Dr. John Gelles is the director of the specialty contact lens division at the Cornea and Laser Eye Institute-Hersh Vision Group and the CLEI Center for Keratoconus in Teaneck, New Jersey. Dr. Gelles’ clinical work is dedicated exclusively to specialty contact lenses and surgical co-management with focus on corneal disease (emphasis in keratoconus), ocular surface disease, and post surgical corneal conditions. Dr. Gelles is also the Chief Emerging Technology officer at CoolDoctors, where his work involves identifying technologies which could be incorporated into the companies eyecare specific telemedicine platform, EyeCareLive, which is purpose built by eyecare professionals to enhance the range and quality of care and service eyecare professionals provide, strengthen the doctor-patient relationship, and improve clinical outcomes. He is currently involved in development of the platform’s real time analytics of patient generated data and in researching the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze ocular conditions to further complement care. He is a graduate of the Pennsylvania College of Optometry
and is an adjunct clinical instructor for State University of New York College of Optometry and New England College of
Optometry. Additionally, he is an optometric consultant, active in clinical research, and is involved in multiple academies,
societies, and associations.
Paul Karpecki, OD, FAAO
Chief Clinical Editor
Review of Optometry
Paul M. Karpecki, OD, FAAO, received his doctor of optometry degree from Indiana University and completed a fellowship in medical cornea and refractive surgery in Kansas City in affiliation with the Pennsylvania College of Optometry. He currently works in corneal services, heads the ocular surface disease clinic and is director of clinical research at the Koffler Vision Group in Lexington, Kentucky.A noted educator and author, Dr. Karpecki has provided over 1000 invited lectures at various meetings domestically and covering 4 continents. He has also authored over 1000 papers in journals, book chapters, eblasts and newsletters.He currently serves as the Chief Clinical Editor for Review of Optometry.
Pearse A. Keane, MD, FRCOphth, is a consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital, London and an NIHR Clinician Scientist, based at the Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London (UCL). Dr Keane specializes in applied ophthalmic research, with a particular interest in retinal imaging and new technologies. Prior to joining Moorfields in 2010 he trained at the Doheny Eye Institute in Los Angeles. He is originally from Ireland and received his medical degree from University College Dublin (UCD).
In January 2015, he was awarded a prestigious "Clinician Scientist” award from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) in the United Kingdom (UK) - the first ophthalmologist in the UK to receive such an award. His remit from this award is to explore the potential of new medical technologies and innovation in ophthalmology, ranging from advanced imaging to artificial intelligence to virtual and augmented realities.
In April 2015, he was ranked no. 4 on a worldwide ranking of ophthalmologists under 40, published in "The Ophthalmologist” journal.
In 2016, he initiated a formal collaboration between Moorfields Eye Hospital and Google DeepMind, with the aim of applying machine learning to automated diagnosis of optical coherence tomography (OCT) images.
Mari Kimura is at the forefront of violinists who are extending the technical and expressive capabilities of the instrument. Mari is widely admired as the inventor of “Subharmonics”, and also premiered many works, including John Adams’s Violin Concerto, appearing as a soloist with the Hamburg Symphony, Tokyo Symphony and Hong Kong Sinfonietta. As a composer, Mari is renown for interactive works, receiving Guggenheim Fellowship, Fromm Award, and a residency at IRCAM in Paris and at Rockefeller Brother’s Fund at Pocantico Center. Mari has beeb recognized as “Immigrants: Pride of America” by the Carnegie Corporation. Recent CDs include Harmonic Constellations (New World Records, American electronic works, 2016) and Voyage Apollonian (Innova Records, own works for motion sensor and Brazilian jazz, 2017). Mari is using “µgic”, a prototype WIFI sensor extracting musical expressions. supported by NYSCA , Governor Cuomo/NY State Legislature and The Rockefeller Foundation. Since summer 2013, Mari directs “Future Music Lab” at the Atlantic Music Festival in Maine. Mari teaches Interactive Computer Music Performance at Juilliard.
Alberto Jimenez
OMS and Payments Leader
IBM Watson Commerce
Currently Mr. Jimenez is the Order Management and Payments Leader for Watson Commerce. In that role, he is responsible for IBM’s global product strategy and execution for the two segments.
