MIT AI Conference exemplifies MIT's ethos of "men's et manus" - applying technology for real-world impact. We bring together AI thought leaders spanning academics, engineers, executives, investors, and experts, to drive meaningful discussions on the innovation and future of AI.
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Andy is the co-founder and CEO of PathAI. Andy earned his MD from Brown Medical School and completed residency and fellowship training in Anatomic Pathology and Molecular Genetic Pathology from Stanford University. He completed a PhD in Biomedical Informatics from Stanford University, where he developed one of the first machine-learning based systems for cancer pathology. He’s been certified by the American Board of Pathology in Anatomic Pathology and Molecular Genetic Pathology.
Prior to co-founding PathAI, he was on the faculty of Harvard Medical School in the Department of Pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He has published over 110 papers in the fields of cancer biology, cancer pathology, and biomedical informatics.
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Aparna Chennapragada is a longtime Silicon Valley resident and technology leader who has 25+ years of experience as a technology and AI executive.
Aparna has built and shaped impactful products such as Google search, YouTube, Google Assistant, Google Lens, Robinhood and now Microsoft Copilot. She currently leads Microsoft’s Generative AI initiatives within Microsoft 365, including Copilot, and Microsoft Designer. She leads teams building products that reimagine creativity and productivity in the world of AI and empower customer.
Aparna has served on the board for Fortune 100 companies, and she’s currently an eBay board member and is part of the Technology and Audit committees.
Arun is a core member of Databricks's Field security practice and has 25 years of experience in building data products, including over a decade of experience in building data and AI products. Arun led and co-created the Security Analysis Tool (SAT) and SSPM for Databricks, he is coauthor of Databricks AI Security Framework (DASF). Arun has a Bachelor's in Computer Science, holds Cloud security and AI/ML industry certifications, and contributes to HITRUST and FAIR Institute AI workgroups.
Caroline O’Brien serves as the Chief Data Officer and Head of Product at Afiniti, an enterprise AI company dedicated to transforming customer experience. In her role, Caroline leads the Product Development organization and oversees the Data Governance and Responsible AI programs.
Caroline's experience spans both academia and industry, working as a data scientist at Commonwealth Australia bank and as a postdoctoral fellow MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering & Sciences. Her research focused on using physics- and data-driven methods to understand cardiovascular disease, inform clinical decision-making, and guide the design of medical devices. She holds a doctorate in Biomedical Engineering from the University of New South Wales and a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering and Mathematics from the University of Queensland.
Dan Mason - Dan is a product and technology leader with unusually broad experience -- in 20+ years at companies like ESPN, Shutterstock, Viacom and a variety of startups and scaleups, he’s accumulated a wealth of knowledge about how digital product development works (and doesn’t), and is excited to apply those insights to reimagining the way teams and products work in the age of LLMs. He is a former engineer turned product manager, and the teams he leads are highly cross-functional -- often including product, technology, design, PMO and data science. Dan leads Stride’s AI/LLM practice and is focused on thought leadership, code automation, and generative AI client engagements.
Dr. Daniela Braga is the founder and CEO of Defined.ai, the largest marketplace of ethically sourced training data for AI. With a hybrid background as a linguist and an engineer and 20+ years of experience in AI, she has raised over $80 million of venture capital, making her the woman founder in Generative AI who has raised more capital in the world. Dr. Braga is also involved in shaping the AI strategy of the US and Portugal.
Himanshu Gupta is the CEO and co-founder of ClimateAi- a series-B company that uses AI to help companies and countries adapt their food and water supply chains to climate change. The company's platform was listed in TIME as one of America’s Top GreenTech Companies in 2024 and one of the Best Innovations for 2022, along with OpenAi and others. He has previously worked with Vice President Al Gore and Lord Nicholas Stern, and was the lead emission modeler for India with contributions to the Paris Discussions. Himanshu was listed in Tech Insider's TOP 100 people in Artificial Intelligence globally.
Himanshu's thought leadership has been published by FT, CNN, WSJ, Forbes, BBC, Reuters, and Stanford Social Innovation Review, among 20+ other publications. He has co-authored a book on the low-carbon economy for India and is an MBA/MS graduate of Stanford University School of Business and Engineering.
