Speakers Washington DC 2009:
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 Clementine (SPSS), Affinium Model (Unica Corporation), Enterprise Miner (SAS), Model 1 (Group1 Software), and hands-on courses using Tibco Spotfire Miner (formerly Insightful Miner), and CART (Salford Systems).
Session: How to Improve Customer Acquisition Models with Ensembles
Workshop: Hands-On Predictive Analytics
Joel Appelbaum, Chief Analytics Officer, Zurich
Joel A. Appelbaum is chief analytics officer of Zurich North America Commercial's Programs and Direct Markets business unit. Mr. Appelbaum specializes in providing predictive modeling solutions for the business unit and Underwriting transformation initiatives for Zurich.
Mr. Appelbaum has more than 20 years of insurance industry experience. Before joining Zurich, he was a construction risk officer for CNA Insurance. He currently serves on the CPCU Society board of Governors', and was an instructor for the Insurance School of Chicago for more than 15 years.
Mr. Appelbaum holds a Bachelor of Science degree from DePaul University and a Master of Business Administration with honors in international business from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. He is a designated Charter Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU), holds an Associate in Risk Management (ARM) designation, and an Associates in Insurance Services designation (AIS).
Session: Top 10 Ways to be Successful in Implementing Predictive Modeling in Insurance Commercial Markets
Heather Avery, Manager, Business Analytics, Aflac
Heather Avery is manager of Business Analytics within the Shared Services division at Aflac. Heather joined Aflac in 2001 and has held analyst positions in Policy Service, Change Management, Strategy & Planning, and Marketing within Aflac; most recently serving as a business process consultant in Shared Services. Heather holds a master's degree in computer science and a bachelor's degree in psychology from Columbus State University, and is currently pursuing a master's degree in business administration from Auburn University.
In her current role, Heather manages the daily operations of the Business Analytics team. This team partners with the Administrative business areas to lead select strategic initiatives, provide actionable, knowledge-based analytics, and build foundational capabilities that support management of operational efficiency and service delivery.
Session: Establishing a Customer Retention Analytics Framework
Stephen L. Baker, Senior writer, BusinessWeek
Stephen L. Baker, author of The Numerati, is a senior writer at BusinessWeek, covering technology. Previously he was a Paris correspondent. Baker joined BusinessWeek in March, 1987, as manager of the Mexico City bureau, where he was responsible for covering Mexico and Latin America. He was named Pittsburgh bureau manager in 1992. Before BusinessWeek, Baker was a reporter for the El Paso Herald-Post. Prior to that, he was chief economic reporter for The Daily Journal in Caracas, Venezuela. Baker holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin and a master's from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He blogs at TheNumerati.net and Blogspotting.net, and can be found on Twitter at @stevebaker.
Keynote: Opportunities and Pitfalls: What the World Does and Doesn't Want from Predictive Analytics
Panel: Predictive Analytics and Consumer Privacy
Michael Berry, Founder and Principal, Data Miners, Inc.
Michael Berry is author of some of the most widely-read and respected books on data mining. He is an active, hands-on practitioner with over 20 years in the field, for the past 12 years with Data Miners, a consultancy he founded.
Session: Predicting Future Subscriber Levels
Erick Brethenoux, Vice President, Corporate Development, SPSS Inc.
Erick Brethenoux's responsibilities within SPSS 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 Fréres, 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.
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.
Session: The Perfect Storm: The Rise of Predictive Analytics
Srivatsava Daruru, Research Assistant, Intelligent Data Exploration and Analysis Laboratory, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin
Based in Austin, Texas, Srivatsava Daruru leads the parallel data mining research efforts at the IDEAL Laboratory, UT Austin. Srivatsava Daruru's research has focused on three areas: association rule mining, search engine and multi-document relevancy ranking, and building massively parallel data mining applications. He has led industry research projects involving very large Netflix, YahooMovies, and France Telecom datasets. He presented his most recent work titled "Pervasive Parallelism in Data Mining: Dataflow solution to Co-clustering Large and Sparse Netflix Data" at the Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Paris, France, July 2009. He is currently working on a terascale density-based clustering algorithm for the Texas Advanced Computing Center.
