Featured Speakers
Siddhartha Dalal
Professor, Columbia University Bio
Siddhartha (Sid) Dalal is a Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies. Prior to joining Columbia he was Chief Data Scientist and Senior Vice President at AIG in charge of R&D that included creation and application of AI, Statistics and CS to Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, and Sensors/IOT for managing risks. He came to AIG from RAND Corporation where he was the CTO. Dalal also was Vice President of Research at Xerox, overseeing their worldwide imaging and software services research, and Bell Labs and Bellcore/SAIC as Chief Scientist and Executive Director. Dalal has an MBA and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester with over 100 peer-reviewed publications, patents, and monographs covering the areas of risk analysis, medical informatics Bayesian statistics and economics, image processing, and sensor networks. At Rand he was responsible for the creation of technology and spinning-off of Praedicat, Inc., a casualty insurance analytics company. Dalal is a member of US Army Science Board, an advisory board of 20 scientists appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Defense to advise the U.S. Army on technology. He has received several awards including from IEEE, ASA, and ASQ. Kirk Borne
Principal Data Scientist, Booz Allen Hamilton Bio
Dr. Kirk Borne is the Principal Data Scientist and an Executive Advisor at global technology and consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. In those roles, he focuses on applications of data science, data management, machine learning, machine intelligence, modeling, and simulation across a wide variety of disciplines. He also provides leadership and mentoring to multi-disciplinary teams of scientists, modelers, and data scientists. Dr. Borne has a B.S. degree in Physics from LSU, and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from Caltech. He is an elected Fellow of the International Astrostatistics Association for his lifelong contributions to big data research in astronomy. Since 2013 he has been listed consistently each year as a top (#1 or #2) worldwide influencer in Big Data and Data Science on social media. |
Eduardo Esquenazi
Founder & Chairman, Sirenas Marine Discovery LLC Bio
Dr. Eduardo Esquenazi is the Founder, Chairman and Head of Innovation of Sirenas Marine Discovery LLC, San Diego California. Dr. Esquenazi's task is to ensure that Sirenas has the best combination of expertise, resources and strategy to succeed and mature. Beyond this, he helps direct the Discovery and Informatics arms of Sirenas, including library creation, acquisition of biodiversity and cutting edge data analytics. Dr. Esquenazi has served as advisor to a global investment fund since 2007 and holds additional board appointments. He was the recipient of the NIH Training Grant in Marine Biotechnology in 2008 and The San Diego Fellowship in 2010 and has published over a dozen publications since 2007 associated with novel approaches to the identification and study of marine natural products. In September 2016, Sirenas was awarded a $775,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to discover potential therapies to treat neglected diseases. Dr. Esquenazi received his B.S. in Biology and Neuroscience from Vanderbilt University and his Ph.D. in Biology from the Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine at The Scripps Institution of Oceanography and from The Skaggs School of Pharmacy at UC San Diego. Paul Barth
Founder & CEO, Podium Data Bio
Dr. Paul Barth is founder and CEO of Podium Data, creator of the industry-leading Podium big data management platform. He has spent decades developing advanced data and analytics solutions for Fortune 100 companies, and is a recognized thought-leader on business-driven data strategies and best practices. Prior to founding Podium Data, Paul co-founded NewVantage Partners, a boutique consultancy advising C-level executives at leading banking, investment, and insurance firms. In his roles at Schlumberger, Thinking Machines, Epsilon, Tessera, and iXL, Dr. Barth led the discovery and development of parallel processing and machine learning technologies to dramatically accelerate and simplify data management and analytics. Paul holds a PhD in computer science from the MIT, and an MS from Yale University. |
Jason Knight
Platform Architect, Intel Bio
Jason is a Platform Architect at Intel's AI Products Group. He leads deep learning software architecture for several projects such as Intel Nervana Graph compiler. Jason has a Ph.D. in computational biology where he developed hierarchical Bayesian statistical models for classification of cancer tumor expression data. In addition, he developed high performance Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques to discover gene regulatory networks in this data using graphical models. He was previously an algorithms engineer at the deep learning startup Nervana Systems. Neil Senturia
Serial Entrepreneur Bio
Neil Senturia is the classic serial entrepreneur. He has had three careers from writing sitcoms in Hollywood to real estate development and finally technology – nine companies as CEO or Chairman and another dozen that he has invested in. Currently Neil is CEO of Blackbird Ventures, a small venture fund that is focused on very early stage companies. Neil has taught entrepreneurship at San Diego State as well as at UC San Diego. He is author of "I'm There for You Baby: The Entrepreneur's Guide to the Galaxy," in which he shares the ups and downs of his entrepreneurial life and lessons learned. He also writes a weekly column for the San Diego Union-Tribune. |
Doug Laney
VP Distinguished Analyst, Gartner Bio
Doug Laney is vice president and distinguished analyst with the Gartner Chief Data Officer (CDO) research and advisory team. Doug researches and advises clients on information monetization and valuation, open and syndicated data, analytics centers of excellence, data governance, and Big Data-based innovation. He is the author of the book, “Infonomics: How to Monetize, Manage and Measure Information as an Asset for Competitive Advantage,” the Financial Times’ “Big Data” e-book, Gartner’s enterprise information management maturity model, and over 100 other Gartner and other publications. Doug is also a two-time recipient of Gartner’s annual thought leadership award. Doug originated the field of Infonomics, developing methods to quantify and harvest information’s economic value. He lectures at business schools and conferences on the topic, and his articles have appeared in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. You can follow Doug on Twitter at @doug_laney and on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/douglaney. |
Ping Yeh
Co-founder and CEO, Stemonix Bio
Ping Yeh is CEO/Cofounder of StemoniX, a biotech startup that is transforming how therapeutic companies prepare for clinical trials. StemoniX makes human microOrgans from anyone’s skin/blood and helps pharmaceutical companies discover new therapeutics for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Autism to even Zika Virus. Founded in early 2014, StemoniX was born from Ping’s experience as a cancer survivor, which inspired him to build a world-class team to address the new challenges of drug discovery and personalized medicine. Interestingly, he began his career as a nanotechnologist for the storage and IT/data center industry and later leveraged his know-how to create StemoniX. The company now serves the needs of many of the top pharmaceutical companies in the world and was the 2017 award recipient of Red Herring 100 North America, which highlights the top 100 most innovative tech companies on the continent. Educationally, Ping received his BS and MS in mechanical engineering with an emphasis in nanotechnology from UC San Diego, MBA from Univ. of Minnesota’s Carlson School, M&A Certification from Kellogg and is internationally certified in Program and Project Management. |