Dean Abbott, President, Abbott Analytics
Dean Abbott is President of Abbott Analytics in San Diego, California. Mr. Abbott has over 21 years of experience applying advanced data mining, data preparation, and data visualization methods in real-world data intensive problems, including fraud detection, risk modeling, text mining, response modeling, survey analysis, planned giving, and predictive toxicology. In addition, Mr. Abbott serves as chief technology officer and mentor for start-up companies focused on applying advanced analytics in their consulting practices.
Mr. Abbott is a seasoned instructor, having taught a wide range of data mining tutorials and seminars for a decade to audiences of up to 400, including PAW, KDD, AAAI, IEEE and several data mining software users conferences. He is the instructor of well-regarded data mining courses, explaining concepts in language readily understood by a wide range of audiences, including analytics novices, data analysts, statisticians, and business professionals. Mr. Abbott also has taught applied data mining courses for major software vendors, including SPSS-IBM Modeler (formerly Clementine), Unica PredictiveInsight (formerly Affinium Model), Enterprise Miner (SAS), Model 1 (Group1 Software), and hands-on courses using Statistica (Statsoft), Tibco Spotfire Miner (formerly Insightful Miner), and CART (Salford Systems).
Case Study: Hiring and Selecting Key Personnel Using Predictive Analytics
Sweta Agrawal, Analytics Consultant, Hewlett-Packard
Sweta Agrawal works as an Analytics Consultant with Hewlett-Packard's Global Analytics division. She has over 2 years of experience in data mining and modeling techniques, and has worked in the area of Customer Intelligence, Warranty and Customer Experience, and Social Media Analytics. Her work has previously been showcased at the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Applications, 2011 at Orlando. She has a Masters in Quantitative Economics from the Indian Statistical Institute.
Case Study: Modeling Consumer Attrition in a Non-Contractual Setting
Jeff Ahlquist, Director of Market Research, Microsoft Corporation
Jeff Ahlquist is a Director of Market Research at Microsoft who manages the Microsoft Market Share Practice along with the behavioral analytics program within the research team. Jeff has been with Microsoft for two years and prior to that was primarily working in the areas of business strategy, marketing and product management for technology startups.
Dimitar Antov, Project Director, the Nielsen Company
Dimitar Antov is a Project Director with the Cambridge Group (acquired by the Nielsen Company) where he is involved in management consulting and developing growth strategies for clients that are driven by a superior understanding of profitable demand. His expertise falls in the area of Corporate Finance, Econometrics, and Industrial Organization. He has worked on a wide spectrum of project engagements involving branding strategy, innovation, new product positioning, and trade spend optimization, with a focus on financial modeling and quantitative analysis. Prior to joining the Cambridge Group, Dimitar has been a teaching assistant for Economics and Kellogg courses and had also worked as an equity trader at S.H. Brandt Investment Company. Dimitar holds a Masters and a Ph.D. degree in Economics with specialty in Finance from Northwestern University.
Case Study: Finding Consumers More Accurately and Actionably Using Data Mining Tools
Bruno Aziza, Director of Worldwide Strategy Lead in Business Intelligence, Microsoft
Bruno Aziza is a recognized authority on Strategy Execution, Business Intelligence and Information Management. He is the co-author of best-selling book, "Drive Business Performance: Enabling a Culture of Intelligent Execution" and a Fellow at the Advanced Performance Institute, a world-leading and independent advisory group specialized in organizational performance. Drs. Kaplan & Norton, of Balanced Scorecard fame, praise Aziza for moving "the field of performance management forward in important new directions."
Aziza's work has been featured in publications across North America, Europe and Asia such as Business Finance magazine, Intelligent Enterprise, CRM magazine and others.
Aziza has held management positions at Apple Inc., Business Objects (SAP), AppStream (Symantec) and Decathlon SA. He currently works on Microsoft Business Intelligence go-to-market strategy and execution for partners, services, sales and marketing. Aziza lives in Seattle with his family and enjoys sports and travelling.
He regularly provides views on leadership and performance on the SuccessFactors thought leader Network, the CIO Network and Forbes Magazine. Aziza is the host of BizIntelligence.TV - a leading weekly show on Business Intelligence and Analytics. An award-winning speaker, Aziza frequently keynotes international events and has shared the stage with executives and thought leaders such as Dr. Kaplan. Aziza's biggest crowd to date is 5,000 people.
