Qatari entrepreneur and innovator, Khalid Aboujassoum, was a guest speaker at the CES Food Tech Conference, an annual trade show organised by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA).
Aboujassoum is the founder and CEO of Else Labs Inc, which produces and sells his own revolutionary invention, Oliver, a smart cooking robot that helps to optimise kitchen automation.
He is also the co-founder and current chairman of Ibtechar, Qatar’s first incubated innovation and turnkey solutions startup, which has actually delivered 70% of all innovation spaces in Qatar over the past decade.
The event, which concluded Saturday at the Venetian Expo and Convention Centre in Las Vegas, hosts presentations of products and technologies in the consumer electronics industry.
This edition of the conference examined how the world of food and cooking is being reinvented through innovation and technology. It brought together leaders of food, culinary, and technology industries from around the world to share lessons learned and discuss the biggest opportunities and challenges in food tech.
CTA is a standards and trade organisation representing more than 2,200 consumer technology companies in the US. Its flagship conference serves as the ultimate platform for business magnates and pioneering thinkers to connect, collaborate, and propel consumer technology forward. Among the key participants are manufacturers, developers, and suppliers of consumer technology hardware, content, technology delivery systems, and more.
Named Qatar’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2011, Aboujassoum was the first Qatari winner of the Stars of Science award in 2012. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Applied Science in Computer Engineering, Engineering Management, and Entrepreneurship from the University of Ottawa, Canada.
Aboujassoum participated as a panelist in a session titled ‘The Kitchen 2030: How Food and Cooking Will Change in the Future’. The discussions focused on the significant transformation that Artificial Intelligence (AI), smart technologies, and robotics are expected to bring to the way people cook, store, and even eat food over the next decade.
“It is inevitable that robots will cook our food. The questions are when and who is going to make it happen? Our design thesis is that form should follow function, and Oliver is a manifestation of that. I do not believe that cooking robots will have dangling hands to perform the tasks. The cooking robots of the future will be familiar and designed with purpose, and Oliver is exactly that. Technology is driving convergence in the process,” said Aboujassoum in his speech.
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