Mr. Daruru's degrees include Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad and Master of Science in Computer Science, University of Texas at Austin, TX.
Session: Churn, Baby, Churn: Fast Scoring on Large Telecom Dataset
Ozgur Dogan, Vice President, Merkle
Ozgur has 12 years of experience in building and implementing analytics solutions for many different clients from credit card, consumer lending, insurance, media, CPG, pharma and business to business verticals.
Ozgur's Database Marketing experience stretches across many functional areas such as strategy, analytics, infrastructure and data content for many Fortune 500 clients. Ozgur is the recipient of multiple awards within Merkle, including the Exceptional Client, Operational Excellence, Database Marketing Excellence and the Chairman's Award, which is the highest recognition within Merkle. Ozgur's Team also won the NCDM Excellence Award in the Modeling and Analytics Area in 2006.
Prior to joining Merkle, he held Senior Analyst, Manager and Director Positions with leading direct marketing firms such as FedEx, NextCard and Wells Fargo Financial. Ozgur holds a BS Degree in Industrial Engineering and a technical MBA degree with focus on Marketing and Management Information Systems from The University of Georgia.
Session: Segmented Modeling Applications in Health Care Industry
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.
Session: The High ROI of Data Mining for Innovative Organizations
Usama Fayyad, Ph.D., CEO, Open Insights
Dr. Usama Fayyad is CEO of Open Insights, a data strategy, technology and consulting firm he founded to help enterprises understand data strategy and deploy data-driven solutions that effectively and dramatically grow revenue and competitive advantages. Up until September 2008, he was Yahoo!'s chief data officer and executive vice president of Research & Strategic Data Solutions. Fayyad was the industry's first chief data officer, responsible for Yahoo!'s global data strategy, architecting Yahoo!'s data policies and systems, prioritizing data investments, and managing the Company's data analytics and data processing infrastructure. Fayyad also founded and managed the Yahoo! Research organization with offices around the world. Yahoo! Research is building the premier scientific research organization to develop the new sciences of the Internet, on-line marketing, and innovative interactive applications.
Prior to joining Yahoo!, Fayyad co-founded and led the DMX Group, a data mining and data strategy consulting and technology company that was acquired by Yahoo! in 2004. DMX Group International still operates in the Middle East and is headquartered in Dubai. In early 2000, he co-founded and served as CEO of digiMine Inc. (Revenue Science, Inc.), a data analysis and data mining company that built, operated and hosted data warehouses and web analytics for some of the world's largest enterprises in online publishing, retail, manufacturing, telecommunications and financial services. The company today specializes in Behavioral Targeting and advertising networks. Fayyad's professional experience also includes five years spent leading the data mining and exploration group at Microsoft Research and building the data mining products for Microsoft's server division. From 1989 to 1996 Fayyad held a leadership role at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where his work in the analysis and exploration of scientific databases gathered from observatories, remote-sensing platforms and spacecraft garnered him the top research excellence award that Caltech awards to JPL scientists, as well as a U.S. Government medal from NASA.
Fayyad earned his Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1991), and also holds BSE's in both electrical and computer engineering (1984); MSE in computer science and engineering (1986); and M.Sc. in mathematics (1989). He has published over 100 technical articles in the fields of data mining and Artificial Intelligence, is a Fellow of the AAAI (association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) and a Fellow of the ACM (association of Computing Machinery), has edited two influential books on the data mining and launched and served as editor-in-chief of both the primary scientific journal in the field of data mining (Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery) and the primary newsletter in the technical community published by the ACM: SIGKDD Explorations. He is active in the academic community and holds adjunct professor positions in Australia and Hong Kong. For more details on Usama's background, see his personal web site at: www.fayyad.com/usama.
