly in the areas of innovation, technology and identity. She has worked with biometrics for 15 years and is also a trained forensic face examiner. In 2013 she headed the first pilot project in Norway on automated face recognition. She has headed, and worked in, several pilot projects aimed at improving quality, security, efficiency and user experience in different areas of Immigration, Borders and Law Enforcement. She also has close ties with academia and has co-authored scientific publications.

Javier Galbally received the M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Universidad de Cantabria, Spain, in 2005, and the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain, in 2009, where he was an Assistant Professor until 2012. In 2013, he joined the European Commission at DG Joint Research Centre, where he worked for nine years as Scientific/Technical Officer. Since May 2022 he is a Senior Capability Building Officer at the European Agency eu-LISA working in the Research and Innovation team. His main field of expertise is data science, with especial focus on biometric technology and in particular on the security and performance evaluation of biometric systems. He has acted as the Chair of the EAB Research Projects Conference between 2017 and 2023. He has authored over 100 publications which have produced over 7000 citations, mainly focused on the biometrics field. Javier has received several awards and distinctions for the quality of his scientific work.

Since May 2016, Olivier Onidi is Deputy Director-General of the Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs (DG HOME) at the European Commission with particular responsibility over Schengen and Internal Security. In this capacity, he oversees the activities in the fields of Schengen, borders, information systems, innovation, terrorism and violent extremism, organized crime and cybersecurity. He also led the European Commission's Task Force for the Security Union and held respectively the EU Anti-Trafficking Coordinator and Counter-Terrorism Coordinator positions. Since July 2022, Olivier Onidi is also the EU Schengen Coordinator.

Olivier Onidi’s last assignment was Deputy Director-General of DG HOME with the specific task to coordinate the Commission-wide work in the context of the refugees’ crisis 2015-2016.

Previously, he was Director for the European Mobility Network within the Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport, responsible for the development of the Trans-European Transport Network infrastructure, the implementation of the Connecting Europe Facility funding instrument, the creation of a Single European Rail Area and policy around ports. Prior to this, he was Director for Innovative and Sustainable Mobility in charge of transport security, clean and urban transport, intelligent transport systems and road safety.

Olivier Onidi also worked as Deputy Head of Cabinet of the Energy Commissioner, Mr Günther H. Oettinger, as Head of Unit for air transport services, aviation safety and environment and was Head of the Satellite Navigation System programme - GALILEO.

His first posts in the Commission were Assistant to Directors-General in the areas of Energy and Transport and External Relations. He then moved to the Secretariat General and afterwards became Member of Cabinet of the Commissioner for Research and Development, Innovation, Education and Training.

Before joining the Commission, Olivier Onidi worked as Adviser to the Executive Committee of Belgacom and as Public Policy Manager at American Express International.

Olivier Onidi holds Master degrees in International Economics, European Studies and Business Administration. He has French citizenship.

Anders has long experience of EU-law, International police cooperation and policy developing in the JHA area.

He is representative of Sweden in the Committee for internal Security (COSI)

He has been co-chairing and representative of Sweden in the High Level Expert Group on Access to data.

Bartjan Wegter started as the EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator in March 2024.

Bartjan Wegter (56) is a Dutch national and senior diplomat. Raised in Brussels where he attended the European School, he studied in The Netherlands, Italy and Belgium and holds degrees in political science from Leiden University and in European affairs from the College of Europe in Bruges.

Bartjan joined The Netherlands MFA in 1998. During his 25 years as a diplomat he held various multilateral and security related positions. Notably, he covered political and Security Council affairs at The Netherlands Mission to the UN in New York; he was Head of Division at The Netherlands’ defence intelligence agency; and recently served as Minister Plenipotentiary at The Netherlands Delegation to NATO. He also headed the Division for North America at the MFA and earlier in his career was the speechwriter for a number of ministers of Foreign Affairs and EU affairs. He has worked at UNHCR where he was a member of the cabinet of High Commissioners Ruud Lubbers and Antonio Guterres, respectively.

Bartjan started his career in the private sector. He is an experienced negotiator and public speaker with expertise on a wide range of issues in the field of security and defense, as well as EU integration; UN affairs; transatlantic relations; peacebuilding; and migration. He speaks Dutch, French, English, German, Italian and Spanish.

Bartjan currently lives in Brussels, where his wife is also working as a diplomat, and has three children.