Over the years, Mr. Jimenez articles and quotes have been published in major publications including the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, TechCrunch, Re/Code, Reuters, Yahoo Finance, CIO Magazine, USA Today, Finextra, Business Insider and PYMNTS.com. In 2016, he was selected by FinTech News Magazine as one the “20 Biggest names in the Payments industry.”
He is also the author of a number of whitepapers including Citigroup’s Finding the Flows: The Next Challenge for Mobile Wallets in Emerging Markets; IBM’s Mobile Payments Adoption in Developed Markets; IBM’s Cash Replacement through Mobile Money in Emerging Markets; and IBM’s Deconstructing the Mobile Money Value Chain through Cloud.
Mr. Jimenez is a frequent speaker at large international conferences including Money2020 in the US and Europe, Mobile World Congress, Sibos, Cartes, ETA’s Transact15, and Payments Innovation World in Sydney, just to mention a few. He has been an active thought leader in academia and has presented at a number of institutions including: The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, The School International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Prior to IBM, Mr. Jimenez was Director of Global Mobile Solution at Citigroup; he began his career at Wells Fargo Securities doing Equity research. Mr. Jimenez is a graduate from Harvard University and Emory University.
Mr Jimenez lives in New York City with his wife and two children.
IBM Watson Commerce combines business expertise with industry-leading solutions embedded with cognitive capabilities, giving commerce professionals the power to create consistent, precise, personalized experiences that customers want and value. Watson Commerce understands, reasons and learns from the collective knowledge of the organization and business trends.
Alex John London
Professor of Philosophy
Director, The Center for Ethics and Policy
Alex John London is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Ethics and Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Professor London is an elected Fellow of the Hastings Center whose work focuses on ethical and policy issues surrounding the development and deployment of novel technologies in medicine, biotechnology and artificial intelligence, methodological issues in theoretical and practical ethics, and cross-national issues of justice and fairness. His papers have appeared in Mind, Science, The Lancet, PLoS Medicine, Statistics In Medicine, The Hastings Center Report, and numerous other journals and collections and he is co-editor of Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, one of the most widely used textbooks in medical ethics.
Policy Work in Research Ethics and Oversight. Biomedical research is one of the most productive areas for the development of novel technologies. Professor London has helped to shape key ethical guidelines for the oversight of research with human participants for over a decade. From 2012-2016 he was a member of the Working Group on the Revision of CIOMS 2002 International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects. Prior to that he was an expert commentator at three World Medical Association meetings for the revision of the 2013 Declaration of Helsinki. Since 2007 he has been a member of the ethics working group of the U.S. HIV Prevention Trials Network where he was part of the group that drafted the HIV Prevention Trials Network Ethics Guidance for Research. From 2016-2017 he was part of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine Committee on Clinical Trials During the 2014-15 Ebola Outbreak and in 2016 he was appointed to the U.S. Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Blood and Tissue Safety and Availability. He has served as an ethics expert in consultations with numerous national and international organizations including U.S. National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization (here, and here), the World Medical Association (here, and here) and the World Bank.
Ethical Foundations of Trial Design. Professor London has written widely on foundational issues in the ethics and design of research with human subjects. His work on clinical equipoise and the “integrative approach” to risk assessment provides clear operational content to the requirement that risks in research be reasonable and that research should be designed to produce valuable information. His work on the ethics of international research has helped to shape the debate about the requirements of justice, responsiveness to host community health needs, post-trial access, how to define the standard of care and how to use the concept of clinical equipoise in cross-national research.
Ethics of Regulation and Oversight. Professor London has articulated a non-paternalistic foundation for the ethical oversight of research involving human subjects. With colleagues he has written a series of papers articulating a model for understanding clinical translation that identifies key benchmarks for assessing the ethical and scientific merits of proposals to reform research practice. This work emphasizes the role of incentives in aligning the parochial interests of stakeholders with the social mission of producing valid, reliable, and relevant scientific information.
Autonomous systems, surveillance and other novel technologies. Professor London’s work extends to novel technologies outside of biomedical research. He has active research interests in ethical and policy issues related to the development and deployment of autonomous systems, such as self-driving cars. He has also worked on ethical issues surrounding real-time video surveillance and the use of DNA technologies to identify remains in the aftermath of conflict or disaster.