Keynote: Predictive Analytics and Business Performance
John Bates, Product Manager, Adobe
John Bates is the Product Manager for Adobe. Prior to this position, he founded the Predictive Analytics Consulting practice for Adobe Consulting. As a consultant and manager over the Predictive Analytics Consulting Team, he consulted some of the world's largest companies and brands using data and text mining techniques in order to drive greater website and digital marketing success. He has extensive experience in the areas of web analytics, digital optimization, A/B and MV testing, social and mobile channel optimization, marketing mix modeling, data/text mining, business intelligence, rule-based targeting, survey analysis, and econometrics.
Case Study: Predictive Social Marketing – Sentiment Forecasting and Impact on Success
Rick Bischoff, Fellow, Predictive Modeling
Bio is forthcoming.
Case Study: A Brave New World - Predictive Model Development with Hadoop, Rhadoop, & R
Meta Brown, General Manager of Analytics, LinguaSys
Meta S. Brown is General Manager of Analytics at LinguaSys, a language technology firm. A hands-on analyst who has tackled projects with up to $900 million at stake, Ms. Brown is a recognized expert in cutting-edge business analytics. She has conducted over 4,000 hours of presentations about business analytics, and written guides on neural networks, quality improvement, statistical process control, and many other statistical methods. Her seminars have attracted thousands of attendees from across the United States and Canada, from novices to professors.
Case Study: Cross-Language Text Analytics: Overcoming Language Barriers
Roger Craig, CEO, Cotinga LLC
Roger Craig is the CEO and cofounder of Cotinga LLC, a predictive analytics consulting firm based in New York City. He has 8 years of experience applying predictive analytics methods to various problems in academia, government, and industry. Fields in which he has researched and developed applications include protein-protein interaction prediction, RNA & protein engineering, and text analytics. In 2010 and 2011, Roger appeared on the quiz show Jeopardy! where he set several records and became the 4th highest winning contestant in the show's history. Text mining and predictive analytics methods similar to IBM's DeepQA Watson project were instrumental in his success on the show. Craig received his B.S. degrees in Biology & Biochemistry from Virginia Tech and his M.S. & Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Delaware.
Keynote: Predictive Analytics For the Win: Data Science Meets the Quiz Show Jeopardy!
Antonia de Medinaceli, Director of Fraud Analytics, Elder Research, Inc.
Antonia de Medinaceli has extensive experience in all aspects of the data mining process, and has solved challenges in many industries, including financial, crime analysis, and customer relationship management (CRM) industries. Her consulting experience is both domestic and international. Antonia is experienced with most of the leading statistical software packages. In addition to her consulting experience, she has taught data mining short courses with the Elder Research team. She has degrees in Computer Science and Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia.
Case Study: Fraud Detection: Fraught with Frightful Modeling Hurdles
Clay Duan, Director of Global Customer Analytics, Western Union
Clay Duan is Director of Customer Analytics in the Global Business Intelligence, Market and Customer Insights group at The Western Union Company. With MS degrees in Economics and Statistics, and a decade of diverse applied analytics experience in Financial Services and Retail industries, Clay's areas of expertise includes network optimization, marketing mix modeling, pricing analytics and design of experiments. He has a proven track record of conceiving and implementing advanced analytic frameworks that deliver significant financial impact. His interests include building decision sciences groups leveraging a global talent pool and diverse skill base.
Case Study: Test & Learn: The Cost Effective Crystal Ball!
John Elder, CEO & Founder, Elder Research, Inc.
Dr. John Elder heads a data mining consulting team with offices in Charlottesville, Virginia and Washington DC. Founded in 1995, Elder Research, Inc. focuses on investment, commercial and security applications of advanced analytics, including text mining, forecasting, stock selection, image recognition, process optimization, cross-selling, biometrics, drug efficacy, credit scoring, market timing, and fraud detection.
