Speakers
Dean Abbott, President, Abbott Analytics
Dean Abbott is President of Abbott Analytics in San Diego, California. Mr. Abbott has over 20 years of experience applying advanced data mining, data preparation, and data visualization methods in real-world data intensive problems, including tax risk and collections, fraud detection, customer analytics (response, cross-sell, segmentation models), survey analysis, planned giving, and predictive toxicology. In addition, he has developed and evaluated algorithms for use in commercial data mining products.Mr. Abbott is a seasoned instructor, having taught a wide range of data mining, tutorials and seminars for a decade to audiences of up to 400, including DAMA, KDD, AAAI, IEEE conferences as well as users conferences for SPSS, Insightful Corp., and Salford Systems, having also served twice on the industrial program committee for KDD conferences. He is the instructor of well-regarded data mining courses, explaining concepts in language readily understood by a wide range of audiences, including analytics novices, data analysts, statisticians, and business professionals. Mr. Abbott also has taught applied courses for major software vendors, including Clementine (SPSS), Affinium Model (Unica Corporation), Model 1 (Group1 Software), and hands-on courses using S-Plus and Insightful Miner (Insightful Corporation), and CART (Salford Systems).
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Case Study: National Rifle AssociationHow to Improve Customer Acquisition Models with Ensembles
Mike Anzenberger, On-line Sales and Marketing Analytics Manager, ISG (Internet Services Group), Wells Fargo
Mike Anzenberger manages On-line Sales and Marketing Analytics for Wells Fargo's Internet Services Group. His team provides measurement, reporting, analytics and predictive modeling to support the Group's mission to provide an outstanding customer experience on WellsFargo.com. Prior to joing Wells Fargo, Mike managed the direct marketing function at WellPoint, and small business product marketing at Bank of America.See Mike speaking at this session:
Case Study: Wells Fargo Internet Services GroupNew Challenges for Developing Predictive Analytics Solutions
Natasha Balac, Ph.D., Data Applications Group Manager, San Diego Supercomputer Center
Dr. Balac is responsible for the leadership and management of the Data Applications and Services group at SDSC. This group supports DataCentral, the first national program of its kind to host and make available significant research and community data collections and databases. Natasha received her Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Middle Tennessee State University as well as her Master's and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Vanderbilt University.See Natasha speaking at this session:
Case Study: San Diego Supercomputer CenterHigh Performance Scoring of Healthcare Data
Sugato Basu, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, Google
His areas of research expertise include machine learning, data mining, predictive modeling and optimization, with special emphasis on scalable algorithm design for text and social network analysis. He did his Ph.D. in machine learning from UT Austin, and worked at SRI International on the CALO project before joining Google. He has written multiple papers, book chapters, and encyclopedia articles on clustering, semi-supervised learning, record linkage, social search / routing, rule mining, and optimization, and has won best paper awards at the KDD, ICML and SDM conferences. He continues to serve on multiple conference / journal committees and NSF panels on machine learning and data mining.
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Predicting the Quality of Advertisements on AdWordsJohn F. Elder, Ph.D., CEO and Founder, Elder Research, Inc.
Dr. John F. Elder heads a data mining consulting team with offices in Charlottesville, Virginia and Washington DC. Founded in 1995, Elder Research, Inc. focuses on scientific and commercial applications of pattern discovery and optimization, including stock selection, image recognition, text mining, biometrics, drug efficacy, credit scoring, cross-selling, investment timing, and fraud detection.John obtained a BS and MEE in Electrical Engineering from Rice University, and a PhD in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia, where he's an adjunct professor, teaching Optimization or Data Mining. Prior to 13 years leading ERI, he spent 5 years in aerospace defense consulting, 4 heading research at an investment management firm, and 2 in Rice's Computational & Applied Mathematics department.
Dr. Elder has authored innovative data mining tools, is active on Statistics, Engineering, and Finance conferences and boards, is a frequent keynote conference speaker, and is General Chair of the 2009 Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining conference in Paris. John's courses on data analysis techniques – taught at dozens of universities, companies, and government labs – are noted for their clarity and effectiveness. Dr. Elder was honored to serve 5 years on a panel appointed by the President to guide technology for the National Security Agency.
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Multiple Case StudiesThe High ROI of Data Mining for Innovative Organizations
Usama Fayyad, Ph.D., Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President of Research & Strategic Data Solutions, Yahoo!, Inc.
