This year, the SWISSED brings together practitioners and academics, by presenting inspiring keynote lectures.

It is our great pleasure to introduce the keynote speakers for this year’s SWISSED:

Nico Michels, a mechanical engineer and systems engineer from Hanover, has more than 20 years of leadership experience in the strategic development and successful implementation of digital transformations in international manufacturing companies. As a long-standing top manager, he has held operational responsibility for complex, globally distributed engineering, production, and IT systems. He is actively involved in innovative research projects with industry, academia, and politics, and serves as a speaker and lecturer in product development and digitalization. Since December 2022, he has been Managing Executive for Digital Enterprise at Siemens Digital Industries Software, where he advises and supports board members and top management in digital transformation initiatives. His strategic and operational focus lies on a holistic, systemic approach and strong collaboration within an international ecosystem.

Keynote: Systems Engineering in the Age of Non‑Determinism: From Digital Twins to Agentic Engineering

Modern engineering faces a fundamental shift: increasing system complexity, interconnected ecosystems, and the growing use of AI introduce a new reality of non‑determinism. Traditional engineering approaches, built on predictability and control, reach their limits.

This keynote explores how Digital Enterprise concepts like Systems Engineering, Digital Twins and industrial-grade AI enable organizations to navigate this new landscape. At the core lies a connected data foundation – combining Digital Twins, knowledge graphs, and AI – that transforms fragmented data into contextualized, actionable intelligence.

Building on this foundation, engineering is able to evolve towards adaptive, fast, and sustainable systems where engineering processes integrate product, production, and service across the full lifecycle.

Finally, the keynote outlines how agentic AI and human‑AI collaboration will fundamentally change the role of systems engineers – from designing systems to orchestrating intelligent, hybrid engineering ecosystems.

Elena Cortona trat im Juni 2021 als CTO bei der Belimo Automation AG ein. Sie ist Mitglied der Konzernleitung und leitet den Konzernbereich Innovation (R&D).
Von 2001 bis 2021 war sie in verschiedenen Positionen für die Schindler-Gruppe tätig.
Zuletzt war sie für die digitale Transformation entlang der gesamten Wertschöpfungskette verantwortlich und definierte strategische Ziele, Methoden sowie die IT-/IoT-Tool-Landschaft für die Konstruktion, Produktion, Installation und Wartung von Aufzügen. Von 2007 bis 2017 war sie technische Leiterin bei Schindler 7000. In dieser Funktion leitete sie die Entwicklung von Aufzügen bis zu einer Höhe von 500 m für den globalen Markt und führte Schindler in diesem Produktsegment an die Spitze. Von 2005 bis 2007 leitete sie das Forschungs- und Entwicklungsteam von Atlas Schindler in São Paulo, Brasilien, und war an der strategischen Ausgestaltung der F&E-Globalisierung für die Schindler-Gruppe beteiligt.
Sie hat einen Doktortitel der ETH Zürich und einen Abschluss in Maschinenbau vom Politecnico di Torino in Italien.

Keynote: Navigating Non-Determinism: The New Engineering Reality

Engineering is entering an era where predictability is no longer the norm but the exception. Changing markets and increasingly individualized customer requirements demand systems that are adaptive rather than predefined. At the same time, a new workforce of digital natives reshapes how engineering knowledge is created and applied. Advances in AI, simulation, and automation are no longer optional—they become essential tools to manage complexity and non-linearity. The future of engineering lies in embracing non-determinism as a design principle, leveraging data-driven and self-learning systems to deliver scalable, resilient solutions.