Innovating Smart Cities Conference 2020

The Enterprise Lab at Imperial College London is partnering with Tsinghua University’s x-lab in Beijing to hold the Innovating Smart Cities Hackathon 2020, a unique opportunity to collaborate across borders to come up with innovative solutions to UN Sustainable Development Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.

Alongside the hackathon competition, a series of keynotes and panel discussion will be taking place, covering various themes under the Smart Cities umbrella.

We are opening up these sessions to the wider public, to promote knowledge sharing in the space.

*You are not required to attend all of the sessions. If you would like to attend more than one session, please select the relevant ticket types.*

Why Smart Cities?

“The world’s population is constantly increasing. To accommodate everyone, we need to build modern, sustainable cities. For all of us to survive and prosper, we need new, intelligent urban planning that creates safe, affordable and resilient cities with green and culturally inspiring living conditions.” (Project Everyone, 2020).

Conference Agenda

Monday 23 November

Keynote 1: ‘The Future of Cities’ with Paolo Taticchi

• 10:00-11:00 GMT
• Paolo Taticchi, Professor in Strategy and Sustainability, Deputy Director (MBA & International) at UCL School of Management
• An introduction to smart cities touching upon key challenges faced by megacities and associated to UrbanTech innovation, why we need smarter cities, and the perspectives entrepreneurs should consider

Keynote 2: ‘The Chinese Innovation Ecosystem’ with Prof Jizhen Li

• 11:00-12:00 GMT
• Professor Jizhen Li, Associate Dean of Tsinghua SEM
• China’s innovation ecosystem is thriving. In his keynote, Professor Li paints a picture of this growing ecosystem, and begins to break down why and how key players like Huawei, Alibaba and Tencent have grown so effectively.

Tuesday 24 November

Panel discussion 1: Perspectives from smart cities around the world

• 10:00-11:00 GMT

• No two cities are the same. Every city worldwide experiences challenges unique to their population, climate, traffic patterns and more. We will host a panel with representatives from around the world, to discuss how cities differ in their approach to and adoption of smart city technologies. Panellists from Beijing, Singapore, Dubai, Syndey at Utrecht
• Moderator:
  • Paolo Taticchi, Professor in Strategy and Sustainability, Deputy Director (MBA & International) at UCL School of Management

• Panel:
  • Eric Mou, SVP of iSoftStone
  • Veerappan Swaminathan, Founder & Director of Sustainable living lab
  • Yousef Khalili, General Manager UAE and Head of Smart Nation at NXN
  • Meredith Hodgman, Co-Founder and International Director of Women in Smart Cities Global
  • Roel Massink, Project coordinator IRIS Smart cities

Keynote 3: ‘Smart Mobility: what it is and why it matters’ with Nan Feng

• 11:00-12:00 GMT
• Nan Feng, Senior Manager of Market Strategy and Business Development of BMW China
• Mr Feng will take us on a deep- dive on the topic of smart mobility, which includes new forms of transport like route optimization software, autonomous vehicles, systems that facilitate easier ordering and sharing of transport, the Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and smart traffic signals, etc.

Wednesday 25 November

Panel discussion 2: The role of entrepreneurship in building our future cities

• 11:00-12:00 GMT

• Cities are by their very nature an outcome of collaboration. So, who is in charge of making them smart and sustainable, and what opportunities and challenges exist for entrepreneurs who want to get involved? In this panel we welcome 5 founders in the smart city space to share their experience and perspective.
• Panel:

• • • Saskia Beer, Founder of Transformcity
    • Simon Sylvester-Chaudur, Founder & Exec Director of CIV:LAB
    • Peter Chun, CEO Ark i Labs & President of World Smart Cities Forum
    • James Dean, CEO & founder of SenSat
    • Justin Liu, CEO of ZhenRobotics

Friday 27 November

Final Pitch-Off & Award Ceremony

• 11:00-12:00 GMT: Pitch finals
• 12:30-13:00: Awards and closing ceremony
• The top 5 hackathon teams will get the chance to pitch their solution live in front of a panel of judges, followed by a Q&A session.

• Judging panel:

• • Johanna Pitman, Vice co-chair of Smart Cities Council Australia
  • Ben Mumby-Croft, Director of Imperial Enterprise Lab
  • Jizhen Li, Tsinghua SEM Vice Dean
  • Zoe Niu, Founder of Ricequant
  • Patrick Schuler, Comet Group
  • Sheetal Handa, Associate Director at BP – ICAM
  • Wang Lijuan, Deputy Director of Science& Technology Department at Sinopec