Speakers

Predictive Analytics World for Manufacturing Las Vegas 2018

June 3-7, 2018 – Caesars Palace, Las Vegas

Click here to view the agenda at a glance
Dean Abbott
Dean Abbott

Chief Data Scientist

Dean Abbott is President of Abbott Analytics and currently is the Bodily Bicentennial Professor in Analytics at UVA Darden School of Business. He is an internationally recognized thought leader and innovator in data science and predictive analytics with more than three decades of experience solving a wide range of private and public sector problems. Mr. Abbott is the author of Applied Predictive Analytics (Wiley, 2014) and coauthor of The IBM SPSS Modeler Cookbook (Packt Publishing, 2013).

Vivek Agarwal
Vivek Agarwal

CEO, Dun and Bradstreet Technologies, Executive Director, PrADS

Vivek Agarwal is the CEO of D&B Technologies and Executive Director of PrADS Inc, where he leads a team of economists, statisticians, industry experts and technologists working on analytical models and risk management solutions that enable organizations increase sales, reduce costs and manage risk better. He also works with several credit bureaus and rating agencies in emerging markets with a vision of creating more transparent credit & business environment and robust economies.

Prior to this, Vivek was part of the founding team of Saksoft, a mid-size public listed technology company specializing in analytics and business intelligence solutions. Before starting Saksoft, he worked with P&G, Diageo and Oriflame, where he built advanced analytical and optimization models for marketing, finance and supply chain functions. Vivek holds BS in Mechanical Engineering and MS in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research from prestigious National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai.

James Casaletto
James Casaletto

PhD Candidate

UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute and former Senior Solutions Architect, MapR

James Casaletto is studying bioinformatics and biomedical engineering at UC Santa Cruz.  Previously, he worked at MapR Technologies where he designed, implemented, and deployed complete solution frameworks for big data. He has written and delivered courses on MapReduce programming, data engineering, and data science on Hadoop to thousands of students around the world.

Abbas Chokor
Abbas Chokor

Staff Data Scientist

Dr. Chokor has developed and integrated emerging IIoT data-driven solutions in multiple industries. As a staff data scientist at Seagate Technology, Abbas unlocks the value of industrial and manufacturing data through leading edge science and mentors uprising data scientists. Before Seagate, Abbas was a lead data scientist on multiple predictive maintenance projects within First Solar, Siemens, and Schlumberger, for their complex assets, including solar panels, trains, and Oil & Gas surface machines. Abbas holds a Ph.D. from Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona and has co-authored dozens of research publications. His research interests include developing state-of-the-art edge solutions in the field of predictive maintenance and online learning.

Abbas Chokor is speaking in the following session:

Beth Crane
Beth Crane

Vice President of Data

Dr. Beth Crane is Vice President of Data at Sight Machine.  She is responsible for leading an implementation team of data engineers and data scientists that use digital twin and AI technologies to solve perennial manufacturing problems.  Prior to joining Sight Machine, Beth was a data scientist leading the development of analytical and reporting tools used for continuous improvement of customer experience and process improvement.  Her academic research focused on predicting outcomes using multi-dimensional time series data.  Beth competed a PhD and was a Post Doc Research fellow at the University of Michigan.

Beth Crane is speaking in the following session:

Edward Crowley
Edward Crowley

CEO

With more than 30 years of marketing and management experience, Ed Crowley is a successful Entrepreneur and alumni of corporate America with tenures at major firms including Lexmark and Texas Instruments. Most recently, Mr. Crowley founded Virtulytix Inc., a leader in the field of Predictive Analytics. Virtulytix provides applied analytics solutions to optimize Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) assets by deploying prescriptive service, predictive logistics and inventory optimization, and manufacturing quality. Virtulytix is an IBM Watson IoT Advanced Analytics development partner and has patented a unique solution for true just-in-time supplies/inventory replenishment named SuppliesIQ. He is a thought leader in servitization, product development, strategic marketing and predictive analytics. 

Crowley holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Missouri (Agricultural Economics Major, Computer Science Minor) and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. He is currently pursuing his doctorate degree in business at the University of Manchester in Manchester, England. He is also Certified New Product Development Professional (NPDP).

Mr. Crowley speaks globally on topics related to servitization and advanced analytics, with over 50 speaking engagements in 20 countries to date. He has also written numerous articles for industry publications and has been published in two academic journals. He has been named as one of the 40 most influential individuals in the imaging industry twice by Imaging Week Magazine, and also as a Difference Maker by ENX magazine.

In his spare time, Mr. Crowley raises registered sheep, cattle, and dairy goat breeding stock on his farm in Versailles Kentucky called Kentucky Meadows.

