Noel is an experienced founder, chairman, and executive in the world of semiconductors, including leading ARM’s CPU group, which accounted for approx $1 billion in revenue under his leadership. He started his career as a chip designer at Philips Semiconductors before joining ARM when it was a small company in Cambridge. He went on to cofound XMOS Semiconductors, a Bristol University spinout. He returned to ARM to run its product marketing before becoming the VP and General Manager of various divisions, including CPUs, Business Segments Group and founded their incubation and strategy group. Noel has also taken on leadership roles at other startups as a board member, including SeaChange.ai and BluWireless, both of which attracted investment from Arm. He is currently a non-executive director at EnSilica plc and CEO of Literal Labs.
Dr. Alex Yakovlev is a Professor of Computer System Design at Newcastle and a Cofounder of Literal Labs. He is a world authority on low-power asynchronous circuit design and design automation, stemming back to his PhD research in St. Petersburg in the 1980s in the lab of Victor Varshavsky, whose mentor was Mikhail Tsetlin. Since then, he has published over 700 research papers and 8 monographs, and has co-invented Signal Transition Graphs (STGs), a model for asynchronous logic design widely used in academia and industry. At Newcastle, since 2000 he has been Head of the Microsystems Group and Founder of the Asynchronous Systems Lab, with over 70 PhD alumni. His team is well-known for its contributions in designing asynchronous circuits, concurrent systems, Petri nets, metastability and synchronizers, and artificial intelligence and machine learning hardware. His most recent work is in the fields of electromagnetic computing and circuit design for machine learning based on Tsetlin automata. He is a Fellow of IEEE, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Engineering and Technology.
Dr Rishad Shafik is a Reader in Machine Learning Systems within the Microsystems Research Group, the Director of the new Stephenson AI Lab, and a Cofounder of Literal Labs. His research focuses on Al hardware design using learning automata and ultra low-power design. He has published two books including the co-edited Energy-efficient Fault-Tolerant Systems and has published in excess of 170 articles in major international journals and conference proceedings -- of which seven were nominated for best paper awards and won the best paper/poster awards. He is a Member of Institute of Engineering and Technology and a Senior Member of IEEE and is a regular conference chair and organiser, including Tsetlin machine conferences. He received PhD and MSc (with distinction) degrees from the University of Southampton in 2010 and 2005, and BSc in Electronic Engineering degree (with distinction) from the IUT, Bangladesh in 2001.
Prof. Ole-Christoffer Granmo is the Founding Director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research (CAIR) at the University of Agder, Norway. His passion for artificial intelligence was lit at the age of ten when he got his first computer and discovered programming. Fascinated by the idea of superintelligence, he obtained his master’s degree in 1999 and his PhD degree in 2004, both from the University of Oslo, Norway. In 2018, he created the Tsetlin machine, for which he was awarded the AI research paper of the decade by the Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Consortium (NORA) in 2022. Dr. Granmo has authored 180+ refereed papers with eight paper awards in machine learning, encompassing learning automata, bandit algorithms, Tsetlin machines, Bayesian reasoning, reinforcement learning, and computational linguistics. He has further coordinated 7+ research projects and graduated 55+ master- and nine PhD students. Dr. Granmo is also a co-founder of NORA. Apart from his academic endeavors, he co-founded Anzyz Technologies AS and Tsense Intelligent Healthcare AS.
Jem is a highly experienced business leader and technologist having previously served 18 years at Arm. He is a former Engineer and was an Arm Fellow holding multiple patents on CPU and GPU design. Latterly, Jem’s career moved into business management and he became a GM first in Arm’s Media Processing Groups, then the founding GM of their Machine Learning group. In addition to setting future technology roadmaps, he also worked on several acquisitions leading to building new businesses inside Arm, including the Mali GPU – the world’s #1-shipping GPU and Arm’s AI processors. Jem left Arm in 2021 and currently is chair of NAG and a non-executive director of Literal Labs, CamAI and BOW.
Xavier Parkhouse-Parker is the COO and Co-Founder of Cambridge Future Tech; a uniquely technology-first venture builder, working closely with top-tier universities for positive global impact.
At just 29 years old, Xavier is an accomplished serial founder, having successfully raised over $8 million in investment for various innovative ventures. He has been recognised as a Young Innovator by CVC Capital Partners and National Entrepreneur of the Year by NACUE.
Xavier is Chair and Co-Founder of Literal Labs and currently sits on multiple DeepTech venture boards.
Kelvin Harrison is a chartered engineer who has operated across IT, media and telecommunications.His leadership has spanned from start up, through VC and PE investment to IPOs and trade sales. He was previously CEO of Vega, Symbionics and Maxima. Maxima was a software and managed services company which he created and grew through 14 acquisitions to £60M revenues, £10M profits and 500 staff with global operations. He now has a portfolio of non-exec positions, bringing strong strategic planning skills and operational experience. Amongst his “give backs” are advising Newcastle University and its spin-outs on commercialisation and mentoring disadvantaged young people who are starting their own businesses through the Princes Trust.