Tech Panel: Data Science – Trusted Relationships and Scientific Innovations

Join Tech in Motion Orange County for an enlightening and thought provoking tech panel on Wednesday July 20th from 6-8:30 p.m. at the Cove at UCI Applied Innovation in Irvine, CA.

AGENDA

• 6-7 p.m. - Checkin | Networking (Appetizers and Drinks provided)

• 7-8 p.m. - Tech Panel and Q&A Session

• 8-8:30 p.m. - Event wrap up and concludes

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DISCUSSION COVERING THE FOLLOWING TOPICS

• Speaker intro’s and experience with Data Science (your history leading up to getting into data science and biggest win/fail/insight so far)

• How data science is used today in each speaker’s respective industry (what is your approach to the data science model development ‘life-cycle’, ethics, innovation)

• How the general public is (and how should they be) impacted by innovations/advancements in data science.

• Data Science career paths and identifying the culture (what are the paths to the different types of “applied data science”?: from developer to data engineer, to data scientist, to research scientist)

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MODERATOR

Sean Goodwin

SPEAKERS

• Amir Ziai, Data Scientist at Hart

• Alex Bates, Chief Technology Officer at Mtell

• Bryan Smith, Lead Data Scientist at Payoff

• Chris Walker, Chief Technology Officer at Illuminate Education

• Reza Sadri, Chief Executive Officer at Levyx

• Xuan Zhao, Data Scientist at Cylance

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About the Moderator: Sean Goodwin

Sean is a serial entrepreneur who has been involved with analytics at several private finance firms (TD Investment Funding & Datacom) and technology in several mobile app start ups (DealAppSeo & Fitness Super Pass). Now he is working on a startup called AuraMetrics to use AI & AR to help people make sense of their personal data and hack healthy habits. In addition to this he started and manages several groups on Linkedin; one that has more than 22k members. His newest meetup is the OC Deep Learning Meetup.

Amir Ziai, Data Scientist at Hart

Amir is a data scientist at Hart where he builds data products backed by machine learning that engage users with their health and fitness. Previously he worked at Compellon, a scalable machine learning as a service company, where he helped Fortune 200, as well as startup companies to build intelligent application. He holds a masters in Information and Data Science from UC Berkeley.

Alex Bates, Chief Technology Officer at Mtell

Alex has a decade of experience in large-scale machine learning and the industrial IoT. He pursued his interest in adaptive learning systems as an undergraduate, performing research in neural networks, vision, and biomedical diagnostics, authoring several peer-reviewed publications. In 2000 he jumped into the private sector, applying analytics on some of the world’s largest data warehouses at Teradata, a pioneer in parallel database technology. In 2006 Alex co-founded Mtelligence (now Mtell) to tackle a big data problem in manufacturing, helping create a world that doesn’t break down. Mtell’s patented machine learning platform is used to monitor global fleets of offshore drilling rigs, railroad engines, and process equipment, in effect creating a distributed immune system to protect equipment and personnel. He is lead inventor on several patents in the area of sensor networks and machine learning.

Bryan Smith, Lead Data Scientist at Payoff

Bryan Smith is a lead data scientist at the fintech company, Payoff, with a Ph.D in Particle Physics and Cosmology, and an M.S in Computer Science specializing in Machine Learning. He is passionate about data exploration and developing algorithm-driven automated systems to improve the accuracy and efficiency of products and strategic decision making. At Payoff, this passion has been directed into Big Data analytics applied to financial, consumer risk, and product marketing domains , as well as developing real-time recommendation systems. Before transition into Data Science through completing Galvanized Data Science Immersive Bootcamp, Bryan spent 8 years teaching STEM courses and mentoring/founding awarding winning FIRST robotics teams in Los Angeles and San Diego County.

Chris Walker, Chief Technology Officer at Illuminate Education

As the CTO for Illuminate Education, Chris Walker is passionate about creating transformational technology products for K-12 education. Prior to joining Illuminate, he served as Director of Technology for DataDirector Solutions, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In both roles, he has contributed leadership (and a line or two of code) to SaaS development and hardware systems teams who have built top quality K-12 data and assessment applications. Chris is now helping to build the data science infrastructure at Illuminate with projects such as early warning systems for at-risk students. In December 2015, Chris received his Master of Information and Data Science degree from UC Berkeley. His lovely wife and son are thrilled to have him back after two years of obsessing over machine learning homework between diaper changes. Chris is rarely seen without a hat.

Reza Sadri, Chief Executive Officer at Levyx

Reza has over 25 years of technical experience in the storage industry and has held various technical and executive positions in a number of public and private technology companies. His passion is developing advanced technologies, including high performance databases.

Before co-founding Levyx, Reza was CTO of Software at sTec (a Nasdaq-listed company and pioneer of enterprise SSDs), laying the foundation of sTec's enterprise software business. Prior to sTec he was CTO at Digital Spectrum where his team built one of the first mobile video communication products and was the Co-founder and CEO of Clenova, a search and discovery solution company.

Xuan Zhao, Data Scientist at Cylance

Xuan Zhao is a Data Scientist at Cylance, where she explores AI (Artificial Intelligence) related research topics and their application to the computer security space. Her specific research include advanced machine learning topics, including work in the deep learning space. She is a member of several conference committees and has 10+ publications in top-ranked journals and international conferences. Xuan holds a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University.

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