Mark Do Couto
Mark Do Couto

Senior Vice President Data Analytics

As SVP of Data Analytics for Altair, Mark is responsible for the global strategy for the Data Analytics business unit. This includes sales, pre-sales, support, consulting/services and product guidance. Altair's Data Analytics suite is focused on helping organization leverage AI and machine learning to make better business decisions.Mark possesses over 15 years of sales experience with a distinct focus on business intelligence, data mining and analytics. His deep understanding of Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning coincide with his need to nurture and maintain strong business relationships. He is passionate about collaborating with different organizations to discover the best solution to their specific challenges across multiple channels.

Mark Do Couto is speaking in the following session:

John Elder Ph.D.
John Elder Ph.D.

Founder & Chair

John Elder chairs America’s most experienced Data Science consultancy. Founded in 1995, Elder Research has offices in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Washington DC, and London. Dr. Elder co-authored 3 award-winning books on analytics, was a discoverer of ensemble methods, chairs international conferences, and is a popular keynote speaker. John is occasionally an Adjunct Professor of Systems Engineering at the University of Virginia.

John Elder Ph.D. is speaking in the following session:

Chetan Gupta
Chetan Gupta

Chief Data Scientist and Architect, Lab Manager, Industrial AI Lab

Dr. Chetan Gupta is the Chief Data Scientist & Architect, and manages the Industrial AI Lab at Hitachi America R&D.  Chetan has more than 15 years of experience in analytics, AI, big data, and related domains. Over his career he has worked both as a machine learning data scientist as well as in designing systems and architectures for big data applications.  

At Hitachi, he manages a large team of data scientists, architects and developers that is engaged in developing cutting edge solutions and opening new frontiers in the area of industrial analytics.  His team builds fundamental horizontal technologies that are then used to build solutions for industry specific verticals. He has led efforts to build horizontal solutions in predictive maintenance, quality, operations monitoring and control, and for verticals such as mobility, mining, building energy management systems,  etc.

Over the years Chetan has led multiple research and development teams, and mentored young researchers. He has close to 50 patents either granted or under review and more than 40 publications in the area of data mining/machine learning, data stream systems, complex event processing, workload management, etc.  Chetan has a Ph.D. in Mathematics and M.S. in Mathematical Computer Science and Chemical Engineering from University of Illinois, Chicago.

Chetan Gupta is speaking in the following session:

Khosrow Hassibi
Khosrow Hassibi

Chief Data Scientist / Chief AI Officer AI and Analytics Center of Innovation

Dr. Hassibi is an expert, practitioner, and thought leader in the areas of data science, Machine Learning (ML), and AI. His expertise is based on 20+ years of design, R&D, consulting/sales, and management in applying these technologies to hard real-world business problems such as real-time fraud detection, hand-print and cursive OCR, marketing, risk, preventive maintenance, and customer behavior analysis. The first two are known as the two most successful commercial applications of neural networks. Dr. Hassibi is recognized for his contributions to real-time payment card fraud detection (FalconTM) and has been a part of four Machine Learning startups focused on new data products and analytics-based business solutions. Most recently and prior to joining R Systems as Chief Data Scientist, he has been with SAS Institute and Cablevision (Altice USA) where in Cablevision, he was responsible for setting up a CoE for data science.

Dr. Hassibi holds a Ph.D. in ECS from Case Western Reserve University. His graduate work concentrated on Intelligent Systems, Machine Learning (focus on neural networks), and Multi-sensor Robotics systems. On the business management side, he is a graduate of “executive program in management” at UCLA Anderson School of Management and the Leadership and Management program at UCSD.

Khosrow Hassibi is speaking in the following session:

Gelston Howell
Gelston Howell

Senior VP of Marketing

Sanmina Corporation

Gelston has worked in product design and manufacturing for the past 25 years. He managed a large business division at Sanmina for over six years, having responsibility for Sanmina’s manufacturing, engineering and regulatory compliance in five plants. Prior to joining Sanmina, Gelston worked in the medical industry, including building a Siemens Medical manufacturing facility for class 2 medical devices in South Korea. Gelston began his career working for IBM as a chip designer.

Krishna Kallakuri
Krishna Kallakuri

President

Krishna Kallakuri is President & founder of Loven Systems, the creators of diwo®.  Krishna’s visionary leadership and delivery of transformational BI and Analytics initiatives to leading Fortune 500's has landed the practice he has founded on the Midwest’s Fastest-Growing list. With 20 years of expertise in technology and executive management, Mr. Kallakuri’s passion for advanced analytics, cognitive technologies, and artificial intelligence has led to pioneering work—most recently the launch of diwo®, which was developed from the ground up as a “business-first” platform to address the adoption issues common with other transformative initiative

Max Kuhn
Max Kuhn

Software Engineer

RStudio

Max Kuhn is a software engineer at RStudio. a leading company for R software and tools. He is currently working on improving R's modeling capabilities. He has a Ph.D. in Biostatistics.