Jorge Espina is a Spanish Public Prosecutor specialised in the international area. He has held the following positions:

• As a member of the Spanish Prosecution he has served
• As line prosecutor in Provincial Public Prosecutor’s Offices, since 1994
• At the General Prosecutor’s Office,
• at the International Section of the Technical Secretariat (2006-2011) and
• at the International Cooperation Unit (2011-2015);
• At the European Commission:
• as Pre-Accession Advisor against Corruption in Slovakia (2001-2003);
• as Seconded National Expert at External Relations Unit DG JLS (2005-2006).
• At Eurojust:
• as Seconded National Expert to the Spanish Desk (2015-2017)
• as Assistant to the National Member for Spain (2017-2020)
• as Deputy National Member for Spain (since 2020).

• a member of the Commission Expert Group on EU Criminal Policy (since 2012).
• the Chair of Eurojust Cybercrime Team and a member of Eurojust Judicial Cooperation Instruments Team,
• a contact point of the European Judicial Network (since 2010),

Philippe Harant has been the Head of Unit for Strategy, Capabilities and Coordination in eu-LISA since 2020. The Unit is in particular in charge of research and innovation activities in the Agency. He is as well a member of the Steering Group of the EU Innovation Hub.
He has extensive experience, working in international organisations, and managerial experience at national level and in other EU Agencies for the past 15 years. He holds degrees in political sciences from ‘Sciences Po’ Bordeaux, a post-master degree in public law from University Montesquieu in Bordeaux and a diploma in management from the French EHESP School.

Gwendal Le Grand is the deputy head of Secretariat of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which he joined in 2021. The EDPB Secretariat is in charge of providing legal support for the drafting of EDPB documents, IT solutions to ensure transparent communications between all the European national data protection authorities, handling EDPB media relations, as well as organizing all EDPB meetings. He is particularly involved in the Coordinated Enforcement Framework (CEF), and the Support Pool of Experts (SPE) which aim to assist national supervisory authorities in the framework of their investigations and enforcement activities of significant common interest. He was previously the Deputy Secretary-General at the French data protection authority CNIL (Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés). He started his career in academia as an associate professor in networking and security. Gwendal received his PhD in computer science from the University of Paris 6 in July 2001.

Tiphaine Romand-Latapie began her career as a cryptography engineer and then moved on to product security at the Orange group. She joined Airbus in 2016 and led the internal security assessment team (RedTeam). Since 2020, she has worked at Synacktiv, an offensive security company, as head of the Reverse Engineering team.

Nicolas Bessot is the Head of Unit for Innovation and Security Research in the European Commission’s Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs, since March 2022.

In his current functions, Nicolas is responsible for the management of the Security Research part of the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, by setting the research agenda, in cooperation with the Member States, in the areas of Fighting Crime and Terrorism, Border Security, Disaster Resilient Societies and Infrastructure Protection.

Nicolas is also co-chair of the EU Innovation Hub since more than a year.

Nicolas Bessot has been working in the European Commission since 2006. He joined the Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs early 2015 to prepare the Commission's policy response to the terrorist attacks of 2015, and then coordinated the implementation of the strategy within the Commission.

From June 2015 to September 2021, Martijn was National Prosecutor for Cybercrime/High Tech Crime

As National Prosecutor for HTC, Martijn was both a prosecutor in complex cybercrime cases, as well as the one who initiated and then handed over large international criminal investigations to colleagues for further handling. In all these cases, a common factor was the collection of E-evidence around the world and/or stored in unknown locations.

October 2021 - present: National Prosecutor for Digital Investigation.

In his current position, Martijn is mainly concerned with advising and training colleagues and police officers on all existing and newly introduced legislation related to obtaining, decrypting and analyzing digital evidence. Furthermore, Martijn is involved in the development of forensic search engines to examine that data and the ability of criminal lawyers to examine that evidence themselves.

Based on national and international legislation, Martijn, together with others within the Public Prosecution Service, determines the legal frameworks within which the Public Prosecution Service and police investigation operate (internationally) to obtain readable digital evidence.

Irina Orssich is working in Directorate-General CONNECT at the European Commission. She is specialised in the field of Artificial Intelligence. A German national, she has a law degree and a postgraduate degree in European law.

Previously responsibilities have included posts in the audiovisual sector and as legal adviser for competition and State aid law.

Kelly is a legal advisor at the Netherlands Police at the Hub Advanced Analytics and AI. This hub is responsible for the quality of AI-systems within the Netherlands Police. In a multidisciplinary team (legal, technical and ethical) she creates policy, advice projects within the organization and participate in legislative processes such as the AI Act but also national legislation.