Ritika Gunnar is the Vice President of Data and AI Expert Labs. In this role, she and her team of ‘ninjas’ work with clients on their transformation journey through a data & AI first methodology and help implement Data & AI solutions using deep knowledge-based skills to accelerate the adoption of data & AI enterprise capabilities. Prior to this role, Ritika was the Vice President of Offerings for IBM Watson. In this role, she has responsibility for all of Watson’s Data and AI portfolio where she is responsible for defining the portfolio strategy, execution of product offerings, and driving business results. Previous to this, as Vice President of IBM’s World-Wide Cloud and Cognitive GTM organization she drove IBM’s mission to apply deep cloud, data, and AI expertise to our clients’ most pressing needs Ritika has also been the Vice President of IBM’s Data and Analytics Business where she was responsible for setting the strategy and execution of IBM’s data platform, data science, and analytics practices. Prior to this, she led and managed IBM’s Master Data Management & Information Integration and Governance business and IBM’s Data Warehousing & Analytics business. Ritika joined IBM as a software engineer in 1999 and has held numerous development and support roles in her career. Ritika holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and an Executive Masters in Business from the University of Texas at Austin. She currently resides in New York.

James Hendler is the Director of the Institute for Data Exploration and Applications and the Tetherless World Professor of Computer, Web, and Cognitive Sciences at RPI. He also is acting director of the RPI-IBM Artificial Intelligence Research Collaboration and serves on the Board of the UK’s charitable Web Science Trust. Hendler has authored over 400 books, technical papers, and articles in the areas of Semantic Web, artificial intelligence, agent-based computing, and high-performance processing. Hendler was the recipient of a 1995 Fulbright Foundation Fellowship, is a former member of the US Air Force Science Advisory Board, and is a Fellow of the AAAI, BCS, the IEEE, the AAAS, and the ACM. He is also the former Chief Scientist of the Information Systems Office at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and was awarded a US Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Medal in 2002. He is also the first computer scientist to serve on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science. In 2010, Hendler was named one of the 20 most innovative professors in America by Playboy magazine and was selected as an “Internet Web Expert” by the US government. In 2013, he was appointed as the Open Data Advisor to New York State and in 2015 appointed a member of the US Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee. In 2016, became a member of the National Academies Board on Research Data and Information and in 2018 became chair of the ACM’s US technology policy committee and was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

Mike Piech is Vice President and General Manager of the Cloud Storage and Data Services organization, managing a team responsible for the product management, strategy, and marketing of Red Hat’s portfolio of data services offerings. These include cloud-native capabilities for storing, moving, transforming, and combining data for such applications as machine learning and edge computing. Prior to Red Hat, Piech held executive product roles at Magnet Systems (mobile app server) and Engine Yard (PaaS), after Oracle and BEA with product responsibility for WebLogic, Java™, and other enterprise platform technologies. He holds several patents.

As Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Bryan Harris is responsible for setting the technology direction for SAS and working with the executive leadership team to translate the organization’s strategic objectives and priorities into products and solutions. Harris has more than 20 years of experience researching and developing analytic techniques, enterprise search technologies, distributed computing and cloud architectures, and user experiences for both the federal and commercial industries. For nearly 10 years, he has been a critical senior leader of SAS R&D. Most recently, as Senior Vice President and Head of Engineering, Harris was instrumental in releasing the latest advancement of SAS® software, SAS® Viya®

Chris Wright is Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Red Hat. He leads the Office of the CTO, which is responsible for incubating emerging technologies and developing forward-looking perspectives on innovations like artificial intelligence, cloud and edge computing, distributed storage, software-defined networking and network functions virtualization, containers, automation and continuous delivery, and distributed ledgers. During his 25 years as a software engineer, Wright has worked in the telecommunications industry and beyond on high-availability and distributed systems. He also has experience in the Linux® industry on security, virtualization, and networking. Wright has been a Linux developer for more than 15 years, with most of this time spent working deep in the Linux kernel. He is passionate about open source software serving as the foundation for next-generation IT systems.

Mihaela van der Schaar is the John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Medicine at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute in London, and a Chancellor’s Professor at UCLA.

Mihaela was elected IEEE Fellow in 2009. She has received numerous awards, including the Oon Prize on Preventative Medicine from the University of Cambridge (2018), a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2004), 3 IBM Faculty Awards, the IBM Exploratory Stream Analytics Innovation Award, the Philips Make a Difference Award and several best paper awards, including the IEEE Darlington Award.

Mihaela’s work has also led to 35 USA patents (many widely cited and adopted in standards) and 45+ contributions to international standards for which she received 3 International ISO (International Organization for Standardization) Awards.

In 2019, she was identified by National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts as the most-cited female AI researcher in the UK. She was also elected as a 2019 “Star in Computer Networking and Communications” by N²Women. Her research expertise spans signal and image processing, communication networks, network science, multimedia, game theory, distributed systems, machine learning, and AI.

Mihaela’s research focus is on machine learning, AI, and operations research for healthcare and medicine.

In addition to leading the van der Schaar Lab, Mihaela is founder and director of the Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine (CCAIM).