CodeForward 2023 features these awesome humans and more to be announced. Keep checking back!
Dror Weiss is co-founder & CEO at Tabnine, an AI code generator and assistant for software developers and R&D teams. Prior to founding Tabnine (formerly Codota) in 2013, Dror worked at Panaya for several years, making his way up from software engineer to the position of Director of Technology.
Noelle Russell is a multi-award-winning technologist with an entrepreneurial spirit who specializes in helping companies with emerging technology, Generative AI, and LLMs. She has led teams at NPR, Microsoft, IBM, AWS and Amazon Alexa, and is a consistent champion for Data and AI literacy.
Internationally renowned Cloud Adoption, DevOps/DevSecOps Transformation, and Data Modernization Executive. Industry Analyst, Thought Leader, Technology and Strategy Advisor, Startup Advisor, Keynote Speaker, Blogger, Podcaster, YouTuber and bestselling Author. Author of ‘The DevOps Adoption Playbook’, and ‘DevOps For Dummies, IBM Edition’. Keynote speaker at global IT conferences.
Swapna is a Principal Product Lead at Microsoft, currently leading enterprise search & productivity experiences for enterprise users and has previously led OEM partnerships for OneDrive that served 50M+ users worldwide.
In her previous life, Swapna led products in the fintech space at a Canadian bank, involving R&D innovation in digital payments, cards and emerging technologies. While at RBC, Swapna also led experiences in the financial planning & personal investments space.
As Field CTO for Public Sector at GitHub, Andrew manages strategic initiatives across federal, state and local government and defense, with a focus on AI innovation in software development and system modernization. Andrew is well-versed in a multitude of domains that include application development on Azure, container technologies and federal security and compliance best practices. He has previously contributed to IT standards research managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)
Mrinalini(Mrina)has been "hacking" away at tech projects since the age of 14! Her first project was programming her TI-84 calculator to be able quickly find the hypotenuse of a right triangle. Since then she has been in constant pursuit of employing CS to enable her curiosity; be it was building a text messaging COVID bot or a motion detector for her pup's sleep.She is a UC Berkeley Alumnus and currently works as a Developer Relations Manager at TinyMCE.
Victor Rojo has worked in the software industry for over two decades and is a huge fan of Conversational AI. In his current role as Principal Partner Solutions Architect at AWS, he is the driving force behind AWS's Conversational AI partners competency and is heavily involved in Generative AI initiatives, including those that deal with technologies like Amazon Lex, Amazon SageMaker Jumpstart, Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Transcribe, and LangChain. Before joining AWS, he was part of the team that launched the Amazon Alexa Skills Kit in Mexico and the US for Spanish-language speakers.
Ryan Gomes is a Sr. Data & ML Engineer with AWS Professional Services. He is passionate about helping customers achieve better outcomes through analytics and machine learning solutions in the cloud. At AWS Ryan specializes in Data Lake/Warehouse formation, ETL Orchestration, Infrastructure as Code (IaaC) for Analytics, and ML Operations workloads. Ryan is experienced in transforming Customer Experience & Digital Media industries using automation and ML capabilities. Most recently he's exploring how Generative AI capabilities can improve developer experience and allow organizations to create new, innovative ways for customers to interact with them. Outside work, Ryan enjoys fitness, exploring his inner chef/foodie, and spending quality time with friends and family.
Angel McDowell is a highly accomplished professional with a diverse background in technology, business and military service. With a wealth of experience across various domains, Angel has made significant contributions in both corporate and public sectors. She currently serves as member of the technical staff at Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Angel has honed her experience in cutting edge technological advancements. Before joining the SEI, Angel worked at Amazon – Seller Partner Trust where she launched a program to identify issues with automated enforcement fostering trust and transparency within the seller ecosystem.
Prior to Amazon, she was the Chief of Staff to the SVP of Engineering and Security at a data analytics start-up managing the crucial intersection of engineering and security. In addition to her corporate experience, Angel has a commendable military background as a Signal Officer. She gained invaluable leadership skills, operational experience and commitment to teamwork. She has an MBA and MA in Political Communication from the University of Florida and a BA in Political Communication from the University of Washington.
With over two decades of expertise in software development, Kurt serves as a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at VMWare. A lifelong learner, he is on the cusp of obtaining his Master's Degree in Machine Learning from Georgia Tech, complementing his Bachelor's in Computer Science from Michigan State University.
A fusion of passion and profession, Kurt delves into the world of LLMs and Generative AI, exploring their myriad applications both in his professional sphere and during his leisure hours. Notably, his innovative spirit led him to invent and secure US Patent 11,645,507 B2, titled "Providing Models to Client Devices".