John obtained a BS and MEE in Electrical Engineering from Rice University, and a PhD in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia, where he's an adjunct professor teaching Optimization or Data Mining. Prior to 15 years at ERI, he spent 5 years in aerospace defense consulting, 4 heading research at an investment management firm, and 2 in Rice University's Computational & Applied Mathematics department. Dr. Elder has authored innovative data mining tools, is a frequent keynote speaker, and was co-chair of the 2009 Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining conference, in Paris.
John's courses on analysis techniques – taught at dozens of universities, companies, and government labs – are noted for their clarity and effectiveness. Dr. Elder was honored to serve for 5 years on a panel appointed by the President to guide technology for National Security. His book with Bob Nisbet and Gary Miner, Handbook of Statistical Analysis & Data Mining Applications, won the PROSE award for Mathematics in 2009. His book with Giovanni Seni, Ensemble Methods in Data Mining: Improving Accuracy through Combining Predictions, was published in February 2010. His (1,000-page) book on Practical Text Mining, with Dr. Andrew Fast and four others, was published by Elsevier in January. John is a follower of Christ and the proud father of 5.
Special Plenary Session: Becoming an Ace with a Robot as your Wingman
Felipe Fernandez, CEO & Partner, Interefe (Brazil)
Felipe Fernandez Martinez obtained a degree in Chemical Engineering at the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo. He subsequently completed an MBA at the Instituto Panamericano de Alta Dirección de Empresas (IPADE) and certificates in corporate finance at ESCP Europe and the Institituto Tecnológico Autonomo de México. Felipe worked at Carrefour for over 12 years. He was Carrefour's Director of Strategic Projects for Latin America with responsibility for Cost optimization, Procurement, Pricing, Supply Chain, Implementation of analytics tools, and non-parametrical and multivariate regression modeling strategies. Prior to joining Carrefour Latin America, Felipe worked at the Carrefour Headquarters in Paris, and also in Italy and Mexico; his positions were: Cost Optimization Director, Chief Procurement Officer of Shared Services, Cost Cutting Manager and Financial Controller. Felipe currently is CEO at Interefe, where he advises retailers on projects turning complexity into competitive advantages in: Energy efficiency, Analytics and Cost optimization.
Case Study: Broad Scale Predictive Modeling Optimization in Marketing and Retail Sales
Frank Fiorille, Director of Risk Management, Paychex, Inc.
Frank Fiorille is the Director of Risk Management at Paychex, a leading provider of payroll, human resource, and benefits outsourcing solutions for small- to medium-sized businesses. Fiorille has over 20 years' experience in risk management and credit and joined Paychex in 2002 to lead the company's initiative to build an enterprise wide risk apparatus. Before joining Paychex he spent four years with PNC Financial working in their Corporate Credit Policy area. Prior to his work with PNC, he spent twelve years with Citigroup holding various risk management and credit roles. He is a graduate of the inaugural 2007 class at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania advanced risk management program. He was named as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Finance-Treasury & Risk Magazine in 2008 and 2009. He is credited for leading successful projects to build the first risk and retention models in both.
Case Study: Combat Client Churn with Predictive Analytics
Bart Flaherty, CEO, GroupM Business Science
Bart Flaherty is CEO of GroupM Business Science, a strategic unit charged with developing a clear understanding of clients' businesses, defining their marketing challenges and creating a go-to-market strategy. His mission is to drive innovations in analytical techniques to help clients navigate the rapidly evolving media landscape and succeed through the use of key insights on the marketplaces in which they compete. Bart's expertise lies in helping business partners and clients understand how best to deploy their marketing, media and retail trade budgets to optimize sales and profit. He has long been a pioneer in the evolution of market research, championing a focus on actionable recommendations that drive measurable ROI. Prior to joining GroupM in 2007, Bart spent 10 years at PepsiCo, first working on the Tropicana business, then as head of the company's Analytic Best Practice Area, and finally running Pepsi's Strategy & Analytics Group.
Matthew Flynn, Director of Claim Research, Travelers Insurance
Matthew J. Flynn, Ph.D. is director of Claim Research at Travelers Insurance in Hartford, CT. He supports efforts at moving towards a data-driven decision-making business strategy through a wide variety of statistical modeling and information technology projects. He is an avid student of modern analytic techniques and a frequent speaker at P&C industry and SAS user group meetings. He has a degree in Finance from Purdue University and ten-plus years experience in analytics in the Property-Casualty Insurance industry. Matt also spent three years as a SAS employee in the SAS Financial Services Business Unit.
