Conference Speakers

“THE FUNDAMENTALS OF AI” - Speaker

Bethany Edmunds is the lead Khoury faculty at Northeastern University - Vancouver campus. Prior to joining Northeastern, she was at the British Columbia Institute of Technology where she led the pedagogical innovation of the Computer Information Technology Program and the Downtown Campus as Program Head and then Associate Dean.

A native of New Jersey, she received her Bachelors of Science in Computer Science from Rowan University in 2002 and PhD in Computer Science from Rutgers University in 2008 before moving to Canada. In 2018, she was named one of BC Business’s Most Influential Women in Stem and Business in Vancouver’s Forty Under 40.

“SETTING THE STAGE - POTENTIALS AND RISKS” - Keynote Speaker

Dr. Oren Etzioni has served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence since its inception in 2014. He has been a Professor at the University of Washington's Computer Science department since 1991, and a Venture Partner at the Madrona Venture Group since 2000.

He has garnered several awards including Seattle's Geek of the Year (2013), the Robert Engelmore Memorial Award (2007), the IJCAI Distinguished Paper Award (2005), AAAI Fellow (2003), and a National Young Investigator Award (1993). He has been the founder or co-founder of several companies, including Farecast (sold to Microsoft in 2008) and Decide (sold to eBay in 2013). He has written commentary on AI for The New York Times, Nature, Wired, and the MIT Technology Review. He helped to pioneer meta-search (1994), online comparison shopping (1996), machine reading (2006), and Open Information Extraction (2007). He has authored over 100 technical papers that have garnered over 2,000 highly influential citations on Semantic Scholar.

He received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon in 1991 and his B.A. from Harvard in 1986.

“AI THROUGH THE VENTURE CAPITAL LENS” - Fireside chat

Heather is Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Flying Fish Partners, a venture firm investing in artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics companies.

She serves on the boards of Beneficial State Bank (Lead Independent Director and member Audit & Technology Committees), Yesler, Inc., Coldstream Holdings Inc., Greater Seattle Metropolitan Chamber (immediate past Chair), Washington Technology Industry Association (Chair), Technology Alliance, Forterra and as a Regent of the Washington State University.  She serves on the executive committee of the Global EIR Coalition, the governing advisory board of the Hawthorn Club, the Connector Board of NCWIT, the advisory board of iInovate and as a mentor at Techstars. She was named a 2019 Director of the Year by the Puget Sound Business Journal. 

Heather is also very active in local and national policy. Prior to her current roles, Heather was Executive and Senior Vice President at each of Indix, Summit Power, Atom Entertainment, Getty Images and PhotoDisc and General Counsel of Getty Images, a publicly traded company. Heather’s law degree is from Stanford and her BA is from Reed.

“THE VIEW FROM AWAY: AI POLICY ACROSS THE COUNTRY AND IN CONGRESS” - Keynote Speaker

Daniel Castro is vice president at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and director of ITIF's Center for Data Innovation.

Castro writes and speaks on a variety of issues related to information technology and internet policy, including privacy, security, intellectual property, Internet governance, e-government, and accessibility for people with disabilities. His work has been quoted and cited in numerous media outlets, including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, USA Today, Bloomberg News, and Bloomberg Businessweek. In 2013, Castro was named to FedScoop’s list of the “top 25 most influential people under 40 in government and tech.” In 2015, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker appointed Castro to the Commerce Data Advisory Council.

Castro previously worked as an IT analyst at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) where he audited IT security and management controls at various government agencies. He contributed to GAO reports on the state of information security at a variety of federal agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In addition, Castro was a visiting scientist at the Software Engineering Institute in Pittsburgh, PA, where he developed virtual training simulations to provide clients with hands-on training of the latest information security tools.

“INTO THE WEEDS” - panelist

Dr. Nicole Nichols is a senior research scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and research associate at Western Washington University Department of Computer Science. She received her B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Massachusetts in 2005.  She received her M.S. and Ph.D degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Washington in 2010 and 2016 respectively, and was awarded both the NSF graduate student fellowship and ARCS foundation fellowship.  

