Since 2005, in his managerial positions, he has focused mainly on regional development, the EU agenda, international cooperation and the support of education. Subsequently, in 2009 he started to build a strategic and regional development division in the consulting and auditing company NEXIA AP.

Since 2013, he has held the position of RIS3 manager for the Central Bohemian Region. Here, thanks to the position of coordinator of the regional innovation strategy, he managed to stimulate a number of new synergies in the innovation activities of the Central Bohemian and Prague corporate, academic / research environment.

In 2014, he started building the Central Bohemian Innovation Center, a joint organization of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the Central Bohemian Region.

He also worked there in the years 2015 - 2017 as its first director.

In 2018 and 2019, in the position of Business Development Manager, he developed the Slovak market for the company Novicom operating in the field of cybersecurity technologies. In addition, he compiled and led a regional development project for the Association of Innovative Entrepreneurship focused on cooperation between industry and research in the Czech Republic.

He has been working in the field of digitalization and cyber security for over 5 years, when, among other things, he and his team implement professional dissemination events with digitalization topics in the regions of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Since 2019, he has been participating in the preparation of innovation projects (digitization topics, Green Tech., Cooperation with Israeli research) within the expert innovation team of the Liberec Region. Here he also coordinates the regional innovation platform Digitalization.

In June 2019, he again became vice president of the National Cluster Association (which he co-founded). Here he focuses on development synergies, including in the field of digitization, connecting the research, business and public spheres, as well as, for example, supporting Czech companies in expanding in foreign markets.

Since 2020, he has designed the project and co-coordinated the activities of a consortium of entities called "DIH Northern and Eastern Bohemia", which, after a competition nominated by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic, entered a prestigious group of 6 European digital innovation hubs selected from all over the Czech Republic.

This group, as the representation of the Czech Republic, will also strive for the best possible position and involvement within the network of European digital innovation hubs. All previous research and work activities and a number of known subjects and agendas within the Central European area, as well as the demand of several partner subjects in the field of digitalization, led Ivo Říha to the idea of creating a Central European metacluster with digitization and environmental technologies. After an agreement with Lubos Komarek, they together established such organisation and called it Central European Digital and Enviro Grouping.

Ivo Říha was born in Brno. He graduated from the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Philosophy, both at Charles University in Prague. In addition to his family, he enjoys music, sports, hiking or psychology in his free time. He is fluent in English, German, basic Russian.

Maroš Barabas graduated from the doctoral study program at the Faculty of Information Technology of Brno University of Technology, specializing in security and focusing on the behavioural aspects of network communication, where he still works as a researcher. In 2006, he joined the newly emerging Czech branch of Red Hat, where, since 2008 until 2011, he worked in the team focused on the security of Linux systems. Since the beginning of 2012, he worked as a Senior IT Security Consultant at AEC and since 2014 he led a team of specialists focused on security technologies. Currently, he is in the position of Head of Product Management being  responsible for the strategy and innovation of the AEC product portfolio. He specializes mainly in the field of security technologies, design, implementation and audit of security architectures and systems. Last but not least, he is involved in disseminating security awareness through professional and scientific publications at security conferences, in professional and scientific journals, including vocational training at universities.

Luboš Komárek is an enthusiast leading for the last five years a nanotechnology cluster organisation Nanoprogress that helped the Czech nanotech sector to flourish by boosting the competitiveness and innovativeness of national SMEs and R&D entities.

Since 2016 he is actively participating in National Cluster Association CZ that strongly supports the national cluster ecosystem. Furthermore, he is very actively involved in the European cluster community and by close collaboration created over the last decade personal bonds with more than 10 leading European cluster organisations that encompass more than 10 000 SMEs and innovation actors linking multiple sectors towards new global opportunities.

In 2020 Lubos Komarek accompanied the establishment of highly innovative company Nanotech dynamics with the objective to foster the development of high TRL technology and product innovations and to introduce new nanotech products to the global market.

As for the education, he got his first Master´s degree in 2005 in Mechanical Engineering at the Brno University of Technology. Then he left Czech Republic and spend eight years in Portugal where he obtained second Master´s degree in 2013 in Business Economics and Competition at INDEG - ISCTE Executive Education in Lisbon. Luboš speaks fluently English, Spanish and Portuguese and at the basic level also German. As a representative of the Geminis zodiac sign, he is cheerful and helpful companion.

An expert in the field of computer modelling and numerical simulations of the technology processes with a strong focus on application of finite element method into industrial processes such as welding, casting, working and heat processing.

After graduating from the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics, and Informatics of Comenius University in 1986 she worked as a researcher and university teacher in the Faculty of Materials Science and Technology STU in Trnava. From 2002 till 2004 she was employed as hosting researcher at the Chemnitz University of Technology. Between 2006 and 2015 she worked at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the University of West Bohemia in the framework of the R&D center FORTECH.

Mária has vast experience with national and international projects and grants and is an author of more than 170 scientific publications from which 17 are in highly impacted journals and 50 in databases WoS/Scopus.

Currently, she holds the position of vice-director of the R&D department at the Institute of Applied Informatics, Automation and Mechatronics MTF STU and is a leader of the laboratory for thermophysical measurements and calculations. She acts as a member of multinational organisations IACSIT - International Association of Computer Science and Information Technology, SCIEI - Science and Engineering Institute and CSACG - Czechoslovak Association for Crystal Growth. Furthermore, she is a member of the Expert Panel for the chemistry and physics of solid materials.

Jaroslav Lískovec has been the director of the National Centre for Industry 4.0 since December, 2018. The National Centre for Industry 4.0 operates within the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics of the Czech Technical University. Prior to that, he was the director of the strategy and security section of the state-owned enterprise National Agency for Communication and Information Technologies (NAKIT), which he helped establish for the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic. He also contributed to the merging of ICT of the Czech Post into NAKIT. Prior to that, he worked at CzechInvest in the field of preparation and construction of strategic industrial zones. He also worked as an advisor to the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic in the field of innovation, investment and economic strategy. In this position he was responsible for the project of merging the agencies CzechTrade, CzechInvest and CzechTourism. He works on the Czech start-up scene and technology transfer.

Alexander Schwock (born 20 of April 1968) is one of the initiators of the BalticNet-PlasmaTec association.

Since the beginning in 2006, he is responsible for the general management of the network and its international development. He finished his studies of electro technique at the Technical University Dresden as certified engineer (Diplom Ingenieur).

After his studies, he worked for seven years as a scientist developing biosensors. From 1999 to 2004 he was one founder and the general manager of a start-up- company. Since 2004 he works as an international project manager.

Additionally, to the cluster work he is the contact point for the Interreg South Baltic programme in Germany and he is the general manager of a SME focusing on automatization for plasma technologies.

Petr Stoklasa is the Marketing and Corporate Communications Director of the Czech investment group TTC, which currently consists of more than 30 technology and real estate companies. He has specialized in the communication and marketing field for more than a quarter of century, holding a range of senior positions that include Managing Director, Partner and Marketing & Business Development Director. 

Petr has worked with many companies over the years as a Senior Consultant, assisting with their strategic and crises communication activities. He founded and managed the Czech branch of one of the three largest global communication agencies, Weber Shandwick, and subsequently was a partner of the leading Czech communication agency Native PR for over 15 years.  As part of the international network of Hauska & Partner agencies, he was a member of a global team that helped clients integrate the principles of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) into their business practices. For more than a decade, he was on the Ethics and Conciliation Committee of the Czech Association of Public Relations Agencies.