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: A Fortune 500 global technology company
Rules Rule: Inductive Business-Rule Discovery in Text Mining
Randall Anzalone, Sr. Finance Manager, Walmart Financial Services
Randall is a Senior Manager of Finance at Walmart. Randall's experience includes operations and finance roles at Intel, Victoria's Secret and Walmart, with expertise in leveraging statistical methods to determine marketing effectiveness and other Financial ROI modeling. Randall has a BA from Wisconsin and an MBA from Purdue University.
Case Study: Walmart Financial Services - Market Mix Modeling in Retail Financial Services
Tonya Etchison Balan, Manager, Analytics Product Management, SAS Institute
As Manager of the Analytics Product Management team at SAS, Tonya Etchison Balan works closely with the Analytics Research and Development team to drive strategy and direction for SAS' offerings in the areas of statistics, data mining, text analytics, forecasting, optimization, and simulation. She has been a SAS user for over 20 years and holds a PhD in Statistics from North Carolina State University. In addition to her experience at SAS, she has extensive consulting experience and has served on the faculty of the Department of Statistics at North Carolina State University.
How Can SAS Analytics Solve Your Business Problems? Let Me Show You!
Sponsor Presentation: Next Generation Insight
Sugato Basu, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, Google
His areas of research expertise include machine learning, data mining, predictive modeling and optimization, with special emphasis on scalable algorithm design for text and social network analysis. He did his Ph.D. in machine learning from UT Austin, and worked at SRI International on the CALO project before joining Google. He has written multiple papers, book chapters, and encyclopedia articles on clustering, semi-supervised learning, record linkage, social search / routing, rule mining, and optimization, and has won best paper awards at the KDD, ICML and SDM conferences. He continues to serve on multiple conference / journal committees and NSF panels on machine learning and data mining.
Massively Parallel Learning of Tree Ensembles to Predict Ad Quality
Richard Boire, Partner, BoireFillerGroup
Richard Boire's experience in database marketing and data mining dates back to 1983 at Reader's Digest Canada where he developed segmentation and modeling routines for all direct marketing programs. Richard's progressive career path led him to American Express Canada, where he pioneered predictive modelling technology for all direct marketing programs and ultimately models to predict ROI. With this experience, Richard formed his own consulting company back in 1994 which is now called the Boire Filler Group , a Canadian leader in offering analytical and database services to companies seeking solutions to their existing data mining or database marketing challenges.
Erick Brethenoux, VP Corporate Development, dSPSS
Erick Brethenoux's responsibilities within SPSS, an IBM Company include mergers and acquisitions, strategic planning, strategic partnering and future scenarios analysis. Brethenoux also plays a major role in the industry analyst activities and various operational missions within the company.
Prior to joining SPSS, Erick Brethenoux was VP of Software Equity Research at Lazard Frères, New York, from 1997 to 2004. Brethenoux had a threefold mission: providing institutional investors with equity research and recommendations, analyzing startup companies for potential venture capital funding or initial public offering and forecasting and monitoring trends and market dynamics in merger and acquisition activities.
Prior to joining Lazard Frères, Brethenoux was Research Director of Advanced Technologies at the Gartner Group (1991 - 1997) focusing on decision support systems, knowledge management and advanced software engineering architectures. Prior to Gartner Group, Mr. Brethenoux held a Senior Analyst position at New Science Associates where he covered applied intelligent systems and launched the commercial high-performance supercomputer systems service. In these roles, he was responsible for research operations issues, advising clients on their information technology strategies, publishing research reports as well as establishing new units of core research within the Gartner Group. Prior to New Science Associates, Mr. Brethenoux was completing a scientific mission for the French Embassy in the United States.
Brethenoux has published extensively in the domains of artificial intelligence systems, system sciences, applied mathematics, complex systems and cybernetics. He has held various academic positions at the University of Delaware and the Polytechnic School of Africa in Gabon. Brethenoux received his third year Manager of Information Systems degree from France and M.S. from West Chester University of Pennsylvania. His research as a Ph.D. candidate at University of Delaware was aimed at knowledge engineering, computational linguistics and connectionism modeling within a cognitive sciences multidisciplinary program.