Jake Seid is General Partner of Ballistic Ventures and brings a unique combination of operating and investing experience, which supports founders as they grow their businesses. Previously, as sole founder of Stone Bridge Ventures, 12 of his early-stage investments grew to become unicorn companies. Prior to that, he was president of TenX/Auction. With 800 people in his reporting organization, he grew the real estate-focused transactional online marketplace to be the industry’s leading platform. The company was acquired for $1.6B. Jake started his tenure in venture capital as a member of the team that launched Lightspeed Venture Partners and became a key Managing Director helping drive the firm’s early growth. Early on, he was a Cisco product lead for the team that commercialized broadband technology, helping the group grow from startup to a $1B revenue run rate in two years and drove many important cybersecurity-focused innovations into his products. He holds an SB in Electrical Engineering and an M.Eng in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. At MIT, he was awarded the Karly Taylor Compton Prize, the highest honor given to a student. He is a long-serving board member of the MIT Club of Northern California. In 2009, he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
Janet Haven is the executive director of Data & Society. She has worked at the intersection of technology policy, governance, and accountability for more than twenty years, both domestically and internationally. Her career has spanned technology start-ups, philanthropic institutions, non-profit organizations and government roles in leadership and board capacities. Janet is a member of the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee (NAIAC), which advises the president on a range of issues related to artificial intelligence.
She writes and speaks regularly on matters related to technology and society, federal AI research and development, and AI governance and policy. Before joining Data & Society, Janet spent more than a decade at the Open Society Foundations leading a global grantmaking program on technology, accountability, and human rights. She holds an MA from the University of Virginia and a BA from Amherst College.
Jay Dawani is co-founder & CEO of Lemurian Labs, a startup at the forefront of general purpose accelerated computing for making AI development affordable and generally available for all companies and people to equally benefit. Author of the influential book "Mathematics for Deep Learning", he has held leadership positions at companies such as BlocPlay and Geometric Energy Corporation, spearheading projects involving quantum computing, metaverse, blockchain, AI, space robotics, and more. Jay has also served as an advisor to NASA Frontier Development Lab, SiaClassic, and many leading AI firms.
Jeff Alstott is the founding director of the Center for Technology and Security Policy (TASP), senior information scientist and professor of policy analysis at RAND. He is an expert at the National Science Foundation, where he directs a program on assessing and predicting R&D investment returns. His government service includes time at the White House as Assistant Director for Technology Competition and Risks at the Office of Science and Technology Policy and Director for Technology and National Security at the National Security Council, as well as in the Intelligence Community as a program manager at IARPA, with a portfolio that included artificial intelligence, analytic methods, biosecurity, and science and technology forecasting. He has worked in academia for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Singapore University of Technology and Design, the World Bank, and the University of Chicago. Alstott's published research covers animal behavior, computational neuroscience, complex networks, design science, statistical methods, and science and technology forecasting. He obtained his doctorate studying complex networks at the University of Cambridge, and his MBA and bachelor's degrees from Indiana University.
Dr. Jennifer Rochlis has spent her career bridging science, technology, and the human element, striving to bring this synergistic approach to her clients. She is the co-founder, President and CEO of Advancing Frontiers, a consulting company providing spaceflight integration services. Prior to that she was the Vice President for Products and Solution Architecture at Teledyne FLIR, where she focused on uncrewed systems for aerospace and defense, integrating advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to enhance overall performance and human-machine interactions. During her 20 years at NASA, she held roles including Division Chief in the Human Health and Performance Directorate, Branch Chief in the Engineering Directorate, and Associate Director Human Resources. She received her B.A. in Physics at Mount Holyoke College, her M.S. and Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She has authored numerous publications and book chapters in the areas of human factors engineering, human-machine teaming, automation and telerobotics, bioastronautics, and human systems integration - including the agency-wide NASA Human Systems Integration Practitioner’s Guide. With 15 years of non-profit board and advisory experience, she is also a STEM career mentor, and an active speaker in the areas of human-centered design, leadership and the integration of humans with emerging technologies.
Dr. Rochlis is also an entrepreneur running her own coaching company that provides integrative coaching for individuals and teams, guiding them toward both personal and professional advancement.
