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).

Karan is responsible for the development and implementation of the IQR (an EXL Analytics company) services, marketing and business strategies worldwide. At IQR Consulting, now a part of market leader EXL Analytics, he has led complex consulting engagements for banks and credit unions. He has 16 years of experience in Financial Services but he has been instrumental in leading IQR to expand its expertise and best practices to other industries as well. He is a graduate in Management Information Systems from Virginia Tech and an MBA in Finance from the University of Maryland. He started his career spending 6 years at Capital One in their data analysis & credit review functions. He has also been a consultant at some top organizations like Fannie Mae, American Express, and British Telecom. Karan has spoken about usage of analytics at many international conferences.

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.

Bob Bress is Head of Data Science at Freewheel, a Comcast Company focused on advanced advertising technologies. In that role he leads teams of data science and analytical staff using their expertise to lead the development of the next generation of advanced targeted advertising products for television and premium video. Bob has over 15 years of analytics experience across industries including work in hospitality, energy, and at GE's Global Research Center in the Applied Statistics Lab.

Bob holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research & Statistics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Lawrence is Senior Partner, COO and Customer Insights & Advanced Analytics practice leader with Cicero Group. Lawrence has spent the last decade building Cicero's analytics practice where he has experience helping Fortune 1000 firms solve real business challenges with data, including attrition, segmentation, sales prioritization, pricing, and customer satisfaction. He also leads the firm in predictive analytics and Big Data related engagements, applying Cicero’s deep expertise in strategy execution to ensure data delivers ROI.  He has partnered with companies to help them to shift from reactive to predictive analytics by collecting and analyzing real-time information and distributing it across the organization— allowing management to make better, faster decisions that move the business forward.

Lawrence holds a Master’s of Science in Predictive Analytics from Northwestern University, an MBA with an emphasis in Business Economics from Westminster College, and a BA from Brigham Young University

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.

Robert Grossman is a partner at Analytic Strategy Partners and a professor at the University of Chicago.  From 2002 to 2016, he was the Founder and Managing Partner of Open Data Group, which provided data science consulting services to a wide variety of companies, including those in financial services, location services, computational advertising and cybersecurity. From 1996 to 2001, he was the Founder and CEO of Magnify, which developed predictive analytic software for the financial services and computational advertising industries.  Magnify was sold to ChoicePoint in 2003 and is now part of the RELX Group.  He is the Frederick H. Rawson Professor of Medicine and Computer Science and the Jim and Karen Frank Director of the Center for Translational Data Science at the University of Chicago, where he leads a data science research group that is developing systems and algorithms for managing, analyzing and sharing large biomedical and environmental datasets.

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.

Michael Li founded The Data Incubator, a New York-based training program that turns talented PhDs from academia into workplace-ready data scientists and quants. The program is free to Fellows, and routinely accepts just 1% of applicants. Employers engage with the Incubator as hiring partners.

Previously, Michael worked as a data scientist (Foursquare), Wall Street quant (D.E. Shaw, J.P. Morgan), and a rocket scientist (NASA). He completed his PhD at Princeton as a Hertz fellow and read Part III Maths at Cambridge as a Marshall Scholar. At Foursquare, Michael discovered that his favorite part of the job was teaching and mentoring smart people about data science. He decided to build a startup to focus on what he really loves.

Michael lives in New York, where he enjoys the Opera, rock climbing, and attending geeky data science events. You can find out more at www.thedataincubator.com.

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.

Steven J. Ramirez is the chief executive officer of Berkeley, Calif.-based Beyond the Arc, Inc., a firm recognized as a leader in helping companies transform their customer experiences by leveraging advanced analytics.

In addition to developing and executing the vision for Beyond the Arc, Ramirez leads teams of data and strategy consultants committed to client success. They analyze customer and social media data, combined with text analysis, to drive customer growth, improve customer retention, understand service breaks and build stronger customer loyalty.

Prior to leading Beyond the Arc, Ramirez served as an executive with Time Warner, where he was responsible for creating and successfully implementing marketing and corporate development strategies.

Ramirez earned a bachelor's degree and master's in Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley. He as also created and taught courses in business management for UC Berkeley and been a guest speaker at the university's Haas School of Business.

Thomas Schleicher is a results-focused executive with nearly 20 years of experience in delivering actionable, data-based insights and profit-optimizing results for various high-profile clients across multifaceted, competitive industries. He is currently Senior Director of Measurement Science at National Consumer Panel, a joint venture of Nielsen and IRI. NCP is the largest longitudinal consumer panel in the world, and it provides the quality data its parent companies leverage to share consumer insights with their respective clients.

Prior to his current role, Tom has had stints at Ipsos-ASI, Bayer HealthCare (Pharmaceuticals), and smaller analytic shops including Symphony Marketing Solutions and Spire, a Loyalty Marketing Analytics firm. Trained as an Experimental Social Psychologist (Ph.D. earned at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee), he is currently augmenting his statistical and social research methods expertise as he nears completion of his online Certificate in Predictive Analytics at UC-Irvine.

Satadru Sengupta is a Senior Engagement Director, Data Science at DataRobot. In this role, Satadru leads the data science engagement team in the US East Region and he works hands-on with the organizations in the NYC area (healthcare, financial and insurance industry) to integrate DataRobot machine learning platform in their problem-solving environment. Previously, Satadru worked with AIG Science Team as a Senior Manager leading quantitative modeling for global distribution. Prior to that, he worked with Liberty Mutual Insurance and Deloitte Consulting. Satadru holds a Master of Science in Actuarial Science and a Master of Science in Statistics. Satadru lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife.

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.

Bob Wood serves as Merkle's Senior Director â€" Advanced Analytics & Research. He and his team have been involved in numerous analytic and insights projects to support global brands such as MetLife, UnderArmour, Dell, Warner Brothers and Assurant, to help them market more effectively and more efficiently. In addition to having 17 years of leadership experience in research and analytics, Bob has a BS in Math & MS in Applied Math from BYU, MS in Statistics from Wichita State, an MBA from the Marriott School of Management, and is currently a doctoral candidate focusing on consumer psychology at Wichita State University.

Toshi has over 15 years of experience in quantitative research, measurement and psychometrics with emphasis on research design, program evaluation, data mining and predictive modeling to help marketing organizations better utilize research and analytics to drive their customer-centric strategies. Dr. Yumoto has been published and presented in over 50 academic journals and currently serves as a professional reviewer for PLoS ONE, Journal of Alzheimer's and Dementia, and Journal of Research in Nursing and Health. Dr. Yumoto has a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland College Park in Measurement, Statistics and Evaluation and a master's from Adler School of Professional Psychology in Counseling Psychology.