Max was a Director of Nonclinical Statistics at Pfizer Global R&D in Connecticut. He was applying models in the pharmaceutical and diagnostic industries for over 18 years. Max is the author of eight R packages for techniques in machine learning and reproducible research and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Statistical Software. He, and Kjell Johnson, wrote the book Applied Predictive Modeling, which won the Ziegel award from the American Statistical Association, which recognizes the best book reviewed in Technometrics in 2015.

He has taught courses on modeling, including many classes for Predictive Analytics World, the useR! conference, the Open Data Science Conference, the India Ministry of Information Technology, and others.

Ricky Loynd
Ricky Loynd

Deep Reinforcement Learning Research Group

Ricky Loynd is a member of the reinforcement learning research group in the Microsoft Research AI labs in Redmond, Wash. He has 25 years of experience with neural networks, and 11 years of experience in reinforcement learning. Ricky is currently focused on creating deep RL agents with more general, human-like intelligence. As a lead mentor for the Microsoft AI School Advanced Projects course, Ricky has helped teams throughout the company incorporate deep learning systems into their work.

James McCaffrey
James McCaffrey

Senior Scientist Engineer

James McCaffrey, who annually leads the full-day deep learning workshop at Machine Learning Week, works for Microsoft Research in Redmond, Wash. James has a PhD in cognitive psychology and computational statistics from the University of Southern California, a BA in psychology, a BA in applied mathematics, and an MS in computer science. James learned to speak to the public while working at Disneyland as a college student, and he can still recite the entire Jungle Cruise ride narration from memory.

Karpagam Narayanan
Karpagam Narayanan

Founder & President

eKryp

Karpagam Narayanan is a co-founder of eKryp, a Prescriptive Service application.  eKryp, provides AI predictions and prescriptive actions on Assets, People and Parts and is delivered as SaaS.  Manufacturers and Service Providers can reduce service costs by over 30%, and parts inventory by 10% by using an intelligence layer to automate actions in Enterprise Service.

Prior to eKryp, Karpagam is a co-founder and President of Paloras Corporation, an install base analytics company till successful exit in 2016. The San Francisco Business Times recognized Paloras as a Top 100 software company (by revenue) in 2014 and 2013. She is a frequent speaker in several AI, IOT and Entrepreneurship conferences. Karpagam believes in AI being inclusive of people with various attitudes and aptitudes.  

She is now a board member of TiE Silicon Valley, an organization that focuses on advising and mentoring technology startups.  She has been a leader, mentor and volunteer for Girl Scouts for 14 years, mentor in the Maker Faire, Bay Area Science Festival, FIRST robotics, and Western Regional Robotics programs in the Bay area.

Twitter - @karpagamn

Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/karpagam/

Karpagam Narayanan is speaking in the following session:

Gary Neights
Gary Neights

Senior Director

Gary Neights works at Elemica where he is responsible for innovations in supply chain automation.  This includes the use of machine learning to derive real-time predictions from large data sets and blockchain to remove friction from global financial processes.   He has written numerous papers on applying cloud computing to global supply chains to improve business performance and manage risk.  Gary has extensive experience consulting on process improvement and automation initiatives.   

He started his career as an officer in the USMC focused on supply chain activities to keep front-line aircraft mission-capable.  After that worked at GP Strategies (formerly RWD Technologies) supporting technology initiatives for companies including Chevron, Coca Cola, Conexant, Dow, Exxon, Ford, IBM, Lyondell, Mobil, P&G, and SAP.  Gary holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Penn State and an MS in Business Administration from Boston University.   He has been certified as a PMP and Six Sigma "Black Belt.”

Gary Neights is speaking in the following session:

David Perkins, CAP®, PMP®
David Perkins, CAP®, PMP®

Professor of Business Analytics

Grand Canyon University

Dr. David Perkins, CAP®, PMP® is a university business analytics professor and teaches introductory & advanced analytics courses. David also has 17 years of experience in the private sector as a project manager, project analyst and systems engineer in various defense and information technology industries. He has held positions at General Dynamics, Motorola, MicroAge, and National Computer Systems. David has also published articles in the International Journal of Information Technology Project Management, Leadership & Organizational Development Journal, and in the International Journal of Managing Projects in Business. One of his articles also appears in the book: People in Projects.

David Perkins, CAP®, PMP® is speaking in the following session:

Srivats Ramaswami
Srivats Ramaswami

CTO

42Q

Srivats Ramaswami has worked at both OEM’s and contract manufacturers for many years, most recently as vice president of I.T.Operations. His expertise includes the architecture and implementation of innovative I.T. solutions for large OEM’s, making their global supply chains visible and more efficient. Srivats is now responsible for providing leadership in customer acquisition and engagement, technology development and deployment for 42Q.

