Dean Abbott is an internationally recognized thought leader and innovator in data science and predictive analytics, with more than three decades of experience solving problems in customer analytics, fraud detection, risk modeling, text mining, survey analysis, and many more. He is frequently included in lists of the top pioneering and influential data scientists in the world. Mr. Abbott is the author of Applied Predictive Analytics (Wiley, 2014) and coauthor of The IBM SPSS Modeler Cookbook (Packt Publishing, 2013). He is a popular keynote speaker and bootcamp/workshop instructor at conferences worldwide and serves on advisory boards for the UC/Irvine Predictive Analytics and UC/San Diego Data Science Certificate programs. He holds a bachelors degree in computational mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a masters degree in applied mathematics from the University of Virginia.

Vikas Agarwal is the global head of Analytics within the Legal and Audit department and has been with Goldman Sachs since 2011. As the global lead for analytics across front office and back office areas and is responsible for leading a team which assists in the application of advance analytics in the risk assessment, audit execution and continuous monitoring processes. As part of this roll Vikas sits on several firm wide committees related to analytics, continuous monitoring, compliance surveillance and enterprise data management. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Mr. Agarwal worked for seven years as a consultant for a big four firm leading a regulatory analytics practice. He has experience dealing with large-scale AML and other compliance related issues at several large broker dealers, retail banks and asset management firms.

Michael Berry is co-author of some of the most widely read and respected books on data mining including Data Mining Techniques for Marketing, Sales, and Customer Relationship Management which is now in its third edition. These best sellers in the field have been translated into many languages. Michael is an active practitioner of data mining. His books reflect many years of practical, hands-on experience down in the data mines. Michael is Director of Analytics at Tripadvisor for Business, the B2B side of Tripadvisor, the world’s largest travel-related web site. Prior to joining Tripadvisor, he spent many years as a data mining consultant and educator.

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. Juergen Klenk is a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Monitor Strategy practice. He focuses on advancing Precision Medicine and Data Science in health care and biomedical research through the unique lens of his combined formal scientific training and entrepreneurial experience. Dr. Klenk has authored publications, patented inventions, spoken at international conferences, and he has started up, grown, and established innovative health analytics businesses. Throughout his career, he has worked with leading health organizations, including government health agencies, academic medical centers, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, health care providers, and non-profit organizations. His areas of specialty include strategy and business operations, digital transformation, data analytics, and science & technology. Dr. Klenk holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics and a Master’s degree in Mathematics and Physics from Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen.

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.

Saikat is a Data Scientist in Intuit focusing on applying data mining and machine learning techniques to Intuit customer data for building innovative data driven products. In this capacity he has built systems for analyzing various kinds of data such as unstructured text voice of customer and consumer and business financial transactions. His current interests are on modeling large scale transactional data, applying big data technologies for mining, and building offers and recommendation products using the data.

Prior to Intuit, he was with Siemens Corporate Research as a Scientist and Research Manager where he led various projects around text analytics and healthcare data mining. He obtained his Ph.D. from SUNY Stony Brook and bachelors from the Indian Institute of Technology, holds a US patent, and has published extensively in technical and industry conferences.

Mukund Raghunath is the Geography Head for Mu Sigma. He has over 11 years of Engineering and consulting experience with a leading telecommunications company and a leading Sales and Marketing Strategy firm in the US. He has helped several Fortune 500 companies in the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare space address a broad range of business issues. He also has extensive experience in product planning, development and management in the telecom sector.

Mukund has a Masters Degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois and an MBA with honors from the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business.

As Chief Strategy Officer, Anne is responsible for accelerating Kinaxis strategy development to add further value to customers. She and her team collaborates closely with customers, external stakeholders and the rest of the senior executive team to drive the strategic roadmap, thought leadership and identify emerging technologies and new industry opportunities.

A proven leader in analytics and digital transformation, with expertise in operations, supply chain, and strategy, Anne has extensive experience in managing supply chains for complex, global organizations. As Executive Director, Global Supply Chain Strategy, Analytics and Systems at Verizon, Anne was responsible for the strategic vision of the company’s global end-to-end supply chain, driving excellence through world-class data-analytics, process innovation and employee empowerment. Before Verizon, Anne spent several years at Cisco where she was responsible for managing advanced analytics, business intelligence and performance management teams.

Anne is a past president of INFORMS (the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences), a seasoned industry speaker and has served on several advisory boards. Originally from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Anne has a BScH from Acadia University, MASc from the University of Waterloo and an MSc and PhD in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University.

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.