Sponsor Presentation:
Beyond the Four Walls of your Enterprise: What your Customers Tell You
Joe Bugajski, Senior Analyst, Burton Group
Joe Bugajski is a senior analyst for Burton Group, a research service of Gartner. He researches IT governance, enterprise architecture, and data - its governance, management, standards, access, quality, and integration. Joe is also industry advisor to MIT's Information Quality program and he chairs the Finance Domain Task Force of the Object Management Group (OMG). Prior to Burton Group, Joe was chief data officer at Visa responsible worldwide for information reliability and value. It was at Visa that his data governance program recovered USD $2 billion annual revenue for Visa's member banks. Joe also served Visa as its chief enterprise architect and resident entrepreneur with responsibility for risk and business intelligence systems.
Prior to Visa, Joe was CEO of Triada, a global business intelligence software provider. Before Triada, Joe was a partner with GC Sproule and Associates. Prior to that endeavor, he managed engineering information systems for Ford Motor Company where he architected the legendary Taurus/Sable engineering program. Joe is a noted researcher in data management and analytics with four patents and twenty-six peer-reviewed publications. Joe's data governance paper won 1st place practice prize in a triple blind peer evaluation for the prestigious Knowledge Discovery in Data (KDD) 2007 conference of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
John V. Colias, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Decision Analyst
John leads the Advanced Analytics Group at Decision Analyst. In this capacity he designs, implements, and interprets custom quantitative research. His work is focused on applying advanced metrics and models in the areas of product optimization, market segmentation, competitive analysis, brand development, pricing strategies, predictive modeling, forecasting, and panel data econometrics.
John has more than 23 years of experience with econometric and simulation models. He has designed marketing research in a broad spectrum of industry categories, including prescription drug, packaged goods, high-tech and computer, telecommunications, insurance, restaurants, automobile, and retail gasoline. John holds a Ph.D. in Economics from The University of Texas at Austin with specializations in econometrics and modeling methods.
Case Study: AT&T Market Simulation in the Telecommunications Sector
Tim Daciuk, Director, Worldwide Demo Resources, SPSS
Tim Daciuk is Director of the Demo Team at SPSS. As a part of the Services organization Tim is responsible for developing and delivering resources to Pre-sales, Sales and Marketing. Tim has worked with SPSS, the company for over 15 years, and with SPSS products for over 30 years. Tim has been a part of many data mining initiatives in both the public and private sector. Tim has also provided support and training to data miners.
Lab Session: Publishing Profitably with Predictive Analytics
Michael Driscoll, Ph.D., Principal, Founder, Dataspora LLC
Michael E. Driscoll is a President of Dataspora LLC, a San Francisco consultancy specializing in Big Data, analytics, and visualization. Dataspora's clients have included telecoms, hedge funds, and Major League Baseball, with projects ranging from customer retention models, recommendation engines, and risk analysis.
Previously, Michael was the founder of CustomInk.com, an Inc 500 online retailer, and worked as a software engineer for the Human Genome Project. He has a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from Boston University and an A.B. from Harvard College.
John F. Elder, Ph.D., CEO and Founder, Elder Research, Inc.
Dr. John F. Elder heads a data mining consulting team with offices in Charlottesville, Virginia and Washington DC. Founded in 1995, Elder Research, Inc. focuses on scientific and commercial applications of pattern discovery and optimization, including stock selection, image recognition, text mining, biometrics, drug efficacy, credit scoring, cross-selling, investment 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 13 years leading ERI, he spent 5 years in aerospace defense consulting, 4 heading research at an investment management firm, and 2 in Rice's Computational & Applied Mathematics department.
Dr. Elder has authored innovative data mining tools, is active on Statistics, Engineering, and Finance conferences and boards, is a frequent keynote conference speaker, and is General Chair of the 2009 Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining conference in Paris. John's courses on data 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 on Practical Data Mining, with Bob Nisbet and Gary Minor, will appear in May 2009.
