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 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.

Richard Boire's experience in predictive analytics and data science dates back to 1983, when he received an MBA from Concordia University in Finance and Statistics. 

His initial experience at organizations such as Reader’s Digest and American Express allowed  him to become a pioneer in the application of predictive modelling technology for all database and CRM type marketing programs. This extended to the introduction of models which targeted the acquisition of new customers based on return on investment.

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 predictive analytics or database marketing challenges.

Richard is a recognized authority on predictive analytics and is among a very few, select top five experts in this field in Canada, with expertise and knowledge that is difficult, if not impossible to replicate in Canada. This expertise has evolved into international speaking assignments and workshop seminars in the U.S., England, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia. 

Within Canada, he gives seminars on segmentation and predictive analytics for such organizations as Canadian Marketing Association (CMA), Direct Marketing News, Direct Marketing Association Toronto, Association for Advanced Relationship Marketing (AARM) and Predictive Analytics World (PAW).  His written articles have appeared in numerous Canadian  publications such as  Direct Marketing News, Strategy Magazine, and Marketing Magazine. He has taught applied statistics, data mining and database marketing at a variety of institutions across Canada which include University of Toronto, George Brown College, Seneca College, and currently Centennial College. Richard was  Chair at the CMA's Customer Insight and Analytics Committee and  sat on the CMA's Board of Directors from 2009-2012. He has chaired numerous full day conferences on behalf of the CMA (the 2000 Database and Technology Seminar as well as the  2002 Database and Technology Seminar and the first-ever Customer Profitability Conference  in 2005. He has most recently chaired the Predictive Analytics World conferences in both 2013 and 2014 which were held in Toronto.

He has co-authored white papers on the following topics: "Best Practices in Data Mining" as well as "Customer Profitability:  The State of Evolution among Canadian Companies."  In Oct. of 2014, his new book on "Data Mining for Managers-How to use Data (Big and Small) to Solve Business Problems" was published by Palgrave Macmillian.  In March of 2016, Boire Filler Group was acquired by Environics Analytics where his current role is senior vice-president of innovation.

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.

Tracie is the U.S. Retail  Sector Analytics and IoT Lead for Deloitte bringing breadth and depth of services to the Retail market in the areas of Technology Strategy, Analytics & Information Management, Cloud and IoT solutions. She is the National  Analytics & Information Management & Analytics Alliance Leader, and has seventeen years of business consulting experience focused on retail, consumer and industrial products clients.  Tracie also leads creation of the Retail Internet of Things strategy and solution development.

Tracie has deep experience in information management & analytics, master data management and governance, and data integration projects .  She manages and delivers complex global data & analytics projects. She bring business and IT together to deliver analytics and data strategies,  data quality, governance, and drive insights at the speed of business. Tracie has strong technology delivery experience and communication skills combined with a proven leadership record in the Technology and Analytics arena.

Andy Curtis is a Senior Vice President at Northern Trust where he leads an enterprise analytics team focused on leveraging data to enhance Northern Trust’s profitability. 

Prior to his current role, Andy led marketing and analytics teams at General Re-New England Asset Management, JP Morgan, and Y&R/Wunderman.  He has helped organizations across many industries enhance the utilization and segmentation of client data to create more profitable relationships.  

Andy received his Bachelor’s degree and MBA from the University of Chicago

Joe joined Enova as Chief Analytics Officer in 2014. As CAO, Joe leads a multi-disciplinary analytics team that provides end-to-end data and analytic services including data warehousing, business intelligence, business analytics, fraud, credit risk and marketing. His team supports the global online financial services offered by Enova International and delivers on-demand decision-making technology and real-time predictive analytics services to clients through the Enova Decisions® brand. Prior to working at Enova, he served as Director and Practice Leader of Advanced Analytics for Chicago-based West Monroe Partners. He has also held a number of executive positions at HAVI Global Solutions and the Allant Group. Joe received a B.A. in economics from Lewis University and an M.A. in economics from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is Immediate Past-President of the Chicago Chapter of the American Statistical Association and is on the Advisory Board of the UIC College of Business Administration. Joe lives in the Chicago area with his wife and daughters.

