Speakers

Sergei Ananyan, Ph.D. is a cofounder and CEO for Megaputer Intelligence. Sergei had an active role in the design of mathematical algorithms and their practical implementation for numerous commercial, research and government organizations throughout the world. He is an author or articles on Business Intelligence in academic and trade publications and a speaker and panel chair at several major industry conferences. Sergei contributed a chapter on text mining to the book “Handbook on Decision Support Systems” published by Springer. His input was utilized in books “Decision Support Systems in the 21st Century” and “Modern Data Warehousing, Mining and Visualization” by Prentice Hall, and “Document Warehousing and Text Mining” by Wiley Computer Publishing.

Bryan oversees all business development for Expert System in North America. He has extensive software industry experience including helping build organizations focused on desktop training, search, automated metadata extraction, taxonomy creation, text analytics, knowledge management and semantic technologies. Prior to his tenure at Expert System, he helped establish and build organizations including Teach.com, Autonomy, Smartlogic and Concept Searching.

Sarah Berndt has over 15 years of experience developing programs in both the Information Governance and Knowledge Management space. From a strategic prospective, Sarah’s activities have included developing data models, taxonomies, and ontologies for use in multiple tools and information environments. Specific client centered work has facilitated a tacit focus on platform utilization to enhance the user experience while improving workforce productivity.

With a background in both the academic and research library settings, Sarah’s work at both NASA Johnson Space Center and PricewaterhouseCoopers has facilitated the opportunities to pursue concentric lines of service in developing a deep understanding of the multiple variables that affect accuracy, feasibility and sustainability.

Chris Bowman started teaching in 1969, and he retired in 2008 as the superintendent of schools in The City of Baker School System in Louisiana. After sitting through many expulsion hearings wondering what could be done to keep small disciplinary infractions small, he chanced upon a tool that could look into the wealth of unstructured information that pointed to potential problems. That tool was text analytics. This new found tool produced a very different way of looking into data, problems, and the ever important personalities of the student and the disciplinarian.

Jeff Catlin has over 15 years of experience in the fields of search, classification and text analytics products and services. He has held technical, managerial and senior management positions within a variety of companies including Thomson Financial and Sovereign Hill Software. Prior to the formation of Lexalytics, Jeff acted as the General Manager for the unstructured data group of LightSpeed Software where he was responsible for sales, marketing and development efforts for the Knowledge Appliance and iFocus products. Prior to joining LightSpeed, he was co-owner of PleasantStreet Technologies which produced a news-filtering product. Jeff graduated from UMass Amherst with a degree in Electrical Engineering in 1987.

Ms. Connors has extensive experience in taxonomy, ontology and metadata design and development. Prior to forming TriviumRLG Ms. Connors was the global director, semantic technology solutions for Dow Jones, responsible for partnering with business champions across Dow Jones to improve digital asset management and delivery. In that position, she managed a worldwide team responsible for the development of taxonomies, ontologies and metadata that are used to add value to Dow Jones news and financial information products. Ms. Connors also served as business champion for the Synaptica® software application, including managing a US- based team of software developers, and supported Dow Jones consulting practices worldwide, which deliver end-to-end information access solutions based on taxonomies, metadata and semantic technologies. Prior to joining Dow Jones Ms. Connors was a knowledge architect at Intuit, where she was responsible for introducing semantic technologies to online content management and search. And before that, she was a Metadata Architect at Raytheon Company and Cybrarian at CEOExpress Company. At Raytheon Company she oversaw knowledge representation and enterprise search, delivering large-scale taxonomies, metadata schema and rules-based classification to improve retrieval of petabytes of internal information via a multi-vendor retrieval platform.

Ms. Connors is a certified Six Sigma Specialist, and is a member of both the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) and the Special Libraries Association. Christine is Organizer of the Philadelphia and Princeton Semantic Web Meetups, and Assistant Organizer of the New York Semantic Web Meetup.

Ms. Connors holds a master of science degree in Library and Information Science from Simmons College, Boston, and a bachelor of science degree in Theatre Arts Management from Ithaca College, New York.

