Katrine Malmer-Høvik is head of SANDSs Intellectual Property group and has more than 22 years of experience within the IP field. She has previously worked at the Norwegian Industrial Property Office. She assists many innovative companies within different technological fields such as health, aquaculture, fisheries, energy and creative industry. Knowledge about various industries provides useful insight for counselling in both drafting agreements and preparing IP strategies.

Martin Brox is a senior lawyer in the technology group at SANDS. He works primarily with company law and transactions (M&A) within the technology segment, including capital raising, acquisitions, incentive schemes, restructuring of ownership, shareholder agreements and other matters related to company law.

Otto Scharff is Digital director at the Norwegian Industrial Property Office (NIPO). He has a Master of Arts in International Political Economy from the University of Warwick and MBA from the Norwegian School of Economics. His professional background includes working with international issues at the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the European Commission. He has also worked as an Advisor at KPMG. From 2005 to 2018 he was Director of the Communication Department at the NIPO, responsible for information services, marketing, communication, branding and digital services. Since 2019, he has lead further digitalisation processes at the NIPO by establishing a new department and new services.

Audun Abelsnes is the Managing Director of Equinor & Techstars Energy Accelerator, bringing together innovative startups and entrepreneurs, corporates and investors in the energy field. Audun has founded and sold a company, and has been instrumental in funding and scaling up a medical diagnostic company. He spent several years in PWC Management Consulting and holds a MSc degree in International Marketing from BI Norwegian Business School and City University in London.

Andreas Mauritzen is the Co-founder and CEO of Ocean Access - a Norwegian startup developing a new data buoy for remote ocean monitoring. He has a background in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and founded Ocean Access while studying at NTNU’s School of Entrepreneurship in 2020.

Ronny Bakke is the CEO & co-founder of Dimeq AS. Ronny has his background from the offshore seismic industry as Chief Geophysical Technician, with more than 12 years of experience in the sector. His technical knowledge was initially developed in Spain while studying Industrial Engineering for 4 years. His deep passion for technology, innovation, and true vision of IoT and wireless technologies motivated him to create these cutting-edge solutions for the maritime industry that will drastically enhance our QHSSE world.