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).

Suresh Arumugam has around 6 years of professional experience in Business Consulting, Analytics and Software Development. He is part of HP ES IT Business Intelligence team and is responsible for predictive modeling and insights on Pipeline Optimization, Marketing Campaigns and Labor Strategy. Earlier Suresh worked with Communications & Media Services of HP ES and was responsible for providing analytical insights on the unit's sales pipeline. Suresh's innovative index based methodology developed at HP, to do market based pricing for IT/ ITES services in the absence of competitive price intelligence, is 'Patent Pending' with USPTO. Suresh holds Masters in Business Administration from IIM Bangalore. Before HP, Suresh worked with iGATE and TCS.

Natasha received her Master's and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Vanderbilt University with an emphasis in Data Mining from large data sets. Her dissertation focused on creating and applying novel data mining techniques to mobile robots and real time sensor data. She has been with UCSD since 2003. She has also led multiple collaborations across a wide range of organizations in industry, government and academia. She had founded and led the Predictive Analytics Center of Excellence at the Supercomputer Center until 2016. She is currently directing the Interdisciplinary Center for Data Data Science (ICData) at Calit2/Qualcomm institute and lectures at the computer Science Department. Dr. Balac has a number of large and multidisciplinary government and research funded projects including the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, NASA, NSF, CPUC, Smart Grid, Smart City, etc. Dr. Balac has founded and serves at the President and CEO of Data Insight Discovery, Inc. DID's charter is enabling businesses to discover actionable insight from vast amounts of data across verticals.

Marco Casalaina manages the go-to-market group for predictive analytics offerings from SAP, which include SAP Predictive Analysis software and the SAP InfiniteInsight solution.

In his role, Marco helps deliver predictive analytics solutions to more than 600 customers worldwide, including AAA, Allegro, Bank of America, Barclays, Belgacom, CBS Interactive, ING Direct, Lowe's, Meredith Corporation, Mobilink, Overstock.com, PT XL Axiata, RealNetworks, Rhapsody, Rockwell, Rogers, Sears, Shutterfly, Stage Stores, U.S. Cellular, and Vodafone.

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.

Dr. Andrew Fast leads the research and development of advanced data mining algorithms at Elder Research, the nation's leading data mining consultancy. ERI was founded in 1995 and has offices in Charlottesville VA and Washington DC,(www.elderresearch.com). ERI focuses on Federal, commercial, investment, and security applications of advanced analytics, including stock selection, image recognition, biometrics, process optimization, cross-selling, drug efficacy, credit scoring, risk management, and fraud detection.

Dr. Fast graduated Magna Cum Laude from Bethel University and earned Master's and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. There, his research focused on causal data mining and mining complex relational data such as social networks. At ERI, Andrew leads the development of new tools and algorithms for data and text mining for applications of capabilities assessment, fraud detection, and national security.

Dr. Fast has published on an array of applications including detecting securities fraud using the social network among brokers, and understanding the structure of criminal and violent groups. Other publications cover modeling peer-to-peer music file sharing networks, understanding how collective classification works, and predicting playoff success of NFL head coaches (work featured on ESPN.com). With John Elder and other co-authors, Andrew has written a book on Practical Text Mining that was awarded the prose Award for Computing and Information Science in 2012.

Andy is the Data Assets Capability Director for Deloitte Australia and has more 15 years of analytics project experience across several countries. Coining the phrase Datostraficante (Data Trafficker) to describe his current focus, Andy's activities are increasingly geared towards data monetization and advocacy around the creative blending of diverse data sources to deliver an analytical edge.Specializing in customer, market and spatial analysis, Andy is a self-described 'ultralight quant' who uses storytelling to bring to life the power of predictive analytics for diverse internal and external clients.  

In more than 15 years as an analytics leader, Aryng Founder Piyanka Jain is a leading expert in Data Literacy, building Data Culture, Machine Learning, Data Science and Analytics. She is an Amazon #1 bestselling author in Data Mining, paid keynoter in conferences as well as contributes to Forbes, HBR, InsideHR, TDWI, Experian, Modern Workplace, Predictive Analytics World, etc. She has developed the BADIR framework which enables 10X+ faster insights, 20X+ impact and driven $1b+ in business impact for her clients. She has two Masters degrees, with her thesis involving applied mathematics and statistics. Before founding Aryng, she was the Head of Business Analytics at PayPal-North America.

Aasif Mohammad Kidwai is a commerce graduate and also holds an MBA degree with specialization in Finance & Marketing. Presently working as a Business Consultant within HP's Corporate Strategy & Analytics group with over 5 years of experience in Research and Analytics. He is reponsible for Sales Planning, development and deployment of best practice analytics including insight, predictive models, segmentation and triggers for HP's Services business.

Mahesh is the Founder and CEO of Tiger Analytics. He started Tiger Analytics with a desire to bring his experience in management science to help organizations achieve superior performance through the application of advanced analytics.Before founding Tiger Analytics, Mahesh was on the faculty of the Smith School of Business and Rutgers Business School.

