group speakers.title

Andrea is a Junior Group Leader at CodeLounge, the software engineering R&D group at the Software Institute, headed by Dr. Marco D’Ambros and Prof. Dr. Michele Lanza. 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). 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.

I'm Thanos, a Senior Software Engineer team lead at XM.For the last 3 years I've been mostly losing my hair over performance testing and scaling of critical applications.As a developer, I'm really passionate about observability, "measuring all the things", and pushing for data driven decisions.Of course, I do enjoy the thrill of the occasional late Friday night deploy to prod!

Aurora Scharff is a software developer and Microsoft MVP from Norway with a bachelor's degree in Robotics and Intelligent Systems. She has a solid foundation in engineering mathematics, robotics, algorithms, data structures, and computer architecture. Aurora began her career at a financial technology startup and now serves as a consultant at Crayon Consulting. She focuses on web development and has extensive experience in React and Next.js and active use of React Server Components.Aurora shares her knowledge through workshops, technical blog posts, social media, demo applications, and supporting fellow developers, and she regularly presents internationally at recognized conferences to contribute to the global developer community.

Full-time Developer Advocate at BellSoft, main focus is on exploring Java features, the newest solutions in the Java ecosystem, and ways of increasing the performance of Java applications in the cloud.Content creator: articles and educational videos.Co-host of the CyberJAR YouTube Channel.

Devlin Duldulao is a dynamic tech professional blending engineering, authorship, mentoring, and community leadership. Whether it's through speaking at conferences, writing code and books, or championing modern practices like GraphQL and AI-enhanced search, he’s a go-to figure for cutting-edge, full-stack, and cloud development.

Dimitris Dranidis currently works as Quality Assurance Lead at BetAdvanced.He is also teaching at CITY College, University of York Europe Campus.In the past he was the Head of the Computer Science Department and an Associate Professor at CITY College, University of York Europe Campus and an associate researcher at SEERC (South East European Research Centre). He holds a PhD in Computer science from the University of Munich, Germany (1997). In the past, he has served as an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Applied Informatics at the University of Macedonia and as a Research Associate in the Technological Institution of Thessaloniki.His interests are in the areas of model-based testing, object-oriented analysis and design, formal methods, software engineering, agile software development methodologies, and artificial intelligence. He has participated as a principal investigator in several EU funded projects.

Fullstack developer with 10+ years of experience, passionate about beautiful UIs, sustainability and super fast web applications.

Eoin Woods is an independent consultant in the fields of software architecture, green software and software engineering. He is formerly the CTO of Endava, where he was responsible for software engineering and capability development for over 10,000 delivery staff across the world. Prior to Endava he has developed databases, created security software and designed way too many systems to move money around. Outside his day job he is interested in software architecture, software security and sustainable (or "green") software. He is a regular conference speaker, has co-authored three books on software architecture and was the recipient of the 2018 Linda Northrup Award for Software Architecture, from the Software Engineering Institute at CMU. His web site is www.eoinwoods.info.

Eva Lampri is Head of Product Owners at Allwyn Lottery Solutions, where she leads teams shaping the future of digital lottery. With a background in business analysis and product leadership, she has spent her career bridging technology and product, guiding teams through change, and focusing on impact over output. She’s passionate about teamwork, clarity, and building products that truly matter.

Passionate software craftsman with 28+ years experience in a broad spectrum of development technologies and platforms. Main focus on cloud-native software architectures and all major cloud environments. Passion for model-driven development, application modernization and Dapr. Observing and securing these environments are key aspects.As a Developer Relations Engineer at New Relic, Harry helps software engineers, DevOps, SREs and operations experts to understand and implement proactive and scalable observability practices by leveraging open source technologies and the New Relic platform.

Dr. Heinz Kabutz is a globally recognized Java Champion and the creator of the acclaimed Java Specialists' Newsletter, which has been read by thousands of advanced Java programmers worldwide. With a PhD in Computer Science and decades of hands-on experience, Heinz is renowned for his deep technical insights, particularly in the areas of Java concurrency, performance optimization, and advanced programming techniques. As a sought-after speaker, trainer, and consultant, he has delivered engaging talks and workshops at premier Java conferences and for leading companies around the globe. Heinz's practical, no-nonsense approach to Java programming has made him a trusted authority in the industry. (Wow, thanks ChatGPT!) https://www.javaspecialists.eu

Jamie is a Senior Developer Advocate for Loqate formally at IBM & Sonatype, based in the UK. He has had the privilege to have spoken all around the world at developer conferences and is an organiser of London’s biggest developer community, the London Java Community.Passionate about discovering ways to help reduce developers carbon footprint, he is also a subject matter expert in containerised solutions and build technologies. He fell in love with coding at university and has gone on to talk at many conferences about using languages like Java with microservices and related technologies such as AI and software security. He has worked on a wide variety of projects such as modernising IBMs mainframe testing infrastructure, creating, and automating the creation of Docker images for IBM’s products and contributing to a DevOps pipeline offering.

I’m Jonas, a Software Developer with a keen focus on crafting robust Software Architectures in Java. I thrive at the crossroads of business and technology, always keeping a pragmatic perspective on both realms.

Josh is a Cloud Developer Advocate at Microsoft, focusing on Azure Data, particularly Microsoft Fabric and operational databases. He works closely with engineering teams to provide valuable product feedback and develops content and code that helps developers get the most out of these technologies. He is Passionate about empowering developer communities, sharing knowledge and fostering collaboration. His goal is to help developers leverage technology to innovate and succeed.