Keynote: Predictive Analytics over On-line and Social Network Data
Sherry Bennett-Flatt, Group Leader, Business Intelligence, Laureate Higher Education Group
Sherry Bennett-Flatt, is Group Leader for the Business Intelligence department at Laureate Higher Education Group, a for-profit education company that own and operates both campus based and on-line universities. Her team is responsible for creating analytical business solutions for universities such as Walden, Kendall College, University of Liverpool and more. Sherry Bennett-Flatt has over 15 years of experience applying advanced modeling and data mining techniques to business opportunities, including among others, risk modeling, response modeling, survey analysis, planned giving, segmentation, etc. In addition, Sherry Bennett-Flatt has extensive experience in the design and development of database and data warehousing solutions for both for-profit and non-profit companies.
Session: The Use of Lead Scoring Solutions in the For-Profit Education Industry
Seth Grimes, Principal Consultant, Alta Plana Corporation
Seth Grimes is an analytics strategist with Washington DC based Alta Plana Corporation. He consults on data management and analysis systems for public and private-sector clients internationally. He is also contributing editor and Breakthrough Analysis columnist for Intelligent Enterprise magazine, founding chair of the Text Analytics Summit, and a leading industry analyst covering text analytics. He writes and speaks on business intelligence, data management and analysis systems, text mining, visualization, and related topics.
Session: Predictive Text Analytics
Michael Grundhoefer, Marketing Analytics, Market Information & Research, US Bank
Mike Grundhoefer is Assistant Vice President of Marketing Analytics at U.S. Bank, the sixth largest bank in the United States, where he leads a team of analysts responsible for all direct marketing models including response, attrition, usage, balance, and uplift models. These models are used in campaigns that produce over six million pieces of mail annually. Mike has over 15 years experience in model development. He holds a Masters in Applied Economics from Marquette University.
Session: Raising the Bar in Cross-Sell Marketing With Uplift Modeling
Mikael Hagström, Executive Vice President, EMEA and Asia Pacific, SAS
As Executive Vice President, Mikael Hagström is passionate about providing a culture where innovation can flourish, resulting in market leadership for the organization and its customers.
Hagström leads a growing global team of more than 4,000 professionals in over 50 countries throughout Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. With a more than 20-year track record of leading high-performance organizations, Hagström is responsible for delivering consecutive revenue growth, ensuring profit, harnessing the potential in the current market and preparing the organization for the future.
From 1998 to 2000, as country manager of SAS Norway, Hagström restructured the office and led SAS Norway to record growth, doubling new sales each year for three consecutive years. Over the next few years, additional geographies and P&Ls were consistently added to his growing level of responsibilities. Hagström, who joined SAS Sweden in 1989, moved to the company's European headquarters in Heidelberg in 1993 where he was promoted to vice president of Sales for EMEA. He currently works from SAS Worldwide Headquarters in Cary, North Carolina.
Hagström is vice-chair of the American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union (AmCham EU) Executive Council, a member of the Executive Committee of the United States Council for International Business (USCIB) and is a frequent speaker on the multinational business climate at the World Economic Forum and OECD in particular. He is a board member, head officer or chairman of more than 30 SAS subsidiaries.
He holds a Master of Science degree in Industrial Automation Engineering and Administration.
Panel: Predictive Analytics and Consumer Privacy
Mike Kinlaw, Manager/Lead Statistician, CMI Customer Analytics, Alticor (Amway)
Mike Kinlaw has masters in statistics and has worked at Amway for 7 years providing statistical support for multiple divisions. In his current capacity, he has lead several research projects including the development of a global segmentation model and a distributor life time value model.
Session: Establishing a Performance-Based Culture with Predictive Analytics
Eric A. King, Founder and President, The Modeling Agency (TMA)
Eric has represented machine learning technology, productized data mining solutions, and managed predictive analytics projects and teams for over 19 years. In its 10th year and with a bench of 18 senior-level data miners, TMA enables those who are data-rich yet information-poor to establish and maintain their own internal predictive modeling practice.