Phil Francisco, Vice President, Product Management & Product Marketing, Netezza
Phil Francisco brings over 20 years of valuable experience in technology development and global technology marketing. As Vice President of Product Management and Product Marketing, he fosters new business and product strategies, directs the product portfolio and drives product marketing programs for Netezza.
Prior to Netezza, Francisco was the Vice President of Marketing at PhotonEx, a leading developer of 40 Gb/s optical transport systems for core telecommunications network providers. Before PhotonEx Francisco served as Vice President of Product Marketing for Lucent Technologies' Optical Networking Group, where he worked with some of the world's largest telecommunications carriers in planning and implementing optical network solutions. In addition, he has more than 10 years of experience in software, hardware and systems engineering at AT&T/Lucent Bell Laboratories.
Mr. Francisco holds a patent in advanced optical network architectures. He received B.S. in Electrical Engineering and B.S. in Computer Science degrees magna cum laude, from the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned his Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and completed the Advanced Management Program at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.
Sponsor Presentation: Next Generation Insight
Mikhail Golovnya, Consulting Project Leader, Salford Systems
Mikhail Golovnya graduated from Kharkov State Polytechnic University, Ukraine in 1995 with a Specialist Engineering Degree in Flight Dynamics and Space Shuttle Control. In 1996, he was a Research Scholar in Econometrics and Finance at Saint Norbert College, Wisconsin. Mr. Golovnya later joined the Master of Science in Computation Statistics program at the University of Central Florida, Orlando from which he graduated with honors in fall of 2000. Mr. Golovnya began his work with Salford Systems as a Systems Analyst in the summer of 1999. He is primarily responsible for data mining consultation projects and works in model development and the search for technological improvements to Salford's core products. He is also responsible for advanced testing of CART, MARS, TreeNet, PRIM, Random Forests, and prototyping of new data mining algorithms and modeling automation. Mr. Golovnya also leads training sessions in CART, MARS, TreeNet, and Random Forests and provides guidance and technical support to Salford Systems' data mining clients.
Addressing Analytics Challenges in the Retail and Insurance Industries
Basile P. Goungetas, Ph.D., Consumer Product Planning & Research, AT&T Inc.
Basile Goungetas has been with AT&T Inc. (and its predecessor SBC Communications, Inc.) for the past 17 years. He is currently a Senior Market Research and Analysis Manager - AT&T Consumer and Mobility markets. Prior to that, he held various analytic positions in Corporate Strategy, International Operations (Telkom South Africa), and Financial Planning. Basile Goungetas holds a M.A. and a Ph.D., both in Economics, from the University of Missouri.
Case Study: AT&T Market Simulation in the Telecommunications Sector
Sean Gourley, Ph.D., Co-founder and Director of Data-tools, Younoodle
Sean is a Rhodes Scholar with a Ph.D. in Physics from Oxford University specializing in networks and complexity. During his research fellowship at Oxford he performed quantitative analysis of war and terror attacks. Using innovative methods to collect and organize information from open source media streams, and revealing surprising mathematical patterns, he consulted at the Pentagon and in Iraq in 2008 at the personal request of the Deputy Prime Minister.
Sean's research was recognized with a TED Fellowship and his work has been published in Nature, Science, the Economist and other leading journals. Prior to Younoodle, Sean worked at NASA, researching the design of self-repairing nanocircuits and is a two time New Zealand track and field champion in the Decathlon. At YouNoodle, Sean leads data collection and analysis, algorithm design, and development of data tools.
The mathematics of innovation: predicting startup success
Robert Grossman, Managing Partner, Open Data Group
Robert Grossman is the Founder and Managing Partner of Open Data Group, which provides management consulting and outsourced analytic services. Grossman is also the Director of the National Center for Data Mining (NCDM) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), which he founded in 1998. The NCDM is a leader in data mining, 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, data warehousing, distributed computing and high performance networking.
Grossman currently holds a part time appointment at UIC. Prior to founding Open Data Group, he founded Magnify, Inc. in 1996. Magnify 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.