Case Study: Insurance and R
Rishab Ghosh, Co-Founder & Vice President of Research, Topsy Labs
Rishab is the Co-Founder and VP of Research for Topsy Labs. Rishab started First Monday, the most widely read peer-reviewed journal of the Internet, in 1995 with Ed Valauskas, Esther Dyson and Vint Cerf. In 2000 he started the Collaborative Creativity Group at the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands, the leading research group on the economics of free/open source software, Wikipedia and other forms of collaborative innovation. Rishab has researched and published on how reputation works and motivates in online communities for over 12 years, collaborating with Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge & Tsinghua Universities, with grants from the US National Science Foundation and European Commission. Rishab is also a board member of the Open Source Initiative.
Case Study: Leveraging Social Media to Identify Predictive Behaviors
Ben Gimpert, Chief Technology Officer, Altos Research
Ben Gimpert is Director of Quantitative Analytics for Altos Research in Mountain View, California. He teaches and speaks on predictive analytics, machine learning, real estate, and financial analysis. Ben has worked with investment banks JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse, the hedge fund Natura Capital, and EdF Trading, a commodities trading shop. He spent ten years as a software developer, having built a taxonomy browser for Encyclopedia Britannica in 2004, and converting to Agile development at ThoughtWorks in 2000. Ben continues to manage a portfolio through a quantitative trading strategy built upon sentiment and news analysis. He has an MSc in Finance from London Business School and a BEng in Computer Science from Northwestern University.
Case Study: There & Back Again: Model Interpretability in Real Estate Market Scoring
Brett Goldstein, Chief Data Officer, City of Chicago
Before coming to City Hall as Chief Data Officer, Brett Goldstein founded and directed the Chicago Police Department's Predictive Analytics Group, which aims to predict when and where crime will happen. Goldstein is a former Commander in the Chicago Police Department. Previously, Goldstein was an early employee with OpenTable. He earned his Bachelor's degree from Connecticut College, his MS in criminal justice at Suffolk University, and his MS in computer science at University of Chicago. Brett is pursuing his PhD in Criminology, Law and Justice at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He resides in Chicago with his wife and two children.
Case Study: Lessons from Year One: Predictive Analytics in Government
Paco Gonzalez, Mentor, SolidQ
Paco Gonzalez works for SolidQ. He earned his master degree in Computer Science at the University of Murcia, Spain and Kennesaw State University, GA. His master project was "Automatic support answerer with BizTalk Server and SQL Server BI technologies". Now he combines his work in SolidQ with his PhD thesis: "Systems Integration and Business Processes". He is an MCT and MCP in BizTalk Server and SQL Server. Paco works in the Integration and BI fields at SolidQ. He presented several webcasts for Microsoft on BizTalk and SQL Server, he is also an active speaker in local user groups. He presented a session about ETL in the first Business Intelligence Conference held Seattle in May 2007. This year he has written a BizTalk series of articles for paper magazine MsCoder. He is coauthor of Microsoft Training Kit 441. Paco is based in London.
Case Study: Data Mining for Social Moderation
Robert Grossman, Partner, Open Data Group & Professor, the University of Chicago
Robert Grossman is a Partner at Open Data Group, which provides strategic consulting and outsourced analytic services. He is also the Director of the Laboratory for Advanced Computing (LAC) at the University of Chicago. The LAC is a leader in predictive modeling, data intensive computing, high performance networking, and Internet technologies. He has developed new methodologies in predictive modeling and led the development of new software tools for data mining, cloud computing, data warehousing, and high performance networking. Prior to founding Open Data Group, he founded Magnify, Inc. in 1996. Magnify's technology provides data mining solutions to the insurance industry. Grossman was Magnify's CEO until 2001 and its Chairman until it was sold to ChoicePoint in 2005. He was one of the founders of the Data Mining Group, which develops the Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML). PMML is the leading standard for exchanging predictive models across different applications and platforms.
Case Study: What is the Analytic Maturity of Your Company and How Can You
Improve It?