Dr. Usama Fayyad is Yahoo!'s Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President of Research & Strategic Data Solutions. Fayyad is responsible for Yahoo!'s global data strategy, architecting Yahoo!'s data policies and systems, prioritizing data investments, and managing the Company's data analytics and data processing infrastructure. Fayyad also founded and oversees the Yahoo! Research organization with offices around the world. Yahoo! Research is building the premier scientific research organization to develop the new sciences of the Internet, on-line marketing, and innovative interactive applications.Prior to joining Yahoo!, Fayyad co-founded and led the DMX Group, a data mining and data strategy consulting and technology company that was acquired by Yahoo! in 2004. In early 2000, he co-founded and served as CEO of Revenue Science, Inc.(digiMine, Inc.), a data analysis and data mining company that built, operated and hosted data warehouses and analytics for some of the world's largest enterprises in online publishing, retail, manufacturing, telecommunications and financial services. The company today specializes in Behavioral Targeting and advertising networks. Fayyad's professional experience also includes five years spent leading the data mining and exploration group at Microsoft Research and building the data mining products for Microsoft's server division. From 1989 to 1996 Fayyad held a leadership role at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where his work in the analysis and exploration of scientific databases gathered from observatories, remote-sensing platforms and spacecraft garnered him the top research excellence award that Caltech awards to JPL scientists, as well as a U.S. Government medal from NASA.
Fayyad earned his Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1991), and also holds BSE's in both electrical and computer engineering (1984); MSE in computer science and engineering (1986); and M.Sc. in mathematics (1989). He has published over 100 technical articles in the fields of data mining and Artificial Intelligence, is a Fellow of the AAAI and a Fellow of the ACM, has edited two influential books on the data mining and launched and served as editor-in-chief of both the primary scientific journal in the field of data mining and the primary newsletter in the technical community published by the ACM: SIGKDD Explorations.
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Keynote: New Challenges in Predictive Analytics: Social Networking, Direct-Response Marketing, and Understanding Customer BehaviorVincent Granville, Chief Scientist, Click Forensics
Vincent Granville has successfully solved problems for 15 years in data mining, text mining, predictive modeling, business intelligence, technical analysis, keyword and web analytics. Vincent is widely recognized as the leading expert in click scoring and click fraud detection. Over the last ten years, he has worked in real-time credit card fraud detection with Visa, advertising analytics with CNET, A/B testing with LowerMyBills, online user experience with Wells Fargo, query intelligence with InfoSpace, click fraud detection with major search engines and large advertising clients.Vincent was formerly Chief Science Officer at Authenticlick. In the last few years, he successfully launched DataShaping, AnalyticBridge, AnalyticBrain, AnalyticTalent, Frenchlane and many other websites. Vincent is a former post-doctorate of Cambridge University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was among the finalists at the Wharton School Business Plan Competition and at the Belgian Mathematical Olympiads. He is currently Chief Scientist at Click Forensics and managing the AnalyticBridge network.
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Case Study: Click ForensicsPredictive Scores to Optimize Pay-Per-Click Campaigns
Everett Harper, Director of Community Initiatives, Linden Lab (Second Life)
Everett Harper is Director of Community Initiatives at Linden Lab where he is responsible for developing products and services to improve the user experience on Second Life. Everett has an MBA and an M.Ed in Education Technology from Stanford and a BSE in Biomedical and Electrical Engineering from Duke.
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Case Study: Linden Lab (Second Life)Customer Retention: Finding and Keeping Residents at Risk on Second Life
Khosrow Hassibi, Ph.D., Senior Technical Director, KXEN
Khosrow Hassibi, Ph.D., is a senior Technical Director at KXEN, a data mining software vendor headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Dr Hassibi has a Ph.D. in EECS from Case Western Reserve University with special concentration in the areas of Intelligent Systems and Machine Learning. Dr Hassibi is also a graduate of UCLA Anderson Executive Program in Management. His expertise is based on seventeen years of design, development, consulting, and management in applying advanced data mining technologies to real-world applications that benefit from behavioral scoring. Dr Hassibi spent several years at HNC Software (now Fair Isaac) where he was last responsible for the core analytic technology group worldwide (R&D) focused on fraud solution products like credit card fraud detection. He is known in the financial industry due to his contributions to payment card fraud detection technology. Dr Hassibi holds two patents and has contributed to several copy-righted commercial software products.See Khosrow speaking at this session:
Case Study: Wells Fargo Internet Services GroupNew Challenges for Developing Predictive Analytics Solutions
Todd Holloway, Ingenuity Systems
Todd Holloway is a PhD Candidate in computer science at Indiana University. Currently on leave, he works at Ingenuity Systems creating novel visualizations of (systems biology) network datasets. The aim of such visualizations is to speedup the drug discovery process. His research interests are structural data mining, network visualization, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. He maintains a blog on these topics at abeautifulwww.comSee Todd speaking at this session:
Visualization and the Netflix PrizeArthur Hughes, Senior Strategist, e-Dialog.com
Arthur Middleton Hughes serves e-Dialog as their Senior Strategist. In this role he advises e-Dialog staff and e-Dialog clients on profitable strategies for using electronic communications in their marketing programs. Arthur is one of the pioneers in the database marketing field. He has been designing and maintaining marketing databases for Fortune 500 companies and others for the past twenty years. His database experience includes wired and wireless telephone companies, insurance, banks, catalogers,retailers, pharmaceuticals, package goods, software and computer manufacturers, resorts, hotels, automobiles, and non-profit fund-raisers.A graduate of Princeton University with a Masters in Public Affairs, Arthur taught economics at the University of Maryland for 32 years. When it comes to database marketing, he wrote the book! He is the author of The Complete Database Marketer. 2nd Ed. (McGraw Hill 1996), Strategic Database Marketing 3rd.Ed. (McGraw Hill 2006) and The Customer Loyalty Solution (McGraw Hill 2003).