At PNNL she has lead technical teams investigating application of deep learning to cyber security and the security of machine learning. Nicole serves on the advisory board of Western Washington University Department of Computer Science and the Software Carpentry Foundation.

“INTO THE WEEDS” - panelist

Osonde Osoba (pronounced “oh-shOwn-day aw-shAw-bah”) is an information scientist at the RAND Corporation and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He has a background in the design and optimization of machine learning algorithms. He has applied his machine learning expertise to diverse policy areas such as health, defense, and technology policy. His more recent focus has been on data privacy and fairness in artificial intelligence and algorithmic systems more generally. Osoba also serves as a co-director for RAND's center for Scalable Computing and Analysis (SCAN).

Prior to joining RAND, he was a researcher at the University of Southern California (USC). His research there focused on improving the speed and robustness of popular statistical algorithms like the expectation-maximization (EM) and backpropagation algorithms used in applications like automatic speech recognition. He also made contributions on the robustness and accuracy of approximate Bayesian inference schemes. Osoba received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from USC and his B.S. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Rochester.

“VECTOR INSTITUTE: WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM CANADA’S EFFORT TO DRIVE AI SUCCESS” - Fireside Chat

As a leader in research, advanced education and commercial collaboration, Dr. Garth Gibson bridges the worlds of academia and business. This unique combination ideally positions him to lead the Vector Institute in its mandate to drive Canada’s leadership in artificial intelligence (AI) research, fostering economic growth and improving the lives of Canadians.

Dr. Gibson has held a number of leadership positions at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, including as Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Co-Director of its Master of Computational Data Science program, and Associate Dean for Master’s Programs in the School of Computer Science, overseeing 20 Master’s programs with over 1,000 enrolled students who are in high-demand upon graduation.

As an active and collaborative researcher, he has been instrumental in integrating academia and industry. CMU’s Parallel Data Lab, established by Dr. Gibson over 25 years ago, continues to enable researchers and companies to collaborate and exchange ideas on technology directions. He has also brought partners together to develop high-performance computing systems required to power big data and machine learning research.

“BenchMARKED AI/Effective development strategies” - presentation

Ewan leads the Design Practice in North America at McKinsey and Company, our work in customer experience and engagement, and our partnerships with technology platforms for our Marketing and Sales Practice. His design perspective is highly influential in our North American work in the telecommunications, technology, media sectors, our work in digital and analytics, service operations, and marketing and sales. 

In client work, Ewan brings together multiple disciplines to help companies drive growth through simple and easy customer experiences, improved employee engagement, and digital products and business processes. 

Before joining McKinsey, Ewan specialized in the development of innovative, user-centric new products and services. He has a background in design and engineering and serves on the board of the Technology Alliance in Seattle. 

“AI THROUGH THE VENTURE CAPITAL LENS” - Fireside chat

Melissa Hellman is an award-winning reporter who covers politics, law, health, education, and social issues in Seattle. Although her reporting interests vary, she likes to write character-driven stories that illuminate policies. She strongly believes in the transformative nature of storytelling, and its potential to hold power accountable. 

As a woman of color who has reported globally, her multicultural perspective grants her access to underrepresented communities everywhere she lives. Over nearly a decade, she’s written breaking news, features and investigations for a range of publications including YES! Magazine, The Associated Press, TIME, The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, Time Out, Seattle Weekly, SF Weekly, SF Business Times and many others. 

Her reporting has taken me to such disparate places as the homes of migrant families in the outskirts of Beijing, day centers for developmentally disabled people in California, and a Seattle mobile home park where 200 Latinx residents were at risk of eviction.  She’s a deeply curious person with a knack for incorporating intricate details into her articles. 

She’s also a graduate of U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she focused on

narrative writing and honing her multimedia skills. When she’s not typing away, you can catch her

hiking in the Cascades, doing yoga, performing improv comedy and exploring quirky towns in the

Pacific Northwest. 

