Moderator: Robert Stevenson
Senior Vice President, Ghafari Associates

With nearly 40 years of engineering and project management experience, Bob is a longtime advocate of sustainable design practices, especially for the complex industrial projects in which he specializes. As Senior Vice President, Bob serves as principal and design manager on large-scale manufacturing and aviation projects located around the globe and is adept at developing energy-conservation strategies that meet client needs. 

Bob holds a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Michigan Technological University and a Master of Business Administration from Indiana Wesleyan University. He is an active member of the U.S. Green Building Council, having served on the Executive Committee of the Detroit Chapter Board of Directors, the Greening the Heartland Committee, and the Heartland Regional Council. He is also a member of ASHRAE and the Society of Military Engineers. 

A Fellow of the Engineering Society of Detroit, Bob currently chairs the society’s Construction and Design Sector, as well as the Construction and Design Awards Committee. He is also a member of ESD’s Economic Forecast Committee. He is a frequent presenter on energy conservation and mechanical engineering and serves on the Industry Advisory Board at Lawrence Technological University.

Speaker: Jihad Boueri
Vice President Transformation for the Middle East & Africa Region, SITA

Jihad Boueri is the SITA Vice President Transformation for the Middle East & Africa Region.
Jihad has a wealth of experience in Project Management, Solution Architecture, Master Systems Integration, Bid Management, and Business Management across most airports in the Middle East, India, and Africa. He was instrumental in the design and implementation of airport systems at the majority of newly built or upgraded airports in his region, including AUH, MCT, BAH, DOH, IST, JNB, ADD, BOM, etc.

He holds an Engineering Degree in Telecommunications from St. Joseph University, Beirut, and an MBA from Strathclyde Graduate Business School, Scotland and a Doctorat of Business Administration (DBA) program at the University of Cote d’Azur in Nice, France. His research focuses on the implementation of complex Digitalization projects, with airports as the primary reference point.

Jihad has completed the AELP ‘Airport Executive Leadership program’ with ACI and Concordia University’s Aviation Management Institute. He also holds an ACI Airport Operations Diploma, and ACI-ICAO AMPAP Associate Diploma. He is an instructor in the AMPAP program covering the topic of Technology & Innovation at Airports.

Speaker: Yann Guillemain
Senior Vice President of Airport & Airline Operations (EMEA), Amadeus

Yann Guillemain is a global Travel & Technology sales, innovation, strategy and transformation senior leader. In his current role as Senior Vice President of Airports, EMEA at Amadeus, he is responsible for the strategic direction and growth of airports, ground handlers, border authorities and governments across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Previously, Yann served as Director of Strategy, Scaling & Marketing for Airport & Airline Operations,, where he defined acceleration strategies, including through M&A with the acquisition in April 2024 of Vision-Box, the leader of biometrics and border control solutions.

Yann’s earlier roles include overseeing the scaling of Amadeus newest businesses like Payments, and advising on strategic positioning across the full spectrum of Amadeus businesses in Travel Distribution, Airlines IT or Hotel IT.

Yann has been contributing to Amadeus’ success for 12 exciting years, building upon his experience with the strategy consulting firm Bain & Company, and international engineering education.

Speaker: Dr. Georgi Nalbantov
Head of AI, Danlex and Chief Scientific Officer, Vector Labs.

Dr. Georgi Nalbantov is a leading expert in Artificial Intelligence and Predictive Analytics, renowned for combining academic excellence with transformative industrial innovation. With a solid
background in Computer Science and Econometrics, and expertise spanning Machine Learning, Healthcare AI, and Marketing Analytics, he unites scientific depth with strategic vision.

Author of over 50 publications in international journals, Dr. Nalbantov continues to advance research and inspire innovation at the intersection of theory and real-world application.

As Head of AI at Danlex, he led the collaboration between the Data Science, R&D, and IT teams to develop and deploy PM4X, the AI-driven predictive maintenance solution for X-ray systems.

He now heads the creation of the PM4X AI Assistant, a next-generation platform transforming maintenance through intelligent, data-driven insights.