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Model Development
Business Leader

Author:

Saeed Contractor

Global Head of Automated Intelligence
Uber

Saeed Contractor is the Global Head of the Intelligent Automation COE, Tech at Uber. He leads the Intelligent Automation COE at Uber for Technology / Architecture, Strategy and Implementation. Recognized as a hands-on leader of software Architecture and Development, Saeed brings together new Technologies, Engineering, Business Processes and Mathematics to provide innovative and effective solutions to difficult problems. He has a strong customer focus and drives the Agile development of secure, scalable, reliable and highly available products with due consideration of negative paths and incorporating feedback from all stages of the product life cycle. Saeed has a Master of Engineering Degree from Princeton University and an MBA from UCF.

Saeed Contractor

Global Head of Automated Intelligence
Uber

Saeed Contractor is the Global Head of the Intelligent Automation COE, Tech at Uber. He leads the Intelligent Automation COE at Uber for Technology / Architecture, Strategy and Implementation. Recognized as a hands-on leader of software Architecture and Development, Saeed brings together new Technologies, Engineering, Business Processes and Mathematics to provide innovative and effective solutions to difficult problems. He has a strong customer focus and drives the Agile development of secure, scalable, reliable and highly available products with due consideration of negative paths and incorporating feedback from all stages of the product life cycle. Saeed has a Master of Engineering Degree from Princeton University and an MBA from UCF.

Author:

Shreesha Jagadeesh

Associate Director of Applied Machine Learning
BestBuy

Shreesha Jagadeesh is an Associate Director of Machine Learning at Best Buy. He leads a multi-national team of ML Scientists and Engineers building models that power the online customer journey through personalized recommendations and ads. He leverages his expertise in Multi-Stage Recommender Systems, LLMs, Embeddings, Multi-Arm Bandits, Offline Policy Evaluation and A/B testing to help digital teams to personalize the experiences deepening customer relationship & driving ecommerce revenue for Best Buy.

 

Prior to Best Buy, he has worked in a variety of corporate and consulting roles including at Amazon, EY and Cisco building Data Science models in a diverse set of domains spanning HR, Tax, Legal and Supply Chain. Outside of his day job, he advises early-stage startup, reviews pre-publication books/courses and has also published 2 online Data Science courses. He lives in Boston with his wife and enjoys travelling to exotic locations with an Antarctica expedition coming up in December 2024.

Shreesha Jagadeesh

Associate Director of Applied Machine Learning
BestBuy

Shreesha Jagadeesh is an Associate Director of Machine Learning at Best Buy. He leads a multi-national team of ML Scientists and Engineers building models that power the online customer journey through personalized recommendations and ads. He leverages his expertise in Multi-Stage Recommender Systems, LLMs, Embeddings, Multi-Arm Bandits, Offline Policy Evaluation and A/B testing to help digital teams to personalize the experiences deepening customer relationship & driving ecommerce revenue for Best Buy.

 

Prior to Best Buy, he has worked in a variety of corporate and consulting roles including at Amazon, EY and Cisco building Data Science models in a diverse set of domains spanning HR, Tax, Legal and Supply Chain. Outside of his day job, he advises early-stage startup, reviews pre-publication books/courses and has also published 2 online Data Science courses. He lives in Boston with his wife and enjoys travelling to exotic locations with an Antarctica expedition coming up in December 2024.

Author:

Stavros Zervoudakis

Professor at NYU, and VP of AI
Mutual of America

With over two decades of experience, Stavros Zervoudakis has established himself as a forward-thinking AI leader, sculpting the future with innovative solutions. He boasts an impressive track record, having orchestrated the successful launch of 24 AI initiatives in just three years, including the implementation of a comprehensive Data Science, Analytics, and Machine Learning framework. His work has catalyzed monumental gains, with single projects injecting between $12M and $56M in value.   Recently, Stavros has architected and deployed a groundbreaking, modular Generative AI platform, enriching the digital ecosystem with four pioneering GenAI products seamlessly integrated across six input/output systems. At the helm of his company's AI voyage, he not only crafted the strategic blueprint but also executed the firm's inaugural AI/ML model in a mere three months, netting an impressive $450K in savings.   A natural leader, Stavros has guided teams towards the creation of business-transforming applications, leveraging the latest in technology through agile, SME-centric project methodologies. His tenure as an academic luminary at NYU and the University of Exeter has allowed him to disseminate his profound AI insights, nurturing the next wave of innovation.   His journey with agile startups and industry titans like Citigroup, led him to deep-rooted understanding of regulatory mandates and has empowered him to weave essential privacy and security measures into his strategic visions, product leadership, and advisory roles, benefiting startups and Fortune 500 firms.   Beyond the digital realm, Stavros is a connoisseur of photography, an avid reader, a globetrotter, and a passionate creator of a future Einstein. Connect with him on LinkedIn to explore common interests.

