About Asim Syed: Asim Syed is a result-oriented leader with +19 years of experience for defining, building, implementing and optimizing best-in-class IT strategies, operations and business solutions. He offers expertise in Digital transformation, Process improvement, strategic decision making and Consulting. Asim has helped many global customers in Manufacturing, Retail, Life sciences and other industries for successful business transformation program. Asim is part of advisory board at UTD and UTA and he is often invited as a guest speaker at large professional events, universities and conferences.

About Brian White: 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 migration to next generation technologies, evolving businesses to new business models and optimizing business operations to maximize quality and velocity of product delivery/deployment.

About Gavin Berry: Currently serving as the Insights and Data lead for the Texas Division of Capgemini/Sogeti, Gavin is a results-oriented leader with 30+ years of industry experience defining, collaborating, architecting, and implementing innovated solutions across Retail, Healthcare, Finance, Transportation and Logistics verticals. He has led many large strategic initiatives from business process optimization, application/cloud development, and insights and data. His cross disciplined/cross industry background enables him to take a holistic approach to implementing highly complicated solutions that optimize business value across domains.

About Eric Haney: Eric Haney is the Chief Technology Officer for Lone Star Analytics. He has been in this role since 2018 and his previous positions include Deputy CTO 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. His principal goal is to connect individuals 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.

Ashok Nayak: Accenture Digital, Managing Director, Applied Intelligence

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 Sanjiva Srivastava: Sanjiva is the Senior Director and Head of People Analytics for Sam’s Club, Global Technology and Corporate Functions at Walmart. He leads teams that provide data driven actionable insights to support people and operational leaders in enhancing employee engagement, productivity and retention. His work also contributes to driving improvements in Club Sales, profitability as well as Member satisfaction and income. The team leverages research, open-source tools, NLP, LLM, geospatial analysis, BI tools, and other AI/ML solutions to deliver insights and recommendations to business leaders and operators. Sanjiva has over 25 years of industry experience in leveraging emerging technology to solve complex business problems and to create new business opportunities within Total Rewards, HR, Finance and Information Technology. Sanjiva holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Computer Science from Utkal University (India) where he was the topper and an Executive MBA from Sam Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. Sanjiva also completed a certification course in Applied Data Science from MIT. Sanjiva enjoys running marathons, music, photography and traveling to new places.

About Tony Scanio: Tony Scanio is currently the Director of Data Management and Business Intelligence for the International Supply Chain at CHRISTUS Health.  His focus is on improving reporting capabilities for faster, more accurate decision making for the department.  He joined CHRISTUS Health in early 2015 after several years as an International Regional Sales Manager for a Fortune 300 company.  He has conducted business in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and English and has specific experience in analytics, data visualization, process improvement, international sales, and international management.   In addition to his career at CHRISTUS Health, Tony currently serves as the 1st Vice Chair for the North Texas District Export Council, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting exports from North Texas through education and collaboration.  As part of the District Export Council, Tony has had the opportunity to work with UTA students during the annual Exporting with the Experts program.   Tony earned BBAs in International Business and Marketing and minors in Spanish and Music from Texas Tech University, and a Professional MBA from Texas Christian University.  In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, and music.

About Daniel Windle: Daniel Windle is the Director of Sales Operations for Trinity Industries. His current role includes responsibility for maintaining and improving relevant economic and industry data, forecasting sales and industry activity, and improving sales processes. He has been with Trinity Industries since 2013 serving as a Marketing Analyst for Energy Markets, a Data Scientist, and a Principal of Market Intelligence. Daniel has a BA in Economics and Political Science from Trinity University and an MS in Predictive Analytics from Northwestern University. He has been a speaker at both the Annual Meeting and Business Analytics Conference hosted by the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS) and has served as a Roundtable and Cluster Chair for the INFORMS Railway Applications Section.

About Vino Kingston: Vino Kingston is a recognized Data, Digital & Decision Intelligence leader with 27 years working in Fortune 10 companies leading and managing decision intelligence and automation practices. As Lean-Agile Data Management & Decision Intelligence Leader with strategic and tactical experience led and managed large corporate wide data and analytics initiatives in prestigious companies (Ford, HP, Lockheed Martin). Contributed and led various Business/IT transformation efforts that included Process Re-engineering, Business and Enterprise Process Optimization aided by modern data management and analytics activities such as Enterprise Data Lake, Business Data Hubs, Advanced BI & Purpose Driven Analytics.   His background in Instrumentation & Control Engineering provided him early on exposure to Industrial Internet in the form of Process Control & Automation. Working in real time systems and enabling decision making for plant operations made Vino passionate about workflow automation in business operations. He is well versed with data and its criticality for business success. He has established business success-oriented data strategy to bring data, business processes, applications together and implemented the strategy using lean and agile processes, best fit technologies, high performing teams to provide data integration, data management, data governance, self-service analytics, data science capabilities.   As analytics expert transitioned from process control & automation engineer with hands on industrial automation experience effectively applying that knowledge to transform business decision making capabilities with embedded & distributed micro analytics services that support proliferation of next generation Robotic Process Automation (RPA). To summarize Vino’s 25+ years of career in one simple phrase, it is, "Distributed Control Systems to Distributed Computing Systems". Started in continuous process industry doing industrial automation with SCADA, PLC, DCS systems enabling real time decision making for plant operators. It was an IoT environment for industries. In the new world of IoT & Big Data Analytics, Vino enables decision makers to operate large businesses using distributed computing & analytics to get to real time decision making.