John Nay is the CEO of Norm Ai, the Regulatory AI company. He has more than a decade of research experience at the intersection of AI and law, most recently at Stanford, where he is pioneering A Legal Informatics Approach to AI Alignment as a Fellow at CodeX. John was also the founding CEO of Brooklyn Investment Group, an AI-powered investment software platform with an SEC Registered Investment Adviser subsidiary, where he now serves as Chairman. As a Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt University, he conducted AI research funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Office of Naval Research. After Vanderbilt, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at NYU and an Affiliate at Harvard. As an Adjunct Professor, he created the first AI course at the NYU School of Law. John has authored dozens of research articles on AI and AI policy, many of which have been published in leading technical journals and law reviews. His article “Artificial Intelligence and Interspecific Law” was recently published in Science.
Jonathan Cohen is a VP of Applied Research at NVIDIA, where he leads development of platforms for Large Language Models and SpeechAI. He also oversees development of genomics software and foundation models.
Previously he was a Director of Engineering at Apple, and before that he spent eight years at NVIDIA in a variety of engineering and research roles. Earlier in his career, he specialized in computer graphics as a software developer in the visual effect industry, winning a Scientific and Technical Academy Award in 2007.
Jonathan Rosenberg is the Chief Technology Officer and head of AI at Five9. In this role, he is responsible for the engineering and operational teams building out Five9’s Genius AI portfolio, in addition to direct the overall technology evolution of Five9’s platform. Jonathan has dedicated his thirty-year career to transforming the telecommunications industry. First, from hardware to software, then software to cloud, and now, cloud to AI. He is well-known for his authorship of the SIP protocol, which is the foundation for modern IP-based telecommunications.
Prior to Five9, Jonathan was CTO for the Collaboration Technology Group (CTG) at Cisco Systems, and before that, Chief Technology Strategist at Skype. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from MIT and holds a PhD in electrical engineering from Columbia University.
In 2002 he was named one of the most innovative young technologists in the world by Technology Review magazine. He also was named a ""Top Supergeek"" by CRN and won a Pulver Von Pioneer award for contributions to the VoIP industry. In 2015 he was presented with the Ohio University Strowger Award for transformational innovation in the Telecommunications industry.
Juan Santiago is the founder and CEO of Santex Group, a global technology company. Santex was established in 1999 in San Diego, California, with the aim of solving human, business, and community challenges through technology. Operating in over 18 countries with approximately 500 team members across 100 cities, Santex proudly maintains a carbon-neutral footprint.
In 2012, Juan founded Incutex, the first ""Company Builder"" for tech startups in LATAM. Since 2017, he has led Kalei Ventures, a venture capital fund based in Silicon Valley focused on propelling Latin American talent toward global leadership.
Juan is known for his ability to anticipate the future needs of the businesses and ecosystems he partners with and for leading high-impact projects. He envisions the entrepreneur of the future as someone who places social responsibility and sustainability at the core of their business strategies. This, he believes, will make their products, projects, and decisions sources of significant economic, human, and environmental impact. Juan’s vision deeply influences all his endeavors. In addition to his role at Santex, he actively participates in numerous boards of institutions focused on economic, social, and public-private innovation, both locally and nationally, where he promotes this vision.
Demonstrating his commitment to social transformation, in 2022, Juan founded the Technology with Purpose Foundation. The nonprofit organization is dedicated to addressing social issues by creating opportunities through technology, establishing inclusive spaces, and providing technical training to vulnerable populations. Some examples of the Foundation’s initiatives include reducing the gender gap and facilitating access to a network of specialized mentors.
Juan is actively engaged in intellectual forums that explore the profound and complex changes driven by the most disruptive technological revolution since the dawn of the internet: Artificial Intelligence. Recently, he co-founded AI League For Good, a think tank that brings together experts from diverse fields. Their objective is to assess the threats and opportunities AI presents and foster constructive discussions and debates on the ethical and moral implications of its applications in different contexts.
Juan believes that achieving great things requires taking risks, challenging the status quo, working intelligently, and choosing the right people for the tasks at hand. He has built a path that is not linear but rather an ecosystem of knowledge, people, diverse industries, and many questions.
Follow Juan on LinkedIn to learn more about his career and projects.
Kahini brings to Obvious product and software experience, and a passion for building data and AI-enabled solutions in healthcare, fintech, and enterprise.
