Speakers

As the director for the U. S. Army Research Lab (ARL) Computational & Information Sciences Directorate, Cynthia Bedell is responsible for basic and applied research into Network and Information Sciences, Cyber Defense, and Battlefield Environments. She has technical oversight of the state-of-the art high performance computing assets, to include artificial intelligence computational capabilities, and wide area networking methodologies for ARL, DA, and DoD.  ARL is the U.S. Department of the Army’s corporate laboratory, strategically placed within the Army Futures Command (AFC). ARL’s mission is to “operationalize science for transformational overmatch”. 

Previously, as the Regional Lead for ARL West, Cindy Bedell established the first extended campus for the US Army Research Lab to make ARL and its researchers more accessible to academics as well as business research leaders on the west coast. The strategically focused partnerships goals are to accelerate understanding and capabilities in the field of Human Information Interaction. When she joined CISD in 2014, Ms. Bedell served as the Associate Directorate for Science and Technology as well as the collaborative alliance manager for the Multi-scale Materials Enterprise.

Cindy Bedell brings with her 30 years of military experience. Prior to her military retirement, Colonel Bedell led the US Army RDECOM Forward Element Command – Atlantic in searching across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, for applicable technologies to support current and future warfighters.  She also served as the Director of Science and Technology Support for Current Operations for the System of Systems Integration Office, U.S. Army Research Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM). 

She helped develop science and technology strategies to allow the Army to address technology shortfalls in current and future war-fighting systems. As Product Manager, Sensors and Lasers, Colonel Bedell was responsible for the Soldier-borne night vision devices, thermal sensors and sights, and laser pointers, rangefinders and designators.  She accelerated the engineering design cycles for a number of systems; to include the Enhanced Night Vision Goggle and the 25 micron Vanadium Oxide based Thermal Weapons Sight. 

She earned both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  She served as Assistant Professor in the Civil and Mechanical Engineering Department at the United States Military Academy. In 2004-2005, she attended the University of Texas, as a Senior Service College Fellow.  She holds United States Patent 5,413,649, with Dr. David Dunand for a method to enhance superplasticity for ease in forming complex composites in materials that undergo phase transformation.  

Dr. Timothy Chung joined DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office as a program manager in February 2016. His interests include autonomous/unmanned air vehicles, collaborative autonomy for unmanned swarm system capabilities, distributed perception, distributed decision-making, and counter unmanned system technologies.

Prior to joining DARPA, Dr. Chung served as an Assistant Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and Director of the Advanced Robotic Systems Engineering Laboratory (ARSENL). His academic interests included modeling, analysis, and systems engineering of operational settings involving unmanned systems, combining collaborative autonomy development efforts with an extensive live-fly field experimentation program for swarm and counter-swarm unmanned system tactics and associated technologies. Dr. Chung also served as Deputy Director of the Secretary of the Navy initiative for the Consortium for Robotics and Unmanned Systems Education and Research (CRUSER).

Dr. Chung holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University. He also earned Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. If you would like more information, please click here.

Army Lt. Col. (ret) Philip Root, PhD, was named deputy director of the Defense Sciences Office (DSO) in June 2019. He continues to manage the Squad X program in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office (TTO) where he explores the intersection of AI, autonomy, and military operations. His former TTO programs include the Urban Reconnaissance through Supervised Autonomy (URSA), the ALIAS aircrew autonomy program, the Mobile Force Protection counter-UAS program, the Underminer tactical tunneling program, and the DSO Fast Lightweight Autonomy (FLA) program. He maintains responsibility for the legal, moral, and ethical (LME) analysis of the URSA program as an exemplar for in-depth LME analysis of an autonomous system.

Before coming to DARPA, Root was the director of the Center for Innovation and Engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point where he oversaw cadet and faculty research in support of Army operations. As a research and development officer, Root has deployed to Afghanistan developing and implementing the hardware and software needed to support cloud-based military intelligence analytics. He served two years as an Astronaut Office support engineer at the Johnson Space Center where he had oversight responsibilities for the booster and launch abort system of the Constellation program intended to return Americans to the Moon. Root spent the nearly the first decade of his career as an Apache helicopter pilot in Germany and Korea. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy, and he received his Master of Science and doctorate from MIT at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS). If you would like more information, please click here.

