Helmut Leopold has more than 30 years of management experience in the IT industry. Currently he is the Head of Center for Digital Safety & Security at the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology. In this role he established successfully an international recognised Cyber Security Research Center in Austria and leads currently more than 220 research professionals in a digital security research programme covering essential areas such as cyber security, data science & Artificial Intelligence, cooperative distributed and data platforms and Photonic & Quantum technologies. In the area of Cyber Security, Helmut Leopold successfully implemented several cooperations for Cyber Security capacity building on a global level by establishing a formal Collaboration Center for Cyber Security for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), by operating a cooperation with the World Institute of Nuclear Security (WINS) for comprehensive capability development for the nuclear sector word-wide, and by cooperating with the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) for cyber security capability development initiatives. In the area of Data Spaces, he implemented successfully, with the Gaia-X Hub Austria, an effective data space hub as an important element for the EU-wide hub network. Helmut Leopold was born in Hohenems, Vorarlberg, in 1963. He completed his Computer Science studies at the Vienna University of Technology and received his Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science from the University of Lancaster in England.