Kashyap Kamdar, Solutions Architect, Nokia Siemens Networks
Kashyap Kamdar is a Solutions Architect in the Technology & Strategy-Advanced Technologies organization of Nokia Siemens Networks, leading projects on Customer Experience Management and application of predictive analytics in wireless network management. Prior to Nokia Siemens Networks, he worked at Motorola's CTO office, where he delivered MME as well as network management solutions for the wireless industry's first pre-commercial 4G – LTE trial. His interests lie in network management, QoE optimization, mobility management, application delivery and use of data analytics in wireless networks.
Case Study: Understanding Mobile User Outages: Predictive Analytics in Wireless Broadband Networks
Joe Kleinhenz, Director, Big Data Analytics
Joe Kleinhenz is currently the Director of Big Data Analytics at Allstate, driving Allstate's efforts around Big Data and how to leverage it with predictive analytics to bring real value to the business. Utilizing a background in Information Technology, Marketing Analytics, Consulting, and GE Six Sigma Black Belt certification he's been able to bring a well rounded and unique approach to bridging the gap between business, IT, analytics, and people, helping to unlock data's value consistently delivering multi-million dollar results.
Keynote: A Brave New World - Predictive Model Development with Hadoop,
Rhadoop, & R
Max Kuhn, Director of Nonclinical Statistics, Pfizer
Max Kuhn is a Director of Nonclinical Statistics at Pfizer Global R&D in Connecticut. He has been apply models in the pharmaceutical industries for over 15 years.
He is a leading R developer and the author of several R packages including the CARET package that provides a simple and consistent interface to over 100 predictive models available in R.
Mr. Kuhn has taught courses on modeling within Pfizer and externally, including a class for the India Ministry of Information Technology.
Case Study: Right Medicine, Right Patient
Workshop: R for Predictive Modeling: A Hands-On Introduction
Mahesh Kumar, CEO, Tiger Analytics
Dr. Mahesh Kumar is the founder and CEO of Tiger Analytics, a boutique consulting company that focuses on applying predictive analytics models in the fields of retail management, online advertising, and internet marketing. Prior to founding Tiger Analytics, Dr. Kumar taught MBA and PhD level classes at the Smith School of Business, Rutgers Business School, and Sloan School of Management at MIT. Dr. Kumar holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from MIT and a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. Dr. Kumar has conducted research in the areas of data mining and statistical modeling and has successfully applied his research to the retailing, online advertising and internet marketing industries to solve problems related to forecasting, pricing, promotions, customer segmentation, etc. He has extensive consulting experience with companies such as McKinsey & Company, SAS, IBM, JC Penney, ProfitLogic, LucidMedia, CompassLabs, TTX, and Reflexis Systems.
Case Study: Predicting Wheel Failure Rate for Railcars
Gert Laursen, Head of Customer Intelligence & Information Management, Maersk Line
Based in Denmark, Gert H. N. Laursen works for Maersk Line as head of global Customer Intelligence and Information management. He has work as a strategy consultant with a particular focus on information management implementation. He worked several years in the Telecom industry, primarily within strategy creation and decision support (i.e. Business Intelligence and Analytics). His experience in information management also includes being responsible for SPSS/IBM national training centers in Denmark. The first 5 years of his career he spent working as a scientist within human resources and cultural development.
Mr. Laursen holds a Master degree in international marketing (one semester from Sheffield- Hallam University), an Executive MBA from Henley management school and a PMI green belt in Lean/six sigma (process optimization).
Within the last 3 years Mr. Laursen has published 3 books on the strategic use of information and has spoken at various events in Europe, Asia and America. He is married and has two children, Victoria at 4 and Lucas at 7 years of age. In his spare time he enjoys sailing, traveling and playing American style pool.
The instructor has worked as an analyst, statistics trainer, BI consultant, and developer of information strategies - as such, he has hands-on experience across all of this workshop's topics.