Anika Binnendijk is a political scientist at the RAND Corporation. At RAND, Binnendijk leads research and analysis on a range of topics including national security decisionmaking, European defense, gray zone challenges, national resilience, and emerging defense technologies including cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, and human-machine teaming. She joined RAND from the State Department's Office of Policy Planning, where she was responsible for advising the Secretary of State on policy questions related to Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, the Caucasus, and NATO, and prior to that on Iran and Persian Gulf issues. During her State Department tenure, she served for a rotation as Director for Russia at the National Security Council. From 2009 to 2012 Binnendijk worked at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, first as a special assistant and policy advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, and later the country director for Egypt. Her doctoral dissertation addressed security force responses to civil resistance during post-Communist nonviolent uprisings. If you would like more information, please click here.

Col Tucker "Cinco" Hamilton is a Experimental Fighter Test Pilot by trade and currently the Director of the Department of the Air Force – MIT Artificial Intelligence Accelerator. Cinco started his career as an operational F-15C pilot. He supported multiple Red Flag Exercises and real world Operation Noble Eagle missions where he protected the President of the United States; at times escorting Air Force One. He served as an Air Liaison Officer in Germany where he was the director of operations for a key command and control squadron. While serving in Germany he was hand-selected to be the initial cadre for the first MC-12 squadron in Afghanistan; heralding in one of the first tactical Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance aircraft. He served as the Chief Instructor for 200+ aircrew and accumulated over 400 combat hours directly supporting ground forces. After his time in the MC-12 he attended Test Pilot School (TPS) where he flew 30 different aircraft and took part in the first Automatic Air Collision Avoidance System testing. After TPS graduation he became an F-15C and F-15E Instructor Experimental Test Pilot. He was the lead test pilot on 11 test programs; supporting the newest software, systems, and weapons for the 450+ F-15 fleet. He then served near the Pentagon as a Program Manager for the Joint Strike Fighter, F-35; overseeing the entire flight test effort for the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marines. He managed an 18 test-aircraft fleet of specially equipped F-35s across multiple operating locations with a $3B budget. After his program manager assignment he took command of the 1,000 person unit that executed F-35 flight test. Cinco has more than 2,000 flying hours in the F-35A/B/C, F-15C/D/E, MC-12W, F-18, F-16, A-10, T-38A/C, T-34, T-6, and 20 additional aircraft. Cinco currently lives in Cambridge, MA with his wife and four children.

Chris Meserole is a fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution and director of research and policy of the Brookings Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative. He is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

Meserole's current research focuses on the intersection of emerging technology and international and domestic security. How can democratic societies ensure that new technologies empower liberal regimes rather than authoritarian ones? And how can they prevent the diffusion of new technology from leading to greater war and violence, rather than peace and security? From disinformation campaigns to autonomous weapons, modern technologies have placed longstanding institutions and policies under immense strain. Meserole's research attempts to develop governance models for technology that are more robust to contemporary competition and conflict.

Meserole is a graduate of Harvard, Yale, and the University of Maryland. His work has appeared or been featured in the New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Wired, and other publications.

If you would like more information, please click here.

Mary Wareham is the advocacy director of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch, where she works to advance humanitarian disarmament and enhance protections for civilians from various weapons that inflict unnecessary harm. She coordinated the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots from its inception until March 2021. As advocacy director for Oxfam New Zealand from 2006 to 2008, Wareham contributed to the adoption of the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. She served as senior advocate for the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch from 1998 to 2006, coordinating the Landmine Monitor research initiative to verify implementation of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. Wareham worked for the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation from 1996 to 1997, assisting Jody Williams in coordinating the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), co-laureate of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize together with Williams. Wareham worked a researcher for the New Zealand parliament from 1995 to 1996 after receiving her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from Victoria University of Wellington. If you would like more information, please click here. 

William A. Carter is Global Policy Lead for Responsible AI at Google. Before joining Google he was the Deputy Director of the Technology Policy Program at CSIS, where his research focused on international technology policy and AI innovation and governance. He has testified before the U.S. Congress and spoken at events and conferences around the world, and participated in Track 1.5 dialogues on cyber and AI policy with China, Russia, India, Australia and the EU. Before joining CSIS, he worked at Goldman Sachs, where he covered geopolitical risk and the technology and telecom sectors. He graduated from New York University with a B.A. in economics.

Aaron Boyd is an award-winning journalist currently serving as senior editor for technology and events at Nextgov. He primarily covers federal government IT contracting and cybersecurity issues affecting both civilian and defense agencies. As a lifelong nerd and policy wonk, he feels right at home covering the intersection of technology and policy in the nation's capital. Learn more here.

Patrick Tucker is technology editor for Defense One. He’s also the author of The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move? (Current, 2014). Previously, Tucker was deputy editor for The Futurist for nine years. Tucker has written about emerging technology in Slate, The Sun, MIT Technology Review, Wilson Quarterly, The American Legion Magazine, BBC News Magazine, Utne Reader, and elsewhere. Learn more here.