Tim Grovac, Director of Information Technology, PASSUR Aerospace
Tim Grovac is the former Special Programs Manager at the FAA (Federal Aviation Adiminstration) Command Center in Washington, DC. He was with the FAA for his entire 30-year career before joining PASSUR Aerospace in 2009. Tim works intimately with both airports and airlines on business intelligence that measures and predicts air traffic in the most congested and weather-challenged markets in the U.S.
Predicting the Health of Air Traffic Systems
Auren Hoffman, CEO, Rapleaf
Auren Hoffman is CEO of Rapleaf, an automated search service that helps companies learn more about their consumers. Rapleaf currently has data on over 375 million consumers worldwide. Auren is also a non-employee cofounder of BrightRoll and serves on boards of AdRocket and Retargeter.com.
Auren was formerly Chair of Stonebrick Group and the Connector Group. Previously, he founded and sold three Internet companies before age 30: BridgePath (sold in 2002), Kyber Systems (sold in 1997), and GetRelevant (sold in 2002). He's the founder of Dialog Retreat and an active angel investor or advisor in: 750 Industries, Aardvark, Blip.TV, Delicious Brands, Dolores Labs, GoodRec, Grouply, Huddler, Kontagent, LabPixies, Lefora, Meebo, Merchant Circle, MesmoTV, Offbeat Guides, OtherInbox, Playlist, Play Megaphone, Proclivity Systems, RichRelevance, Structural Wealth Management, VoxPop.tv, Yotify, Zoom Systems, and more. Auren holds a B.S.E. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from UC Berkeley. He writes a blog called Summation.
Case Study: 1-800 Flowers Leveraging Social Media Data to Manage Fraud Risk
Franz Hofner, Analyst, Dt. Postbank AG
Franz is the head analyst of the German Postbank, a leading retail bank with over 14 m customers. His tasks range from customer segmentation, all kinds of scoring, development of retention approaches to fraud detection. Franz has a Diplom (MSc) in Mathematics from the university of Bonn.
Case Study: Dt. Postbank AG Model Retrospection - Boosting Your Learning Curve
Piyanka Jain, Sr. Manager, Paypal
Piyanka's strength and interest lies in deriving actionable insights from data to enable informed trade-offs and decision making. She never stops asking "Why" questions as customer behavior, action and attitude continuously intrigue her.
Currently, she is engaged in leading strategic analytics for PayPal that enables fact-based decisions on fine-tuning customer experience and product development. From building a recommendation engine for "Next Best product" for merchants to identifying the factors that indicates to an event happening in future, her role at PayPal is to lead the organization into learning more about their products and customers through rigorous understanding and mining of data.
Prior to this, Piyanka provided database driven analytical services to Adobe Product Marketing and Campaign Marketing. At Adobe, Piyanka designed and analyzed programs, used program learnings to drive planning for direct marketing communication programs, created segmentation and targeting strategy, mined data for predictors of campaign performance, built statistical models to identify top converters.
Prior to this, Piyanka founded Out of Box Media in 2003. The company's first Ad Campaign started with Chinese boxes and then grew to incorporate other types of containers including Pizza boxes, cake boxes etc. Her experience in advertising at Google, and her science and engineering degrees from Texas A&M and University of Minnesota enabled her to reach out to a wide variety of customers.
In her spare time, Piyanka likes to run, practice Yoga, paint, make pottery, and get an occasional game of Squash with her husband, Parth Sethia.
Peter Jaumann, Customer Analytics and Predictive Analytics, Sun Microsystems
Peter's areas of expertise include all facets of customer analytics and customer data mining. His emphasis is on new and innovative algorithm and product development based on machine learning, predictive analytics, and fuzzy matching. He currently leads an advanced/predictive analytics group in Sun's Marketing and Customer Operations.
His M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Geophysics/Geology/Statistics from Brown Univ and Univ Iowa, respectively, focused on climate change pattern detection as did his postdoctoral fellowship at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). He has released numerous internal reports and algorithms and has published on human-induced climate change detection with his fellow NCAR mentors in a variety of peer-reviewed journals. Peter's 15 years of experience cover the high-tech, engineering, telco, and consulting industries.
