Boards

Anke Rehlinger is a politician and has been Minister-President of Saarland since April 2022 and Chairwoman of the Chairwoman of the SPD branch for the State of Saarland since 2018. After studying law at Saarland University, where she graduated in 2000 with the first state examination, Rehlinger completed supplementary studies at the German University of Administrative Sciences in Speyer. From 2001 to 2003, she was a legal trainee at Saarland’s Ministry of Justice. She was called to the bar in 2005 and one year later became a partner in a supralocal law firm in Losheim. At that time, Rehlinger, who became an SPD member in 1998, was already deputy chairwoman of the SPD branch for the Merzig-Wadern district, and in 2006 she was elected chairwoman. From 2014 until her election as Minister-President, she was Minister of Economy, Work, Energy, and Transport and Deputy Minister-President of Saarland. From 2012 to 2014, she already held the office of the Minister of Justice and Environment and Consumer Protection in Saarland. Anke Rehlinger was born in Wadern and lives in Nunkirchen in the Hochwald.

Catrin Hinkel

Country General Managerin of Microsoft Switzerland

Catrin Hinkel is Country General Managerin of Microsoft Switzerland since May 2021. The German national studied at the University of Reutlingen (European Business School in Reutlingen and London). After graduating, Catrin Hinkel worked in various roles for Accenture, most recently as Senior Managing Director for Cloud First Strategy & Consulting in Europe. She is a member of the Executive Committee of digitalswitzerland and a board member of the association ASUT. She is also a member of the Supervisory Board of CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security and spokesperson of the Board of "Generation CEO", a non-profit association and established network for women leaders in German-speaking countries. Catrin Hinkel is the mother of two children and lives in Zurich.

Dr. Siegfried Dais

Former Deputy Chairman of the Board of Management of Robert Bosch GmbH

Siegfried Dais studied physics at the University of Stuttgart. He wrote his diploma and doctoral theses at the Institute of Physics of the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research (now MPI for Intelligent Systems). He deliberately chose an industrial career and started his professional path in 1979 in advance development at Robert Bosch GmbH. After further stations, among others in the development of integrated circuits and communication technology, Siegfried Dais became Managing Director of Robert Bosch GmbH in 1998 with responsibility for the central divisions of Research / Advance Development as well as several business units. Since 2004, he has been Deputy Chairman of the Board of Management, responsible for the central functions of product planning and technology of the business sectors of Automotive Technology, Consumer Goods, and Building Technology as well as Research, Advance Engineering, and IT. In 2007, the shareholders of Robert Bosch Industrietreuhand KG appointed Dais as an additional limited partner. The Robert Bosch Industrietreuhand exercises the entrepreneurial shareholder function at Robert Bosch GmbH and plays a crucial role in determining the strategic direction of the corporate group. Dais retired from the board of management at the end of 2012 and from the industrial trust in 2017.
Dais was a member, and later chairman, of the university council of the University of Stuttgart, a member of the Senate of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, the German Research Foundation, and the Helmholtz Research Foundation, as well as a member of the Board of Trustees of two Max Planck Institutes.

Thomas Caspers

Vice President of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) 

Thomas Caspers is Vice President of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) in Bonn, Germany. Before he took office in 2025, he was Director-General Technology Strategy at BSI since 2019. His teams were responsible for BSI's work on IT systems, cloud computing and artificial intelligence and also ensured the digitalization of the Federal Office.

As Chairman elected by the NATO member states, Thomas Caspers chaired the Alliance's Capability Panel Information Assurance and Cyber Defence in Brussels from 2018 to 2021 in Brussels. Since 2021, he has represented Germany on the Governing Board of the EU's European Cybersecurity Competence Centre (ECCC) in Bucharest, and in 2023 he was appointed to the Supervisory Board of the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Saarbrücken.

In his previous position from 2015 to 2019 as Head of Evaluation and Operation of Cryptographic Systems at BSI, he created the operational basis for the national and international processing and transmission of classified information through the technical evaluation of information security systems for the German Federal Administration, EU and NATO.

In other positions since 2003, he also headed BSI's activities in the areas of operating system security, trusted computing and secure platforms, having previously worked in various companies covering scientific analytical solutions and health care technology. Thomas Caspers studied physics and astronomy at the University of Bonn and holds a degree in physics.

Dr. Georg Schütte

Secretary General of the Volkswagen Foundation

Dr. Georg Schütte has been Secretary General of the Volkswagen Foundation since January 1, 2020. Prior to this, he was State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research for ten years.

Before joining civil service, Dr. Schütte was Secretary General of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. He has worked in science and foundation management for 30 years.

Georg Schütte studied journalism and television and radio in Dortmund and New York. For his doctorate, the media and communication scientist conducted research in the DFG special research area "Screen Media" at the University of Siegen and as a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University.

Dr. Tina Klüwer

Directorate-General 5: “Research for Technological Sovereignty and Innovation” at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research

Since December 2023, Dr. Tina Klüwer has been heading the Directorate-General 5: “Research for Technological Sovereignty and Innovation” at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Previously, she was the director of K.I.E.Z. - the Artificial Intelligence Entrepreneurship Center. K.I.E.Z. is an initiative of Science & Startups, the association of startup services at Berlin's universities and Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

Before K.I.E.Z. started, Klüwer was the founder and managing director of parlamind GmbH, a company for automation in customer service using artificial intelligence and language processing. For 10 years, she worked as a researchers at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and various universities. She received her doctorate in computational linguistics from Saarland University.

Dr. Tina Klüwer is a recognized expert, manager and technical ambassador for the topic of artificial intelligence and its implementation in the industry.