About Robert Hinojosa: Currently serving as the Head of AI/ML, EA for Staples, leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Enterprise Architecture (EA) initiatives throughout the enterprise. His career is marked by a commitment to innovation and excellence in technology landscapes across many retail organizations, where he has been instrumental in building seamless experiences that deliver on customer promises, transform business, and upskill the workforce. In his previous role at Ashley Furniture Industries, he served as the Chief AI Officer, responsible for leading the AI strategy, plan, and transformation across the organization. He serves as an industry advisor for other academic and business institutions, including University of Texas at Arlington (College of Business, ISOM), Texas Christian University (College of Science and Engineering, Computer Science), Wisconsin Cooperative Educational Service Agency (CESA) for AI, and retail-focused and executive groups. He looks forward to the journey of enabling AI across the enterprise, empowering the workforce, and helping customers make doing business with Staples even easier.

About Bo Gu: Bo Gu is a Director of Data Science & Generative AI at AT&T's Chief Data Office, where he leads the development and delivery of generative AI solutions to enhance operational efficiency across call centers. He also oversees a segment of the internal "Create and Deploy AI" platform, designed for data scientists, citizen data scientists (CDS), and business analysts (BA). Prior to AT&T, Bo held leadership roles in data science and analytics at Caesars Entertainment and PepsiCo, and founded a SaaS startup in China. Bo is active in the Asian community, serving as President of the DFW IT Association and as Membership & Engagement Officer for InspirASIAN National.

About Neer Patel: Neer Patel is an innovation-driven technology leader with over 20 years of experience in cloud development, API engineering, and software solutions. As VP of Cloud & Platform Engineering at General Motors Insurance, Neer has led transformative initiatives within the FinTech sector, focusing on rapid product delivery and cloud scalability. Currently, he is exploring the potential of AI to further innovations and increase business value. Neer emphasizes innovation-focused, servant leadership, fostering team empowerment and collaboration. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and hosted internal podcasts on software development in the cloud. As a proud 2006 graduate of UT Arlington, Neer actively contributes to the university community. He is a founding member of the Dean's Leadership Circle in the College of Business, serves on the Information Systems and Operations Management Advisory Board, and is a member of the 1895 Society. Additionally, he’s a Life Member of the UT Arlington Alumni Association and has held leadership roles there, including President and Vice President of Students & Scholarships. Beyond UT Arlington, Neer has been dedicated to the Epilepsy Foundation Texas for over 25 years, serving on their board and volunteering each summer at their camp for children with epilepsy.

About Samar Khan: Founder, TripAI Technologies. A product and technology services company focused on using AI for various aviation, travel and hospitality use cases. 20+ years of broad experience in developing, delivering, and maintaining mission critical software in multiple industries. Sustainability, cloud, and AI technology leader in the aviation, travel, and hospitality industry. Expert in building Offshore, Nearshore Teams for US Corporations for over a decade in multiple countries. Graduated with a BS from the University of Texas at Arlington and an MBA from SMU Cox. "Samar strongly advocates for 'Smarter Together for AI and Sustainability' and collaborates with international organizations on aviation and travel sustainability and decarbonization efforts."

About Sriram Palghat: Sriram Palghat is a passionate technologist, and is committed to building responsible technology solutions which will make the world a better place. He has over 20 years of experience and has deep technical and domain expertise in AI, cloud scaling, big data, and advanced analytics. Sriram is living in the Dallas Metropolitan area since 2020.Sriram is an Industry expert in autonomous cars, and highly automated driving leveraging advanced AI techniques. He currently works for Qualcomm as Director of Product Management in their Automotive BU. He is responsible for their Data and Simulation Factory, and Data Centric AI products. Prior to that he was Senior Manager Products at Argo AI which was an Autonomous Robo Taxi Company that was owned by Ford Motor Company and Volkswagen. He was responsible for the Autonomy stack, Data Pipeline, Terminal and Fleet management capabilities. 

About Rengaa Venkataraman : Rengaa Venkataraman is currently the Director in Data Center Supply Chain organization at Microsoft Inc. and oversees supply chain manufacturing quality of data center equipment for Americas region. This includes various equipment like gensets, UPS, switchgears and thermal management equipment. He has two decades of experience in industry including his leadership roles at Caterpillar Inc in Diesel Engines, Batteries, Fuel Cells and Photovoltaics. His experience has spanned various functional organizations including Supply chain planning, manufacturing quality, category management, product design, development and validation. Rengaa is a Certified Supply Chain Professional and holds an MBA and MS from Bradley University and an Executive Program in Supply Chain Management from Loyola Institute of Business Administration.