Anshul is a software engineer who has worked in startups ranging from autonomous vehicles to generative AI after graduating from Caltech. Today, he leads the go to market efforts at Codeium, the most advanced AI-powered toolkit for software engineers, which uplevels the work of hundreds of thousands of developers, ranging from hobbyists to Fortune 500 employees.
Nick Dokich is an enterprise voice/chat bot building expert. For Nick, it is all about getting the right information, to the right person, in the right way, at the right time. With over 7 years of experience, Nick is focused on building the world's largest and most complex voice/chat experiences. His bots have interacted with over 1/3 of the US population. Currently working for Google, Nick is passionate about helping enterprises build successful voice experiences. He believes that voicebots have the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with technology, and he is committed to helping businesses realize that potential. He has worked with Fortune 500, start-ups, and government organizations, focused on engaging experiences that produce tangible ROI. His voice/chat experiences contain millions of calls each month while providing immensely engaging experiences.
Noble's professional career merges at the intersection of data ethics and emergent technology. His impact in product leadership spans industries Health, Edtech, International development, and media.
Day-to-day, he leads product strategy for enterprises looking to implement complex applications and responsible artificial intelligence solutions in a human-centered way, including AI bias mitigation, explainability, privacy-preserving approaches, and continuous learning automation to streamline software.
Mr. Ackerson is a Certified AI Product Manager, a Google Certified Design Sprint Master, and a former Google Developers Expert for Product Strategy.
Aydrian Howard is a Hoosier living in the big city. Currently a Principal Product Evangelist at Tabnine, he enjoys mentoring at hackathons and live coding on Twitch. Aydrian began his career helping bring technology to schools by setting up computer labs and training teachers and staff. Education will always an important aspect of his professional journey and strives to pass on knowledge learned from personal experience and those who’ve helped him along the way. He’s a corgi dad to Atticus and is interested in movies, theatre, attending sci-fi/comic conventions, and some light cosplay.
Prashant G Bhoyar is a Microsoft AI MVP, Microsoft Business Applications MVP, Microsoft Certified Trainer ( MCT ), and Microsoft Certified Professional. He currently works as Cloud Solution Architect at Applied Information Sciences ( www.ais.com ). He is a trusted advisor and Subject Matter Expert in Conversational AI, Applied AI, Intelligent Business Process Automation, development, and post-implementation adoption of complex custom solutions in AI, Machine Learning, Bots, Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and SharePoint.
Prashant has supported a multitude of government agencies and non-profit organizations in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Prashant is the co-author of the book “PowerShell for Office 365 “and is the technical reviewer of the book "Pro SharePoint 2013 Administration." He serves on the leadership committee for the Azure Data Fest conference, Artificial Intelligence Fest conference, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning User Group, Northern Virginia SQL User Group, and DC Metro Office 365 User Group.
Allen is a Google Developer Expert for the Google Assistant and other technologies, helping other developers understand how they can apply the skills they already have to this growing technology. He is a Senior Project Engineer at Objective Consulting, co-author of "Designing and Developing for Google Glass", enjoys the history of technology, and has occasionally been known to wear light blue shirts.
Zain Hasan is a Senior Developer Advocate at Weaviate an open-source vector database. He is an engineer and data scientist by training, who pursued his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Toronto building artificially intelligent assistive technologies. He then founded his company developing a digital health platform that leveraged machine learning to remotely monitor chronically ill patients. More recently he practiced as a consultant senior data scientist in Toronto. He is passionate about open-source software, education, community, and machine learning and has delivered workshops and talks at multiple events and conferences.
Jon Modell has 20+ years experience in Software Development, from UX to Data Modeling to DevOps. He has a passion for building sustainable software, reliable data driven feedback and helping teams create and adopt standards. He architected and seeded projects that have grown from 2 engineers to over 100 and inherited legacy applications on the edge of “software rigor mortis”. For the last 2 years, he has been using and promoting Gen-AI, Software Analysis and Process Automation tools to build more secure, sustainable applications at scale.
Brian Sathianathan is the Chief Technology Officer at Iterate.ai. Previously, Sathianathan worked at Apple on various emerging technology projects that included the Mac operating system and the first iPhone.
Scott is the CEO and co-founder of Sublayer, an AI agent framework for software development. Previously he was CTO and co-founder of Sayspring (acq'd by Adobe) and an early engineer at Sidetour (acq'd by Groupon). He's spent over 10 years working professionally in Ruby and as a software engineer and engineering leader primarily focused on creating highly productive small teams, most recently using that expertise to build the team behind Adobe Podcast.
Michael Yee is the founder and lead engineer for Tiga.AI - a company focused on building an AI Copilot for sales teams. He has extensive experience in leveraging GPT technology for the development of LLM-based autonomous agents as well as for classification of intent data signals . He has written articles on AI, web3 and other emerging technologies. In his free time, Michael indulges in drumming and running.