“WORKFORCE DISRUPTION: THE FUTURE IS NOW” - PANEL

Author of “Safe A.I.”, Dr. Teresa Escrig is an AI expert with more than 25 years of distinguished accomplishments in the field. She is an AI Global lead at Accenture, has been founder and CEO of two startups, lead creator of four products from concept to delivery, head of a research group, author of 100-plus peer reviewed research articles, four books, and is the recipient of several awards, including the National Prize on Science and Technology. Dr. Escrig has been professor on AI-related topics at several universities in Europe and the US for almost 20 years. A visionary, out-of-the-box thinker, passionate and effective leader and speaker, Dr. Escrig's mission is to make sure that we develop transparent, unbiased, safe and responsible AI.

“Defined Crowd - training on ai with ai” - fast pitch presentation

Dr. Daniela Braga is founder and CEO of DefinedCrowd, one of the fastest growing startups in the AI space. With almost two decades of work in Speech Technology both in academia and industry in Portugal, Spain, China and the US, Dr. Braga has deep expertise in Speech Science and is one the world leaders of Crowdsourcing adoption in large enterprises. Previously at Microsoft worked in pretty much all stacks of Speech Technology and shipped 26 languages for Exchange 14, 10 TTS voices in Windows 8 and was involved in Cortana. At Voicebox Technologies, Dr. Braga created the Data Science team and shipped voice enabled products for clients like Samsung and Toyota, introduced Crowdsourcing for big data solutions and re-structured the Engineering infrastructure around data collection, processing, ingestion, instrumentation and discoverability. Dr. Braga is oftentimes guest lecturer in the University of Washington, USA, is the author of more than 90 scientific papers and several patents.

“98.6 - ai and telemedicine” - Fast Pitch Presentation

Tori serves as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for 98point6, a company that is reimagining primary care by delivering diagnosis and treatment through private and secure in-app messaging. Tori joined 98point6 in 2015 as employee number five and has helped it grow to a team of more than 200. In addition to her day-to-day responsibilities overseeing legal, regulatory and compliance, Tori led the company's nationwide expansion effort while spearheading the legal function through October 2018's Series C fundraising, resulting in a total raise of $86 million to date. Last year, Tori was named to the "40 Under 40" class of 2018 by the Puget Sound Business Journal. Prior to joining 98point6, Tori focused her practice on healthcare privacy and security, FDA regulation, human subjects research and clinical trials. She holds a JD and an MPH from the University of Washington. Tori loves gymnastics and lives in Seattle with her husband and toddler son in a 1927 Dutch Colonial that is perpetually undergoing several intensive restoration projects at once. 

“uw tasker center - accessible sidewalks” - fast pitch presentation

Anat Caspi is Director of The Taskar Center for Accessible Technology (TCAT). This initiative housed by the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science at University of Washington is focused on translating novel research and technologies for use by populations with disabilities. TCAT also plays a role in continuing the department's well-established engagement with access technologies and in applying universal design practices across a vast array of projects. 

 Caspi received her PhD in BioEngineering from the Joint Program in BioEngineering at University of California at Berkeley and UC San Francisco and her MS and BS in Computer Science from Stanford University. Dr. Caspi’s primary research areas are in the fields of Ubiquitous Computing and Contextually Aware Automation. Her research focuses on engineering machine intelligent solutions for customizable real-time, responsive technologies in the context of work, play and urban street environments. She has designed, developed and evaluated sensor and mobile applications for personalized navigation and routing in pedestrian ways, improving personal automated mobility devices, and enhancing automation in play/work environments with contextually-responsive behavior. In her current role, Caspi evaluates and develops new methods/techniques/instrumentation and collaborates in experimental design and execution. Her primary design methods involve participatory design, and a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. 

 Caspi is interested in exploring different ways in which collaborative commons and cooperation can challenge and transform the current economics of assistive technology and incentivize rapid development and deployment of ethically built accessible technologies. 

“WA tree fruit commission - robotic harvesting” - fast pitch presentation

Dr. Hanrahan serves as Executive Director of the WTFRC effective August 2018.  She was previously employed as a Project Manager by the Commission since 2005. Ines holds a Diploma in Agricultural Engineering from Humboldt University Berlin, Germany in 1999 and a Ph.D. in Horticulture from Washington State University.  