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Gregory C. Allen is the Director of Strategy and Policy at the Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC). At the JAIC, Mr. Allen advises on development, implementation, and assessment of the DoD AI Strategy and is responsible managing the JAIC’s annual strategic planning process. He ensures the development and reform of policies and processes that accelerate the DoD’s adoption of AI for competitive military advantage.

Before joining the JAIC, Mr. Allen was an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) where he focused on the intersection of Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, robotics, space, and national security. Mr. Allen also previously served as the head of market and competitive strategy at Blue Origin, a space technology manufacturer.

Mr. Allen holds a joint MPP/MBA degree from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School.

Mr. Yll Bajraktari is the Executive Director of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.  Prior to joining NSCAI, he served as Chief of Staff to the National Security Advisor LTG H.R. McMaster, held a variety of leadership roles for former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, and served as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dempsey.  Originally joining the Department of Defense in 2010, he served in the Office of the Undersecretary for Policy as a country director for Afghanistan, and later India. Mr. Bajraktari is the recipient of the Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Medal – the highest award given to career DoD civilian employees.

Dr. Steve Chien is JPL Fellow, Senior Research Scientist, and Technical Group Supervisor of the Artificial Intelligence Group and in the Mission Planning and Execution Section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology where he leads efforts in automated planning and scheduling for space exploration.  Dr. Chien was previously Adjunct Faculty with the Department of Computer Science of the University of Southern California, and a Research Scientist at the Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science & Engineering and a Visiting Scholar with the Department of Computer Science of the University of California at Los Angeles. He holds a B.S. with Highest Honors in Computer Science, with minors in Mathematics and Economics, M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science, all from the University of Illinois.

He is a founder of the International Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space held every other year from 1997 onward and was the Chair or Co-chair  of numerous workshops.  He is former chair of the AIPS Executive Council (2000-2002), was a founding member of the ICAPS Executive Council (2002-2006), and was founding President of the ICAPS Executive Council 2002-2004. He was also a Councilor for the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (2003-2006)

Dr. Chien was a recipient of the 1995 Lew Allen Award for Excellence, JPLs highest award recognizing outstanding technical achievements by JPL personnel in the early years of their careers. In 1997, he received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for his work in research and development of planning and scheduling systems for NASA. He is the Team Lead for the ASPEN Planning System , which received Honorable Mention in the 1999 Software of the Year Competition and was a contributor to the Remote Agent System which was a co-winner in the same 1999 competition. In 2000, he received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal for service and leadership in research and deployment of planning and scheduling systems for NASA. He is the Principal Investigator for the Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment which is a co-winner of the 2005 NASA Software of the Year Award. In 2007, he received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for outstanding technical accomplishments in the development of the Autonomous Sciencecraft deployed on the Earth Observing One Mission and the development of the Earth Observing Sensorweb. In 2011 He was awarded the innaugural AIAA Intelligent Systems Award, for his contributions to Spacecraft Autonomy. In 2011, he was the team co-lead for the Sensorweb Toolbox team, which was awarded Honorable mention in the 2011 NASA Software of the Year Competition. In 2015 He was awarded a JPL Magellan Award as well as the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for his contributions to automated science scheduling for ESA's Rosetta mission.

Dr. Chien has supported the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Defense Science Board, and Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.  In 2018, Dr. Chien was appointed to the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.

Dr. Chien has presented invited seminars on planning, scheduling, and resource allocation as well as on spacecraft autonomy and autonomous systems. He has authored numerous publications. in these areas, and has served as a consultant to several multinational corporations in these areas. His current research interests lie in the areas of: planning and scheduling, machine learning, operations research, and decision theory.

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Dr. Matt Turek joined DARPA's Information Innovation Office (I2O) as a program manager in July 2018, and was named Acting Deputy Director of I2O in June 2021. His research interests include computer vision, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and their application to problems with significant societal impact.

Prior to his position at DARPA, Turek was at Kitware, Inc., where he led a team developing computer vision technologies. His research focused on multiple areas, including large scale behavior recognition and modeling; object detection and tracking; activity recognition; normalcy modeling and anomaly detection; and image indexing and retrieval. Turek has made significant contributions to multiple DARPA and Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) efforts and has transitioned large scale systems for operational use. Before joining Kitware, Turek worked for GE Global Research, conducting research in medical imaging and industrial inspection.

Turek holds a Doctor of Philosophy in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a Master of Science in electrical engineering from Marquette University, and a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Clarkson University. His doctoral work focused on combinatorial optimization techniques for computer vision problems. Turek is a co-inventor on several patents and co-author of multiple publications, primarily in computer vision.

