A Closer Look at ODSC Boston’s Keynote Speakers

ODSC East 2018 is here. Thousands of developers, researchers, academics, business professionals and students will gather to at what is the future of AI. In this article, we spotlight the the keynote speakers at ODSC East 2018 in Boston. ODSC Boston’s keynote speakers are renowned in their field, and are leading the data science community into the future of AI and machine learning.

Dr. Drew Conway

Conway received his PhD in Political Science at New York University. He studies international relations, conflict, and terrorism using the tools of mathematics, statistics, and computer science in an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of these phenomena. His academic curiosity is informed by his years as an analyst in the U.S. intelligence and defence communities. He has also co-founded many data related companies such as Alluvium and DataKind, both of which harness the power of data science in the service of humanity and business. In 2012, he published Machine Learning for Hackers, for O’Reilly Media. If you have any interest in how data science is used to understand politics, crime, and human behaviour, make sure you catch his talk on the third day of the conference – Thursday, May 3rd at 9:20am EST in Room 210ABC.

Professor Gary Marcus

Profess Marcus (whom I wrote about recently) is a psychologist whose work revolves around language and cognitive neuroscience. He has written a number of books such as The Future of the Brain, The New Musician and Science of Learning, Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, and The Algebraic Mind . As can be denoted by the book titles, he has a lot of fascinating things to say about the relationship between our minds and AI. Marcus also founded Geometric Intelligence which was later acquired by Uber, culminating in Uber’s AI Labs. Geometric Intelligence’s main focus was to minimize the size of datasets, while still gaining the same results when implementing machine learning models. His talk takes place on the second day – Wednesday, May 2nd at 9:20am EST in Room 210B.

Dr. Catherine O’Neil

O’Neil is a mathematician who received her PhD from Harvard in 1999. She has also been involved with MIT and Barnard College, researching arithmetic algebraic geometry. She published an O-Reilly book titled Doing Data Science: Straight Talk from the Frontline in 2013, and another book titled Weapons Of Math Destruction, which overviews common political and humanitarian issues in data science. O’Neil founded O’Neil Risk Consulting & Algorithm Auditing (ORCAA), which helps companies implement mathematical tools with less political risk. O’Neil also has a personal blog at mathbabe.org, and will be speaking on the third day at ODSC – Thursday, May 3rd at 10:00am EST in Room 210ABC.

Dr. Kirk Borne

Dr.Borne is the Principal Data Scientist and Executive Advisor at Booz Allen Hamilton, He creates data solutions for a variety of different companies and purposes. After receiving his PhD from   Caltech in Astrophysics, he became fascinated by big data and data mining. He has also worked at DataRPM, Cobalt Solutions, and SYNTASA, along with many other involvements. He spoke at TedX in 2013, and will now be speaking on the second day of ODSC. His talk is on Wednesday, May 2nd at 10:05am EST in Room 210B.

Dr. Alex “Sandy” Pentland

An American computer scientist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Alex “Sandy” Pentland obtained his PhD in Psychology n 1982. At MIT, he directed the Connection Science program and the Human Dynamics Labs. He started as a lecturer at Stanford University, in psychology as well has computer science. He also is on the boards at the UN, Google, AT&T, and Nissan. He won the McKinsey Award (along with many others) and is declared as one of the 7 most powerful data scientists in the world by Forbes. He has co-founded many other data related startups, most of which relate to social physics and privacy. He will speak on the first day at ODSC – Tuesday, May 1st at 9:30am EST in Room 210B.

Dr. Ruchir Puri

As Chief Architect of IBM Watson, Dr Ruchir Puri, is also an IBM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, and received Semiconductor Research Corporation’s Outstanding Mentor A ward. He had involvement at Stanford and Columbia University, and was awarded John Von-Neumann Chair at Bonn University in Germany. Puri has authored over 120 publications and given many talks on areas of AI and Deep Learning. He is giving his talk on Wednesday, May 3rd at 9:10am in Room 210ABC.

ODSC has always hosted an excellent variety of keynote speakers, all of whom would be difficult to miss. Their work has changed the data science field, and it will be a huge pleasure to see them all at the ODSC East 2018.

To learn more about the times and locations for ODSC East 2018’s keynotes and other speakers, please refer to here.