At Sun, Peter leads the development of next-generation customer analytics, specifically an application named 'KaufPac' and, in his spare time, adapts this package to a derivative sports application called 'StreakPac'. He's also responsible for the design and implementation of 'FuzzyMatch', a versatile and iterative, fuzzy-matching algorithm aimed at intelligently matching customer and product names (record linkage; especially when there is no address information), de-duping records, cleaning 'hierarchies', and automatic record attribution.
David Katz, Founder & President, David Katz Consulting
David Katz has been in the forefront of applying statistical models and database technology to marketing problems since 1980. He holds a Master's Degree in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is one of the founders of Abacus Direct Marketing and was previously was previously the Director of Database Development for Williams-Sonoma.
He is the founder and President of David Katz Consulting, specializing in sophisticated statistical services for a variety of applications, with a special focus on the Direct Marketing Industry. David Katz has an extensive background that includes experience in all aspects of direct marketing from data mining, to strategy, to test design and implementation. In addition, he consults on a variety of data mining and statistical applications from public health to collections analysis. He has partnered with consulting firms such as Ernst and Young and Prediction Impact.
Case Study: Continental Airlines and PASSUR Aerospace
Predicting the Health of Air Traffic Systems
Branton Kenton-Dau, CEO, VortexDNA
Together with colleagues Martin Burley and Raf Manji, Branton has pioneered the science of human intention. Since 2001 the team has been instrumental in mapping the structure of human intent through the mathematics of complex systems. In 2007 the team first publicly demonstrated the principles of complex systems in human behaviour in a test against Google SearchTM. Since then the commercial applications of this major scientific breakthrough have been focused on providing better segmentation in the insurance, credit and online sectors.
Branton is also a director of MetaWealth Limited and MarketsDNA Limited. Prior to his work on human intention Branton created the first corporate environmental rating system based on whole system principles. Before moving to New Zealand in 1996, Branton ran Human Technology UK Limited, a high profile business consultancy focusing on the management of change. Branton holds a First Class Honours degree in Religious Studies and Philosophy from Lancaster University, UK.
Lab Session: Better Debt Pricing and Recovery
Kim Larsen, Charles Schwab & Co
Kim Larsen is a Director in the Advanced Analytics group at Charles Schwab & Co., in San Francisco. The Advanced Analytics team works directly with partners in marketing, finance, and product management to solve business problems through statistical analysis and optimize the impact of marketing and other business levers. He has more than eight years of experience in data mining and statistical modeling in the financial services industry.
Throughout his professional career he has worked on a wide array of data mining problems, including customer segmentation, forecasting, price optimization, and predictive modeling for various applications. Kim holds a BS in mathematics and economics and an MS in statistics.
Keynote: Response Modeling is the Wrong Modeling - Maximize Impact With Net Lift Modeling
Greg Makowski, Data Mining Consultant, Wells Fargo
Greg Makowski works in the Consumer & Small Business Deposit Risk Department at Wells Fargo. Previously he was Principal Consultant of Golden Data Mining, in Los Altos, California. Since 1992, he has deployed over 70 data mining models for clients in targeted marketing, financial services, supply chain, e-commerce, and Internet advertising in North America, South America and Europe. He has applied a variety of data mining algorithms during these engagements and has experience using SQL, SAS, Java, and areas of Cloud Computing. Greg has eight years of experience in Product Management and over six years of experience working with start ups.
Addressing Analytics Challenges in the Retail and Insurance Industries
Manya Mayes, Product Marketing Manager, SAS
Manya Mayes, a 15-year SAS veteran, plans and executes SAS' worldwide marketing strategies for text mining as SAS' Chief Text Mining Strategist. She has more than five years of text and data mining consulting experience with major manufacturers, financials, telco, retail, helping them better understand the information gathered through warranty, call centers, chat rooms, blogs and other customer data sources. She also has played an instrumental role in developing text mining applications for emerging technologies in the areas of social media analysis, early warning, consumer and product safety in manufacturing, and audio analysis.