Kanchana Patlolla is a Technical Solutions Manager with focus on Generative AI. She manages solutions built on Generative AI using Google Cloud. She has been responsible for solutions improving operations through Generative AI and creating assistants for Supply chain management.
In her previous role she was an AI/ML Specialist in Google Cloud Platform. She has architected solutions with major public cloud providers in New England customers spanning across Financial services, Retail , HCM and Digital native companies on their quest to cloud particularly in their Big Data and machine learning journey.
In her spare time, she loves to try different cuisines and relax with kids.
Roya is a research scientist who is passionate about advancing artificial intelligence technologies. She is particularly interested in computer vision and pattern recognition and has developed machine learning solutions for various applications, including healthcare, assistive technology, and security.
Roya is also an advocate for women's rights. She is a Google Women's Techmaker Ambassador and a Google Developer Group organizer. She uses these platforms to encourage women to pursue careers in science and technology.
With nearly 30 years in the industry working in a variety of industries including Cloud, Retail, FinTech and others, Christopher's focus has centered on helping organizations deliver code faster and more effectively.
Experiences with companies of all sizes have enabled Christopher to take a business first approach to technology solutions, addressing real-world constraints and opportunities.
He is currently focused on helping Google customers innovate software delivery with AI Infrastructure, Developer Productivity with AI, and AppDev Innovation with AI, solutions.
Madhunika is a Data & ML Engineer at AWS Professional Services, where she helps customers achieve their desired outcomes by providing guidance and best practices on data engineering, machine learning and cloud computing. She is also passionate about discovering generative ai opportunities and how they can transform organizations. Outside of work, she loves traveling and spending time with family and friends.
Sze Wong is a problem solver, entrepreneur, inventor and educator. He is a serial entrepreneur. He started his first company a year before graduating from college. Sze avoids external funding and supports a bootstrap first, slow growth philosophy in business. He believes if one can solve “Mundane Business Problems”, one can be successful in business.
He is the CEO of Zerion Software and creator of the iFormBuilder mobile platform an enterprise field service solution utilized by Fortune 500 companies around the world.
Sze speaks internationally on topics ranging from Entrepreneurship, Data Security, Big Data and Education.
- INC 5000 award (Fastest growing companies in the US) for 5 consecutive years
- 7 US Patents relating to Data and Data Security
- Author of the book Craft your World
Wes Shields, Principal and founder of Synthminds.AI, leads a team of 15 experts, propelling clients' AI strategies and objectives with ethical and innovative solutions. Under his stewardship, his full-service Artificial Intelligence agency provides bespoke services that exceed their strategic needs to an extensive list of clientele from academia to various industries including aviation, customer service, legal, marketing, logistics, education and technology. Shields' exemplary work has earned him and his Synthminds team the "Expert-Vetted" AI Consultant accolade from Upwork, a title conferred on the top 1% of the 18 million professionals on the platform.
Recognized as an accomplished strategist and speaker in the field of AI, he is also the host of the popular podcast, 'How to Talk to AI.' He has a notable presence on Promptbase.com, the premier prompt sales marketplace, where his prompts rank him amongst the top 200 worldwide.
Shields possesses an impressive academic portfolio, holding an MS in Operations Research from the Naval Postgraduate School, an MBA from the Mason School of Business at The College of William & Mary, and a BS in Economics from the esteemed United States Naval Academy. His contributions to academic research, particularly in the domains of complex network science and logistics technology integration, have been published and recognized, earning him graduate certifications from both the Kegan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and the Naval Postgraduate School.
Tyler brings a multidisciplinary approach to the evolving landscape of language models and machine learning. He is the creator of the Innervation Framework, a system designed to facilitate autonomous workflows in enterprise applications through the use of Language Learning Models (LLMs). Innervation aims to be a flexible tool, accommodating a broad spectrum of data inputs and providing adaptive solutions based on specific user needs.
Tyler's background is rooted in a balanced blend of technology and humanities, equipping him with a nuanced understanding of the ethical and practical challenges facing the AI community. This dual focus informs his work, from his contributions to Innervation, to his current research interests in AI Alignment.
The talk "Agentic Organization for Productivity and Alignment," will explore the potential of multi-agent systems to address some of the intrinsic limitations of LLMs. Specifically, he will introduce HASTUR, a polymorphic agentic system designed to adapt dynamically based on the task it's been given and the resources/tools available. This framework represents a powerful tool not only for designing complex multi-agent systems, but also studying complex cognitive architectures and their alignment.
With a keen eye for detail and a commitment to ethical considerations, Tyler offers a unique perspective on how we can navigate the complexities of AI in a way that is both innovative and responsible.
International Tech Liaison, Original Contributing Designer and Builder of the Global Target Analysis System (GTAS). Part of multiple award winning teams, commercial and federal sectors. Military Veteran focused primarily on making applications accessible and uplifting and scaling engineers.