About Aamer Charania: Aamer Charania is the Head of Applied Machine Learning at Best Buy, the world’s largest consumer electronics retailer, addressing key human needs across a variety of areas including entertainment, productivity, communications, security, nutrition and healthcare. Prior to Best Buy, Aamer was the Regional Head of Center for Machine Learning at Capital One, an enterprise-wide center of excellence providing machine learning solutions to various lines of business across the company. Before Capital One, Aamer led the strategy and development of state of the art big data and machine learning products at Humana and Verizon. He started his career as a research assistant at MIT helping airlines leverage machine learning algorithms for dynamic pricing.  Aamer enjoys giving back to the community. He is the Founder and President of Dallas AI, the largest nonprofit AI meetup forum in North Texas, with over 3,800 members. Aamer is also a board member of the Southern Methodist University (SMU) Big Data Advisory and a governing body member of the Evanta/Gartner Chief Data Officer community in Dallas. In addition, he is an MIT Alumni Career Advisor, MIT Educational Counselor, and former President of the MIT Alumni Club of Dallas & Fort Worth. Aamer has been awarded over 10 patents. He holds a Masters in Engineering from MIT, a Masters in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an MBA from Southern Methodist University. He lives in Flower Mound, TX with his wife and two daughters. In their free time, they love exploring nature and hiking.

About Kay-Yut Chen, PhD: Kay-Yut Chen is a professor of the Information Systems and Operations Management Department at the University of Texas Arlington. Early in his career, after he received his Ph.D. from Caltech in 1994, he established experimental economics research at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, a first in a corporation. He is one of the first researchers to apply behavioral economics to business issues in areas such as supply chain contracting, workforce management, sales prediction and management, and human-based forecasting. He won the Management Science 2014 Best Paper Award in Operations Management, and the 2012 INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Practice Award. Kay-Yut is a Senior Editor at Production and Operations Management. Aside from publishing in academic journals such as Management Science and Production and Operations Management, his work has been featured in many general publications such as NTX Magazine (2015), Entrepreneur Magazine (2012), Scientific American (2006), Newsweek (2003), the Wall Street Journal (2000), Financial Times (2002) and others. He is the author of the book, The Secrets of the MoneyLab , published by Portfolio in Oct 2010.

About Eric N. Haney PhD: Eric Haney is the Chief Technology Officer for Lone Star Analytics and previously served as Deputy CTO and Lead Analyst at the company. In his current role, Eric is responsible for guiding the technical direction of the company. He manages the development and roll-out Lone Star’s core software applications, TruNavigatorTM, AnalyticsOSTM, and TruPredictTM. He also chairs the company’s Advanced Research & Development arm, Cipher Alchemy, which focuses on cutting-edge artificial intelligence algorithms and advanced statistical data processing. His principal goal is to connect customers with the information required to make pragmatic, objective decisions. Eric completed his doctorate in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington culminating in his dissertation, Data Engineering in Aerospace Systems Design & Forecasting. His academic research team’s collaborations with DARPA and NASA have been published in The Aeronautical Journal.

About Alfonso Marin: Alfonso Marin is a senior product owner of Safety Connect at Toyota Connected, where he has worked since 2017. Marin manages the suite of telematics products under Safety Connect, including Automatic Collision Notification, Emergency Assistance Button, Enhanced Roadside Assistance, Stolen Vehicle Locator and Destination Assist.   As of early 2023, Safety Connect is in more than 6 million vehicles in North America across Toyota, Lexus and other automotive makes. The vision for Safety Connect is simple: “keep our customers safe wherever they are.” Whether the customer is involved in a collision or their vehicle was stolen, Toyota is there to ensure the customer is safe and receives steadfast emergency assistance when they need it.   Marin earned his bachelor’s degree in Industrial Distribution from Texas A&M University and his master’s in Information Technology and Management from The University of Texas at Dallas.

