Jeff Herbst
Founding Managing Partner
GFT Ventures
Jeff Herbst is Co-Founding Managing Partner of GFT Ventures, an early stage AI-focused venture capital fund with approximate $140M in assets under management. He brings to the fund over three decades of venture capital, operational, business development and M&A experience. Prior to launching GFT, Jeff spent 20 years as NVIDIA's Vice President of Business Development where he built an ecosystem of accelerated computing applications spanning the domains of AI, Data Science, Autonomous Machines, and Graphics and Visualization. During his tenure at the company, among other things he created the Nvidia GPU Ventures program, overseeing more than 40 global investments and 20 acquisitions valued over $8B. He also led the Nvidia Inception global startup accelerator, now comprised of more than 10,000 AI, Data Science and High Performance computing companies.
Shreesha Jagadeesh
Associate Director of Applied Machine Learning
BestBuy
Shreesha Jagadeesh is an Associate Director of Machine Learning at Best Buy. He leads a multi-national team of ML Scientists and Engineers building models that power the online customer journey through personalized recommendations and ads. He leverages his expertise in Multi-Stage Recommender Systems, LLMs, Embeddings, Multi-Arm Bandits, Offline Policy Evaluation and A/B testing to help digital teams to personalize the experiences deepening customer relationship & driving ecommerce revenue for Best Buy.
Prior to Best Buy, he has worked in a variety of corporate and consulting roles including at Amazon, EY and Cisco building Data Science models in a diverse set of domains spanning HR, Tax, Legal and Supply Chain. Outside of his day job, he advises early-stage startup, reviews pre-publication books/courses and has also published 2 online Data Science courses. He lives in Boston with his wife and enjoys travelling to exotic locations with an Antarctica expedition coming up in December 2024.
Bias in AI systems can lead to harmful outcomes. We investigate methods to increase model transparency and explainability in order to detect, understand, and mitigate risks from bias. Techniques like saliency maps, attention mechanisms, and adversarial testing can shed light on model behavior. Improving model transparency and reducing bias is key to developing safer, more trustworthy AI.
Risk Mitigation
Model Development
Data Scientist
Jon Bennion
Machine Learning Engineer and LLMOps
FOX
Regulation
Ethics
Business Leader
Melissa Harup
SVP and Chief Counsel
Mondelez International
Data
MLOps
Data Scientist
Jürgen Weichenberger
VP of AI Strategy & Innovation
Schneider Electric
Julius Lo
Director
NEUCHIPS
Julius is a Director of NEUCHIPS, an AI ASIC startup for recommendation inferencing. Julius leads NEUCHIPS software team, covering server integration to on-board firmware. Before NEUCHIPS, Julius worked for Global Unchip Corp., hTC and Mediatek, devoting himself to RTL circuit design, Linux device drivers and performance optimization with power balancing in 20+ chips. He is an author of 6+ international patents in the areas of scheduling and data compression.
Rashmi Gopinath
General Partner
B Capital
Rashmi Gopinath is a General Partner at B Capital Group where she leads the fund’s enterprise software practice in cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, devops, and AI/ML sectors. She brings over two decades of experience investing and operating in cutting-edge enterprise technologies. She led B Capital’s investments in over 24 companies such as DataRobot, FalconX, Clari, Phenom People, Synack, Innovaccer, Labelbox, Fabric, 6Sense, Highspot, Pendo, Starburst, OwnBackup, Figment, Perimeter81, Zesty, among others.
Rashmi was previously a Managing Director at M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, where she led investments globally in enterprise software and sat on several boards including Synack, Innovaccer, Contrast Security, Frame, UnravelData, Incorta, among others.
Prior to M12, Rashmi was an Investment Director with Intel Capital where she was involved in the firm’s investments in startups including MongoDB (Nasdaq: MDB), ForeScout (Nasdaq: FSCT), Maginatics (acq. by EMC), BlueData (acq. by HPE), among others. Rashmi held operating roles at high-growth startups such as BlueData (acq. by HPE) and Couchbase (Nasdaq: BASE) where she led global business development, product and marketing roles. She began her career in engineering and product roles at Oracle and GE Healthcare. She earned an M.B.A. from Northwestern University, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Mumbai in India.
Use cases
Business Leader
Nick Nystrom
Chief Technology Officer
Peptilogics
Data
Ethics
Data Scientist
Stavros Zervoudakis
Professor at NYU, and VP of AI
Mutual of America
With over two decades of experience, Stavros Zervoudakis has established himself as a forward-thinking AI leader, sculpting the future with innovative solutions. He boasts an impressive track record, having orchestrated the successful launch of 24 AI initiatives in just three years, including the implementation of a comprehensive Data Science, Analytics, and Machine Learning framework. His work has catalyzed monumental gains, with single projects injecting between $12M and $56M in value. Recently, Stavros has architected and deployed a groundbreaking, modular Generative AI platform, enriching the digital ecosystem with four pioneering GenAI products seamlessly integrated across six input/output systems. At the helm of his company's AI voyage, he not only crafted the strategic blueprint but also executed the firm's inaugural AI/ML model in a mere three months, netting an impressive $450K in savings. A natural leader, Stavros has guided teams towards the creation of business-transforming applications, leveraging the latest in technology through agile, SME-centric project methodologies. His tenure as an academic luminary at NYU and the University of Exeter has allowed him to disseminate his profound AI insights, nurturing the next wave of innovation. His journey with agile startups and industry titans like Citigroup, led him to deep-rooted understanding of regulatory mandates and has empowered him to weave essential privacy and security measures into his strategic visions, product leadership, and advisory roles, benefiting startups and Fortune 500 firms. Beyond the digital realm, Stavros is a connoisseur of photography, an avid reader, a globetrotter, and a passionate creator of a future Einstein. Connect with him on LinkedIn to explore common interests.
Melissa Harup
SVP and Chief Counsel
Mondelez International
John Almasan
Senior Managing Director, Head of AI & Emerging Tech
TIAA
Dr. John Almasan is an accomplished technology executive with over 20 years of experience leading global tech teams and building large-scale data, AI, and cloud platforms for prominent companies such as TIAA, McKinsey & Co., American Express, Bank of America, and Nationwide Insurance. With deep expertise in multi-cloud big data engineering, machine learning, and data science, John is a hands-on practitioner and passionate about enabling the acceleration of AI adoption.
As an adjunct professor at various universities and a member of Arizona State University's Executive Board of Advisors, John is committed to preparing the next generation to meet the future's skillset needs and demands. He focuses on employee cross-training and actively engages in teaching and mentoring students in the field.
John holds two master's degrees in Engineering and Statistics, a Doctor of Business Administration, and has over 20+ patents credited to his name. He has received several awards throughout his career for his contributions to the technology industry.