Members Opinions
Petros Zerfos, Research Staff Member and Manager - Next Generation Applications group at IBM
Petros' Bio:
Dr. Zerfos is Research Staff Member and Manager of the Next Generation Applications group at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He received his PhD (2005) and MSc (2002) in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and his B.Eng. from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 1999. His research interests primarily lie in the areas of cognitive analytics services in the cloud, cloud computing, and predictive analytics for cloud service management. He has (co-) authored more than 50 papers published in technical journals and international conferences and filed more than 30 patents (13 granted to date), while technology that he has developed with his team in the above areas has been commercialized in products by the IBM Analytics and IBM Cloud business units. Recently, Dr. Zerfos and his team developed and commercialized regulatory compliance analytics technology that uses natural language processing and machine learning to help automate the analysis of regulatory documents for compliance purposes.
Eric Greene, Lead AI Architect at Wells Fargo
Eric's Bio:
Eric Greene is a senior architect for Wells Fargo AI Innovation Lab, specializing in bringing technical innovations in artificial intelligence to fruition. Eric’s passion in applying AI to financial services has been instrumental in creating next generation applications in fraud detection, predictive banking and intelligent operations management. Eric’s current areas of research include integrating cognitive functionality into applications, creating predictive banking models using deep learning techniques and utilizing graph databases for fraud detection.
Presentation from Wells Fargo
Nikolas Badminton, Futurist
Nikolas' Bio:
Nikolas is a Futurist speaker with over 20 years of research, writing and speaking experience.
Nikolas wows audiences with keynote speeches on: The Future of Work; The Sharing Economy; The Future of Cars; The Future of Cities; The Future of AI integrated with Life and Business; The Future of Education; Predictions for 2016, 2020, 2030, 2045, 2050 and beyond. He also produces amazing events, including Future Camp, Cyborg Camp YVR, PRODUCT, From Now, and DARK FUTURES.
Nikolas also runs the popular Vancouver Futurists meetup with over 450 members.
Nikolas regularly appears on the BBC, CBC, CTV, Global News, CHCH, CHED640, CKNW, Roundhouse Radio and writes for the Huffington Post, Forbes, Venturebeat, Betakit, TechVibes, Business.com, Vancouver is Awesome, and Vancity Buzz.
Michael Schuchardt, Managing Director and Financial Services Industry Lead for the West at Protiviti
Michael's Bio:
Michael is a Managing Director in Protiviti’s Risk and Compliance Practice focusing on financial risk management. He is a member of Protiviti’s Financial Services Industry (FSI) leadership team and runs the FSI practice in the Western U.S. He has managed large, complex Risk Consulting and Internal Audit engagements for global financial services clients across a wide spectrum of risk management topics.
Prior to joining Protiviti, he spent over three years with GE Capital managing credit operations and leading internal consulting projects in their Six Sigma program. He also brings external consulting experience with Arthur Andersen, and has held operational leadership positions with several large financial institutions, including Wells Fargo and Ford Credit Corporation.
Pedro Bizarro, CSO at Feedzai
Pedro's Bio:
'A researcher turned entrepreneur’: after a 10-year research career (Computer Science PhD at the University of Madison – Wisconsin, Fulbright Fellow, Marie Curie Fellow and winner of BES Innovation National Competition), Pedro helped co-found Feedzai where he is CSO, leading the Research team in the development of the best fraud prevention algorithms and tools.
Here are the links to the bios and a presentation we received from the speakers. They are listed in the same order as the agenda for the event.
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Jerry Chou, Compliance Director at Lending Club
Jerry's Bio:
Jerry serves as the compliance thought leader who heads the compliance organization at Lending Club. Which comprises of the Personal Loans, Small Business, Auto refinance, Patient finance, Education finance, Investor compliance and Lending Club Advisors (LCA) for the borrower and investor compliance functions. He has over 17 years of experience in the financial services industry developing, implementing, and executing on all facets of the compliance management system. He obtained his MBA from Texas A&M University and his B.A. from Occidental College. He holds the following designations CRCM, CIPP/US and CAMS.