Ziad & Salah: Robotics & Magic

In this episode our founder Nour Hassan speaks to Ziad Abbas and Salah El Abd are the dynamic duo behind some of Egypt and the region's biggest tech startups and innovations. Both Ziad and Salah have worked on the Ai-Da project, contributing to creating what is now widely known as the world's first robot artist. Ziad was in charge of developing the creative algorithms that allowed Ai-Da, the robot, to be able to draw people from sight. Ziad joined IBM UK for a year, where he was a DevOps software engineer in charge of developing and maintaining Event Streams on Cloud, one of IBM’s managed cloud offerings. Ziad's robotics foundation was nurtured through completing both a Bachelor and Masters in Robotics at Leeds University. Ziad conducted intensive research in bio-mechatronics at Leeds.

Salah studied Mechatronics and Robotics also at the University of Leeds - where the two met.  Salah joined the team that developed Ai-Da also working on the robot's creative capability to sketch anything that it can see. After finishing his bachelor's degree, Salah took a different turn and went into construction briefly. Finally, Ziad and Salah founded Collard together, a start up focused on revolutionizing the art of networking through digital business cards. The startup then went on to develop different platforms such as penetrating the online ticketing market and becoming the lead online ticketing platform in Egypt. We speak about the relationship between technology and magic, how working on a robotics project pushes your creativity to its limits, and what it means to be two young men in their early twenties at the forefront of the tech industry in the MENA.

For more information check out www.collardeg.com.

This season is powered by INERTIA and is in collaboration with Egypt's Entrepreneur Awards - to check out the inaugural event's winners visit @eeawards_.

Support the show