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Case StudyPredictive Modeling for Email Marketing
Gary Katz, Founder & CEO, Marketing Operations Partners
Gary Katz, Founder and CEO of Marketing Operations Partners, is a visionary and thought leader in the emerging Marketing Operations field. He is a veteran with more than twenty years of marketing and change management experience in the technology industry in corporate, agency and entrepreneurial positions, where he directed corporate marketing, communications, public relations, lead generation and qualification, investor relations, and employee communications programs. In addition to founding Marketing Operations Partners' and its sister company, CommPros Group in 2005, he previously formed a communications consultancy and public relations firm. Gary holds a master's degree in organization development from the University of San Francisco and a bachelor’s degree in public relations from San Jose State University. He has served as a track chair for the Henry Stewart Marketing Operations Symposium during the past four years and is a noted author, speaker and evangelist on the topic of Marketing Operations. He recently taught the first known US class on Marketing Operations at UCSC Extension in Sunnyvale.
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Marketing Operations: The Engine Behind Predictive AnalyticsMark Klein, Ph.D., CEO and Founder, Loyalty Builders
As CEO of Loyalty Builders, Mark Klein, PhD combines his background in the sciences with his entrepreneurial spirit to push the limits of modern-day marketing. Before embarking on his latest effort, he founded and sold three software companies, IE Systems, Channel Computing and Edge Research. After the purchase of Edge Research by Lotus in 1994, Dr. Klein joined Lotus Development Corporation and IBM as General Manager for Enterprise Integration, a position he held until founding Loyalty Builders in 1999. Prior to his entrepreneurial efforts, Dr. Klein taught and performed research in theoretical physics at Bryn Mawr College, University of Wisconsin, UCLA, University of Colorado, and University of New Hampshire. Dr. Klein holds a PhD in physics from Indiana University. He recently published his first novel and you can find Mark blogging here.
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Case Study: Linden Lab (Second Life)Customer Retention: Finding and Keeping Residents at Risk on Second Life
Matt Kramer, Global Consulting and Analytics Group, Acxiom
Matt very recently came from ChoicePoint Precision Marketing (CPPM) where he was an Assistant Vice President of Analytics & Consulting and was responsible for modeling and analytics direction and development across all of CPPM's managed database clients. During his 6+ year tenure with CPPM, Matt was responsible for analytics consultation and strategic sales support across all clients. Previous to joining CPPM, he was Director of Client Services with Ronald J. Krumm & Associates, LLC, where he managed and developed client relationships with Wachovia's and First Union's bankcard marketing and retail bank insurance services divisions.His primary responsibilities included econometric time series modeling, sales and support for risk, attrition, retention, cash/check usage, profitability, pricing, cross sell, and insurance response. Matt has extensive experience in database marketing (16 years) and Analytics (20 years). Matt holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from North Central College in Naperville, Illinois.
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Case Study: Wells Fargo Card ServicesCustomer Marketing – Predictive Modeling & Today's Growing Data Challenges
Alex Kriney, Director, DMD Online Marketing, Sun Microsystems
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Case Study: Sun MicrosystemsKim Larsen, Director Advanced Analytics, Charles Schwab & Co.
Kim Larsen is a Director in the Advanced Analytics group at Charles Schwab & Co., in San Francisco. The Advanced Analytics team works directly with partners in marketing, finance, and product management to solve business problems through statistical analysis and optimize the impact of marketing and other business levers. He has more than eight years of experience in data mining and statistical modeling in the financial services industry.Throughout his professional career he has worked on a wide array of data mining problems, including customer segmentation, forecasting, price optimization, and predictive modeling for various applications. Kim holds a BS in mathematics and economics and an MS in statistics.