Case Study: Making a company turnaround in FMCG industry
Workshop: Making Information Strategic with Business Analytics and Data Science
Mei Mei Lim, Principal, Accenture
Mei Mei Lim is a Principal with Accenture Customer Relationship Management practice (CRM), based in Malaysia. She specializes in Customer Analytics, Targeted Marketing, Campaign Management and Marketing Strategy. She has more than ten years' experience in these areas. She has helped more than five largest telecommunication giants and financial services across Asia region to improve their marketing operations. Miss Lim main area of expertise is helping organizations to achieve high performance by designing and executing marketing programs. Marketing programs are designed based on actionable customer insights, extracted from sophisticated predictive modeling, dynamic segmentation and social network analysis. Miss Lim has helped clients to deliver million of revenue through boosting customers' spend and churn reduction.
Case Study: Next Generation Mobile Analytics - Combining the Power of Real Time Data with Predictive Analytics
Vijay Madhavan, Senior Product Manager, eBay Inc.
Vijay Madhavan is a Senior Analytics Product Manager at eBay. His team is currently developing intranet and extranet analytics applications on eBay's data warehouse infrastructure. Prior to working at eBay, Mr. Madhavan was a technical product manager at MicroStrategy where he developed the Intelligence Server, Distribution Services, and Administrator products in MicroStrategy 7.x to 9.x.
Case Study: Experimentation - From visual data exploration to decisions
Pranjal Mallick, Project Manager, Hewlett-Packard
Pranjal Mallick is a Project Manager at Hewlett-Packard's Global Analytics division. He has 3.5 years of experience in Data Mining, Machine Learning and Statistical Modeling and has worked in Banking and Marketing domains. His work has previously been showcased at the M2010 Data Mining Conference organized by SAS. Prior to joining HP, he has worked with HSBC. He holds a MS in Pure Mathematics from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
Case Study: Modeling Consumer Attrition in a Non-Contractual Setting
Anthony Miyake, Chief Economist, GroupM Business Science
At GroupM, Anthony has been leveraging best practices in analytics and in data processing /quality control across the operating companies of Mindshare, MEC, Mediacom, and Maxus. His current client list spans industries such as automotive, quick-serve restaurants, online commerce, retail, and consumer packaged goods among others.
He has developed macroeconomic models on core retail sales and the automotive industry, which have been deployed across the GroupM client projects to understand how macroeconomic factors influence our clients' businesses.
With 15+ years of modeling and analytics experience, Anthony has a wide range of project experience leveraging a range of techniques. His projects have ranged from marketing mix modeling, price and promotion analyses, market structure, consumer preference segmentation, product assortment optimization, and optimal retail store layouts/shelving configurations.
Anthony holds a Masters in Economics from Yale University and a BA in Economics from Columbia University.
Shirish Nagaraj, R&D Engineering Manager, Nokia-Siemens Networks
Shirish Nagaraj, R&D engineering manager, Nokia Siemens Networks
Shirish Nagaraj is an R&D engineering manager in Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), where he leads the Statistical Signal Processing Solutions (SSPS) group within the Technology and Strategy organization. Prior to joining Nokia Siemens Networks, he worked at Bell Laboratories-Lucent Technologies, and at Motorola Inc., in their advanced technology labs. His research interests are in statistical estimation and learning methodologies, especially for telecom data analytics, and statistical signal processing and multi-antenna resource allocation problems in wireless communications networks. At NSN, his group is responsible for the proposals and development of advanced concepts, algorithms, and performance evaluation in the areas of signal processing for base-station transceivers, and predictive analytics for wireless network optimization and management.
Dr. Nagaraj holds several patents and publications in the areas of statistical learning, signal processing and wireless communications. He has also presented workshops on wireless networks at various IEEE chapters and conferences.
Case Study: Understanding Mobile User Outages: Predictive Analytics in Wireless Broadband Networks
Jyotirmay Nag, Business Analyst of RnD Analytics, Hewlett-Packard
Jyotirmay Nag is currently Business Analyst of RnD Analytics at Hewlett-Packard. He has 1.5 years of experience in Data Mining, Predictive Modeling in the areas of HR, Marketing, Sales, Finance, etc. Prior to Hewlett-Packard he finished his Master of Statistics from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.
Case Study: An Innovative Approach to Analyze Employee Satisfaction Response in Light of Customer Satisfaction Response
Jeremy Newton, Chief Science Officer, Rebellion Research
Mr. Newton is the Chief Science Officer of Rebellion. He is responsible for the ongoing development and engineering of the A.I. and all Rebellion's software developments.