Kieran is the Director of Technical Services with the Queensland Reconstruction Authority (QRA) and has over 14 years of experience with Local, State and Federal Government in the design and delivery of civil infrastructure. Kieran has ground-up experience including drafting, design modelling, drainage, interface management, design and project management. His current role within the QRA sees him coordinating a team of Engineers, Program Managers, Quantity Surveyors, and Geospatial Analysts in assessing and managing the delivery of Natural Disaster Recovery Works within the State. This includes a growing emphasis on planning and resilience building activities that reflect a clear directional shift towards pre-emptive, predictive analysis over the traditional reactive approach to reconstruction activities.

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.

Will is a Director in the Performance Analytics Practice with Deloitte Australia and has over 12 years of international experience spanning a range of roles and industries. He has overseen the delivery of a number of large, complex engagements with a particular focus on the application of analytics in both Public Sector and Financial Services & Insurance (FSI) contexts. In recent times, this has included a particular focus on applying advanced analytics in order to generate more robust and accurate predictions of the impacts of severe weather events. This focus has positioned Will at the nexus between the public institutions that manage the natural disaster/emergency process (e.g. Bureau of Meteorology, State Emergency Service etc.) and those that deal with the significant administrative aftermath (both financial and logistical) of a natural disaster weather event.

John Elder chairs America’s most experienced Data Science consultancy. Founded in 1995, Elder Research has offices in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and Washington DC. 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. Daniel Fuhrmann is a Senior Data Scientist in Enterprise Data & Analytics, the central data science division within Northwestern Mutual.  He currently leads the development of analytical models for algorithmic risk assessments in life insurance and creates innovative data products for the future of underwriting.  Throughout his career in both industry and academia, Dr. Fuhrmann developed expertise in strategic decision-making with analytics, inferential statistical methods, survey research, econometrics, and applications of machine learning to create business value.  He has co-authored more than 20 peer-reviewed manuscripts & conference presentations and served as statistician on six grant-funded projects.  His most recent interests are on impactful communication for data scientists, methods to monetize data, and ways to manage information as an asset.He holds an Intermediate Diploma in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Potsdam, Germany, and both a M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  

John is the head of Data Science at Maiden Re. His prior positions in the insurance industry include predictive modeller, assistant actuarial analyst, and manager of quantitative analytics. As a mathematics professor, John taught graduate courses data mining and machine learning, applied probability and stochastic modelling, actuarial mathematics, and financial mathematics. John holds a PhD in statistics, and master's degrees in statistics, and computational finance and risk management.  He has published work in top journals on topics in veterinary science, climate modelling, statistical theory, and actuarial science. John is a frequent speaker at academic and industry conferences.

Christina Hoy is Vice President, Corporate Business Information and Analytics, at the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB).  She leads a team in governing and transforming data into high-quality, high-value information solutions to drive better outcomes for the workers and employers of Ontario.  Christina led changes on numerous information fronts, from establishing data standards and ensuring high-quality data to developing innovative province-wide information solutions.

Prior to joining the WSIB, Christina was Director of Health System Funding Policy at the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.  She led the strategic development and implementation of funding reform across the province, ensuring equitable distribution of over $10 billion to more than 150 Ontario hospitals, 600 long-term care homes and 14 Community Care Access Centres.

Christina also held decision support leadership positions at Southlake Regional Health Centre and the University Health Network. 

Sriram is a Vice President, Data Science at Tiger Analytics where he leads a team of data scientists, data engineers and consultants to deliver end-to-end analytics solutions to financial services clients. He has over 15 years of experience in designing and implementing data science driven solutions across industries in the areas of marketing, customer management, risk, pricing, distribution and operations.

Prior to his current role at Tiger Analytics, Sriram served as Vice President, Customer Analytics at Western Union where he led advanced analytics to support business units globally. Prior to that, he held senior analytics roles within Kantar’s marketing science practice.