Before joining Obvious, Kahini was an investor at Google’s early-stage AI fund, Gradient Ventures. She started her career as software developer writing embedded systems code for the Iridium NEXT Satellite Constellation. Kahini then managed product and sales for an AI group at Booz Allen Hamilton, focused on natural language processing and data science.
Kahini holds a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. She also earned an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Lisa Besserman, Founder of Startup Buenos Aires (acquired), has been named as Business Insider’s “Top 100 Most Influential Women in Tech”, sharing the list with other women such as Sheryl Sandberg, Arianna Huffington, and Marissa Mayer (..she wants to emphasize that she was #94 on the list so don’t get too excited).
Lisa currently serves as the Head of Innovation at JP Morgan Chase Operations, where she works with startups and emerging technologies to solve problems at scale for the largest financial institution in the world.
Prior to her current role, she served as the Managing Director at Expa VC, a $350M venture fund and startup studio investing in pre-seed to series A startups.
Lisa was the Founder and CEO of Startup Buenos Aires, an accelerator program that supported startups and entrepreneurs throughout Latin America.
Lisa has been featured by NBC, Bloomberg TV, Reuters, Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes, and CNN. She has guest lectured on entrepreneurship and innovation to universities such as NYU, Northwestern, Harvard, Berkeley, and the University of Pennsylvania.
She enjoys traveling, mountaineering, playing the guitar (poorly), advising startups (not poorly), and finds it awkward to write about herself in the third person.
"Manolis Kellis is a professor of computer science and artificial intelligence at MIT, and leads the MIT Computational Biology Group at MIT CSAIL and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. His research
seeks to understand the mechanistic basis of human disease, to develop new therapeutics that reverse disease circuitry, and to enable personalized medicine, using AI and machine learning to integrate
genetics and genomics, single-cell epigenomics and transcriptomics, and high-throughput experiments, applied to Alzheimer's, Obesity, Cancer, Schizophrenia, Cardiovascular, and Immune Disorders. He
helped lead several large-scale genomics projects, including Roadmap Epigenomics, ENCODE, Genotype Tissue-Expression (GTEx), and Comparative Genomics projects. He has authored over 280 journal
publications cited more than 160,000 times. He received the US Presidential Award for Science and Engineering by Barack Obama, the Mendel Medal for Outstanding Achievements in Science, the NIH
Director’s Transformative Research Award, the Argo Science Award by the Hellenic President, the Boston Patent Law Association award, the NSF CAREER award, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the
Technology Review TR35 recognition, the AIT Niki Award, and the Sprowls award for the best Ph.D. thesis in computer science at MIT. He has obtained more than 20 multi-year grants from the NIH, and
his trainees hold faculty positions at Stanford, Harvard, CMU, McGill, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and other top universities. He lived in Greece and France before moving to the US, and he studied and conducted
research at MIT, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, and the Cold Spring Harbor Lab. For more info, see: compbio.mit.edu"
Mark Gorenberg has three decades of venture capital experience, funding and serving on the boards of numerous successful start-ups. Mark is the Founder and a Managing Director of Zetta Venture Partners, the first and leading early-stage fund focused only on AI for enterprise. Prior to his career in venture capital Mark served as a software executive, entrepreneur and a member of the first SparcStation team at Sun Microsystems.
Mark is also currently the Chair of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Corporation (Board of Trustees). In 2011, Mark was appointed by President Barack Obama to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a 21-person advisory group of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers.
He graduated from MIT and received Masters Degrees from the University of Minnesota and Stanford University.
Maryam M. Shanechi is the Alexander A. Sawchuk Chair and Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, and Neuroscience Graduate Program at the University of Southern California (USC). She is also the Founding Director of the USC Center for Neurotechnology. She received her B.A.Sc. degree in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto, her S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, and her postdoctoral training in Neural Engineering and Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School and UC Berkeley.
She conducts research at the intersection of engineering, AI, and neuroscience to develop closed-loop neurotechnology and brain-computer interfaces. She is the recipient of several awards including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, NSF CAREER Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, ASEE’s Curtis W. McGraw Research Award, MIT Technology Review’s Top 35 Innovators Under 35, Popular Science Brilliant 10, Science News SN10, One Mind Rising Star Award, and a DoD Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) Award. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and was named a 2023 Blavatnik National Awards Finalist.