Seth Earley is a well-known expert in search, content and knowledge management strategies. He has extensive practical knowledge of information architecture and has directed numerous IA engagements for Earley & Associates. Teams under Seth’s direction have worked with many clients to develop enterprise-wide information architectures for both Fortune 1000 and dynamic mid-size companies, as well as for non-profits. Seth is a popular speaker and workshop leader at conferences throughout North America speaking on intranet design, knowledge management, content management systems and strategy, taxonomy development and other related topics.

Dr. Andrew Fast leads the research and development of advanced data mining algorithms at Elder Research, the nation’s leading data mining consultancy. ERI was founded in 1995 and has offices in Charlottesville VA and Washington DC,(www.datamininglab.com). ERI focuses on Federal, commercial, investment, and security applications of advanced analytics, including stock selection, image recognition, biometrics, process optimization, cross-selling, drug efficacy, credit scoring, risk management, and fraud detection.

Dr. Fast graduated Magna Cum Laude from Bethel University and earned Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. There, his research focused on causal data mining and mining complex relational data such as social networks. At ERI, Andrew leads the development of new tools and algorithms for data and text mining for applications of capabilities assessment, fraud detection, and national security.

Dr. Fast has published on an array of applications including detecting securities fraud using the social network among brokers, and understanding the structure of criminal and violent groups. Other publications cover modeling peer-to-peer music file sharing networks, understanding how collective classification works, and predicting playoff success of NFL head coaches (work featured on ESPN.com). With John Elder and other co-authors, Andrew has written a book on Practical Text Mining that was awarded the prose Award for Computing and Information Science in 2012.

Dr. Georgi Georgiev has specialized in advanced text analytics with especial focus on machine learning based models and overall software architectures and solution methodologies for enterprise level semantic annotation and search solutions. Georgiev leads the text analysis product development and professional services at Ontotext, which resulted in him technologically and scientifically leading semantic publishing projects for organizations like the BBC and PressAssociation. He has a strong leader’s role in the Semantic Annotation and Search division of Ontotext and strong commitment to combining scientific and research excellence with productive industrial and government oriented solutions. His interests include machine learning product development and adaptation, team leadership, enterprise software architectures, and contemporary management techniques.

Lars has over 20 years of experience in running advanced AI development teams, both in Europe and North America. In 1984, he started Greve Gaphics, the first video game developer in Scandinavia, and has since pioneered large-scale use of AI. In 2006, Lars founded Expertmaker as an AI platform solution that would help transform search, discovery and recommendation, and enable broad deployment of intelligent solutions for companies and developers. Lars is also a guest lecturer at Lund University on the topics of theoretical ecology and genetics and is a frequent speaker at conferences on technology innovation and mobile evolution.

Dr. Catherine Havasi has been researching language and learning for nearly fifteen years. In addition to being CEO of Luminoso, she is a research scientist in artificial intelligence and computational linguistics at the MIT Media Lab. She co-founded the Open Mind Common Sense project, which uses information about the world to understand natural language text and make computers easier to use.

Heather Hedden is a taxonomy consultant a through her business Hedden Information Management (www.hedden-information.com), helping varied clients develop faceted and hierarchical taxonomies and metadata strategies for web or internal content/document management to support browsing and searching. She also teaches online continuing education workshops in taxonomy creation through Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science and gives conference and customized workshops on taxonomies. Heather previously worked as a taxonomist at Project Performance Corporation, First Wind, Viziant Corporation, and Thomson/Gale. She is the mentoring chair of the mentoring committee of the Taxonomy Division of SLA and the founder and past manager of the Taxonomies & Controlled Vocabularies Special Interest Group of the American Society for Indexing. Heather is the author numerous trade journal articles and the book, The Accidental Taxonomist (Information Today Inc., 2010).

SB MIT, MD Harvard, post-graduate training at Massachusetts General Hospital
Currently combine private practice Internal Medicine and Cardiology with research in Medical Informatics.
Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Harvard; Assistant Director MGH Lab of Computer Science, Co-developer, DXplain
Fellow, American College of Cardiology; Fellow, American College of Physicians; Fellow, American College of Medical Informatics

Paul Hofmann is Chief Technology Officer at Saffron Technology. Before joining Saffron Paul was Vice President R&D at SAP Labs.