Mr. Newton graduated cum laude from Amherst College with a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Computer Science. He was awarded an Upjohn Scholarship for college and won the American Chemistry Regional Award.
Mr. Newton has extensive experience in programming, having won several Michigan programming competitions in addition to placing 3rd in the international American Computer Science League Tournament.
Case Study: Improving Stock Prediction Using Universal Artificial Intelligence
Kirtida Parikh, Director & Head, Enterprise Business Analytics, Silicon Valley Bank
Kirtida Parikh has been involved in translating data into useful information and insights to support strategic & financial planning, as well as marketing efforts. Currently leading Enterprise Business Analytics group at Silicon Valley Bank. Prior to SVB, she was at Wells Fargo, where she built and managed analytics teams in three different groups: Internet Services Group, Wealth Management Group and Wholesale Banking. Typically these teams include a combination of business analysts, statisticians and programmers. After completing her PhD from London School of Economics, UK; she has applied econometric principles and developed innovative analytical approaches to answer various business questions in different industries such as Electric Utilities, Pharmaceuticals and Banking.
Case Study: Advanced Analytics inside the Banking Industry
Puneet Piplani, Senior Vice President, Mu Sigma
Puneet Piplani has over 13 years of experience in consulting, client-partner and project management roles for various technology, retail and manufacturing organizations. Before joining Mu-Sigma, he led the Supply Chain Solutions team at Nordstrom Inc. Puneet has worked globally leading large teams in developing and implementing large cap projects. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Computer Sciences from State College of Engineering, Haryana and an MBA from Stern School of Business, New York University.
David Perkins, Associate Professor of Business, Grand Canyon University
Dr. David Perkins, PMP is an Associate Professor of Business at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona. He primarily teaches analytics and operations management courses. Dr. Perkins has 17 years of industry experience in project management and systems engineering disciplines. He has worked in both defense and commercial sectors. Dr. Perkins has held Project Manager and Project Analyst positions at MicroAge, National Computer Systems, Motorola and General Dynamics. Dr. Perkins holds a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) degree in Management from Anderson University. He holds Master of Business Administration (MBA) and Master of Technology degrees from Arizona State University. He is also a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and has published articles in selected project management publications including PM Network and Project Manager Today. One of his articles also appears in the book People in Projects.
Case Study: Modeling Project Leaders' Perceptions of Their Clients
Randy Saaf, CEO & Founder, AlphaGenius
Randy Saaf is currently CEO and founder of AlphaGenius, Inc. AlphaGenius was founded in 2010. AlphaGenius takes data on social networks and builds investing models using econometrics and machine learning.Co-founded Jirbo, Inc in 2008. Jirbo was one the first iPhone gaming companies and has some of the most popular iPhone Apps with over 30 million downloads. Jirbo was sold to Insight Venture Partners in 2010. Randy still maintain an equity interest in Jirbo.Founded MediaDefender in summer of 2000 during the heyday of Napster. Built MediaDefender to the largest online anti-piracy software company in the world. Sold MediaDefender in 2005. Was CEO of MediaDefender from 2000-2008.
Case Study: Sentiment Investing - Above Market Returns Extracting & Analyzing Twitter & the Social Internet
Karthik Sethuraman, Director of Analytic Solutions, Kaggle
Karthik Sethuraman is the Director of Analytic Solutions at Kaggle. He has over 9 years of experience in applying various data mining and optimization techniques across financial services, insurance, retail and healthcare industries. Prior to joining Kaggle, Karthik worked at FICO as an analytic solution architect developing analytic solutions for companies across the globe. These solutions have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental profitability for FICO's clients. Karthik graduated from University of California at Berkeley in 2003 with a master's degree in Operations Research.
Case Study: Crowdsourcing Predictive Analytics: Why 25,000 Heads Are
Better Than One
Eric Siegel, Program Chair, Predictive Analytics World
The president of Prediction Impact, Inc., Eric Siegel is an expert in predictive analytics and data mining and a former computer science professor at Columbia University, where he won the engineering school's award for teaching, including graduate-level courses in machine learning and intelligent systems - the academic terms for predictive analytics. After Columbia, Dr. Siegel co-founded two software companies for customer profiling and data mining, and then started Prediction Impact in 2003, providing predictive analytics services and training to mid-tier through Fortune 100 companies.
