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Business Leader

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Risk Mitigation
Use cases
Business Leader

Author:

Jeff Herbst

Founding Managing Partner
GFT Ventures

Jeff Herbst is Co-Founding Managing Partner of GFT Ventures, an early stage AI-focused venture capital fund with approximate $140M in assets under management.  He brings to the fund over three decades of venture capital, operational, business development and M&A experience. Prior to launching GFT, Jeff spent 20 years as NVIDIA's Vice President of Business Development where he built an ecosystem of accelerated computing applications spanning the domains of AI, Data Science, Autonomous Machines, and Graphics and Visualization. During his tenure at the company, among other things he created the Nvidia GPU Ventures program, overseeing more than 40 global investments and 20 acquisitions valued over $8B. He also led the Nvidia Inception global startup accelerator, now comprised of more than 10,000 AI, Data Science and High Performance computing companies.

Jeff Herbst

Founding Managing Partner
GFT Ventures

Jeff Herbst is Co-Founding Managing Partner of GFT Ventures, an early stage AI-focused venture capital fund with approximate $140M in assets under management.  He brings to the fund over three decades of venture capital, operational, business development and M&A experience. Prior to launching GFT, Jeff spent 20 years as NVIDIA's Vice President of Business Development where he built an ecosystem of accelerated computing applications spanning the domains of AI, Data Science, Autonomous Machines, and Graphics and Visualization. During his tenure at the company, among other things he created the Nvidia GPU Ventures program, overseeing more than 40 global investments and 20 acquisitions valued over $8B. He also led the Nvidia Inception global startup accelerator, now comprised of more than 10,000 AI, Data Science and High Performance computing companies.

Author:

Gautam Hotti

Director of Generative AI
Novartis

Highly experienced and visionary Director and Head of Enterprise Architecture with over 20 years of experience in leading cross-functional teams to design, build and implement complex software systems and platforms. Proven track record of developing architecture services and processes, rolling out governance best practices, leading distributed systems architecture and development. Currently driving adoption of Generative AI in Novartis.

Gautam Hotti

Director of Generative AI
Novartis

Highly experienced and visionary Director and Head of Enterprise Architecture with over 20 years of experience in leading cross-functional teams to design, build and implement complex software systems and platforms. Proven track record of developing architecture services and processes, rolling out governance best practices, leading distributed systems architecture and development. Currently driving adoption of Generative AI in Novartis.

Author:

Mike Shirazi

General Partner
Pursuit Ventures

Mike Shirazi

General Partner
Pursuit Ventures
Infrastructure
Investment
Business Leader
Panel

Author:

Jack Qiao

Senior Manager Data Science & AI
Lowe's Companies Inc.

Jack Qiao

Senior Manager Data Science & AI
Lowe's Companies Inc.

Author:

Linus Liang

Founder and Managing Partner
Kyber Knight Capital

Linus is the Founder and Managing Partner of Kyber Knight Capital. He brings over twenty-five years of experience in venture capital and entrepreneurship to his leadership role. Before starting Kyber Knight Capital, Linus spent a decade at Signia Ventures, where he continues as a Partner. His entrepreneurial pursuits include co-founding Embrace, the company behind the world’s most affordable infant incubator. To date, Embrace has impacted the lives of over 500,000 infants worldwide in over a dozen countries.

Before Embrace, Linus founded several software companies focusing on mobile technology and social networking. He is well known for joining Zynga’s founding team, following the acquisition of his start-up, where he served as the tenth employee.

Linus’s career also encompasses roles at major corporations, including Program Manager at Microsoft, database researcher at IBM, and a member of the investment team at Andreessen Horowitz.

Linus is a holder of a B.A. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley, as well as an M.S. in Computer Science, an M.A. in Education, and an MBA from Stanford University. He is a co-instructor for Stanford’s Frontier Technologies course and has previously taught a Big Data class at Stanford’s Business School.

Linus Liang

Founder and Managing Partner
Kyber Knight Capital

Linus is the Founder and Managing Partner of Kyber Knight Capital. He brings over twenty-five years of experience in venture capital and entrepreneurship to his leadership role. Before starting Kyber Knight Capital, Linus spent a decade at Signia Ventures, where he continues as a Partner. His entrepreneurial pursuits include co-founding Embrace, the company behind the world’s most affordable infant incubator. To date, Embrace has impacted the lives of over 500,000 infants worldwide in over a dozen countries.

Before Embrace, Linus founded several software companies focusing on mobile technology and social networking. He is well known for joining Zynga’s founding team, following the acquisition of his start-up, where he served as the tenth employee.

Linus’s career also encompasses roles at major corporations, including Program Manager at Microsoft, database researcher at IBM, and a member of the investment team at Andreessen Horowitz.

Linus is a holder of a B.A. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley, as well as an M.S. in Computer Science, an M.A. in Education, and an MBA from Stanford University. He is a co-instructor for Stanford’s Frontier Technologies course and has previously taught a Big Data class at Stanford’s Business School.

Author:

Jeff Winter

Senior Director of Industry Strategy, Manufacturing
Hitachi Solutions America

Jeff Winter

Senior Director of Industry Strategy, Manufacturing
Hitachi Solutions America

This session is targeted at technical leaders interested in generative AI applications. Donna and Kevin will cover business use cases leveraging generative AI, patterns for building common scenarios and best practices for implementation.

Use cases
Innovation
Business Leader

Author:

Donna Schut

Head of Technical Solutions Management, Generative AI & Large Scale ML
Google Cloud

Donna Schut

Head of Technical Solutions Management, Generative AI & Large Scale ML
Google Cloud

Author:

Kevin Tsai

Head of Technical Solution Architecture, Generative AI & ML Infrastructure
Google Cloud

Kevin currently leads a team of Solution Architects with focus on Generative AI and large-scale, accelerated infrastructure. Kevin has also led teams in Data Analytics, Data Management, and ML at Google, and has more than 20 years of experience in the technology industry

Kevin Tsai

Head of Technical Solution Architecture, Generative AI & ML Infrastructure
Google Cloud

Kevin currently leads a team of Solution Architects with focus on Generative AI and large-scale, accelerated infrastructure. Kevin has also led teams in Data Analytics, Data Management, and ML at Google, and has more than 20 years of experience in the technology industry

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.