Steven Ramirez
Steven Ramirez

CEO

Steven J. Ramirez is the chief executive officer of Berkeley, Calif.-based Beyond the Arc, Inc., a firm recognized as a leader in helping companies transform their customer experiences by leveraging advanced analytics.

In addition to developing and executing the vision for Beyond the Arc, Ramirez leads teams of data and strategy consultants committed to client success. They analyze customer and social media data, combined with text analysis, to drive customer growth, improve customer retention, understand service breaks and build stronger customer loyalty.

Prior to leading Beyond the Arc, Ramirez served as an executive with Time Warner, where he was responsible for creating and successfully implementing marketing and corporate development strategies.

Ramirez earned a bachelor's degree and master's in Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley. He as also created and taught courses in business management for UC Berkeley and been a guest speaker at the university's Haas School of Business.

Karl Rexer
Karl Rexer

President

Karl Rexer founded Rexer Analytics in 2002. He and his teams have built an outstanding reputation providing predictive modeling and analytic consulting to clients across many industries. Recent clients include OneBlood, PwC, Boston Scientific, Redbox, ADT Security, Interamericana University, MIT, Forward Financing, SharkNinja, and many smaller companies. In addition to leading client engagements and hands-on data work, Karl is a predictive analytics evangelist, frequently speaking at conferences, colleges, and other events. He also serves on Advisory Boards for the Business Analytics programs at both Babson College and Bentley University. Since 2007 Rexer Analytics has conducted surveys of analytic professionals, asking them about their algorithms, tools, behaviors and  views. Summary reports from these surveys are available as a free download from the Rexer Analytics website. Prior to founding Rexer Analytics, Karl held leadership positions at several consulting firms and two multi-national banks. Karl holds a PhD from the University of Connecticut.

Karl Rexer is speaking in the following session:

David Russell
David Russell

RVP of Sales - West Region

David Russell is an analytics professional who currently holds responsibility for running DataRobot's Sales & Operations across the Western US, Canada, and LATAM, markets. David has over 18 year experience focused on successful enterprise deployments in big data, predictive analytics, business intelligence, and high performance data-warehousing solutions. David's core focus is on assisting customers in growing top-line revenue and/or decreasing operations overhead by leveraging data as a strategic asset. Currently, David is helping forward thinking organizations leverage DataRobot's modern, disruptive machine learning platform to create competitive advantages across a wide spectrum of data-drive use cases.

David Russell is speaking in the following session:

Mike Tamir
Mike Tamir

Head of Data Science, Advanced Technologies Group

Mike serves as Head of Data Science at Uber ATG, UC Berkeley Data Science faculty, and head of Skymind Labs the Machine Learning research lab affiliated with DeepLearning4J.  He has led teams of Data Scientists in the bay area as Chief Data Scientist for InterTrust, Director of Data Sciences for MetaScale/Sears, and CSO for Galvanize where he founded the galvanizeU-UNH accredited Masters of Science in Data Science degree and oversaw the company's transformation from co-working space to Data Science organization.  Mike began his career in academia serving as a mathematics teaching fellow for Columbia University before teaching at the University of Pittsburgh. His early research focused on developing the epsilon-anchor methodology for resolving both an inconsistency he highlighted in the dynamics of Einstein’s general relativity theory and the convergence of “large N” Monte Carlo simulations in Statistical Mechanics’ universality models of criticality phenomena.

Mike Tamir is speaking in the following session:

James Taylor
James Taylor

CEO

James Taylor is the CEO of Decision Management Solutions and is a leading expert in how to use business rules and analytic technology to build decision management systems. He is passionate about using decision management systems to help companies improve decision-making and develop an agile, analytic and adaptive business. He provides strategic consulting to companies of all sizes, working with clients in all sectors to adopt decision-making technology. James is an expert member of the International Institute for Analytics and is the author of multiple books and articles on decision management, decision modeling, predictive analytics and business rules, and writes a regular blog at JT on EDM. James also delivers webinars, workshops and training. He is a regular keynote speaker at conferences around the world.

James Taylor is moderator of the following session:

Morgan Vawter
Morgan Vawter

Global VP of Data & Analytics

Morgan Vawter is the Chief Analytics Director at Caterpillar, Inc. She's responsible for setting the strategy and delivering value from analytics solutions for Caterpillar's customers, dealers, and business units. Before joining Caterpillar, Morgan held a number of top data analytics positions at leading firms, including Accenture Interactive, and consulted for more than 40 Fortune 500 companies on analytics.

Phil Winters
Phil Winters

Author and Thought Leader

Phil Winters is known internationally as The Father of Customer Intelligence. An independent business advisor, author,  keynote lecturer and workshop leader with 35+ years' experience working with some 300 companies, he focuses on Customer Intelligence and championing the customer perspective to help organizations raise customer value through outstanding customer experience.

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