Kostas is a principal software engineer with a solid experience of more than 20 years. He is currently fighting legacy and architecting novel software solutions at Kaizen Gaming. When not getting his hands dirty with code, riding his bike, sailing or hiking, he studies the sociotechnical aspects of complex systems and likes to challenge assumptions and existing practices. He is passionate about organizational agility and fast flow. He serves as a volunteer and committee member for Devoxx Greece, an organizer for Better Ways (ex Agile Summit) and co-organizes Domain Driven Design Greece meetup.

Loïc Magnette is a seasoned software developer with a strong background in consulting. Currently a senior developer at Oniryx, he specializes in Java and Angular, delivering innovative solutions and sharing his knowledge as a speaker. As a co-organizer of the Belgian Java User Group (BeJUG), he fosters connections within the developer community. Outside of tech, Loïc’s passion for wildlife inspires his work and creativity.

Marit van Dijk is a software developer with over 20 years of diverse experience across various roles and companies. As a Java Champion and Developer Advocate at JetBrains, she is passionate about building awesome software in collaboration with amazing people, and making developers’ lives better.Marit is committed to continuous learning and actively shares her expertise in programming, software development, testing, and test automation.Marit regularly presents at international conferences, participates in webinars, and appears on podcasts. Additionally, she writes blog posts and tutorials, creates videos, and is a contributor to the book “97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know” (O’Reilly Media).

With two decades of experience in IDE and database tools development, Markus is a dedicated advocate for Java. As CEO of MicroStream, he drives the development of EclipseStore, Eclipse Serializer, and RapidClipse IDE – innovative open-source projects shaping the future of Java. Beyond his technical role, Markus is a driving force in the Java community, serving as editor-in-chief of JAVAPRO Magazine and co-organizing the Java community conference JCON EUROPE. His commitment to Java is evident in his numerous contributions to the industry, from speaking at conferences to mentoring developers. A passionate advocate for open source, Markus' company is a member and sponsor of the Micronaut Foundation and the Eclipse Foundation. He believes in giving back to the Java community by contributing new innovations and supporting open-source projects.

Melinda Seckington is a consultant, trainer and coach, working with engineering teams and leaders to improve their communication, management and collaboration skills. She previously was an engineering manager at companies such as the Wikimedia Foundation and FutureLearn, where she focused on creating great internal engineering cultures. She’s an international conference speaker and has spoken at over 50 conferences, covering topics from good management practices to becoming a better speaker.

Nikhil Barthwal is passionate about building distributed systems. He has several years of work experience in both big companies & smaller startups and also acts as a mentor to several startups. Outside of work, he speaks at international conferences on several topics related to Distributed systems & Programming Languages. You can learn more about him via his homepage: www.nikhilbarthwal.com.

Panos Tsilopoulos is an engineering executive with a background in Artificial Intelligence, cloud infrastructure, platform and production engineering. Currently serving as the Director of Observability Platform Engineering at Nike, Inc., he leads the global strategy for ingesting and analyzing peta-scale consumers and systems' telemetry data to enhance digital services' resilience posture. Previously, he held leadership roles at U.S. Xpress Enterprises, building a coherent Developer Experience based on Platform Engineering principles. Did the startup dance for 5 years as a founding engineer at VidReach, pioneering B2B web-based video. Panos holds a master’s degree in computer science from Georgia Tech with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence and a bachelor’s in computer engineering from the International Hellenic University.

Pavlos Charonyktakis is Senior Consultant at Deloitte. He leads technical teams,primarily focusing on GenAI and life sciences projects, while also contributing to abroader range of initiatives. He was previously CEO and co-founder at JADBio. From2019 until 2022 he had the role of CTO, where he led the development of JADBioautomated machine learning platform. He has also contributed to the developmentof the Biosignature Discoverer plug-in for identifying molecular signatures for theCLCbio bioinformatics platform as well as to a highly optimized machine learningand statistics library.He received his B.Sc. in 2011 and his M.Sc. in 2015 from the Computer ScienceDepartment of the University of Crete. From 2009 until 2015, he had been a research assistant (with scholarship) at the Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas. He has been the author or co-author of 15+ journal and peer-reviewed conference and journal articles. He has also been the PI, WP leader, or coordinator of 4 European and National research grants.

Notorious engineer at work and after hours, tracing meanders of the art of software engineering. Remote Software Gardener, mostly working in web-oriented Java gardens. Java Champion. Testcontainers Champion. Programming usually in Java (since 1.3), Scala and Go, but in other languages too. Fan of agility, seen mostly as choosing the right tools and approaches after asking the right questions. Developer, trainer and conference speaker. In his talks, Piotr covers not only hardcore Java but also software architecture, computer security, and soft-skills.

Sandra Ahlgrimm is a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, specializing in supporting Java Developers. With over a decade of experience as a Java developer, she brings a wealth of knowledge to her role. Sandra is passionate about containers and has recently learned to love AI.As a leader in the tech community, Sandra actively contributes to the Berlin Java User Group (JUG) and the Berlin Docker MeetUp. Her expertise extends beyond coding; she focuses on LangChain4j integrations and serves as the primary point of contact for developer feedback related to GitHub Copilot for Java developers. Additionally, her interest in performance and event-driven architectures led to her involvement with native images. Therefore, Sandra represents Microsoft on the GraalVM Program Advisory Board.Sandra’s commitment to empowering fellow developers and fostering collaboration makes her an invaluable asset to the software development ecosystem.

Hi! I’m Scott. I’ve worked as various exciting variants of a code-pusher since who-knows-when. These days I work as a Developer Advocate @ Datadog. I live in Switzerland in the rather scenic Berner Oberland.These days I focus on the technical foundations of software engineering - what does it take to build high-quality software, how can we best use our tools and languages, and how can an awareness of the lower levels of the stack help? I believe that knowledge of these foundational layers influences high-level design and engineering more than we often acknowledge, and I strive to make this understanding more approachable. I’m currently working primarily with Java, Rust, and eBPF.