Dr. Siegel is the instructor of the acclaimed training program, Predictive Analytics for Business, Marketing and Web, and the online version, Predictive Analytics Applied. He has published over 20 papers and articles in data mining research and computer science education, has served on 10 conference programme committees, has chaired a AAAI Symposium held at MIT, and is the founding chair of Predictive Analytics World.
Keynote: Persuasion by the Numbers: Optimize Marketing Influence by Predicting It
Mark Slusar, Quantitative Research & Analytics Fellow, Allstate
Mark Slusar is a Quantitative Research & Analytics Fellow at Allstate where he is responsible for the research and prototyping in the corporate portfolio of big data projects. Mark has a diverse background in software development, operations, research, data science, leadership, design, and prototyping. He has worked across an extremely wide variety of disciplines and subjects of data joining many ideas, sources, and view points. This blending has positioned Mark as an extremely active contributor to many organizations intellectual property portfolios and disruptive product development.
Case Study: A Brave New World - Predictive Model Development with Hadoop, Rhadoop, & R
Mark Tabladillo, Mentor, SolidQ
Mark Tabladillo has been an information technology professional since 1998, and has a primary career consulting companies from across commercial and non-profit industries in the United States and around the world. Mark has a doctorate from the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech, where he focused on applied statistics and quality management. Mark has a complementary role as graduate school professor at the accredited University of Phoenix, where doctoral candidates ask him to be their dissertation mentor.
Mark's business mission is to empower and inspire executives, architects and developers with insights from data mining, predictive analytics and business intelligence to make actionable decisions.
Mark regularly presents at major technical conferences such as SAS Global Forum and Microsoft's TechEd. Mark writes and produces videos to share his message. A few clients prefer the more exclusive personal one-on-one coaching. However, Mark shares his thoughts freely for a wide professional audience on his blog at http://marktab.net.
Case Study: Data Mining for Social Moderation
James Taylor, CEO, Decision Management Solutions
James Taylor is the CEO and Principal Consultant of Decision Management Solutions. James is the leading expert in decision management and decisioning technologies. James is passionate about using decisioning technologies like business rules and predictive analytics to help companies improve decision making and develop smarter and more agile processes and systems. James has over 20 years developing software and solutions for clients and has led Decision Management efforts for leading companies in insurance, banking, health management and telecommunications. He is also an active speaker, blogger (primarily at JTonEDM) and author.
James delivers webinars, workshops and sales training for clients and vendors. He is a keynote speaker at conferences such as the Business Rules Forum, Predictive Analytics World and IBM's Business Analytics Forum. James was co-author of "Smart (Enough) Systems" (Prentice Hall, 2007) with Neil Raden, and has contributed chapters on decision management and business rules to multiple books including "Applying Real-World BPM in an SAP Environment", "The Decision Model", "The Business Rules Revolution: Doing Business The Right Way" and "Business Intelligence Implementation: Issues and Perspectives". James is a faculty member of the International Institute for Analytics and has experience at FICO, PeopleSoft R&D, and Ernst & Young.
Case Study: Coming Soon!
Marco Vriens, Senior Vice President, The Modellers LLC
Dr. Vriens is the Editor of the Handbook of Marketing Research and the author of The Insights Advantage: Knowing How to Win. He has led analytics, research and insights teams at Microsoft, GE Healthcare, and at various marketing research firms. He has consulted many organizations as an outside consultant or as a manager within firms in a variety of industries including Technology, Services, Consumer Electronics, Fast Moving Consumer Goods, Retailing, etc. His work and insights contributed to tackling emerging new competitors, increasing marketing efficiency and customer satisfaction, and significantly increased acceptance and usage of customer and marketing insights. He has published articles in many leading academic journals such as Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science and numerous papers in industry magazines. He also has presented his work at numerous conferences. He won the David K. Hardin Award for best paper in the AMA's Marketing Research Magazine.
Case Study: Getting Management to Act on Driver Models
