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Alberto Bacchelli is a professor of Empirical Software Engineering at University of Zurich,Switzerland, where he leads the Zurich Empirical Software Engineering Team (ZEST).His broader research vision is to innovate software engineering, through fundamental empiricalresearch and software tools. His goal is to increase our scientific knowledge of today’s softwaredevelopment and to design, based on strong empirical evidence and theory, the right tools, languages, and development environments for high‑quality software engineering.

Alessandra Pasini is a Solutions Architect at AWS based in Zurich, specializing in analytics and AI/ML solutions. She works with leading European companies on cloud transformation and has a strong passion for public speaking, regularly presenting on topics including data strategy, Kiro, AI-guided development, and generative AI solutions. She is also dedicated to empowering the next generation of technologists through mentorship and community engagement.

Alessandro Giagnorio is a Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Informatics at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), Switzerland, where he is part of the SEART research group. His research focuses on the intersection of software engineering and artificial intelligence, particularly on enhancing Large Language Models for software development tasks. Although research is already part of his daily routine, Alessandro is passionate about keeping up-to-date with the latest AI and industry trends and experiment with new technologies. His enthusiasm for AI and software development drives him to explore innovative solutions that can bridge the gap between academia and industry.

Alessandro Giusti is a full professor of AI for Autonomous Robotics at SUPSI in Lugano, in the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA, USI-SUPSI). He leads a group of 10 researchers and PhD students working on self-supervised robot learning, real-world deep learning applications, and human-robot interaction. He teaches university courses at the Swiss Master of Science in Engineering (Zurich), USI (Lugano), SUPSI (Lugano), and Politecnico di Milano on Robotics, Computer Vision, Deep Learning and Data Science topics.

Open-source software engineer with over 15yrs of experience in the field and people manager of a worldwide distributed and diverse team of engineers. Contributor of RESTEasy and many other successful open-source projects (WildFly, Quarkus, Apache CXF, Apache WSS4J, Apache Santuario, ...)

Alex Gavrilescu leads backend & web engineering at Funstage GmbH in Vienna, keeping millions of free‑to‑play gamers happily tapping. He still ships code, tinkers with Raspberry Pi Kubernetes clusters for fun, and is passionate about weaving project‑management smarts with practical AI. Most recently he created Backlog.md, a micro‑tool that turns side‑project chaos into shippable tasks.

Andrea is a Junior Group Leader at CodeLounge, the software engineering R&D group at the Software Institute. His main responsibilities include being the tech lead for CodeLounge team and projects. In the context of the REFLEX project, he has fun with machine learning and natural language processing to support economists and social scientists in their research.Passionate about programming languages, Andrea has a particular love for functional programming. While he doesn’t publish as often these days, he still enjoys speaking at developer conferences, including Scala Days Seattle (2023) and Voxxed Days Zurich (2024), and Voxxed Days Thessaloniki (2025). In the past, Andrea has been a postdoctoral researcher at MIT and USI Lugano, and his alma mater is Politecnico di Milano, where he’s got a PhD advised by Prof. Carlo Ghezzi.

Annelore is a passionate software developer from Switzerland who values high-quality code, likes working in teams, and sharing her knowledge. She also likes to meet new people, so if you see her around, feel free to say hi!

Anton is a Developer Advocate at JetBrains, working with Kotlin, IntelliJ IDEA, and AI-driven developer tools. With a background in server-side development, he has spent over a decade building software for developers. A Java Champion since 2014, Anton speaks at conferences, shares insights on the Kotlin YouTube channel, and enjoys exploring new ideas in programming languages, AI-powered tooling, and developer workflows. He’s always experimenting with new tech, looking for ways to make coding more efficient and enjoyable.

Baruch Sadogursky (@jbaruch) did Java before it had generics, DevOps before there was Docker, and DevRel before it had a name. He built DevRel at JFrog from a ten-person company through IPO, co-authored "Liquid Software" and "DevOps Tools for Java Developers," and is a Java Champion, Microsoft MVP, and CNCF Ambassador alumni.Today, he's obsessed with how AI agents actually write code. At Tessl, an AI agent enablement platform, Baruch focuses on context engineering, management, and sharing. On top of sharing context with AI agents, Baruch also shares knowledge with developers through blog posts, meetups, and conferences like DevNexus, QCon, Kubecon, and Devoxx, mostly about why vibecoding doesn't scale.

Christian is a software developer and Microsoft MVP with over 15 years of experience in the field. He loves to write code in Java, TypeScript and JavaScript. In his spare time he tries to convince others to also start using these languages by giving engaging live-coding conference talks and trainings. When there‘s time left he records videos trying to explain the most complex concepts of TypeScript in a simple way.

I am a research assistant with the Programming group at the University of St. Gallen. I am working on recent topics in the context of Software Engineering. Currently, my goal is to improve the current state of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) as well as Security in the context of the AI age.I joined the programming group in July 2024, after nine wonderful years at smartive AG in St. Gallen, Switzerland. My passion for exploring new technologies and solving complex problems has always driven my learning process. My Master Thesis with the university of applied science OST (former HSR) resolved around identity security and authentication in heterogeneous systems.Since September 2024, I am enrolled in the Masters program in Computer Science at the University of St. Gallen, after which I will continue my research in the Programming group - enrolling in the PhD program under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Guido Salvaneschi. During my studies at HSG - and with my Master Thesis - I focus on testing and verification of IaC programs.When I am not trying out new technologies or working on my research, I enjoy spending time with my beautiful wife and our kid. I also love playing video games, snowboarding, and Lindy Hop dancing.