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Case Study: Charles Schwab & CoMaximize Marketing Impact with Net Lift Models
Sean Larson, Head of 3M's Global Data Strategy
Sean has spent the past 12 years working with customer data, marketing analytics, category management and fact based solution selling across multiple businesses within 3M. Sean developed and led the Industrial & Transportation, a $7B business, predictive analytics program for 3M from 2003 – 2006 optimizing cross sell / up sell strategies, new & lost business management, lead generation and territory optimization. In 2006 Sean created and continues to lead the Global Predictive Analytics Program for 3M. Teams across the globe are working on optimization of cross sell / upsell strategy, lead generation, offer optimization, customer churn management, forecasting, territory resource planning, gray market diversion anomaly detection, employee attrition, weather pattern analysis, repeat purchase optimization & channel partner stocking solutions.Sean earned an MBA from the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management (2006), has completed The University of Indiana Kelley School of Business Marketing Leadership Development Program (2004) and received a BA Finance from the University of St.Thomas (1996).
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Case Study: 3MPredictive Analytics at 3M
Anna Lu, Senior Research Manager, e-Dialog.com
Anna works on helping e-Dialog's client base refine and optimize their marketing approaches through a combination of sequential-data analytics and strategic interactive marketing, primarily focusing on email. Through her 12 years of experience with both on- and off-line data, she has continually pushed for the effective use of information for advanced database marketing, and her expertise has allowed e-Dialog to utilize more advanced and sophisticated statistical techniques to enhance email marketing performance in ways unmatched by other email and database marketing companies.See Anna speaking at this session:
Case StudyPredictive Modeling for Email Marketing
John McConnell, Director, Analytical People
John has been involved in business/research analytics and technology since 1986. Spanning many dimensions in services and management roles in SPSS from 1989 to 2000 and in several new ventures since 2000. Most typically configuring and applying analytical methodologies to a variety of client-specific business problems. John co-founded Applied Insights – specialising in Advanced Digital Analytics – with Neil Mason in 2004. That business was acquired by Foviance in November 2008 and John started Analytical People.See John speaking at this session:
Case Study: Reed ElsevierProfitably increasing retention – and convincing the business that you are
Jim Porzak
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Case Study: Sun MicrosystemsAnand Rajaraman, Co-Founder, Kosmix
Anand Rajaraman is a co-founder of Kosmix, an internet startup focused on organizing the wisdom of the web. He is also a Founding Partner of Cambrian Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm, and a Consulting Assistant professor at the Computer Science Department at Stanford University.Previously, Anand was Director of Technology at Amazon.com, where he was responsible for technology strategy and helped launch the transformation of Amazon.com from a retailer into a retail platform. He came to Amazon.com in 1998 through the $250 Million acquisition of Junglee, an Internet pioneer that he co-founded in 1996. He obtained his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, where he won the President of India Gold Medal for graduating at the top of his class, and his MS and PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Anand has been featured in articles in Business Week, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other leading national publications. On his Blog Datawocky, he discusses the application of data mining techniques to search, social media, and advertising.
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It's the Data, Stupid!James Taylor, Co-Founder, Smart (enough) Systems
Prior to co-founding Smart (enough) Systems, James Taylor was a Vice President at Fair Isaac Corporation where he developed and refined the concept of enterprise decision management or EDM. Widely credited with the invention of the term and the best known proponent of the approach, Mr Taylor helped create the emerging EDM market and is a passionate advocate of decision management. Mr. Taylor has 20 years experience in all aspects of the design, development, marketing and use of advanced technology including CASE tools, project planning and methodology tools as well as platform development in PeopleSoft's R&D team and consulting with Ernst and Young. He has consistently worked to develop approaches, tools and platforms that others can use to build more effective information systems. He is an experienced speaker and author, with his columns and articles appearing regularly in industry magazines.
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From Analytics to Competing on DecisionsAndreas Töscher, Research & Technical Development, Commendo Research and Consulting, GmbH
Andreas Töscher is one of two founding members of the top Netflix Prize team, "BigChaos," which currently holds first place, and cofounder of Commendo Research and Consulting, GmbH, a small, high-profile consulting firm based in Austria that develops and deploys product recommendation systems. Andreas is also working towards graduate degrees in machine learning at the Technical University Graz, and in mathematics at the University of Graz (Karl-Franzens-Universität). His graduate research focuses on scaling recommendation systems.
