Digital Transformation Community Thought Leader Interview: Serban Cantacuzene and Athanasios Kontopoulos, Air Liquide

Resource Type
Audio Presentation/Podcast
Publish Date
04/15/2021
Authors
Serban Cantacuzene, Athanasios Kontopoulos
Topics
Digital Innovation, Leading Innovation Organizations
Associated Event
Digital Transformation Thought Leader Interview: Serban Cantacuzene and Athanasios Kontopoulos, Air Liquide
April 2021

IRI’s Lee Green and Serban and Thanos discuss spreading digitalization efforts across a complex global network, using digital tools to meet the needs of a hospitals in a pandemic, and upskilling staff in this wide-ranging interview.

Serban Cantacuzene joined the Air Liquide Group in 1995 as a Researcher at the Innovation Campus Paris and managed several projects in Heat Treatment and Metallurgy. In 2000, he transitioned to a Marketing position at the Group’s Paris headquarters.

Between 2004 and 2011, he held several international operational roles in North America, based in Atlanta, Houston, and Montréal. In 2011, Serban was appointed CEO of the Maghreb Cluster based in Tunisia, and in 2014, he became Executive Vice President and COO of Air Liquide Japan. Since returning to R&D in 2018 as Vice President of the Americas, Serban has been responsible for managing the Zone’s strategy and activities. He is based at the Innovation Campus Delaware in Newark, Delaware.

Serban holds an INPG Engineering Degree in Material Science from the Grenoble Institute of Technology, a PhD in Plasma Physics from Paris Saclay/CEA, and a MBA from the Institut d’Administration des Entreprises (IAE) de Paris.

Athanasios Kontopoulos holds the position of “Computational & Data Science Scientific Director and Global Lab Leader”. He is a Chemical Engineer with a PhD in Applied Sciences and Math. He is with Air Liquide since 1995. He found several ways to express his passion for simulation, applied math and data science both in R&D, where he is currently, and in Operations, where he spent more than 13 years. He pioneered many smart manufacturing solutions for Air Liquide such as the development of predictive control and innovative real-time optimization systems. He presented the first roadmap of big data for Air Liquide and set up the first teams of data scientists within R&D, in 3 continents. He introduced artificial intelligence, through proofs of concept and alliances with innovative companies. He recently launched the “data and decision sciences lab” (d2-lab) initiative, a network of experts and practitioners, to reach scientific excellence in these areas. Athanasios is an Air Liquide International Fellow.