Max Kolysh is a serial entrepeneur and investor. Max is currently the CEO of Dover.com, an all-in-one recruiting platform for fast-growing startups. Max previously started Zinc.com. Max graduated from MIT with a degree in CS.
Mikey is the co-founder & COO of Lighty AI, a fast-growing generative AI startup revolutionizing the way we work and live by building agentic workflows that help us be more productive and creative. Before Lighty, Mikey was the Director of Product Strategy & Operations for Google AI and transformed the Research/AI organization to bring the best tech to all Google products and services. Mikey previously led custom machine learning and AI programs at Google Cloud as the co-Founder of the Advanced Solutions Lab and prior to that was the GM of Google Fiber for Business. Before Google, Mikey was a successful business leader for Danaher where, as a General Manager, she had responsibility for $300M+ P&L, delivering significant growth during that tenure.
Mikey earned bachelor’s degrees in economics and management science with an IT emphasis from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master’s in business administration from Harvard Business School. She lives in the Bay area with her husband and their three sons.
Monica Brand Engel, co-founding Managing Partner of Quona Capital, is an investor and entrepreneur, who has spent her career dedicated to broadening financial inclusion globally. She spent her formative years in Silicon Valley, building alternative financing companies targeted at near-bankable businesses. With a desire to apply lessons learned in emerging markets, she moved to South Africa after graduating Stanford Business School to work in venture capital in a nascent ecosystem. From Cape Town, Monica was recruited by Accion as Head of Product and
Innovation to launch new financial services for underserved businesses and consumers globally. Her experience included a period in Mexico with Compartamos Bank, Latin America’s largest microfinance institute (re-branded Gentera Bank following its IPO in 2007). This IPO provided the funds to launch Accion’s Frontier Investments– its first fintech for inclusion fund and the predecessor to the creation of
Quona Capital. Monica leads the Africa, MENA, and Cross-Border investment strategy Quona. She’s served for over a decade as a graduate school professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS and has co-authored and contributed to numerous books. Monica earned an MBA and a MA of Education from Stanford University and a BA with honors in Economics from Williams College. She’s half-Peruvian and blessed with a fantastic husband and twins
Omar Khawaja leads Databricks' Field Security practice globally, teaches at Carnegie Mellon’s CISO program, sits on the boards of HITRUST and FAIR Institute, spent 9 years as CISO of a $26B enterprise and is leading a team that developed an actionable AI security framework for 12,000 enterprise data platform customers at Databricks.
Pablo Di Si was appointed President and CEO, Volkswagen Group of America, and CEO, Volkswagen North American Region, effective Sept. 1, 2022. He is responsible for the Group‘s growth strategy in the U.S., with a portfolio of more than 25 EV models planned by 2030. He assumes leadership for the 20,000+ employees across the region who are helping seize the historic market opportunities across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.
Previously, Pablo was Executive Chairman of Volkswagen South America Region with more than EUR 7 billion in sales and 20,000 employees. He led the Latin American market’s return to profitability for the first time in years, promoting the most significant launch of new products in its history tailored to the region’s needs. He led a restructuring focused on cultural transformation, creating new business models, accelerating digitalization, and improving client satisfaction. Volkswagen became the leader in the A0 SUV segment in Brazil, and the brand remains the largest producer and exporter of light vehicles in the country.
Pablo began his career at Volkswagen Group in 2014 as President and CEO of Volkswagen Argentina. He took over the position of President and CEO of Volkswagen Brazil and Latin America in 2017. Recently, he was appointed Executive Chairman of Volkswagen South American Region.
Previously, he held key positions in finance and business development both in U.S. and Brazil with the Fiat Chrysler Group, Kimberly-Clark, and Monsanto. A graduate of Harvard Business School (AMP 2011), he holds an M.B.A in International Management at the Thunderbird School of Management (2002) and a Degree in Accounting at Northwestern University (1996). Pablo also earned a B.A. in Business Administration with a major in Finance at the Loyola University of Chicago (1994).