Manya is the author of a number of white papers and articles on text mining, her work with SAS Text Miner began with its inception in 1998. Manya earned a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from the University of Waikato, New Zealand in 1991.
Case Study: Successful application of text analytics to real world business issues
John McConnell, Director, Analytical People
John McConnell is the founder of Analytical People. He has been delivering Analytical Consulting Services in a broad range of business and research areas for over 20 years. The type of projects he is involved in range from ad-hoc analyses through to multi-user high-end, automated, analytical solutions delivery with Statistical, Data Mining and Predictive Analytics methods and technologies.
Through the '90s he worked for SPSS in a variety of international Professional Services delivery and management roles. Since 2000 John has been involved in a number of ventures which have applied advanced analytical methodologies. In 2004 he co-founded Applied Insights which specialised in the application of Advanced Digital Analytics. Applied Insights was acquired by Foviance in November 2008 and Analytical People was launched.
John has a BSc in Mathematics, Statistics and Operational Research from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, UK
Case Study: BBC Identifying and helping the most vulnerable
Lab Session: Publishing Profitably with Predictive Analytics
Fiona McNeill, Product Marketing Manager, SAS
As global product marketing manager, Fiona McNeill oversees the product marketing of Text Analytics at SAS. During her 11+ year tenure, she has helped organizations derive tangible benefit from their strategic use of technology. In addition to her work with a wide range of industries, Ms. McNeill has defined product strategy and corporate relationships at SAS, received multiple innovation awards, and was identified as a Pioneer and one of the Most Influential People by CRMPower, 2000. Before joining SAS, Ms. McNeill was a member of the IBM Global Services.
Ms. McNeill has published in academic journals, co-authored white papers, conducted education seminars and presented at both academic and industry conferences over the course of her career. She received her M.A. in Quantitative Behavioral Geography from McMaster University, and graduated cum laude with a B.Sc. in Bio-Physical Systems, University of Toronto.
Case Study: Successful application of text analytics to real world business issues
Neil Raden, CEO, Hired Brains
Neil Raden, consultant, analyst and author is followed by technology providers, consultants and even other analysts. His knowledge of the analytical applications is the result of thirty years of intensive work. He is the founder of Hired Brains, a research and advisory firm in Santa Barbara, CA, offering research and analysis services to technology providers as well as providing consulting and implementation services.
Mr. Raden began his career as a casualty actuary with AIG before moving into software engineering and consulting in the application of analytics in fields as diverse as health care to nuclear waste management to cosmetics marketing. His blog can be found at intelligententerprise.com/experts/raden/. He is the author of dozens articles and white papers and he has has contributed to numerous books and is the co-author of "Smart (Enough) Systems" (Prentice Hall, 2007) with James Taylor.
In-database Vs. In-cloud Analytics: Implications for Deployment
Dhiraj Rajaram, CEO, Mu Sigma Inc.
Dhiraj Rajaram is the founder and CEO of Mu Sigma, an analytics services company that helps clients institutionalize data-driven decision making. Dhiraj is responsible for the vision, strategic direction and leadership in Mu Sigma. His key strengths lie in the area of managing teams, aligning organizational resources to a customer centric vision and delivering profitable growth. He has built Mu Sigma from ground up during which time he executed on activities that included raising seed and growth capital for the venture, securing key fortune 100 customers, incubating an offshore delivery unit and hiring key leadership members into the company.
Dhiraj is extremely passionate about data driven decision making and has made it his mission to help companies deploy the use of sophisticated analytics and develop an objective quantitative language to communicate marketing, risk and supply chain issues within and across businesses.
