Zwipe, Sita, ACM announce leadership changes
Effective June 2, 2020, Zwipe has appointed Oslo-based Bishwajit Choudhary as Executive Vice President Strategy & Channels to lead business development and engagement with major players in the payment sector during the run-up to biometric payment cards commercialization, the company announced.
Choudhary’s experience includes leading digital ID, electronic signatures and mobile authentication initiatives at Nets for twenty years. During his tenure as Group SVP (Strategy) he was responsible for market intelligence and strategy, and had valuable input in initiatives such as open-banking data analytics, customer advisory, strategic alliances and fintech partnerships. Before starting his role at Zwipe, Choudhary was Chief Commercial Office at UserTribe.
“With increasing activity in payment cards and wearables in general, and biometrics in particular, and with Zwipe poised to take a technology and cost leadership position in this high potential market, timing is right for Zwipe to complement our growing engagements with our direct customers, the smart card manufacturers, by embarking on a ‘pull strategy,’” said André Løvestam, Zwipe CEO, in a prepared statement. “This means that we will step up our engagements with banks and neo-banks, as well as new players in card issuance, such as retailers and tech companies. With deep insights in the payments industry, Bishwajit will add a valuable breadth in our payments expertise and lead our strategy and channel development.”
Sita announces executive management changes
Effective June 1, 2020, Sita has named David Lavorel head of its airport and border solution portfolio ‘Sita at Airports and Borders’, as Sébastien Fabre, previously VP of the Airline & Airports Portfolio, will replace Lavorel to head ‘Sita for Aircraft’, the company announced.
Previously CEO of ‘Sita for Aircraft’, Lavorel is replacing Matthys Serfontein, who is retiring after leading the portfolio for 13 years. The 2020 strategy for the airport and border segment will be focused on smart solutions for new passenger processing procedures to ensure health and safety. This involves rethinking passenger journey and fast adjustment to border changes.
As head of Sita for Aircraft Fabre will focus on operational efficiency as airlines resume activity.
“Ensuring strong leadership of our key business areas is especially important as we look to support the industry as it begins to return to the skies,” said Barbara Dalibard, Sita CEO, in a prepared statement. “After more than a decade proving themselves highly capable of driving innovation while ensuring continued customer satisfaction, Sébastien and David are perfectly placed to steer the business through the new challenges and deliver solutions that help support the industry’s recovery.”
ACM announced new leaders for two-year term
Effective July 1, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) has named new organization leaders for a two-year term, the company announced.
The new team leader is President Gabriele Kotsis, Professor and Head of the Department of Telecooperation at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. Kotsis is joined by Vice President Joan Feigenbaum, Grace Murray Hopper Professor of Computer Science at Yale University; and, as Secretary/Treasurer, Elisa Bertino, Samuel Conte Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University.
Members-at-Large elected to four-year terms are Nancy M. Amato, Abel Bliss Professor and Department Head of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Tom Crick, Professor of Digital Education & Policy, Swansea University, Swansea, UK; Susan Dumais, Technical Fellow and Director, Microsoft Research Labs, New England; Mehran Sahami, Professor (Teaching) and Associate Chair for Education, Stanford University; and Alejandro Saucedo, Engineering Director (Machine Learning), Seldon Technologies and Chief Scientist, The Institute for Ethical AI & Machine Learning, London, UK.
“No other discipline or technology will have more impact on shaping our future than computer science and technology. Global problems must be addressed in a global way, independently from a particular individual, national or commercial interest,” said Kotsis, in a prepared statement. “Computing can play a role in fighting the CO2 dilemma, fertilizing medical research and healthcare, and protecting our democracy. Our community must lead, not only from a scientific and technical perspective in being able to provide correct solutions, but also from an ethical and societal point of view.”
Founding member of ACM Europe Council where she served between 2008 and 2016, Kotsis arranged conferences and workshops, and was recognized for her ACM womENcourage conference series. She has been Member-at-Large of the ACM Council since 2016.
“ACM members can address myriad threats now facing society,” said Feigenbaum, in a prepared statement. “These threats combine sophisticated computation in critical ways with politics (as in ‘election hacking’), economics (as in technology-induced unemployment), journalism (as in ‘fake news’), law (as in mass surveillance in the name of national security), international relations (as in ‘cyberwar’), finance (as in bitcoin speculation), and many other fields. In tackling them, computer scientists will work collaboratively with people in social sciences, law, and many disciplines besides the STEM fields with which we have collaborated for decades.”
Joan Feigenbaum has been a member of ACM since graduate school. Previous roles include SIGACT Executive Committee member from 2005 to 2009 and SIGEcom Vice Chair from 2005 to 2011. She has been a critical contributor to establishing ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation (TEAC). Feigenbaum has established the ACM Symposium on Computer Science and Law and served as General Chair for the inaugural symposium in 2019.
“I will also focus on important matters, such as broadening diversity in our field, supporting younger researchers and open access to data and publications,” said Bertino, in a prepared statement. “Last, but not least, I would like to make sure that ACM stays technically relevant by organizing workshops and conferences on new emerging technologies and applications.”
An ACM member for 38 years, Bertino served as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing and coordinating Co-Editor-in-Chief of Very Large Database Systems (VLDB). She chaired ACM’s Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control (SIGSAC) from 2009 to 2013. In 2011, she co-founded ACM’s Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY), a research forum on data privacy and security. Bertino received the 2019-2020 ACM Athena Lecturer Award.
Article Topics
ACM | airports | appointments | biometric cards | biometric payments | biometrics | SITA | wearables | Zwipe
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