Richard Rabbat (MIT S.M. ‘98, Ph.D ‘01) is co-founder and CEO of Lighty AI, an agentic AI company based in Boston and San Francisco. Prior to Lighty, he was a Vice President of Product at Twitter leading the Platform team where he ran the Data Platform product team at Twitter, with focus on big data analytics and ML infrastructure. Richard was co-founder, CEO of Gfycat, the largest GIF platform (top 60 US website, top 250 worldwide). Gfycat was acquired by Snap, Inc.
Richard had led ad monetization at a late-stage startup Tango and grew revenue from $0 to $30M ARR. Richard was a General Manager at Zynga, focused on monetization and platform, where he built the first SaaS platform for gaming. Richard started his career in product management at Google, where he worked on the search team and led a company wide initiative to make the web faster.
Rohini Chakravarthy (MBA ‘99) is Managing Partner at NewBuild Venture Capital, where she invests in early-stage enterprise and supply chain software companies. AI is an important enabling trend for her thematic firm.
Prior to founding NewBuild Venture Capital, Rohini was a venture capitalist at NEA, Intel Capital, and NGP Capital for over 20 years. Over her career, she has invested through several enterprise architectural shifts including wireless networking, big data, cloud computing, and AI. Rohini has served on 15+ boards as an investor board member, and has shepherded many companies through exponential growth, successful acquisitions, and IPOs.
Outside her work as a venture investor, Rohini is deeply involved in alumni engagement and giving, and actively supports women in technology. She is a board member of the MIT Club of Northern California, was on the board of the IIT Madras Foundation for six years, and is a member of Indiaspora, which is a community platform to shape successful US-India relations.
Runik Mehrotra is the Co-Founder & CIO of Vise. Vise is an asset manager that uses artificial intelligence to help financial advisors build, manage, and explain personalized portfolios for their clients. Vise’s mission is to create financial freedom for all with a platform that allows all investors, regardless of age, net worth, or geography, to access personalized, automated, and intelligent investments across all asset classes. The company is leading the industry-wide shift toward Wealth 3.0—the next step beyond mutual funds, ETFs, and index funds into personalized, automated portfolios. The team consists of world-class engineers, Ph.D. quant researchers, and investment strategists from top firms like Citadel, Google, AQR, and Dimensional Fund Advisors.
He and co-founder Samir Vasavada started Vise when they were 16 years old and living in the Midwest. They bootstrapped the company before raising a total of $128 million in venture funding from firms including Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, and Allen & Company.
Runik is an active AI and Quantitative Finance researcher. Alongside research, Runik has consulted with firms such as UBS, BCG, Mass Mutual, Alliance Bernstein, Deutsche Asset Management and others on implementations of Artificial Intelligence in Finance.
Runik attended the Jerome Fisher Program for Management and Technology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and studied Computer Science at the Engineering School.
Runik has been featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 and covered in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, TechCrunch, and many other publications.
Sadegh Salehi is a Principal Machine Learning Scientist at Overjet, a dental AI platform that lets dental professionals to put patients first and operate efficiently. At Overjet, Sadegh leads the advanced development of foundational models for dental X-ray, CBCT, and dental note processing. Previously, he served as a Staff Scientist at Hyperfine, where he led the development of AI-based products for low-field MRI reconstruction and processing.
Throughout his career, Sadegh has played a key role in advancing AI-driven medical image processing, contributing to the successful FDA clearance of five AI-based medical devices. During his PhD at Northeastern University, he worked as a Research Associate with the IMAGINE group at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, where he developed novel AI methods for real-time processing of fetal MRI.
Sam Sinai, PhD, is a co-founder and head of machine learning at Dyno Therapeutics, a gene therapy company founded in 2018 and based in Watertown, MA. Dyno is a pioneer in solving some of the most challenging problems in gene therapy using artificial intelligence, which could help millions of people with untreatable genetic or acquired illnesses. Sam developed the underpinnings of the AI algorithms that Dyno uses to design therapeutic viruses, which were published in leading journals Science and Nature Biotechnology as well as leading AI conferences. Since its founding, Dyno has won Xconomy startup of the year in 2020, Endpoints promising startup in 2021, NEVY Emerging company of the year in 2022, as well as making into Forbes' list of best startup employers in 2022. In 2021, Dyno raised a $100 million series A round and currently employs more than 100 people across North America.