Before Mu Sigma, he advised senior executives across a variety of verticals as a strategy and operations consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
While at Booz Allen Hamilton, Dhiraj worked with clients across various verticals (Consumer Products, Auto, Hi-Tech, Telecom, and Financial Services) and authored white papers on globalization and innovation. Prior to joining Booz Allen Hamilton, he worked as a management consultant, providing a mix of strategy, systems integration and project management consulting with PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Dhiraj holds an MBA from the University of Chicago where he majored in Finance, Strategy and Entrepreneurship. He also received an M.S. in Computer Engineering from Wayne State University. Dhiraj attended the College of Engineering - Guindy, Anna University to receive a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering.
Case Study: Walmart Financial Services - Market Mix Modeling in Retail Financial Services
Eric Siegel, Ph.D., Conference Chair
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 awards 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 19 articles and papers in data mining research and computer science education, has served on 10 conference program committees, has chaired a AAAI Symposium held at MIT, and is the founding chair of Predictive Analytics World.
Eureka! Seven Innovative Applications of Predictive Analytics
Matthew Strampe, Programmer / Analyst, Elder Research, Inc.
Programmer / Analyst Matthew Strampe earned a B.S. in Physics from the University of Virginia, and has had previous experience developing software. Since graduating, he has worked for Elder Research doing data mining consulting and development. He has an interest in data mining algorithms and ensemble theory. Matthew has taught courses on SPSS and SAS data mining software. His range of data mining experience has included fraud detection, medical diagnosis, customer segmentation, investment forecasting, civil defense, reliability forecasting, and customer relationship management.
James Taylor, CEO, Decision Management Solutions
James Taylor is CEO of Decision Management Solutions and one of the leading experts in decision management. James works with clients to develop effective technology solutions to improve business performance. James was previously a Vice President at Fair Isaac Corporation where he developed and refined the concept of enterprise decision management or EDM. The best known proponent of the approach, James is a passionate advocate of decision management. James has 20 years experience in all aspects of the design, development, marketing and use of advanced technology including CASE tools, project planning and methodology tools as well as platform development in PeopleSoft's R&D team and consulting with Ernst and Young. He develops approaches, tools and platforms that others can use to build more effective information systems. He is an experienced speaker and author, with his columns and articles appearing regularly in industry magazines.
Case Study: IBM - Analytic Journeys
Michael Towns, Director - Inventory & Consumer Analytics, Group RCI
Michael Towns is Director of Inventory and Consumer Analytics within the Global Revenue Management and Analytics department at Group RCI in Parsippany, NJ. He manages a group of analysts involved in a variety of marketing analytics, business scenario analysis and forecasting projects that touch several lines of business across the company's global operations.
Prior to joining RCI 5 years ago, Michael spent 8 years working on Revenue Management applications at United Airlines and Avis Budget Group. He has a BS in Civil Engineering from Rice University and an MS in Operations Research from Princeton University.
Membership Value Modeling with Soft Revenues and Uncertain Costs
Noe Tuason, Customer Research Manager, Insurance California State Automobile Association
Noe is currently the Customer Research Manager for insurance at the California State Automobile Association (CSAA). Prior to joining CSAA, Noe worked for Deloitte Consulting as a project lead at the Advanced Quantitative Services Group and for the Allstate Research and Planning Center data mining and modeling Groups as a senior researcher. He has published papers on research methods in various journals and presented in conferences. Related to the current topic, Noe presented a paper at the Advanced Research Techniques Forum comparing the use of logistic regression, decision trees, and hybrid combination of the two on predicting short-term defection. He also taught research methods at the Cal State University East Bay and was a research co-investigator at the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Addressing Analytics Challenges in the Retail and Insurance Industries
Andreas S. Weigend, Ph.D., people & data, and former Chief Scientist, Amazon.com
Andreas S. Weigend, Ph.D. was Chief Scientist at Amazon.com, where he specialized in understanding how people behave online, helping Amazon build its customer-centric, measurement-focused culture.
He now works as an independent consultant with firms including Alibaba, Lufthansa, MySpace, and Nokia, helping some of the most brilliant executives around the world leverage user data to produce innovative products and business models. He also teaches at Stanford and UC Berkeley, and is often invited to speak at international events.
Keynote: Predictive Power Part II - Advanced Analytics in the New Data Economy