His background is entrenched in research as Senior Scientist and Assistant Professor at outstanding European and American Universities (Northwestern University, U.S., Munich Institute of Technology and Darmstadt Institute of Technology, Germany) and he is an expert in computer simulations and graphics (PhD, research and teaching in Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos Theory), authoring numerous publications and books.

Paul was visiting scientist at MIT, Cambridge in 2009.

Prior to joining SAP in 2001, Paul was Plant Manager at BASF’s Catalysts Global Business Unit.

Paul received his PhD in Physics at the Darmstadt Institute of Technology, Germany, after completing his bachelor in biotechnology and a master’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Vienna.

Janine Johnson is Director of Analytics for ISO Innovative Analytics, where she is responsible for a variety of analytic projects for Property and Casualty insurance carriers. She has over 12 years of experience applying a variety of statistical and data mining techniques to solve business problems. She also has extensive experience in specialized areas including entity resolution, social network analysis and text mining. Ms. Johnson holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in econometric modeling from the University of Cincinnati.

Frank is the President of Knowledge Consultants, Inc.

He has over 30 years of management and consulting experience in manufacturing, distribution, banking, insurance and financial services as well as the public sector. He has been involved with wide range of projects that include business analysis, process management, e-commerce, business performance measurement, business and competitive intelligence, knowledge management, and supply chain management.

In addition to being a keynote speaker at international conferences as well as a conference chair, he has written numerous papers and spoken at conferences on a variety of subjects such as business performance management, technology forecasting, management disciplines, process analytics and management and various aspect of enterprise analysis. He is the author of a 1996 book on Enterprise Analysis and over 70 papers.

Frank is currently working on a BPM book for managers and a new edition of the enterprise analysis book.

Bio is forthcoming!

Larry Lempert is Director, Product Research & Planning, in the Product Development group at Bloomberg BNA in Arlington, VA. He holds a Master’s of Library Science from the University of Maryland and JD from the University of Michigan. He has worked in legal publishing for 35 years, with a focus in recent years on information architecture.

John Mareda spent the majority of his 35+ year career at Sandia National Laboratories.
Early on, John’s focus was on scientific visualization and applying video technology for analyzing scientific data. He taught courses on digital video and animation systems and chaired a panel on HDTV at SIGGRAPH. His work has been shown in the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theatre and on the cover of IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. John left Sandia in the mid-90s to start a dot-com company to conceptualize, design, and develop software to use clusters of metadata rich 3D objects to represent information on the Web. It seemed like a good idea at the time. John returned to Sandia in 2000 where he leads the Knowledge Systems Department which provides enterprise level technical solutions for information management, information analytics, and search. He has a Master’s degree in electrical engineering with a focus on computer engineering.

David Meza currently serves as the Operational Excellence Program Manager at the Johnson Space Center. He holds a BS in Management Information Systems, a Master’s in Engineering Management from the University of Houston Clear Lake (UHCL) and is currently pursuing an MS in Statistics from UHCL. During his tenure at NASA, he has worked in all aspects of the Information Technology field developing and deploying several IT systems in use at JSC. His desire to improve IT processes and systems lead him to earn Master’s certificates in Project Management and Six Sigma in addition to becoming a NASA certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. In his current role at JSC, he established the Operational Excellence program, promoting a viewpoint of organizational leadership that stresses the application of a variety of principles, systems, and tools toward the sustainable improvement of key performance metrics by focusing on the needs of the customer, empowering employees, and optimizing existing activities in the process. Mr. Meza is conducting research on Automatic Classification algorithms, domain specific search interfaces, probabilistic scheduling and a Bayesian network model for risk analysis with respect to scope, schedule and budget. Findings from the research should help improve strategic planning, decision analysis and operational processes.

Lynda Moulton is principal consultant at LWM Technology Services, focusing on practices and technologies that support enterprise information and knowledge asset management. Lynda currently blogs on enterprise search at Bluebill Advisors, and researches and writes on knowledge management and information technologies. In 2008, she wrote the Gilbane Report: Enterprise Search Markets and Applications; Capitalizing on Emerging Demand and was the principal writer of a 2010 study, Semantic Software Technologies; Landscape of High Value Applications for the Enterprise. Lynda is a leader in the Boston KM Forum, and recently taught “Organizing and Accessing Information and Knowledge: Practice and Methods” for Columbia University’s Master of Science in Information and Knowledge Strategy program.