Dyno has so far reached partnership deals worth up to billions of dollars, with global brands such as Roche and Astellas, among others. Before Dyno, Sam received his PhD in Mathematical and Computational Biology from Harvard in 2019, supervised by scientists Martin A. Nowak and George M. Church. Sam received a B.Sc. and M. Eng. from MIT in computer science and AI. He is a co-author on more than 20 scientific publications and holds co-inventorship in several patents. He has also written publicly on issues concerning science, medicine, immigration in general publications such as Slate, Forbes, and Quartz. Sam immigrated from Iran, where he grew up.
Sami Shalabi is a technology serial entrepreneur and inventor. He is currently Founder & CTO of Maven AGI, a Generative AI platform on a mission to reimagine customer experience starting with support. Prior to Maven AGI, Sami led the reinvention of Google News integrating AI and expanding its user base by over a billion users. During his tenure at Google he co-founded Google Play Newsstand (grew it from zero to over a billion users), Google Play Magazines, Google Currents, and Google Friend Connect. In healthcare, Sami was COO at Outcomes4Me, an AI oncology patient empowerment platform leading the expansion of its footprint to over 25% of breast cancer patients in the U.S. Before joining Google, Sami co-founded several companies including Zingku, a venture-backed mobile social startup that was acquired by Google, and Istikana, the largest SVOD platform focused on Arab Indie films. Sami holds over 55 patents and was awarded the 2009 MIT Young Professional Award. He is a partner at the Mentors Fund and is an advisor and startup mentor with the US State Department, MIT, Harvard, Techstars, Endeavor, and others. Sami received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from MIT and started his career at Lotus / IBM.
Shishir Mehrotra is CEO and Co-founder of Coda, the all-in-one platform for business, which combines documents, spreadsheets, and applications into a single canvas. Before founding Coda, he co-ran YouTube as the CPO / CTO, overseeing the YouTube product, UX and engineering. Over his 6 years tenure, he helped grow YouTube to the world's largest video destination, one of Google's largest and fastest growing businesses, and the platform of choice for a new generation of video creators. Prior to Google, Shishir spent 6 years at Microsoft and held leadership roles in the Windows, Office, and SQL Server divisions. Before Microsoft, Shishir was the founding CEO of Centrata. Shishir is an MIT graduate, and was awarded the Technology Review's TR35 (""35 innovators under 35"") award in 2012. He has been an advisor to Spotify since 2015 and joined the board in June 2017.
Somak is the founder and Managing Partner of Armory Square Ventures (ASV), a venture capital firm based in Upstate New York and New York City. ASV leads early-stage rounds in software companies targeting industries in the early stages of digital transformation. ASV manages over $100M in capital across its funds and has generated top decile returns primarily to nonprofits, institutions, and business leaders in New York State. The firm plays a key role in recruiting talent and follow-on capital in secondary markets like Upstate New York. Somak was an early investor in Buffalo-based ACV Auctions (NADSDAQ: ACVA), NYC-based BentoBox (acquired by Fiserv), and numerous other high-growth technology companies. Somak has been operating and investing in early-stage startups in New York State and other emerging venture regions since 1999. Before launching ASV in 2014, he was a partner at Tribeca Venture Partners, where he was instrumental in nearly every investment of its first fund and helped launch its second fund. He started his venture career at Edison Partners. Prior to entering the VC industry, Somak held senior operating roles at Shopping.com (acquired by eBay for over $600M by eBay) and Medtower, a knowledge management company for the life science industry. He has served on the boards of numerous companies in the startup and nonprofit sectors. Somak received his Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and his Master's in Entrepreneurship and Finance from Columbia Business School.
Surojit is CEO and Founder of Ema.co - a cutting edge agentic ai startup headquartered in San Francisco, USA. Ema is funded by notable investors like Accel Partners, Prosus Ventures, Section 32, Wipro Ventures and a host of prominent Silicon Valley Angels.