Céline is a Software Engineer at Swiss Post with a passion for problem solving. As a Co-Lead Developer for the Swiss Post E-Voting project, she has gained significant experience in back-end and front-end development, deployment processes, cryptography, and security.

Dr. Cristian Schuszter holds a PhD in Systems Engineering with a focus on distributed fault-tolerant software architectures and machine-learning based failure prediction. In his day-to-day, he is somewhere between a Data and Full-stack Software Engineer, with a wide range of tech & job exposure both in academia and industry.For the past 8 years he's been working with various teams in CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research). Currently he's focusing on the architectural directions of the CERN business computing group, with an emphasis on enterprise Java systems and UI.

Software Engineer turned SRE to get paged in the middle of the night for Kubernetes multi-cluster setups and thousands of worker nodes on bare-metal: been there, done that.

Domagoj Marić graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb, shifting from information security to data science with a focus on web scraping. He began his career at Megatrend poslovna rješenja developing Python applications and data solutions, later leading the data science department, a role he continued at Comping. Today, he works as the AI Customer Delivery Manager at Pontis Technology, leading the delivery of projects in NLP, computer vision, predictive analytics, and generative AI. In addition to his industry work, he also works as a lecturer in programming.

Eros is a Principal Software Engineer and Software Architect with over 18 years of experience in Telecommunication, Security, and Data Analytics & AI domains.He works at Julius Baer leading a global platform engineering team tasked with improving developer experience and accelerating technology adoption.

Eva Panadero is a Senior Software Engineer at CGI, specializing in backend development with technologies such as Spring Boot, Java, Kotlin, and Nest.js, as well as microservices, databases, containers, and automation with GitHub Actions. She holds a master’s degree in Cybersecurity and Privacy, along with certifications as a cybersecurity professional and in Management 3.0.With over 10 years of experience, she combines a solid technical background with a creative and innovative approach. She is actively involved in initiatives like "Seré Ingeniera", encouraging girls to pursue technical careers through workshops and hands-on projects. Currently, she is also developing two new initiatives focused on digital education and cybersecurity.

Fabrizio Beretta Piccoli is a dynamic Application Manager for E-Voting at Swiss Post, where he supports the development and management of secure electronic voting solutions. With a background in ICT, DevOps, and application management, Fabrizio has experience working with diverse teams and stakeholders across Switzerland.Fabrizio is known for clear communication, a collaborative approach, and the ability to explain technical topics to different audiences. Fluent in Italian, French, English, and German, he values teamwork and knowledge sharing, and enjoys working in multicultural environments. Fabrizio is committed to supporting digital innovation and public service in Switzerland

Developer Advocate

Florian is a experience software engineer with 10+ years of experience in Java, Python and Go. He has worked on some of the largest systems the tech world has to offer at companies such as IBM, AWS and Dynatrace.At Dynatrace he is responsible for building the future of Hyperscaler Observability.

I've been working for many years in the computer field. In the last 15 years I've cultivated a strong passion in Java development and the under the hood details of OpenJDK, C and (x86) Assembly.Big fan of DDD (Domain Driven Design) world, I've developed several Event-Sourcing high performance solutions in the medical and IoT field.I'm an active member of various online communities on performance (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mechanical-sympathy), Senior Principal (Software) Performance Engineer and Performance Lead for Red Hat/IBM on Quarkus, Red Hat Top Inventor (2019).I've collaborated to different projects related high-performance computing both as committer and contributors eg Quarkus, Vert-x, Netty committer, JCTools author, PMC of ActiveMQ Apache Artemis (Messaging Broker), HdrHistogram, JGroups-raft, ...

Giovanni Degiorgi is a forward-thinking Solution Architect at Swiss Post, based in Lugano, Switzerland. With a keen focus on digital transformation, Giovanni plays a crucial role in guiding the organization's transition to cloud technologies. His expertise in designing and implementing robust cloud solutions has been instrumental in driving innovation and efficiency within Swiss Post.Giovanni recently enhanced his technical prowess by completing a Master's degree in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence from SUPSI (University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland). This advanced education has equipped him with cutting-edge knowledge, allowing him to bridge the gap between traditional IT infrastructure and modern data-driven technologies.In his current role, Giovanni is actively supporting the development team at Swiss Post in establishing foundational blueprints for cloud architecture. His efforts are particularly focused on implementing MLOps (Machine Learning Operations) practices using the AWS platform. This initiative aims to streamline the deployment, monitoring, and management of machine learning models in production environments.

Ixchel Ruiz has been developing software applications and tools since 2000. Her research interests include Java, dynamic languages, client-side technologies, and testing. As a Java Champion, Oracle ACE Pro, Testcontainers Community Champion, CDF Ambassador, Hackergarten enthusiast, Open Source advocate, public speaker, and mentor, Ixchel is deeply committed to fostering inclusive and collaborative tech communities. She actively mentors aspiring developers and champions initiatives aimed at increasing diversity and accessibility in the technology sector.Ixchel’s work is characterised by a relentless pursuit of innovation, a deep understanding of user needs, and an unwavering commitment to ethical technology development.

Jesper Findahl is a Senior R&D Software Engineer at CodeLounge, a software research and development center at the Software Institute, Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Switzerland. Since joining CodeLounge in 2018, Jesper has worked across the full stack — from frontend and backend engineering to data visualization, CI/CD automation, and software analysis.In recent years, his focus has expanded toward data analytics and machine learning, exploring how modern tools like Polars can make data pipelines faster, simpler, and more enjoyable. Jesper is passionate about software design, developer productivity, and discovering new technologies that push the boundaries of what’s possible.