The

Team

At Konpanion we are proud to be part of a multidisciplinary team with skillsets ranging from fashion, linguistics, robotics and machine learning. We believe this allows Konpanion to be a place for fertile imaginative thinking, an essential skill to invent companion robots for the real world. We are always looking for new talents to join our team, feel free to get in touch!

ALEXANDRE COLLE

| CO-FOUNDER | CEO

Robotics PhD candidate at the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, with a strong focus on enhancing social robot integration through aesthetics. Background in fashion and hospitality entrepreneurship, MA industrial design from Central Saint Martins, lead human-robot interaction designer for the Small Robot Company.

alexandre@konpanion.com

SWEN GAUDL

| CO-FOUNDER | CTO

Lecturer in computer science University of Plymouth. Research Fellow at Falmouth University working on Computational Creativity. Received PhD in Computer Science at the University of Bath, specialising in AI. Spent three years as a researcher and PM at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology. Specialised in AI and embodied cognition and has 10 years of software development experience.

swen@konpanion.com

CAMILA JIMENEZ POL

| HEAD OF PRODUCT

Lead multidisciplinary designer focusing on product development, UX/UI design and User Research at Konpanion, with a first-class BA(Hons) in Product and Industrial design from The University of Edinburgh and a strong believer that technology should go hand-in-hand with design and must be guided by human spirit.

camila@konpanion.com

MINQIU ZHOU

| SOFTWARE ARCHITECT

Lead software developer working on Maah's cognitive architecture. Current PhD Engineering candidate at the University of Edinburgh. Fascinated with Sudoku.

minqiu@konpanion.com

YORDAN SVETKOV

| MECHANICAL ENGINEER

Lead Robotics Engineer focused on developing the hardware behind Maah, experienced in mechanical and electronic design.

MATTIA OPPER

| NLP ARCHITECT

PhD candidate at Edinburgh University’s ILCC, working on unsupervised representation learning and structure induction. Prior to this graduated with distinction from the MSc in Speech and Language Processing, from which the interest in generating novel voices originated.

CRISTY TURNER

| COMMUNICATIONS ADVISOR

With over 15 years of experience in fashion, lifestyle, and digital, founder Cristy Turner has led campaigns for top global brands including Tommy Hilfiger, Target, Veuve Clicquot, Grand Hyatt, St. Regis and LVMH. Prior to Scout, Cristy was VP at Digital Brand Architects (DBA), overseeing strategy for the agency’s brand clients. Previously, she launched the social division at PR agency, LaForce + Stevens, and was Creative Director at online retailers, REVOLVE and FWRD.