Moderator
Ram Krishnamurthy, Group Director, Marketing Strategy & Insights, The Coca-Cola Company
Ram Krishnamurthy is the Group Director, Marketing Strategy & Insights at The Coca-Cola Company. Ram currently overseeing projects to gather and deploy insights relating to marketing productivity and investment allocation for Coke worldwide. He is a market generalist market researcher with quantitative leanings and an abiding interest in understanding why it is such a struggle to get at accurate predictions with the data we have and the applications available. To that end, he has been a driver for one of the world's largest CPG companies is improving their ability to accurately forecast sales and drive efficiencies and the marketing spends to do so.
Session: A Predictive Approach to Marketing Mix Modeling
Russell Mandelik, Regional Sales Manager, NICE Systems
Russell Mandelik is a Regional Sales Manager at NICE Systems. He has been providing enterprise software solutions to Financial, Insurance, Healthcare, and Telecommunication organizations for over 10 years. During the last 2 years, Russell has been part of the NICE Interaction Business Applications business unit. The group is responsible for speech analytics based solutions including customer churn prediction, customer experience, sales and marketing effectiveness, and operational efficiency
Session: Leveraging Speech Analytics to Gain a Competitive Edge
Tim Manns, Senior Data Mining Analyst, Consumer Marketing, Optus
Tim Manns works as a data mining analyst for Optus SingTel. He manages Optus's Data Mining Innovations' team, and often spends his time analysing transactional call detail records (cdr) data which are stored in the Teradata data warehouse.
He has conducted awesome analysis to tackle common marketing problems such as; customer retention (churn), acquistion, fraud, up-sell, cross-sell, product targeting, mobile rateplan features etc.
Session: Know Your Customers by Knowing Who They Know, and Who They Don't
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
Session: Where Do We Go from Here - So the First Model Worked. What About the Next 6?
Antonia de Medinaceli, Senior Business Analyst, Elder Research, Inc.
Antonia de Medinaceli has extensive experience in all aspects of the data mining process, and has solved challenges in many industries, including financial, crime analysis, and customer relationship management (CRM) industries. Her consulting experience is both domestic and international. Antonia is experienced with most of the leading statistical software packages. In addition to her consulting experience, she has taught data mining short courses with the Elder Research team. She has degrees in Computer Science and Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia.
Session: Keep Winning the Eternal Fraud Battles
Anne Milley, Senior Director of Technology Product Marketing, SAS
As Senior Director of SAS Technology Product Marketing, Anne Milley oversees the marketing of SAS(r) technologies. Her ties to SAS began with her thesis on bank failure prediction models and the term structure of interest rates, which she completed at The Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas. She has also served as a senior business consultant at 7-Eleven Inc., where she performed sales analysis and designed and conducted tests to aid in strategic decision making.
Milley has authored various papers, articles and an award-winning report for the 1999 KDD Contest. She co-chaired the SAS data mining technology conferences, M2001 and M2002, as well as SAS' inaugural forecasting conference, F2006. She has served on Web mining committees for KDD and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and on the Scientific Advisory Committee for Data Mining 2002. In 2008, she completed a five-month working sabbatical at a major financial services company in the United Kingdom.
Session: Strength in Numbers: ACE!
Anish Nanavaty, CEO, Research & Analytics, WNS Global Services
Anish Nanavaty is CEO, Research & Analytics at WNS Global Services, Inc (NYSE: WNS). The Research & Analytics business unit that Anish leads provides specialized services for the Consumer Packaged Goods, Pharmaceutical, Retail, and Financial Services and Professional Services industries. With approximately 1,500 staff, the division provides some of the world's largest companies with complex analytical solutions in functional areas such as marketing, operations, supply chain and risk.
As one of WNS' founding executives, Anish previously led sales and business development efforts for the company in North America. As Executive Vice President, Anish had particular responsibility for building the Travel Services practice from its infancy. In this role, he was active in sales, strategy setting, business development, marketing, and alliances.
Anish has a Bachelors Degree in Science and Economics from Wharton Business School.