Stavros Zervoudakis

Professor at NYU, and VP of AI
Mutual of America

With over two decades of experience, Stavros Zervoudakis has established himself as a forward-thinking AI leader, sculpting the future with innovative solutions. He boasts an impressive track record, having orchestrated the successful launch of 24 AI initiatives in just three years, including the implementation of a comprehensive Data Science, Analytics, and Machine Learning framework. His work has catalyzed monumental gains, with single projects injecting between $12M and $56M in value.   Recently, Stavros has architected and deployed a groundbreaking, modular Generative AI platform, enriching the digital ecosystem with four pioneering GenAI products seamlessly integrated across six input/output systems. At the helm of his company's AI voyage, he not only crafted the strategic blueprint but also executed the firm's inaugural AI/ML model in a mere three months, netting an impressive $450K in savings.   A natural leader, Stavros has guided teams towards the creation of business-transforming applications, leveraging the latest in technology through agile, SME-centric project methodologies. His tenure as an academic luminary at NYU and the University of Exeter has allowed him to disseminate his profound AI insights, nurturing the next wave of innovation.   His journey with agile startups and industry titans like Citigroup, led him to deep-rooted understanding of regulatory mandates and has empowered him to weave essential privacy and security measures into his strategic visions, product leadership, and advisory roles, benefiting startups and Fortune 500 firms.   Beyond the digital realm, Stavros is a connoisseur of photography, an avid reader, a globetrotter, and a passionate creator of a future Einstein. Connect with him on LinkedIn to explore common interests.

Author:

Hemant Jain

Senior Software Engineer, Inference
Cohere

Hemant works on efficiently fine-tuning and serving LLMs as a part of the Platform team at Cohere. Prior to this, he spent 3 years at NVIDIA developing Triton Inference Server, an open-source solution used to deploy machine learning models into production. He has a Masters in Data Science from the University of Washington.

Hemant Jain

Senior Software Engineer, Inference
Cohere

Hemant works on efficiently fine-tuning and serving LLMs as a part of the Platform team at Cohere. Prior to this, he spent 3 years at NVIDIA developing Triton Inference Server, an open-source solution used to deploy machine learning models into production. He has a Masters in Data Science from the University of Washington.

Infrastructure
Risk Mitigation
Innovation
Keynote

Author:

Sol Rashidi

Former CDO/CAO of Estee Lauder, Merck Pharmaceuticals, Sony Music, and RCCL
Estée Lauder

Sol Rashidi

Former CDO/CAO of Estee Lauder, Merck Pharmaceuticals, Sony Music, and RCCL
Estée Lauder
Interview with Avara Foods

AI is starting to usher in a new era for work. LinkedIn data suggests that by 2030, generative AI (GAI) could transform up to 65% of roles, reducing mundane tasks and enhancing complex planning, reasoning, and decision-making skills. But it’s not just the way we work that’s transforming, it’s the very definition of work itself. Enterprises that want to emerge successfully from this cognitive transformation must focus on upskilling and reskilling employees  - both around AI-specific skills and human-centric skills like flexibility, empathy, and strategic thinking. 

Join us for this keynote as we explore GAI’s potential at its edges, its impacts on the enterprise workforce, and suggest strategies for enterprises to both leverage GAI benefits and help their teams navigate in an increasingly AI-driven world.

Innovation
Use cases
Keynote

Author:

Donald Thompson

Distinguished Engineer
LinkedIn

Donald is currently a Distinguished Engineer at LinkedIn, primarily overseeing the company's generative AI strategy, architecture, and technology. He has more than 35 years of hands-on experience as a technical architect and CTO, with an extensive background in designing and delivering innovative software and services on a large scale. In 2013, Donald co-founded Maana, which pioneered computational knowledge graphs and visual no-code/low-code authoring environments to address complex AI-based digital transformation challenges in Fortune 50 companies. During his 15 years at Microsoft, Donald started the Knowledge and Reasoning group within Microsoft's Bing division, where he innovated "Satori", an internet-scale knowledge graph constructed automatically from the web crawl. He co-founded a semantic computing incubation funded directly by Bill Gates, portions of which shipped as the SQL Server Semantic Engine. Additionally, he created Microsoft's first internet display ad delivery system and led numerous AI/ML initiatives in Microsoft Research across embedded systems, robotics, wearable computing, and privacy-preserving personal data services.

Donald Thompson

Distinguished Engineer
LinkedIn

Donald is currently a Distinguished Engineer at LinkedIn, primarily overseeing the company's generative AI strategy, architecture, and technology. He has more than 35 years of hands-on experience as a technical architect and CTO, with an extensive background in designing and delivering innovative software and services on a large scale. In 2013, Donald co-founded Maana, which pioneered computational knowledge graphs and visual no-code/low-code authoring environments to address complex AI-based digital transformation challenges in Fortune 50 companies. During his 15 years at Microsoft, Donald started the Knowledge and Reasoning group within Microsoft's Bing division, where he innovated "Satori", an internet-scale knowledge graph constructed automatically from the web crawl. He co-founded a semantic computing incubation funded directly by Bill Gates, portions of which shipped as the SQL Server Semantic Engine. Additionally, he created Microsoft's first internet display ad delivery system and led numerous AI/ML initiatives in Microsoft Research across embedded systems, robotics, wearable computing, and privacy-preserving personal data services.

 

Clement Charelain

Head Human Genetics and Genomics
Sanofi

Clement Charelain

Head Human Genetics and Genomics
Sanofi

Clement Charelain

Head Human Genetics and Genomics
Sanofi
 

Max Liu

Senior Software Engineer - Early Science
AstraZeneca

Max Liu

Senior Software Engineer - Early Science
AstraZeneca

Max Liu

Senior Software Engineer - Early Science
AstraZeneca
 

Alla Bushoy

Engineering Team Lead
AstraZeneca

Alla Bushoy

Engineering Team Lead
AstraZeneca

Alla Bushoy

Engineering Team Lead
AstraZeneca
 

Liz Schwarzbach

Chief Business Officer
BigHat Biosciences

Liz Schwarzbach

Chief Business Officer
BigHat Biosciences

Liz Schwarzbach

Chief Business Officer
BigHat Biosciences