About Andy Minteer: Andy Minteer, Sr Director, Leverage AI at Walmart Global Technology.  He currently has responsibility for the Data Science, Machine learning engineering, and AI Products development team in the Enterprise Business Services organization.  His team builds machine learning products to digitally transform how Walmart works.  This includes several focus areas of machine learning, including computer vision, NLP, and forecasting.   Andy leads a global team with locations in Texas, Arkansas, and India.Andy has led data science teams for over 25 years with a diverse background from IoT to Finance to Manufacturing.  He is the author of the book Analytics for the Internet of Things.

About Scott Neal: Scott Neal is the Analytics Solution Architect for Trinity Industries Expanded Services, where he is responsible for creating analytic solutions that address business and industry challenges. His role includes data engineering, visualizing and interpreting analyses, and bringing those solutions to customer-facing applications. Additionally, he is responsible for building models to lead the industry in service interruption prevention, and identifying strategic opportunities. Scott has been with Trinity Industries since 2021. He holds a BA in Computer Science from Tarleton State University and has over a decade of experience in the rail industry. Prior to joining Trinity Industries, he spent 10 years at BNSF Railway where he led data science and full-stack application development teams, and supported train movement coupled with the rollout of Positive Train Control. During this time, he received several accolades for his work including the Achievement Award in 2019 and Employee of the Year award in 2018. In addition to his experience in the rail industry, Scott has also published patents in the field for automating root cause analysis of train events and anomalies.”

Nathaniel Richmond: Nathaniel Richmond is a Staff Data Scientist at Shopify, where he currently leads the Orders data science team and serves on the Machine Learning Ethics Committee. Before joining Shopify in 2021, he worked at Keurig Dr Pepper and BNSF Railway. He holds a M.S. in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematical & Computational Sciences from the University of Iowa. The unifying thread throughout Nathaniel’s graduate studies and cross-industry career has been the application of mathematical tools to solve complex logistics problems. Although Nathaniel’s academic background is in Operations Research, recently he has branched out into machine learning and product analytics. His favorite projects involve collaboration with colleagues from different disciplines. Over the past several years, Nathaniel has worked on applications like demand forecasting, inventory replenishment, next best product recommender systems, agent-based simulations, and various optimization algorithms. He holds a patent for a locomotive-based computer vision system. Nathaniel spent several years volunteering as a pro-bono IT consultant for Meals on Wheels of Tarrant County, where among other projects he created an automated form-scanning software that reduced manual data entry. Nathaniel is heavily involved with INFORMS, where he previously chaired the Railway Applications Section and served on the Professional Recognition Committee. In his free time, Nathaniel roasts his own coffee, plays soccer and ultimate frisbee, enjoys board games, and spends time with his partner and his Portuguese Water Dog. He loves to travel and experience different cultures, especially the food.

About Brian Ward: About Brian A. Ward: Brian Ward is a Sr. Mgr. at Verizon of the Wireless AI Innovation @ Verizon (WAIV) team focused on turning cutting-edge technologies in the field of Data Science into solutions for our Best-in-Class engineering teams. The team focuses on creative uses for AI/ML to provide innovative insights for our engineers, automations so tasks can be handled automatically, and creating prototypes and patents that can be hardened into long-lasting Network solutions. The team relies on strong business connections in order to offer innovative changes that may be unexpected through the introduction of new ideas, methods or technologies. Previously, Brian was part of HQ Network roles focused on deep analytics insights around traffic flow of OSI Layer seven packets (Apps, Video, etc), advisement of Network leadership at Super Bowl events, and the design and implementation of HD Voice. Additionally, Brain has had roles focused on device analytics and phone OS Updates, focused on detection of Network-Device bugs. The result of this work pushed many needed fixes into Software Updates for devices to ensure that cell phones receive text messages, make voice calls and transmit data, all as we have come to expect. Brian holds a B.S of Computer Engineering from Harding University and has been awarded/recognized multiple times by Verizon for Innovation and Optimization for improvements on Verizon's Best-in-Class Network.

About Brian: Currently serving as Head of Customer Support for the Ericsson North America Market, Brian is a thirty-year veteran managing the development and delivery of complex network and software solutions primarily for telecommunications service providers. As an evangelist for the innovation driven by analytics and transformative digital solutions Brian has led the creation of strategies for migrating to next generation technologies, evolving businesses to new business models and optimizing business operations.