2015 Business Analytics Competition
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Keynote Speakers
David Ferrucci, Ph.D.Dr. Ferrucci joined Bridgewater Associates as aSenior Technologist in December of 2012. Based in Westport, Connecticut, Bridgewater manages approximately $160 billion in global investments for a wide array of institutional clients, including foreign governments and central banks, corporate and public pension funds, university endowments and charitable foundations.
Prior to joining Bridgewater Associates, Dr. Ferrucci was the Principal Investigator for DeepQA ("Watson") Project. From 2007 to 2011, he lead a team of about 30 IBM and academic researchers in the development and application of DeepQA - a natural language processing system for collecting, analyzing and reasoning over unstructured content. The team developed Watson, the computer system that beat the best players of all time in the question-answer game of Jeopardy! Prior to the development of Watson, Ferrucci was the Chief Architect for the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) at IBM, a framework for integrating and scaling, text, speech and image analytic. UIMA is now managed as an Apache Open-Source Project. While at IBM, Ferrucci also led the development of an automated document configuration system and the design and application of enterprise integration architecture for retail.
Ferrucci graduated from Manhattan College, with a B.S. degree in biology and from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a Ph.D. degree in computer science specializing in knowledge representation and reasoning.
Meet David Ferrucci: Computer scientist and Watson co-creator David Ferrucci - ScienceLives
David G. Belanger, Ph.D.Dr. Belanger is currently a Senior Research Fellow at Stevens Institute of Technology. In this role he continues his work in Big Data Technology, Applications, and Governance. He teaches and is a leader in the Business Intelligence & Analysis Master’s Degree program, In addition, he is involved in consulting related to Big Data in areas such as Telecommunications Services, Health Care, Security, and Networking. He was recently named co-leader of IEEE Big Data Initiative (bigdata.ieee.org); and is on the steering committee of the New Jersey Big Data Alliance (njbigdata.org).
Prior to this role, Dr. Belanger was Chief Scientist of AT&T Labs, and Vice President of Information, Software, & Systems Research at AT&T Shannon Labs in Florham Park, NJ. The Information, Software & Systems Research Lab conducted research in: large scale and real time information mining related to operations of a (communications) service business; interactive, information visualization; scalable, dependable software systems; and new, information based, communications services. It was also responsible for delivery and operations of very large scale (e.g. petabyte), near real time service management capabilities to AT&T, and its customers, as well as a wide variety of analytic and information mining services. He was the creator of the AT&T InfoLab, an organization aimed at optimizing the value gained from data for AT&T. InfoLab was a very early participant in “Big Data” research and practice. It performed data oriented projects across the spectrum of telecommunications services including: networking, mobility, operations, customer interactions, services, and fraud/security.
Accomplishments ranged from revolutionizing the corporate fraud systems and systems for measuring customer experience for each customer in the Mobility Business, to winning theNetflix Prize in 2009. They also included the development of world class tools used in Big Data. As Chief Scientist, he interacted with customers, suppliers, and government to articulate the company’s technological directions.
Dave joined Bell Laboratories in 1979. He has led research in software systems and engineering, information mining, information visualization, and development in very large scale data systems. He built the Software Engineering Research Department which provided software tools and techniques used across AT&T Bell Labs, and via open source, across the world. He has been awarded 24 patents.
In 1998, he was awarded the AT&T Science and Technology Medal for contributions in very large scale information mining technology; in 2006 he was named an AT&T Fellow for “lifetime contributions in software, software tools, and information mining”; and in 2009 he received the IEEE Communications Society Industrial Innovator Award.
Dr. Belanger received his B. S. from Union College (NY) in Mathematics, and an M. S. & Ph.D., in Mathematics, from Case Western Reserve University.
Mr. Gregory BrillMr. Brill is the Co-Founder and CEO of Infusion Development, a global consultancy firm. He is responsible for driving the strategic vision of the company. Through his leadership over the last ten years, Mr. Brill has grown Infusion to become a global innovation company with over 500 employees. A force of ingenuity and transformation, Greg identifies emerging technologies and trends and then champions their integration into the enterprise.
In the early days of Infusion, Brill led the technology training practice and was responsible for creating and authoring the Random House book series, CodeNotes. The books were distributed in every major book chain in the US and Canada and won much recognition for his firm. Brill evolved Infusion into a solutions firm that developed mission critical business applications for the financial services industry and the public sector. As Infusion continues to grow, Brill’s sights are firmly set on using firm expertise to continue to develop new products and support services.
In addition, Mr. Brill is Partner and Founder of Infusion Angels, a Toronto based ‘angel’ investment firm whose goal is to identify, fund, and help grow concepts into full-fledged, revenue-oriented companies.
