Rob is a seasoned industry advisor with over 20 years of experience leading transformation across the Education and Public Sector. As Director, Industry Advisor for Education, Rob works closely with national ministries, institutional leaders, and policy makers to shape forward-looking strategies that strengthen education systems, promote digital equity, and build institutional resilience. His deep regional expertise—particularly in Southeast Asia—combined with a practical understanding of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, enables him to guide leaders in navigating the evolving intersection of policy, pedagogy, and innovation. Rob is a trusted voice in engagements focused on modernizing education, fostering public-private collaboration, and unlocking the societal potential of technology.
Archan Misra is Vice Provost (Research) and Lee Kong Chian Professor of Computer Science at Singapore Management University (SMU). Archan has provided leadership to several large-scale research initiatives at SMU, cumulatively worth more than $50M USD, which collectively developed innovative mobile/wearable/IoT technologies for pervasive computing applications. He is currently a Program Co-PI on the ongoing MIT/SMART’s Mens, Manus and Machina (M3S) inter-disciplinary research program that seeks to create breakthroughs on the use of AI and machines for collaborative work with humans. He is also the Interim Director of SMU’s Resilient Workforces Institute, which is spearheading research on Adult/Lifelong Learning and the Future of Work. He was SMU’s first recipient of the prestigious Singapore NRF Investigator grant, awarded for his research on low-power, multi-modal human-machine interaction. His current research interests lie in ultra-low energy execution of AI on IoT and edge devices, and embodied AI to support spatially grounded human-machine collaboration. Over a 25+ year research career spanning both academics and industry, Archan has published on, and practically deployed, technologies spanning wireless networking, mobile & wearable sensing and human-robot interaction. An ACM Distinguished Member, Archan chaired the IEEE Computer Society’s Technical Committee on Computer Communications (TCCC) from 2005-2007.