Sriram received a Bachelor’s in engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and a Master’s in engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Radha is a Senior Business and Technology Executive with demonstrated leadership in building and leading high-performance global teams in Financial, Healthcare, and Insurance Industries delivering global complex business initiatives through Infrastructure agility, Operational Efficiency, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing, Data Analytics and Business Model Innovation.   Radha is currently the President of NexGen Infrastructure Solutions and a Vice President at State Street Bank.  He is a trusted advisor to clients on the convergence of technology, business, and talent across all facets of the enterprise.   Radha is a multi-dimensional leader who is decisive, solutions-focused and results-oriented and recognized Operations and Big Data evangelist and a thought leader.  He leads a technology movement that emphasizes the importance of extracting real-time insights from data and analytics into real-time actions for a marketing strategy that leads to competitive advantage through outstanding customer service and value creation.  Radha supported Global Datacenters, managed hosting solutions and co-locations supporting millions of customers and several billion in the top and bottom lines.

Radha implemented new Enterprise 3rd platform technologies (Cloud, Mobile, Analytics and Social Media) to support many business channels for many financial and healthcare behemoths enabling business agility resulting in new opportunities for the rapid customer, revenue, and earnings growth while managing operational risk.

Radha also developed and executed multi-year business/product strategy and transformation plans in close partnership with Business and IT, and in translating business models and forecasts into specific IT growth strategies and execution plans in lock step with business objectives, timeline and market conditions.  Radha holds MBA in Strategy and Finance from Northeastern University, Boston & MS from University of Mumbai, India.

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.

Richard Lee is Director of Data Science for John Hancock, the U.S. division of Toronto-based Manulife.

Richard leads the Advanced Analytics & AI group, which supports operations decision analytics across all U.S. businesses.

In his current role, Richard finds opportunities for efficiencies in Life Insurance as well as Long Term Care Insurance operations. Much of his focus is on innovation to enhance the relevance and understanding of analytics and its impact on operations decision-making.

Prior to his current role, Richard has spent 15 years at John Hancock in various analytics roles

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, 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.

Syed Mehmud, ASA, MAAA, FCA, is a Principal and Senior Consulting Actuary in the Denver office of Wakely. Syed is a recognized expert on risk adjustment and actuarial applications of predictive modeling. Through the combination of large scale actuarial projects and developing popular product offerings, Syed has served most health plans in the United States in some capacity. He has worked on a variety of healthcare related projects, particularly involving the application of risk adjustment tools and implementation of risk adjustment methodologies.

Syed has worked on risk adjustment with clients in Medicare, Medicaid, and Commercial settings. His recent work includes a large-scale actuarial consulting engagement where the Wakely team simulated the HHS risk adjustment methodology in over 30 individual and small group markets across the United States. His other works include the conception and development of the Wakely Risk Assessment (WRA) model, advanced Risk Score Optimization (RSO) analytics, the Wakely RAPID program, and the Wakely Risk Insight (WRI) program.

Most recently, Syed and his team have executed an on-going national-scale project aimed at understanding the drivers of success and challenges in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) program. The Wakely Risk Insight – National Reporting (WRINR) project is a unique lens on the ACA program in that it uses detailed data on millions of ACA lives in order to uncover insights related to succeeding in this program.

Syed co-authored (with Ross Winkelman) the 2007 Society of Actuaries' study on the comparative assessment of risk assessment models. Syed led a 2012 Society of Actuaries’ study on Uncertainty in Risk Adjustment. His other major published works include Society of Actuaries research project titled 'Non-Traditional Predictors in Risk Assessment' (SOA, 2013), and Risk Scoring in Health Insurance – A Primer (SOA, 2016). He is also in the process of writing a book on predictive modeling.

Mei Najim currently works as an Applied Analytics Manager at HSBC and teaches part-time as a Data Analytics Lecturer at University of Chicago. Mei has over 18 years of hands-on analytics experience in banking (collections, agent performance, and financial crime), insurance (claim management, underwriting, pricing, reserving, and catastrophe risk management), and consulting.