Session: A Predictive Approach to Marketing Mix Modeling
Istvan Pilaszy, Prize Team, Gravity R&D
Istvan Pilaszy is a co-founder of the Netflix Prize team, Gravity, which lead the Netflix Prize competition from Jan 2007 to Apr 2007, and participated very successfully during the lifetime of the competition. Gravity served as a core component of team "The Ensemble," which came in an extremely close second place at the conclusion of this ground-breaking competition by tying, according to Netflix, with the winning team, who had submitted their entry just 20 minutes earlier. The team members founded a startup, Gravity R&D, which specializes in high quality recommendation systems. The company won the Strands $100k Call last year, and is also a winner of the Red Herring 100 Europe award.
Istvan is working on his PhD thesis about recommendation algorithms, which is expected to be finished at the end of this year.
Session: Lessons That We Learned from the Netflix Prize
Andrew Pole, Senior Manager, Media and Database Marketing, Target
Andrew Pole's work experience includes Marketing research and CRM analytics as a Lead Consumer Analyst at Hallmark Cards, Analytics manager at Hallmark Loyalty Marketing Group consulting on CRM activities for clients ranging from Nestle-Purina, Cendant Mortgage, and Schwans Foods, and, currently, Sr. Manager at Target, managing a team of 40 people in the US and India supporting the analytics, campaign design/execution, and operational/performance reporting for Target stores and Target.com marketing campaigns. Mr. Pole's degrees include BA Math and Music (Augustana College), MS Statistics (Kansas State University), MA Economics (University of Missouri-Kansas City).
Session: Challenges of Incremental Sales Modeling in Direct Marketing
Jules Polonetsky, Co-Chair and Director, Future of Privacy Forum
Jules serves as Co-chair and Director of the Future of Privacy Forum. As AOL's former Chief Privacy Officer and SVP for Consumer Advocacy, Jules was responsible for ensuring that AOL's users could trust the company with their information and for educating employees about best practices for advertising, content, and product development. Jules also served for four years as Vice President, Integrity Assurance, at America Online Inc.
From 2000 to 2002, Jules was Chief Privacy Officer and Special Counsel at DoubleClick, the advertising and marketing technology company that at the time was the largest internet company in New York City. From 1998 until 2000, Jules served as the NYC Consumer Affairs Commissioner for Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Jules served as an elected member of the New York State Assembly from 1994 to 1997. From November 1992 through 1993, Jules was a legislative aide to Congressman Charles Schumer and was a District Representative for Congressman Steve Solarz from 1990 to 1992.
A graduate of New York University School of Law and Yeshiva University, Jules has served on the boards of a number of privacy and consumer protection organizations. In 2001, Crain's NY Business magazine named Jules one of the top technology leaders in New York City. Jules is a regular speaker at privacy and marketing industry events and has testified or presented as an industry expert before Congressional committees and the Federal Trade Commission.
Panel: Predictive Analytics and Consumer Privacy
Rex Pruitt, Senior Level Business Analyst, PREMIER Bankcard, LLC
Rex Pruitt is currently a Senior Level Business Analyst, who works for PREMIER Bankcard, LLC. He is responsible for portfolio data mining and predictive modeling, among other project leadership roles. Rex has a degree in Marketing Management and his career has been focused on the study of corporate data and how it can be turned into a revenue source. He has been in the Analytics profession since 1986 supporting the Financial Services and Insurance industries. Rex has traveled the world performing accounting process audits and recommending business process improvements using his analytic talents.
Karl Rexer, PhD, President, Rexer Analytics
Karl Rexer is President of Rexer Analytics, a small Boston-based analytic consulting firm. Karl has broad experience in analytic
consulting that includes analytic strategy & leadership, predictive modeling, statistics, data mining, direct marketing, CRM, and market
research. Before founding Rexer Analytics in 2002, Karl held leadership and consulting positions at several consulting firms and
two multi-national banks. Karl and his teams have delivered analytic solutions to dozens of companies, including fraud detection, customer attrition analysis and prediction, customer segmentation, sales forecasting, direct mail targeting, market basket analysis and survey research. Karl is a leader in the field of applied data mining. He is a frequent invited speaker at MBA programs and conferences, and he has been on the review and organizing committees of several international data mining conferences, including KDD-2006, 2007, 2008, & 2010.