James W. Pennebaker is the Regents Centennial Professor of Liberal Arts and the Departmental Chair in the Psychology Department at the University of Texas at Austin, where he received his Ph.D. in 1977. He has been on the faculty at the University of Virginia, Southern Methodist University, and, since 1997, The University of Texas. He and his students are exploring the links between traumatic experiences, expressive writing, natural language use, and physical and mental health. His studies find that physical health and work performance can improve by simple writing and/or talking exercises. His most recent research focuses on the nature of language and emotion in the real world. The words people use serve as powerful reflections of their personality and social worlds. Author or editor of 9 books and over 250 articles, Pennebaker has received numerous awards and honors.

Mr. Radhakrishnan has an M.B.A. degree from Old Dominion University and an M.S. degree from the University of Virginia, McIntire School of Commerce. Mr. Radhakrishnan is certified as a TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) practitioner, ITIL-ITSM (v3) consultant (Expert Level), Six Sigma Black Belt, IBM Senior IT Architect, and as an Open Group Master Architect, Solaris Systems Administrator and Storage Architect.

Mr. Radhakrishnan has received multiple awards including Virginia IT Scholar award from UVA (2003), multiple Patent and Plateau Awards (10th in 2013 from IBM (2010, 2011, 2012 & 2013), Stock Grant for Innovation (2008), Service Excellence Award from IBM (2006) and multiple named account star awards from Sun (2000-2004). Mr. Radhakrishnan was placed among Top 1% or Top 5% in multiple academic examinations during his high school and undergraduate years. Mr. Radhakrishnan currently has one granted patent and thirty plus pending patents.

Kevin Reale currently is the Regional Director for Analytics8, a business intelligence consultancy. Kevin has over 20 years of supply chain, product quality, warranty, and business intelligence leadership. Kevin has worked with several Automotive OEM’s and high technology companies to improve their customer service levels, reduce warranty related costs, and enhance revenues by enhancing the human decision making process by correlating structured and non-structured data. Kevin has provided value added solutions and consultative services that bring enterprise data together with 3rd party reference sources to enable stakeholders to determine “what” has happened and the associated root causes. Kevin has done this by exposing key attributes of information that reside in unstructured narratives with key enterprise data providing early warning of product and service related issues that could effect a companies brand.

Kevin has gained his process and technical backgrounds from his practical experiences at Electronic Data Systems, IBM, i2 Technologies, KPMG, and Endeca Technologies. He has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and a Masters in Business Administration.

Tom Reamy is currently the Chief Knowledge Architect and founder of KAPS Group, a group of knowledge architecture, taxonomy, and text analytics consultants. Tom has 20 years of experience in information architecture, enterprise search, intranet management and consulting, education software, and text analytics consulting. Tom’s academic background includes a Master’s in the History of Ideas, research in artificial intelligence and cognitive science, and a strong background in philosophy, particularly epistemology. He has published articles in various journals and is a frequent speaker at knowledge management conferences. When not writing or developing KM projects, he can usually be found at the bottom of the ocean in Carmel taking photos of strange creatures.

George was born in Cluj, Romania where he graduated University of Babes Bolyai with a degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. George emigrated to the US in 1991 where he worked as a software architect for large projects mainly in the Financial Industry. In 1999, George co-founded Recognos Inc., a company specialized in developing Semantic Applications mainly for the Investments Industry.

Tim Trussell is a solution specialist at SAS Canada focusing on advanced analytics. Since joining SAS seven years ago Tim has parlayed his background in health analytics into assisting many organizations in understanding how analytics drives competitive advantage and supports management decisions. Tim has consulted with Financial Institutions, Retailers and Telecommunications companies on Data Mining, Text Analytics, Customer Loyalty, and many other applications of process and technology. His passion for the topic and creativity in solving business problems make him a frequently requested speaker at industry conferences and thought leader discussions.