Mahesh has conducted research in the areas of data mining and statistical modeling and has successfully applied his research to solve problems related to forecasting, pricing, promotions, and customer segmentation for a wide range of businesses across industries. Mahesh holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Marketing from MIT, and a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Bombay.

Gayatri manages eBay's Data and Analytics Platform Strategy. She is involved in strategic initiatives related to eBay's industry-leading data warehousing systems, map-reduce platforms, analytic products, business intelligence tools, collaboration portals, and fast analytics platforms. She has successfully launched over a dozen enterprise software products at leading organizations, such as Oracle and HP, and having founded an industry-leading complex-event processing (CEP) software company (now part of SAP), Gayatri has thrived for over 25 years on the challenge of matching innovation with high customer impact.

Daniel Porter is the cofounder of BlueLabs, a Washington DC based analytics, data and technology company whose clients include political campaigns, nonprofits and corporations.

Prior to founding BlueLabs, Daniel was Director of Statistical Modeling for the 2012 Obama reelection campaign. His team developed individual level statistical models that were used throughout the campaign for fundraising, media buying and state strategy. These models served two primary purposes: to pinpoint which voters were most likely to take an action or hold a belief (i.e. support the President or turn out to vote) as well as to measure the influence a campaign contact had on an individual's likelihood to take such actions or change their beliefs. Combined, these measures helped the campaign optimize their targeting to maximize their return on investment.

Chiranjiv Roy has around 8 years of experience in Business Consulting, Data Mining and Advanced Analytics across Banking, Financial Services and IT. As a consultant for HP ES IT Business Intelligence & Optimization, he delivers analytics services and solutions to complex business problems in HP ES. His main responsibilities includes providing strategic insights, predictive modeling for structured and unstructured data and solution development. Chiranjiv holds Bachelors and Master’s Degree in Computer Applications along with Executive Post Graduate in International Business Management. Before HP, Chiranjiv worked with companies like HSBC, Ameriprise Express Financial Advisors(AMP) and WNS Research & Analytics.

Nishant Saxena has around 12 years of professional experience in Advanced Analytics, Business Consulting and Program Management. Nishant holds MBA in Finance from IBS Hyderabad and B.E. in Computer Science from VTU Belgaum. He is also a PMI certified PMP. Nishant currently leads the Enterprise Services Analytics team for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Prior to joining HPE, he was part of Global Strategy & Marketing at Honeywell and Business Consulting at Cognizant. Nishant has a PATENT Published. He has been Speaker at various conferences on smart usage of analytics in enterprise business: ICBAI 2015, ICBAI 2014, HP Tech Con 2014; PAW San Francisco 2014; and ICBAI 2013. His white paper was selected for IEEE/WIC/ACM ICWI 2014. He has a White Paper accepted for publication in JIOS by Taylor & Francis. Nishant was invited as Plenary Speaker & Session Chair for International Conference on Crowdfunding 2016. He has also been review committee member for PMI PMPC 2016 and HPE Parasparam 2016.

Eric Siegel, Ph.D., is a leading consultant and former Columbia University professor who helps companies deploy machine learning. He is the founder of the long-running Machine Learning Week conference series and its new sister, Generative AI Applications Summit, the instructor of the acclaimed online course “Machine Learning Leadership and Practice – End-to-End Mastery,” executive editor of The Machine Learning Times, and a frequent keynote speaker. He wrote the bestselling Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die, which has been used in courses at hundreds of universities, as well as The AI Playbook: Mastering the Rare Art of Machine Learning Deployment. Eric’s interdisciplinary work bridges the stubborn technology/business gap. At Columbia, he won the Distinguished Faculty award when teaching the graduate computer science courses in ML and AI. Later, he served as a business school professor at UVA Darden. Eric also publishes op-eds on analytics and social justice.

Eric has appeared on Bloomberg TV and Radio, BNN (Canada), Israel National Radio, National Geographic Breakthrough, NPR Marketplace, Radio National (Australia), and TheStreet. Eric and his books have been featured in Big Think, Businessweek, CBS MoneyWatch, Contagious Magazine, The European Business Review, Fast Company, The Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, GQ, Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Luckbox Magazine, MIT Sloan Management Review, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Newsweek, Quartz, Salon, The San Francisco Chronicle, Scientific American, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and WSJ MarketWatch.

Dr. Marc A. Smith is a sociologist specializing in the social organization of online communities and computer mediated interaction. Smith leads the Connected Action consulting group. Smith co-founded the Social Media Research Foundation (http://www.smrfoundation.org/), a non-profit devoted to open tools, data, and scholarship related to social media research. He contributes to the open and free NodeXL project (http://nodexl.codeplex.com) that adds social network analysis features to the familiar Excel spreadsheet. NodeXL enables social network analysis of email, Twitter, Flickr, WWW, Facebook and other network data sets. Along with Derek Hansen and Ben Shneiderman, he is the co-author and editor of Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a connected world, from Morgan-Kaufmann which is a guide to mapping connections created through computer-mediated interactions. Smith has published research on social media extensively, providing a map to the landscape of connected communities on the Internet.

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.