Her professional background in practical and academic horticulture encompasses research, teaching, and consulting for the past 20+ years. Dr. Hanrahan’s expertise includes the management of scientific projects such as: apple postharvest physiological disorder prevention, optimization of cropping and storage systems for pome fruit, management of plant material evaluation from breeding programs for commercial suitability, and applied food safety research. Overall, her primary focus is on expediting transfer of research results to implementation, while providing an ongoing link between scientists and the industry. In addition, she is passionate about training and mentoring the next generation of industry professionals. 

“vector institute: what can we learn from canada’s effort to drive ai success?” - fireside chat

University President Kirk H. Schulz is guiding Washington State University’s transformation into one of the nation’s top public research universities. The University has achieved several significant milestones under President Schulz’s leadership: 

• Statewide enrollment totaled a record-breaking 31,478 students for the fall, 2018 semester—the third consecutive year WSU topped the 30,000-student mark. 

• WSU Everett, the University’s newest campus, has expanded its academic offerings and opened a state-of-the-art facility in downtown Everett. 

• WSU and the state wine industry—the second largest producer of premium wine in the country—have strengthened their partnership, symbolized by the Ste. Michelle Wine Estates WSU Wine Science Center at WSU Tri-Cities. 

“WSU - Precision Farming”-fast pitch presentation

Dr. Karkee was born and raised in Bhojpur, a mid hill district of the Himalayan country of Nepal, some 400 km east of the capital city Kathmandu. After completing high school in his village, he moved to Kathmandu for his Associate and Undergraduate degrees. He received his bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering in 2002 from Tribhuvan University, then moved to Bangkok, Thailand to attend Asian Institute of Technology where he earned his Master’s Degree in Remote Sensing and GIS. Dr. Karkee then spent the next five years in Ames, Iowa working on his doctoral research and education, earning his PhD in Agricultural Engineering and Human Computer Interaction from Iowa State University in 2009. 

Dr. Karkee joined Washington State University (WSU) in 2010 where he leads a strong research program in agricultural automation and mechanization area with a particular emphasis on machine vision and sensing technologies for agricultural automation and robotics. He has been working on numerous sponsored projects in this area, including apple crop load estimation, apple and cherry harvesting, fruit tree and berry bush pruning, blossom thinning, water and nutrient stress monitoring, weed control in vegetable crops, and Big-data based SMART irrigation system for winegrapes. Dr. Karkee has been actively publishing in such journals as ‘Journal of Field Robotics’, ‘Computers and Electronics in Agriculture’, ‘Biosystems Engineering’ and ‘The Transactions of ASABE’ and has frequently presented in national and international conferences. Dr. Karkee currently serves as an Associate Editor of ‘Transactions of the ASABE’ and ‘Applied Engineering in Agriculture’, and as an Guest Editor for ‘Robotics’. He is the elected chair of Technical Committee 8.1, Control in Agriculture, International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) serving the term from, 2017 to 2020. 

“STORY of the ecosystem”- presentation

Hank is Director of the Paul G. Allen School and Wissner-Slivka Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where his research projects concern operating systems, distributed systems, security, the world-wide web, and computer architecture. He launched his career at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), an early computer manufacturer, where he worked on commercial operating systems and system architecture. The author of two books and more than 100 papers on computer systems design, his publications have earned nearly 20 best-paper awards and "test of time/influential paper" awards in operating systems and computer architecture. Hank has supervised 25 Ph.D. students, many of whom now hold academic positions.  

Hank is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a Fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and recipient of a Fulbright Research Scholar Award. He is former chair of ACM SIGOPS (the Special Interest Group on Operating Systems), former program chair of the ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), The USENIX Conference on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), the ACM Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS), and the IEEE Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HOTOS). 

He has co-founded two companies -- Skytap, a Seattle cloud-computing company, and Performant, Inc., a Java-based performance management company that was acquired by Mercury in 2003. He is a member of the Technical Advisory Boards of Isilon Systems, Zillow.com, Turi (formerly GraphLab), Alibaba, and Madrona Venture Group. He served as the CSE project leader for the design and construction of the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering and the new Bill & Melinda Gates Center, and is art curator for the Allen School art collection.  

