Biography

Dr Mahendra Samarawickrama (GAICD, MBA, SMIEEE, ACS(CP)) is the ACS ICT Professional of the Year 2022. He is a highly accomplished leader having an impressive track record of driving visions, technology innovations and transformation towards humanity, social justice, and sustainability. He is extremely passionate about empowering people, innovations, and creativity to enhance the businesses and customer experience. His experience spans across conceptualising, building and managing a variety of AI and data science teams, systems and processes. He is a Director of The Centre for Sustainable AI. He leads the Australian AI and data-science strategy while building capabilities for social justice and sustainability with diversity, equity and inclusion in AI and data science by mobilising the power of humanity.

He is an author, inventor, mentor and regular speaker in various tech forums, conferences and events worldwide. He holds a PhD in computer science with double masters in business administration (MBA) and project management (MPM). He is an industry collaborator who actively leads technology innovation-and-transformation initiatives and partnerships toward humanity, social justice and sustainability. In this perspective, he is an Advisory Council Member in Harvard Business Review (HBR), an Expert in AI ethics and governance at Global AI Ethics Institute, an industry Mentor in the UNSW business school, a senior member of IEEE (SMIEEE), an honorary visiting scholar at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), an Advisor for Data Science and Ai Association of Australia (DSAi), and a graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD).

He developed the Australian Red Cross AI governance and strategy framework crucial to the business’ successful deployment of Data Science and AI capabilities to mobilise the power of humanity. He built the Volunteer Data Science and Analytics team from the ground up, supporting the Australian Red Cross’s strategic goals. He helped the business for personalised engagement of customers for disaster resilience in the demanding times of pandemics, natural disasters, and global conflicts. He was also a co-author of the IFRC data playbook and contributed to the data science and emerging technology chapter for AI governance, ethics, and literacy. In all these processes, he valued diversity, equity and inclusion. In recognition of this, his team became finalists in 1) the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Action Award in the 2021 IoT Awards, 2) the Best Use of Technology to Revolutionise CX Award in the 2021 Ashton Media CX Awards, 3) the Service Transformation for the Digital Consumer for Not-for-Profit/NGO in 2022 ACS Digital Disruptors Awards, and contributed to winning the CX Team of the Year Award in 2021 Ashton Media CX Awards. All of these awards are prestigious national awards.

Biography

Dr. Carolina Pinart is the Group Head of R&D Information Technology at Nestlé, in charge of accelerating R&D’s digital transformation through key IT capabilities to deliver purpose-driven innovation. Before that, she was Global Product Director for New Generation Technologies at Nestlé, where she industrialized emerging technologies across the Group such as AR/VR, AI, chatbots, advanced nutrition or voice, and led Nestlé’s company-wide AI Strategy Program, as well as the Barcelona Innovation Outpost. She holds a PhD in Engineering from the Technical University of Catalonia and has conducted business studies at the London Business School and New York University. Prior to Nestlé, she was the Chief Operating Officer of a New York City based startup, where she developed and launched an app ecosystem to match taxi supply and demand in real time. She also led Telehealth and Connected Car product development and new business launches for wireless carrier Telefónica, based in Madrid and the UK, with operation in Europe and Latin America. Carolina started her career as a consultant for Altran in France and worked in research and innovation for Siemens in Germany and for a leading technology center in Barcelona. Over that period, she published over 70+ papers in international journals and conferences and obtained 1 patent in diverse areas such as mobile video, wireless communications and optical networking.

Biography

Dragos Margineantu is the AI Chief Technologist and a Senior Technical Fellow with BoeingResearch & Technology. His research interests include Computational Decision Systems, Probabilistic Models forUncertainty, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Anomaly Detection, Robust MachineLearning, Human-in-the-loop Systems, Inverse Reinforcement Learning, Tractability in Intelligent Systems, Cost-sensitive Learning, Active, and Ensemble Learning. Dragos was one of the research pioneers in ensemble learning and cost-sensitive learning since the 1990s.
 
At Boeing, he designed and developed computational solutions for airplane maintenance, autonomous systems, surveillance, manufacturing optimization, and design. Dragos is the technical lead of the team developing the decision system, perception localization, and mapping for the Autonomous Caravan, developed by BCA PD. He served as PI and technical lead of DARPA programs ranging from "Learning Applied to Ground Robots” (that pioneered autonomous driving) to “Bootstrapped Learning”, and from“Personal Assistant that Learns (PAL)” to “Assured Autonomy”–a program that sets the foundations of robust machine learning to engineer for autonomous systems. Dragos Margineantu serves as the Editor of the Springer book series on “Applied MachineLearning” and as the Action Editor for Special Issues for the Machine Learning Journal (MLJ). He serves on the editorial board of both major machine learning journals (MLJ and JMLR), and served as senior program committee member of all major machine learning and AI research conferences. In 2015 he was the program chair of the premier applied data science conference, the KDD-Applied Science Track. In his free time, Dragos coaches middle schoolers for Mathematics Competitions or takes his camera out to photograph unique corners of nature.

Biography

oonam Goyal is Sector Head and Senior Equity Analyst for North American E-Commerce at Bloomberg Intelligence. With more than 18 years of equity research experience, Poonam covers leading e-commerce and athleisure brands at Bloomberg Intelligence including Amazon.com, Wayfair, eBay, Etsy, ThredUp, Poshmark, Rent the Runway, Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, VF Corp and Lululemon. She frequently appears as a guest on TV and radio outlets worldwide where she discusses her research and industry insights. Ms. Goyal started her career following Steel and Service Center companies at Goldman Sachs Investment Research Group and then transitioned over to Retail.