Sega Cheng (程世嘉), Co-Founder & CEO of iKala

Sega lives on the edge of information technology. He is an entrepreneur, technology executive, AI specialist, government advisor, tech blogger, and, last but not least, social dancer.

Sega is currently leading iKala, a company he founded in 2011 with a team of 60+ software engineers, to innovate in online video technologies. iKala is a pioneer in video SaaS (Software as a Service), making video technologies rent-able and scalable on the cloud. Its products StraaS.io and LIVEhouse.in are two of the most widely used video SaaS platforms in the world, with presence in Japan, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and US. iKala is recognized by Google by being selected as a Google premier partner, an honor granted to less than 20 companies in the world. Sega is also sitting at the boards of several top game, education, and FinTech companies, including Rayark, Gamania, Fuco & Solution, MasterTalks, and Omni-Synth, where he continues to help drive software innovations.

Before founding and leading these companies, Sega had been an early software engineer in Google for 6 years. He worked on a wide spectrum of projects, including Google search, Google Maps, and Android, laying the groundwork for them. He is one of the authors of the well-known Google Transit (大眾運輸), now used by hundreds of millions of people in the world, if not billions. He was also an early engineer of Android multimedia framework that powers billions of smartphones nowadays.

Sega graduated from Stanford University with master degree in artificial intelligence. In his tenure there, he did research in and worked on projects covering autonomous car, robot dog, and machine translation. He is now applying computer vision and natural language processing technologies to iKala's products.

Sega also belongs to some non-profit organizations and provides counseling to governments:
• Co-founder, Taiwan Association for Virtual and Augmented Reality (台灣虛擬及擴充實境協會)
• Co-founder, 政問
• Co-founder, MMDays
• Chair, CCTF OTT Working Group (台灣雲端暨聯網電視協會)
• Advisor, Chinese Institute of Engineers (中國工程師學會)
• Advisor, Taipei City Government (台北市政府資訊顧問)
• Young Advisor Group, Executive Yuan (行政院青年顧問團 2014 - 2016)

Special Honor
• 2015 潘文淵年輕研究創新獎
• 台灣 Google 第一位軟體工程師實習生
• 台灣 Google 第一位登上 Google I/O 開發者大會的講師

Award
• 2016 經濟部工業局雲端金頂獎
• Google Cloud Platform Ready Certification
• 2015 Google Play Best Apps of the Year
• 第 14 屆經濟部工業局新創事業獎銀質獎
• 2015 年經濟部工業局金漾獎網路直播類優勝
• 2015 潘文淵年輕研究創新獎
• 第 1 屆台北市產業發展獎勵補助計畫「亮點企業」獎
• 台北市電腦公會 TCA 2014 百大創新獎
• 文化部文創之星創意加值競賽人氣獎
• APP01 2013 華人行動應用大賞－應用科技類金獎
• 經濟部商業司金網獎、市場營運創新類銀質獎
• 台灣創意設計中心金點設計獎，獲頒金點設計標章
• 經濟部工業局 2013 數位內容產品獎
• 第五屆科技趨勢金獎雲端服務組金獎
• 數位時代 2012 NEO STAR 創業之星評審團參獎