Karl serves on the Board of Directors of Oracle's Business Intelligence, Warehousing, and Analytics (BIWA) Special Interest Group, and is on SPSS's customer advisory board. Each year Rexer Analytics conducts and publishes the widely read Annual Data Miner Survey. In the Spring of 2009 over 700 data miners from around the globe participated in the third annual survey. Karl holds a BA from The Ohio State University and a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Connecticut.
Moderator
Chris Scandlen, Senior Manager, Analytics, Laureate Education
Chris has been with Laureate Education for one and a half years where he manages the Marketing Analytics team. The Marketing Analytics team was instrumental in deploying the lead scoring solution for Laureate Education's flagship online university. Prior to Laureate Education he was a member of the Economics and Statistics Group at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he employed rigorous empirical analyses to address business challenges for organizations in the health care, financial services and Consumer Packaged Goods industries.
Before joining PricewaterhouseCoopers, Chris worked for Time Warner in the AOL Member Services group leading quantitative modeling efforts to support operational and strategic execution in AOL's call centers. He has a BA in Mathematics and a BA in Economics from Macalester College and an MSc in Operations Research from George Mason University. Chris was also a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Maryland specializing in Game Theory.
Session: The Use of Lead Scoring Solutions in the For-Profit Education Industry
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 13 papers in data mining research and computer science education, has served on 10 conference program committees, and has chaired a AAAI Symposium held at MIT.
Session: Five Ways to Lower Costs with Predictive Analytics
Stamatis Stefanakos, Senior Consultant, D1 Solutions AG
Stamatis Stefanakos received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) in 2004. In 2005 he was a researcher at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" and the University of Padova in Italy. Afterwards, he worked as an analyst in the telecommunications industry in Zurich before joining D1 Solutions AG. He is a senior consultant with experience in business intelligence and data mining projects in telecommunications, banking, and retail.
Session: Cost Reduction in Bill-Insert Campaigns With Predictive Analytics
James Taylor, CEO, Decision Management Solutions
Taylor 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, Taylor is a passionate advocate of decision management. He 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.
Workshop: Putting Predictive Analytics to Work
Session: Putting Predictive Analytics to Work
Steve VanDee, PMP, AVP of Underwriting Transformation, Zurich Programs and Direct Markets
Steve VanDee is an Assistant Vice President of Zurich North America Commercial's Programs and Direct Markets business unit. Mr. VanDee is dedicated to the elements of organizational transformation and change management in the implementation of predictive analytics solutions within our business unit.
Mr. VanDee has 10 years of insurance industry experience. Before joining Zurich, he was a Senior Project Manager with Sprint. Mr. VanDee holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Conception College and a degree in philosophy from the Gregorian University in Rome. He is a designated Project Management Professional and is currently pursuing a Master of Business Administration from Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.
Session: Top 10 Ways to be Successful in Implementing Predictive Modeling in Insurance Commercial Markets
Jay Zhou, President, Business Data Miners, LLC
Dr. Jay Zhou is President of Business Data Miners, LLC. He has over 11 years of experience applying data mining technologies in solving business problems, including credit risk modeling, fraud detection in financial and telecommunication industries, life time value modeling, and direct mailing. Tens of millions of consumers have benefited from the predictive models that he has built. Dr. Zhou has developed many innovative data mining approaches. He co-authored the award wining paper, "Using genetic learning artificial neural networks for spatial decision making in GIS" (Nov., 1996, PE & RS). He obtained a MS in Beijing University, and a PhD in plant science from University of Connecticut. Dr. Zhou can be reached at [email protected] and followed on twitter.
Session: Building In-Database Predictive Scoring Model: Check Fraud Detection Case Study
