Archives: Speakers

Dr. Sunil Kumar Vuppala is the Director – Data Science, Ericsson GAIA (Global AI Accelerator), Bangalore. Sunil has 15+ years of industrial and research experience in Machine learning, Deep learning, Analytics, Optimization, Internet of Things, Automation, and Smart Grid. Sunil worked in Oracle, Infosys R&D and Philips Research before joining Ericsson.

Sunil received B.Tech (CSE) from JNTU, Hyderabad in 2002 and M.Tech (IT) from IIT Roorkee in 2004 and Ph.D. (IT) from IIIT Bangalore in 2018. He completed his Senior management program from IIM Ahmedabad in 2019. Sunil is a lead inventor of 20 patents (6 granted and 14 pending applications). He has published more than 30 papers in both international journals and conferences and delivered 100+ guest lectures. He is a senior member of ACM and IEEE, fellow of IETE and life member of CSI. He is one of top 10 data scientists in India for 2019.

Madhav Kaushik has 12 years of experience in analytics and data science fields, across different industry verticals, with domain expertise in the Banking and Financial Services industry. At Analyttica, he leads the client solutions and product strategy group, providing data science solutions across the customer life cycle, from acquisition to customer engagement to risk mitigation.

He has spent a significant part of his career in a variety of roles in companies such as Fidelity and Genpact, enabling business impact through the application of analytics and data science. He has a Master’s in Economics from Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune and a BA (Hons) from Delhi University.

Nishant is leading a GPU and Deep Learning Architect team in Compute Ecosystem Engineering at Intel. He has 17 years of industry experience in system software design & development in the area of High Performance Computing (HPC), AI, Big Data & In-Memory Computing areas.

Nishant is an expert in the analytics field with a prime focus to build high-performance architectures using the latest parallel computing technologies. In his previous role at Intel, he was leading Data Center (Cloud, Communication, Enterprise and HPC) software application engineering technical team for Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ) region in the Developer Relation Division.

He has been granted 10+ patents in multiple geographies, published multiple research & white papers, conducted workshops, and delivered invited talks at tier 1 international conferences. Nishant was also selected in the Top 10 scientists list of participants from India for BRICS Young Scientists Conclave 2016. Nishant is a Certified Business Analyst (Data Scientist) from ISB, Hyderabad.

Dr. Geetha Manjunath is the Founder, CEO and CTO of NIRAMAI, a deep tech startup developing a novel solution for detecting early-stage breast cancer. She has over 25 years of experience in IT research and has led many innovative projects in Healthcare and Transportation, especially catering to Emerging Market needs. Until the end of 2016, she was a Lab Director heading Data Analytics Research in Xerox India.  Prior to that, she was a Principal Research Scientist at Hewlett Packard Laboratories for 17 years, and a member of the C-DAC team which built the first commercial supercomputer from India. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Science and management education from Kellogg’s School of Management Chicago.

Geetha has won much international and national recognition for her innovations and entrepreneurial work. She was awarded the Computer Society of India Gold Medal and Karnataka  State Award, was named as one of the top 50 NASSCOM IT Innovators and was also the winner of 2010 MIT Tech Review Grand Challenges She is a Senior Member of IEEE and past Chair of IEEE  Computer Society, Bangalore Chapter. She is the inventor of 15 US patents with more pending grants.

Abhishek Khanna is Vice President, Fraud Risk Decision Science for American Express. He has been a part of American Express since 2004, holding positions of increasing responsibility within the Fraud Risk Management organization, building strategies, capabilities and predictive models to tackle first party and 3rd party fraud.

In his current capacity, Abhishek leads a team of data scientists responsible for deploying Machine Learning and AI solutions to mitigate Fraud risk for American Express Card Members and merchants across the globe. At AXP, Abhishek is also a key voting member of the Modeling Risk Committee. 

Abhishek believes in having an active engagement with the analytics community to understand new trends and identify top talent for recruitment. He also leads efforts to engage with the industry and elevate the brand of American Express.

Abhishek holds a Master of Applied Operations Research from Delhi University. In his free time, he enjoys cycling, is a driving enthusiast and loves to catch up on Formula 1 whenever he can.