Dr. Xiaoming Liu is the MSU Foundation Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of Michigan State University (MSU). He received Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Mellon University in 2004. Before joining MSU in 2012 he was a research scientist at General Electric (GE) Global Research. He works on computer vision, machine learning, and biometrics especially on 3D vision, and face related analysis. Since 2012 he helps to develop a strong computer vision area in MSU who is ranked top 15 in US according to the 5-year statistics at csrankings.org. He received the 2018 Withrow Distinguished Scholar Award from MSU. He has been Area Chairs for numerous conferences, including CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML, the Co-Program Chair of BTAS’18, WACV’18, and AVSS’21 conferences, and Co-General Chair of FG’23 conference. He is an Associate Editor of Pattern Recognition Letters, Pattern Recognition, and IEEE Transaction on Image Processing. He has authored more than 150 scientific publications, and has filed 29 U.S. patents. His work has been cited over 14000 times according to Google Scholar, with an H-index of 60. He is a fellow of IAPR. More information of Dr. Liu’s research can be found at http://cvlab.cse.msu.edu 

Dr. Rafael ‘Tico’ Ballagas is a Senior Manager of Omnicept AI at HP Labs. His work explores how AI transforms the way we interact with computers, including pioneering new types of brain-computer interfaces by understanding the links between peripheral physiology and state of mind.  He leads the team responsible for building the inference engines for the Omnicept product (see http://hp.com/omnicept). Prior to HP, Tico was the co-founder of Kindoma, the award-winning creator of the mobile communication services around shared activities, like reading and drawing, that help families meaningfully connect with children when they can’t be together. His work consistently garners worldwide media attention with articles featured in the New York Times, The Guardian, and USA Today. He earned his Doctorate in computer science at RWTH Aachen University in Germany, and he also has degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology and Stanford University.

Dr. Boggs is the Chief AI Architect for the Leidos AI/ML Accelerator, where he provides oversight on strategic AI-related R&D efforts. His work focuses on the development, assessment, and deployment of Deep Learning capabilities into production environments. His professional background includes over 20 years of experience in AI/ML, modeling & simulation, and remote sensing for government, DoD, and IC customers. He received a PhD in Computational Sciences & Informatics and a Master’s degree in Applied Physics from George Mason University. He received a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering and bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy and Physics from Virginia Tech. 

Jeri leads the Data Science Business in the Advanced Compute and Solutions group at HP Inc.  In this role, Jeri is responsible for end to end leadership, driving breakthrough innovations, bringing solutions to market, and Business Development for Data Science.  Jeri joined HP in 1990 to work on software solutions and usability. In her 32 years at HP, Jeri has worked in a wide range of businesses focusing on software and image analysis and is now focusing on enabling the use of AI at the edge.

Brianna Havlik is the leader of the XR SW team delivering HP Omnicept, a software solution utilizing AI to create more personalized VR experiences. She has a passion for people development and project execution which she is thankful to be utilizing in the impactful and fun field of VR.

Bob Pette is the vice president of Professional Visualization at NVIDIA. 

Pette, who joined NVIDIA in 2009, brings more than 25 years of experience in visualization, high-performance computing, and multi-touch technologies to his role. His responsibilities include NVIDIA platforms and technologies such as Quadro GPUs, advanced rendering technologies, and professional virtual reality solutions. 

After leaving NVIDIA in 2015, Pette was CEO of Perceptive Pixel, where he successfully steered the company through its acquisition by Microsoft. He was also CEO of TouchShare, where he transformed the multi-touch hardware company to a SaaS software company focusing on geospatial collaboration and visualization. He rejoined NVIDIA in 2015.

Prior to his roles at NVIDIA, Pette held executive management roles at Silicon Graphics.

Pette earned a Bachelor of Science in mathematics from the University of Tampa, and a Bachelor of Science in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Patrick Tucker is technology editor for Defense One. He’s also the author of The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move? (Current, 2014). Previously, Tucker was deputy editor for The Futurist for nine years. Tucker has written about emerging technology in Slate, The Sun, MIT Technology Review, Wilson Quarterly, The American Legion Magazine, BBC News Magazine, Utne Reader, and elsewhere. Learn more here.

Brandi Vincent reports on the federal government’s use of and policies for emerging technologies. Before joining Nextgov, she produced a long-form documentary and helped create news at Snapchat and mixed media at NBC. Brandi was named a 2021 Paul Miller Washington Fellow by the National Press Foundation and was awarded SIIA’s 2021 Jesse H. Neal Award for Best News Coverage. She grew up in south Louisiana and received a master’s in journalism from the University of Maryland. Learn more here.

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