A seasoned Silicon Valley operator, Surojit has successfully built and scaled multiple industry-leading products within two decades of his career. Prior to his current role, Surojit was Chief Product Officer at Coinbase where he led Product Management, Product Design, User Research, and Program Management and helped lead Coinbase through its 2021 IPO. Previously Surojit was Vice President and Head of Product for Google Shopping, scaling it into a multi-billion dollar business with hundreds of millions of users. Surojit was also a founding member of Google's Mobile Search Ads product, where he guided Google in its transition from desktop to mobile advertising, a move that now generates the majority of Google’s Ad revenue. Surojit has a BS in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and and MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. He has 40 US patents to his name in distributed computing, payments, mobile advertising, and location based technologies. Surojit continues to be an active angel investor in technology companies across Silicon Valley and India.
Tod Hynes is the Founder of Clymate Studios and a Senior Advisor for Climate & Energy at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. As a Senior Lecturer at MIT, he has taught a graduate course called Climate & Energy Ventures since 2008 and co-founded the MIT Climate & Energy Prize in 2007. Over 50 companies have come out of this course, and over 160 teams from 44 countries participated in the 2024 prize. Tod led the effort to create an AI Judge for the ClimaTech Great Global Innovation Challenge and is incorporating a suite of custom AI tools into the CEV course as well as the book he is co-authoring on Climate & Energy Startups. He Founded Clymate Studios and advises and invests in over 20 companies and funds in the climate and energy sectors. He has started several companies since 2002, including XL Fleet (now called Spruce Power), which went public in 2020. He is the Vice Chair of the board of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, the MIT Leadership Partner for Ocean Visions, and an International Advisory Council Observer for Climate Impact X. He previously launched the wind development business at Citizens Energy and co-chaired the Energy Committee for CERC, the organization the greened the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in 2004. Hynes holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Science from MIT.
Professor Thomas Oxley MBBS BMedSc FRACP PhD is a vascular and interventional neurologist and world expert in brain computer interfaces. Dr Oxley is the founding CEO of Synchron, a neurotechnology company based in New York City, having raised over US$145M in capital. Synchron is a clinical stage company developing an endovascular implantable brain computer interface, StentrodeTM. The Synchron BCI is a minimally invasive brain implant for people with debilitating medical illnesses designed to restore autonomy by reconnecting them online in ways that can dramatically improve their lives.
He is a Clinical Instructor, Attending in the Department of Neurosurgery, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City. Dr Oxley has performed over 1600 endovascular neurosurgical procedures, including cerebral aneurysm coiling and clot retrievals in acute stroke. Dr Oxley has published over 120 internationally peer reviewed articles in journals including JAMA Neurology, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Biomedical Engineering, New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. He has over 100 patents filed. He is also Professor of Medicine, University of Melbourne, Australia.
In 2023, Dr Oxley and Synchron completed enrollment in an FDA-approved clinical trial on the Stentrode motor neuroprosthesis that is paving the way towards first FDA marketing approval for an implanted brain computer interface, bringing the total number of patients implanted with the system to 10 worldwide.
Whitney T. Espich was named CEO of the MIT Alumni Association in August 2017.
Prior to this role, she served as Executive Director of Communications, Events, and Donor Relations in MIT's Resource Development group, playing a significant role in launching the public phase of the MIT Campaign for a Better World. Before joining MIT, Whitney worked in Harvard University’s Central Alumni Affairs and Development Office, first as Director of University Development Communications Initiatives and then as Senior Director of Strategic Marketing and Communications. Earlier in her career, she held communications and management positions at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Citigate Cunningham, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (Monticello), and Mary Baldwin College.
Whitney serves on the board of the Council of Alumni Association Executives (CAAE). Originally from Virginia, Whitney holds a BA from Indiana University-Bloomington, an M.A. from the University of Virginia, and an M.Phil. from St. Andrews University in Scotland.
Ziad is Spotify’s VP of Personalization, leading product, engineering and research to provide the world’s most personalized audio experience. During his time at Spotify he has had a considerable impact on bringing flagship, machine learning powered products to hundreds of millions of users worldwide, including AI DJ, daylist, Wrapped, Discover Weekly, Daily Mix, Blend and many more.
Prior to Spotify, Ziad was the Product Lead for Google News, using artificial intelligence to find great reporting done by journalists around the globe. Prior to that, he was the founder of Nextly, a venture-backed curation platform used by top publishers around the world, an Entrepreneur in Residence and Venture Investor with Longworth Venture Partners, and Management Consultant with the Boston Consulting Group. Ziad holds a B.S. and an M.Eng in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.