Foundational Ethical Issues. In addition to his work on practical ethical and policy issues, Professor London maintains an active research program on foundational ethical and methodological issues in theoretical and practical ethics. He has explored the value of dignity in Kantian moral frameworks and the challenges this concept poses for rational decision making, in both group and individual choice settings. He has also written about methodological issues in practical ethics.
Honors and Awards. Professor London received the Elliott Dunlap Smith Award for Distinguished Teaching and Educational Service in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. He received the Distinguished Service Award from the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) and a New Directions Fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Professor London is an affiliated faculty member of the Center for Bioethics and Health Law at the University of Pittsburgh and was previously a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard University Program in Ethics and Health. Before joining Carnegie Mellon in 2000, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics and he received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Virginia.
Hilary Mason is Founder and CEO of Fast Forward Labs, a machine intelligence research company, and Data Scientist in Residence at Accel Partners. Previously, Hilary was Chief Scientist at bitly. She co-hosts a DataGotham, a conference for New York's home grown data community, and co-founded HackNY, a non-profit that helps engineering students find opportunities in New York's creative technical economy. She’s on the board of the Anita Borg Institute and an advisor to several companies including Sparkfun Electronics, Wildcard, and Wonder. Hilary served on Mayor Bloomberg’s Technology Advisory Board, and is a member of Brooklyn hacker collective NYC Resistor.
Victor Morrison
Chief Strategy Officer & SVP of Sales
Next IT Healthcare
With over 27 years of healthcare experience, Victor Morrison leads Next IT’s healthcare division as their Chief Strategy Officer and SVP of Sales. For the last five years he has been a driving force behind the emergence of the healthcare focused cognitive technology industry and market, building a foundation for Next IT Healthcare’s Digital Health Coach platform which is uniquely poised to disrupt and transform patient engagement. Prior to Next IT, Victor worked at Teva Pharmaceuticals where he most notably crafted and led their initial specialty pharmacy and federal sales strategy and held various other leadership roles on their payer access teams.
Prof. Kovin Naidoo
BSc, BOptom, OD, MPH, PhD, FAAO, FCOptom(Hon)
Professor Kovin Naidoo is the CEO of the Brien Holden Vision Institute. He is an academic, former anti-apartheid activist and political prisoner, optometrist and an internationally celebrated public health leader. His professional life has been dedicated to delivering eye care to people in need.
Professor Naidoo is an Associate Professor of Optometry at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Visiting Professorial Fellow at University of New South Wales, Australia and Adjunct Faculty at Salus University in Philadelphia. He has published extensively in epidemiology and public health. Recognizing the need to develop research capacity in Africa, Prof Naidoo initiated the formation of the African Vision Research Institute (AVRI). Prof. Naidoo is a member of the World Council of Optometry Executive committee; Founder and Chair of African Vision and former Chair of the Red Cross Air Mercy Services board of Trustees among his many esteemed affiliations.
Prof Naidoo is a Fulbright Scholar and was elected as an Ashoka Fellow and a Schwab Fellow. He was jointly awarded with Professor Brien Holden, the Schwab Social Entrepreneur Award for Africa 2010 at the regional World Economic Forum in Tanzania in recognition of his ability to merge business acumen with social causes. The American Academy of Optometry awarded him the Essilor Award for outstanding contributions to Optometry in 2010, and the British College of Optometrists an honorary fellowship in 2009 for his contribution to the development of optometry in Africa and the developing world. He was African Optometrist of the Year in 2002, then International Optometrist of the Year in 2007. The American Academy has recently announced Prof. Naidoo as the recipient of the Henry B. Peters Memorial Award in Public Health and Environmental Vision for 2016.
Chandra Narayanaswami, PhD
Principal Research Staff Member
Chief Scientist, IBM Blockchain and Supply Chain Research
IBM TJ Watson Research Center, New York
Chandra is currently the Chief Scientist for IBM Blockchain and Supply Chain at IBM Research and is actively involved in core science and technology for several areas of cognitive commerce including real-time personalized customer engagement solutions, alternative and dynamic points of commerce, next generation supply chains, omnichannel inventory and order fulfillment optimization, and retail/mobile payments.