“iocurrents - maritime” - fast pitch presentation

Cosmo King is the CEO and co-founder of Seattle based ioCurrents, the leading real-time predictive analytics platform for the maritime industry. The company’s platform, MarineInsightTM, analyzes and transmits vessel equipment data in real time to help operators prevent machinery failures, reduce maintenance costs, increase fuel efficiency, and minimize downtime. 

 With more than 20 years’ experience in the tech industry, King has worked at various tech companies, honing his expertise on system automation for storage and cloud products.  Before launching ioCurrents, King was part of the original engineering team at Isilon Systems as they grew from startup to a global storage industry leader acquired by EMC. King is an industry expert in cloud computing, distributed systems, data storage, and security. Having grown up on the Chesapeake Bay and now calling the Pacific Northwest home, King was inspired to start ioCurrents after working with geospatial IoT and sensor data and seeing the benefits that edge analysis technology could provide to the maritime industry. 

King enjoys spending his spare time on the water with his family, having fully restored his vintage Coronado 41 sloop “Northern Lights.” 

“workforce disruption: the future is now” - Panel

Dr. Jerry Weber is the president of Bellevue College, and a strong advocate of community colleges as affordable, open-access pathways for students to achieve their life and career goals. Previously he served as president of the College of Lake County just outside of Chicago, Illinois, (2009-2017), and before that as president of Kankakee Community College (2001-2009).

He took a leadership role in his greater community as well, serving on a number of local economic boards and committees including the Lake County Workforce Development Board, Lake County Community Foundation, Lake County Partners for Economic Development, and Health Professions Education Consortium. Regionally, he served on and chaired the Economic Development Committee of CMAP, and the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

His dedication to the value of community colleges and workforce development was recognized by his peers when he was elected to the board of directors of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC). He is the founding chair for the Sustainability Education & Economic Development (SEED) Center in which colleges commit to sharing information and resources for developing a sustainable campus and workforce, and has served as adjunct faculty at Harvard University in the continuing education program of Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership.

“workforce disruption: the future is now” - Panel

Michael Lotito, as co-chair of Littler’s Workplace Policy Institute (WPI), strategically advises clients and policy makers on what labor and employment law might become, not just what it is today. He provides counsel in all aspects of traditional labor relations, including matters arising under the National Labor Relations Act.

A nationally recognized thought leader on workplace policy, Michael has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, as well as the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In his WPI role, he advocates on behalf of the employer community on a variety of issues and regularly files amicus briefs on vital workplace policy concerns.

Through the Emma Coalition, a project Michael co-founded and named in honor of his granddaughter, he is at the vanguard in preparing American business and the American workforce for the future of work. As technology, especially robotics and artificial intelligence, creates not only unprecedented displacement but also unprecedented opportunities, the Emma Coalition, in cooperation with government and corporate entities, examines what skills the American workforce will need down the road and makes sure America and its people will remain competitive in the years to come.

“MXTREALITY & MYPAD3D - VR & AR” - fast pitch presentation

MXTreality CEO, Jeff Rayner has 20 years of experience working with tech start-ups across the globe.  For the past 6 years, his talented & diverse team has been innovating with the latest tech (drones, 360 cameras, VR, AR, MR, AI, virtual smells, fully body sensory suits) to improve everyday challenges through virtual gamification.  Solutions developed run across multiple industries including architecture & construction, medical & health, art & history, travel & tourism, education & training, non-profits and social good.  With over 2.5M downloads, 1,000 VR users a day, and creating more than 100 XR solutions, Jeff and his team are driving the innovation that will improve our future decisions, our experiences and our lives.

“workforce disruption: the future is now” - Panel

Andrea is co-Director of United for Respect, a national organization building power for people working in low wage jobs by centering their voices, experiences, and solutions in the national movement fighting for the future of work, our economy and corporate regulation. Andrea’s roots in the movement go deep and include seminal experiences winning major victories with people working in the most unstable and precarious low wage service jobs, from janitors to hotel workers. Andrea leveraged these critical advances and learnings into developing innovative models of leveraging technology and internet-based activation to support working people build power and voice.