Robert-Jan Sips

At TKH, an international group of technology companies, I am responsible for the group-wide adoption and acceleration of smart software and artificial intelligence.

As CTO, I am leading a team of 20 data scientists and engineers, with whom we jointly pushing the boundaries of technology, to help those with unmet medical need. Main achievements:

• Recruited a product, engineering and data science team
• Initiated collaboration with leading academia (Delft university, Erasmus medical center)
• Led the company towards GDPR compliance
• Architected a central CRM System and standard tools for BI / metrics
• Implemented an AI roadmap
• Performed a vendor selection and negotiations for our CRF tool, enabling our RWD collection service
• Led the build of a state-of-the-art semantic search engine for clinical trial

As interim CMO, I recruited a team of 5, including a marketing director, and defined the overall digital marketing strategy for myTomorrows. Main achievements:

• Setup a paid and unpaid channel strategy, moving paid from Social to SEA.
• Implemented a proprietary machine learning algorithm, scaling our SEA efforts to hundreds of campaigns in >26 countries.
• Setup of a Patient Advocacy group partnership program and social media strategy, centering on the stories behind myTomorrows (employees, patients, caregivers).
• Implementation of a new website and automated, standardized landing pages.
• Setup of a SEO strategy, centering around structured data (Schema.org) and link building.

Responsible for the strategy of Centers for Advanced Studies in Europe and Central Asia (27 countries, 70 fte). In this role I was responsible for the transformation of these academic collaboration hubs into self-funding AI Innovation centers, translating AI research into real-world business solutions for IBMs clients.

Responsible for the day-to-day operation and strategy of IBM Benelux Center for Advanced Studies. In this role I restructured the Benelux CAS into a profitable commercial AI Innovation department, with offices in Amsterdam and Brussels. I founded Collaborative Innovation Centers with VU University Amsterdam and Delft University of Technology, allowing academia and IBM clients to work together on AI business applications. Finally, we created AI masterclasses for professionals and university students, which won a Computable award.

Responsible for the the CrowdTruth (Teach Watson) research project, in which IBM (Watson Lab and BNL CAS) and VU Amsterdam collaborated to explore crowd- and nichesourcing for the training of the medical Watson.

Implementation and design of the first IBM Benelux Smarter Planet projects: Smart Grid/Smart Energy, Telematics (remote truck monitoring and e-Call) and Flood Control (remote sensing and anomaly detection on the Dutch levee system).

Part of the implementation of the Mercedes-Benz Kontakt system, for remote diagnosis and the implementation of the Mercedes-Benz Roadside Assistance projects (overflow & technician monitoring).