His past work includes - the Linux Watch, SoulPad, and Personal Mobile Hub that included medical monitoring applications, Inverted Browsers (essentially hybrid mobile app model where the browser is included in the app), a navigation system that was the first to provide photographs along with route information, and OpenGL graphics standards.
Chandra has authored more than 40 scientific papers, and served as Guest Editor, Associate Editor in Chief of IEEE publications and as General Chair and Program Committee Member of numerous ACM/IEEE conferences. He holds approximately 100 US Patents and was twice named an IBM Master Inventor. He has a PhD in Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a BTech in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He's a Fellow of the IEEE.
Mark Platshon
Managing Director
Icebreaker Ventures' Autonomous World Fund
Menlo Park, CA
Mark Platshon is the Managing Director and co-founder of Icebreaker Ventures’ Autonomous World Fund. This new multicorporate venture fund invests in the technologies required to create electric, connected, autonomous and shared mobility and all the new businesses and business models that will be enabled by this “Autonomous World”.
Mark serves on SAFE’s Autonomous Driving Task Force (Secure America’s Future Energy). He is a mentor at Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s Cyclotron Road energy incubator. He is a member of the Phillips 66 Technology Advisory Board.
Mark has been Senior Investment Advisor to BMW for the past 5 years, where he played a lead role in establishing i-Ventures and leading investments in Silicon Valley. He is also a venture partner with Birchmere Ventures.
Previously Mark was a serial Silicon Valley CEO for 20 years and a partner with Trident Capital and with VantagePoint Capital Partners.
He is co-founder of Amprius, a Lithium-ion battery company spun out of Stanford. He was an early investor in Tesla. He has served as CEO or Board member of numerous acquired companies, including: EloTouch, the Raychem subsidiary that pioneered the touchscreen; Synxis (acquired by Sabre); Everdream (Dell); Idetek (Idexx); Zing (Sony); and Ancore (Rapiscan).
Mark’s recent investments include: Peloton, Nauto, Amprius, RideCell, Zendrive, Stratim, ChargePoint, Turo, Mapper, PolyPlus, Ionic Materials, Dreamweaver, Cellink, Seurat, Eargo, Estimote, CodeHS, and TapResearch.
Mark earned a BSE in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at the University of Michigan and an MBA from Stanford University. As a Lieutenant in the Navy, Mark studied nuclear engineering at Westinghouse and served on Admiral Rickover’s nuclear submarine engineering staff.
Or Shani
CEO & Founder, Adgorithms
Or Shani is CEO and founder of Adgorithms, creators of Albert, the world’s first and only self-driven marketing and advertising platform. Albert is used by top brands, including Harley-Davidson, EVISU, Made.com, and others.
Or and Adgorithms’ team of 80 data scientists, engineers, and mathematicians spent the last 6+ years “reverse engineering the logic and intuition” of brands and retailers to intimately understand marketers’ thought processes at every step of a multi-channel digital campaign. The result is a fully automated, digital marketing solution that doesn’t just replicate what human marketers do, but increases prospects, conversions and transactions (online or in-store) at a scale not previously possible by even the largest marketing teams.
Or took Adgorithms public in 2015, raising $42 million on the London Stock Exchange (after having previously declined offers from VCs, Private Equity and other investors). In 2016, Adgorithms ranked #98 on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500—a list of the country’s fastest-growing companies—with an annual growth rate of 992%. Adogrithms attributes its growth to overwhelming demand for Albert and “his” ability to alleviate legacy marketing complexities for top brands.
Harley-Davidson, for example, announced in 2016 that it credits 40% of its New York City sales to Albert, which subsequently spurred further adoption by a number of its U.S. and global franchises. And iconic global jeans designer EVISU recently revealed that Albert increased its digital sales ROI by 500% through its year-long, fully automated digital efforts in the U.S., UK, Canada Australia and Singapore.
Or Shani is Chairman and Founder of the AI Marketing Association. He’s also a member of the Forbes Technology Council and the Young Presidents Organization (YPO). He regularly contributes to publications, including Forbes, Wired, AdExchanger, CMO.com, Marketing Land, and others.