Brill is a graduate of the University of Rochester and holds a Masters of Computer Science from R.I.T.
Meet Greg Brill: Infusion CEO Greg Brill @ the 2009 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference
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Judges
Winter Mason, Ph.D.Dr. Mason received his Ph.D. in social psychology and cognitive science in 2007 from Indiana University, and is currently a Data Scientist at Facebook. His research bridges psychology and computer science, focusing on social networks, social media, and crowdsourcing. Prior to working at Facebook, he was a visiting scientist with the Human Social Dynamics group at Yahoo! Research and an assistant professor in the Howe School of Technology Management at Stevens Institute of Technology.
Mike DeAngelo Mike DeAngelo started his career in Business Analytics working for Coopers & Lybrand in 1996. Over the next eight years helped manage and refine the systems used by C&L and then PwC to measure the cost, revenue, and ultimately the profitability of the individual engagements conducted by C&L/PwC consultants and accountants.
In 2004, Mike joined Composite Software, a small tech startup based in Silicon Valley. Composite Software built tools to allow analysts to build reports utilizing data that resides in a diverse variety of sources. Mike has performed extensive work with Composite Software clients, enabling their analysts to use this data for their decision support systems. In 2013 Composite Software was acquired by Cisco Systems, and Mike continues to work in this capacity in Cisco's "Data and Analytics Business Group". As part of Composite Software and then Cisco, Mike has worked with virtually every major investment bank on Wall Street, several top pharmaceutical firms, several top energy firms, and a number of top communications firms.
In the spring of 2015, Mike joined Looker Data Sciences as an Architect. Looker builds and sells a highly dynamic reporting and analytics platform that can be installed on premises or hosted in the cloud. He is currently helping to extend and enhance the product and also help implement the product with Looker customers.
Yurdaer N. Doganata , Ph.D.Dr. Doganata is a senior research scientist at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. He has worked and managed projects in broad research topics including Queuing Theory, Intelligent Transportation Systems, Multimedia Servers, Web-based Collaboration, Electronic Services, Technical Support Search Systems, Unstructured Information Management, Business Process Management and Predictive Analytics, since he first joined IBM Research in 1989. His current research interests include decision management systems, machine learning, predictive modeling and extracting insight from big data. He received an M.S. from Middle East Technical University in 1983 and a Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in 1987 all in Electrical and Electronics Engineering. Dr. Doganata holds several innovation and client awards, including 2014 IBM Research Client Award for helping the client to achieve big data and analytics goal. He is a senior member of IEEE and holds more than 40 peer reviewed publications, and 29 patents issued in the area of computer science.
Peter J. Rutigliano, Ph.D.Dr. Rutigliano is Managing Director of Client Services, Sirota Consulting. In the 20 years of external consulting, Peter has been able to provide analysis, interpretation and recommendations for many organizations in a variety of industries. For the past 7 years, Peter consults with Sirota Consulting driving change in organizations through engagement surveys, onboarding surveys, exit surveys, 360 surveys as well as other survey efforts. Some of his clients include Apple Filemaker, IDEXX, eBay, LinkedIn and Marathon Oil.
In addition to his position at Sirota, Peter is on the Corporate Advisory Board at Hofstra University. He is the former president for the Metropolitan New York Association for Applied Psychology and continues to sit on the advisory board. Finally, Peter sits on the Chairman’s Circle for the National Organization on Disability (NOD) and frequently speaks with the NOD at the Conference Board, Bloomberg Education Series as well as NOD sponsored events.
Peter also maintains an active research program with over 50 publications and presentations including a consistent representation at the Society of Industrial / Organizational Psychology annual conference. Peter’s major areas of focus are the effective use of identified surveys, survey psychometrics and investigating the work experience of people with disabilities.
Peter holds a dual degree Doctorate of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology and Health Psychology from Drexel University.
Mehmet Ulema, Ph.D.Dr. Ulema is a professor at Manhattan College, USA. Previously, Dr. Ulema held management and technical positions at AT&T Bell Labs, Bellcore, Daewoo Telecom, and Hazeltine. Dr. Ulema has been involved in a variety of telecom projects. He has been on the editorial board of a number of journals including IEEE Journal of Internet of Things, IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management. He has been an active member of IEEE. Currently he is the Director of Standards Development in IEEE ComSoc. Dr. Ulema has been involved in many international conference and workshops. He served as the General Chair and Technical Program Chair of many IEEE conferences. He received MS & Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, U.S.A. He also received B.S. & M.S. degrees at Istanbul Technical University.