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Case Study: Netflix Prize (leading competitor)Advanced Approaches for Recommender Systems and the Netflix Prize
Richard G. Vlasimsky, Cofounder & Vice-President, Valen Technologies
Mr. Vlasimsky is a cofounder of Valen Technologies, a turnkey predictive analytic solution provider that specializes in property casualty insurance. Mr. Vlasimsky has developed pricing models for commercial lines of business (BOP, GL, Property, Auto, and Work Comp), premium audit models, retention models for transportation companies, and loss prevention models. Mr. Vlasimsky began his career at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), where he worked on a number of successful initiatives, notably: a global deployment of enterprise resource planning and demand planning system for Texas Instruments, a technology transfer and channel development project with an enterprise application integration startup (SeeBeyond Technologies), and the development of a constraint-based ad-targeting system for Turner Broadcasting (now Time Warner).After Andersen, Mr. Vlasimsky joined Silicon Valley startup, Market Touch, and served as product manager for their content personalization line of products. Mr. Vlasimsky became involved with the computational learning groups at Berkeley and Stanford where he explored new approaches to statistical learning – including Support Vector Machines, Fuzzy Logic, Particle Swarm Optimization, Genetic Algorithms, and Neural Networks. These early explorations ultimately led to the co-founding of Valen Technologies.
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Case Study: Pinnacol AssuranceA Day in the Life: Predictive Analytics in the Insurance Industry
Bill Vorias, Sr. Mathematician, Loyalty Builders
Bill Vorias is a Mathematician for Loyalty Builders where he consults for clients in a variety of industries including retail, distribution, technology and manufacturing. He regularly contributes to refining the predictive algorithms for Longbow, Loyalty Builders' web- based direct marketing system with built in predictive analytics. He was also instrumental in the creation of Loyalty Builders sample size and power analysis calculator including the robust set of documentation and help. Before coming to Loyalty Builders, Bill consulted in forecasting and model building in a wide variety of areas, including online advertising and marketing.
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Case Study: Linden Lab (Second Life)Customer Retention: Finding and Keeping Residents at Risk on Second Life
Andreas S. Weigend, Ph.D., people & data, and former Chief Scientist, Amazon.com
Andreas S. Weigend, Ph.D. was Chief Scientist at Amazon.com, where he specialized in understanding how people behave online, helping Amazon build its customer-centric, measurement-focused culture. He now works as an independent consultant with firms including Alibaba, Lufthansa, MySpace, and Nokia, helping some of the most brilliant executives around the world leverage user data to produce innovative products and business models. He also teaches at Stanford and UC Berkeley, and is often invited to speak at international events.
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The Unrealized Predictive Power of DataEric Zankman, UTOPY
Eric Zankman is an experienced customer analytics and business intelligence consultant with a 20+ year track record of improving profitability for some of the largest US and international firms by applying data mining, predictive modeling, customer segmentation, experimental design, and optimization.Prior to joining UTOPY, Eric led a Customer Analytics consulting practice and served as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Knowledge Center Coordinator at American Management Systems (AMS), a global business and IT consulting firm.
Eric has given numerous presentations at major industry conferences related to customer analytics and CRM. He has authored several white papers and thought leadership articles, including a Gartner publication on customer loyalty. Eric earned a BS degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Case Study: Affiliated Computer Services (ACS)Using Speech Analytics to Improve the Customer Experience
Michael Zeller, Ph.D., CEO, Zementis
Dr. Zeller manages the strategic direction of Zementis, a software company focused on predictive analytics and advanced decisioning technology. His mission is to combine science and software to create superior business and industrial solutions that leverage predictive models and rules in real-time.Dr. Zeller received a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Frankfurt (Germany), with emphasis in the development of neural networks, robotics, and human-computer intelligent interaction. He received a visiting scholarship from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was the recipient of a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California.
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Case Study: San Diego Supercomputer CenterHigh Performance Scoring of Healthcare Data
Jun Zhong, VP Targeting and Analytics, Card Services Customer Marketing, Wells Fargo
Jun Zhong has been with Wells Fargo for over 4 years in the area of marketing analytics and currently managing statistical modeling, segmentation, and marketing analytics efforts to optimize credit card acquisition, activation, and retention strategies.Jun Zhong has more than 12 years of experience in statistical analysis and modeling in both marketing and risk management. Prior to Wells Fargo, Jun spent a number of years at Providian Financial as the Manager of Acquisition Credit Risk Modeling responsible for underwriting strategies, line assignment and prediction of fraud.
Jun Zhong earned a bachelor's degree from Jinan University and a Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University.
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Case Study: Wells Fargo Card ServicesCustomer Marketing – Predictive Modeling & Today's Growing Data Challenges