Since 2007, Mei has mainly been working, leading, and implementing various large scale data analytics and predictive analytics projects to develop analytics capability for financial organizations. She has extensive statistics, machine learning, and data mining experience dealing with large and complex data sets.  She is an analytics thought leader with a positive influence and a clear vision for how analytics can transform business strategy through techniques, communication, and leadership to devise innovative data-driven solutions. 
Mei has been a frequent speaker at various industry conferences to share her expertise in predictive analytics, machine learning, and data science. She holds a BS in actuarial science from Hunan University and two MS degrees in applied mathematics and in statistics, from Washington State University. She is a member of the American Statistical Association and a Certified Specialist in Predictive Analytics (CSPA) of the Casualty Actuarial Society.

Kevin has 17 years of experience in advanced analytics and machine learning applications in government, intelligence community, and industry.  He developed artificial intelligence methods that have been deployed without modification for over 7 years making daily stock recommendations in over 40 market segments.  He was previously Senior Analytics Scientist at Teradata Aster consulting on big data analytics to finance, communications, retail, manufacturing and drug clients. Advanced analytics is his second career; he earlier spent 22 years as a commercial appellate lawyer. He has over 100 publications and has presented at major international conferences and to commercial and government groups.  He holds JD and MSCS degrees from U Texas and U South Florida.

A perpetual innovator and entrepreneur in his vocation, Satyendra Rana is an unapologetic challenger of status quo. Loven Systems is his latest act of that spirit, where he is leading the research and development of a big data science platform, called DIWO™(Data In Wisdom Out), inspired by systems thinking approach and cognitive science. In his exciting professional journey spanning over 35 years, Dr. Rana has built and sold companies in emerging technologies, held senior and executive leadership positions in various companies, won prestigious industry awards, served on the boards of startups, and has mentored many professionals. Dr. Rana holds a Doctorate Degree in Distributed Computing from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India where he was also a faculty member for over 4 years before migrating to USA.

Rob Rolleston is the Manager, Data Science at Paychex. Previously Rob worked at Xerox in the areas of Information Visualization, Strategy & Planning, and Color Management. He has 47 issued patents, and numerous technical publications and presentations.

He received his B.S. in Computational Physics from Carnegie-Mellon University, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Optics from the University of Rochester. Rob recently completed an MPS Degree in Information Visualization from Maryland Institute College of Arts, and is now an instructor for the program where he teaches statistics and data analysis. Rob has also been an adjunct professor and instructor at Rochester Institute of Technology. He has served on the Executive Advisory Board for the New York State Center for Electronic Imaging Systems, the Advisory Board for the Rochester Institute of Technology Center for Imaging Science, and was chair of the Xerox University Affairs Committee.

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.

Eric Siegel, Ph.D., is a former Columbia University professor who helps companies deploy machine learning. He is the cofounder and CEO of Gooder AI, the founder of the long-running Machine Learning Week conference series, 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. A Forbes contributor, Eric 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. A Forbes contributor, Eric and his books have been featured in BBC, Big Think, Businessweek, CBS MoneyWatch, Contagious Magazine, The European Business Review, Fast Company, The Financial Times, 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.

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.

James Taylor is Executive Partner at Blue Polaris 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.

Meina is a data scientist and senior consultant at Capco. Her core expertise lies in the application of proven data science tools and techniques to conduct business analytics and predictive modeling. Meina has used her business acumen and data science skills to solve business problems, such as churn and upsell predictive modeling, marketing qualified lead scoring system and customer journey. She also has a background in big data analytics and enjoys data visualizations. Meina is a thought leader in the data science world and is an active conference speaker. She enjoys public speaking and sharing innovative data science ideas with other people. Meina received her Master of Science in Data Science from New York University and her Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Economics from Agnes Scott College.

Dr. Scott Zoldi is chief analytics officer at FICO, responsible for artificial intelligence (AI) and analytic innovation across FICO's product and technology solutions. While at FICO, he has authored more than 130+ analytic patents, with 92 granted and 42 pending. Scott is an industry leader at the forefront of Responsible AI, and an outspoken proponent of AI governance and regulation. His groundbreaking work in AI model development governance, including a patented use of blockchain technology for this application, has helped propel Scott to AI visionary status, with recent awards received including a Future Thinking Award at Corinium Global’s Business of Data Gala. Scott serves on the Boards of Directors of Software San Diego and San Diego Cyber Center of Excellence. He received his Ph.D. degree in theoretical and computational physics from Duke University.