Emerging Technology and Geopolitics

Zahar Barth-Manzoori is the Director of the German Center for Research and Innovation (DWIH) in San Francisco. After completing her doctorate in Middle Eastern Studies at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel – supported by a scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation – she began working at the DAAD in Bonn in 2011 as head of the Events and Visitor Programs Department. In 2015, she took over the position as Head of Section Joint Scholarship Programs Middle East, North Africa, returning to her professional roots. From May 2020 until her departure for San Francisco, she played a leading role in setting up DWIH San Francisco as head of the DWIH management office at DAAD. As an experienced science manager and passionate networker, she is particularly looking forward to initiating international university collaborations, fostering knowledge transfer between research, business and society, and supporting research-based innovation in San Francisco.  

Olaf Groth is a scholar-entrepreneur, capacity builder, strategy adviser, author and speaker for the AI and emerging tech-driven transformation of global organizations and economies.

Groth has 28 years of experience as an executive and adviser building strategies, programs,  ventures and capabilities across 35+ countries with multinationals (e.g. AirTouch, Boeing, Chevron, GE, Qualcomm, Q-Cells, Vodafone, Volkswagen, etc.), consultancies, startups, foundations, governments and academia. Groth is the founding CEO of advisory thinktank Cambrian Futures and of concept development firm Cambrian Labs. He serves as professional faculty for strategy, policy, technology and futures at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, adjunct professor of Practice at Hult IBS, and honorary adjunct professor at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, teaching across the US, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Martin Rauchbauer is a senior Austrian diplomat and a tech governance expert who currently is on a sabbatical in the San Francisco Bay Area after having served for two years as Austria’s first Tech Ambassador to Silicon Valley and more than five years as Head of Open Austria and Austrian Consul in San Francisco. Martin shaped the emerging field of tech diplomacy, engaged in transatlantic tech diplomacy and digital human rights. He also developed digital humanism as a strategic focus of Austrian foreign policy. In Silicon Valley Martin co-founded Open Austria’s Art + Tech Lab, and the European art + tech + policy initiative The Grid. At Berggruen, he looks at new and innovative ways to reorganize the relationship between governments and tech companies. Analyzing the growing trend of tech diplomacy in global tech hubs such as Silicon Valley, he will launch a new initiative on the global governance of new technologies supported by various stakeholders in the private and policy sector.