Speakers 2025
The Optimized AI Conference (previously the Southern Data Science Conference) has had an amazing, world-class lineup of speakers since 2015. We were traditionally a single-track conference focused purely on technical content . This year we aim to double or triple the number of high-caliber speakers, so you can expect even more actionable content across more domains.
Oreilly - AI Engineering
LR
DL
AIL
Chip Huyen
Author/Founder
DL
MM
CO
Paige Bailey
AI Developer Relations Lead
NVIDIA/Kaggle
DP
DL
MLO
Chris Deotte
Research Scientist/Quadruple Kaggle Grandmaster
CEO
VC
AIL
AIS
Amr Awadallah
Vectara
Voltron Data
DP
VC
AIS
Josh Patterson
CEO/Founder & LLMOps
Home Depot
AIL
CO
Huiming Qu
VP DATA Science,
E-Commerce and marketing
SearchKernel
LR
AIC
AIS
Trey Grainger
CEO/Founder
NVIDIA
MLO
IO
CO
Mark Moyou, PhD
Sr. Solutions Architect & Optimization
Cohere
AIS
LR
AG
Vivek Muppalla
Director AI Engineering
Shopify
DL
LR
AIL
Mike Tamir, PhD
Distinguished Scientist
LR
AIS
AIC
Hamza Farooq
CEO/Founder
Microsoft
IO
MLO
AIL
Mostafa Elzoghbi
Principal Engineering Manager, AI Platform
Coursera
MLO
AIL
Surya Kallumadi
Director of Machine Learning
Aflac
VC
AIS
AIC
Jason Quinley
Ventures Associate
NVIDIA
CO
AIL
Katrina Riehl
Principal Technical Product Manager
Data Science Dojo
CO
AIC
AG
Raja Iqbal
Founder/CEO
PhPartners
AIL
AIC
Patrick Hoeffel
Founder/CEO
GraphAware
DL
MLO
Alessandro Negro
Chief Scientist
DeGirum Corp
LR
Darshil Modi
ML Engineer
Lenovo
MLO
Jose Carlos Huescas Palomeque
Global AI Product leader
Toyota
DL
MLO
Ravi Chandu Ummadisetti
Generative AI Architect
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
LR
IO
Shankar Krishnan
Product Leader - Conversational Analytics
JP Morgan Chase
LR
AIL
Naresh Dulam
Vice President of Software Engineering
Bauplan
DP
MLO
LR
Jacopo Tagliabue
Co-founder/CTO
Teacher
AIL
Jennifer Priestley. Ph.D.
Marist School
Microsoft
AIL
CO
MM
Dona Sarkar
Chief Troublemaker - Copilot and AI Extensibility
Fetch
LR
MM
CO
Murium Iqbal
Staff Applied Scientist
NVIDIA
DP
AIL
IO
Konstantin Cvetanov
Sr. Solutions Architect
The Home Depot
MLO
IO
AIL
Jinzhou Huang
Sr. Director Data Science
Heft IQ
AG
IO
AIL
Learie Hercules
CEO/Founder
Macy's
AIL
Iris Yang Singhania
VP, Enterprise Data Science & Machine Learning Engineering
Deloitte
AG
Jayita Bhattacharyya
Data Scientist
Aperture VC
VC
William Crowder
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Wavicle Data Solutions
AIC
CO
Beverly Wright, PhD CAP
VP Data Science & AI/CAIO
MLO
AG
Maria Shaukat
Machine Learning Engineer
Microsoft
Mark Tabladillo
Cloud Solutions Architect
Schaeffler
DL
IO
Balaji Chandrasekaran
Lead Data Scientist
Blackrock
DL
LR
MLO
Lin Zhang
VP Data Science
Not Diamond
AG
LR
AIS
Tomás Hernando Kofman
Founder & CEO
Kennesaw State University
AIL
AIC
Bill Franks
Director, Center for Data Science & Analytics
Kaiser Permanente
DL
MLO
LR
Faizan Javed
Sr. Director Data Science
Amazon
AG
LR
Abhai Pratap Singh
Senior Product Manager-Technical
MongoDB
AG
IO
Apoorva Joshi
Sr. AI Developer Advocate
NVIDIA/OAI
AIL
AIS
Khalifeh AlJadda
Director of Data Science/Founder
IBM
AIC
AIS
Mohita Ajmera
AI Engineering lead
Regions Bank
D
MLO
Praneeth Reddy Amudala Puchakayala
Data Scientist
UIUC
LR
AG
Lakshmithejaswi Narasannagari
Machine Learning Engineer
Arcade AI
AIS
AG
LR
Sam Partee
Engineer/Co-founder
Salesforce AI
AIL
LR
MLO
Reshma Lal Jagadheesh
Sr. Manager
Neuron7.ai
AIL
LR
MLO
Andrei Lopatenko, PhD
VP AI & Engineering
Lighthouz.ai
AIS
MM
AIL
Srijan Kumar
CEO/Co-founder
Nasim Eftekhari
AIL
AIC
City of Hope
Exec. Director, Applied AI and Data Science
Amazon
DL
MM
CO
Sarfaraz Hussein, PhD
Applied Scientist II
AMEX
AIL
CO
Man Chon (Kevin) U
Vice President, Head of Enterprise Data & AI at American Express
Trace Machina
DL
MM
LR
Marcus Eagan
Co-Founder
Redis
DL
AG
LR
Tyler Hutchinson
Lead Applied AI Engineer
84.51
MM
AIL
LR
Giri Tatavarty
VP AI
NVIDIA
AG
CO
LR
Benika Hall, PhD
Senior Data Scientist
DL
MLO
Monica Song
Product Manager
DL
AG
AIC
Luciano Martins
Google AI Developer Advocate
ADP
Melissa Ngamini
Lead Data Scientist
Agile Hippo
AG
Benjamin Manning, PhD
Owner
Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), Jamaica
AIL
Christopher Reckord
Chairman, National Artificial Intelligence Task Force
Baseten
IO
AG
MLO
Philip Kiely
Head of Developer Relations
Autodesk Inc
LR
AG
Saurabh Aggarwal
Sr Manager & Principal Data Scientist
Meta AI
DL
AG
Suraj Subramanian
Machine Learning Engineer
Instacart
LR
AG
Vinesh Gudla
Staff Machine Learning Engineer
NexGen AI Solutions
AIS
AG
Sid Sriram, MS
CEO/Founder
Walmart
MLO
DL
Shashank Kapadia
Staff Machine Learning Engineer
Microsoft
AIS
Kimetha Dunn M.Ed
AI UX Researcher at Microsoft and Founder of The Fedeila Group
Gradle Inc.
DL
Eyal Wirsansky
Senior Data Scientist/Author