Speakers

Kevin Walsh is a Director in GAO’s Information Technology and Cybersecurity team. He oversees work related to CIO authorities, systems at DHS and DOD, legacy modernizations, and satellite and space systems. He has led reviews covering topics related to the authorities of federal Chief Information Officers, management of legacy IT systems, coordination of IT contracts, and assessments of IT-related risk.

Kevin joined GAO in June 2006, and led projects related to FITARA and GAO’s High Risk area on Improving the Management of IT Acquisitions and Operations.

Kevin earned a master’s degree in business administration from Virginia Tech. Kevin earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Professor Marios Savvides is the Bossa Nova Robotics Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Carnegie Mellon University and is also the Founder and Director of the Biometrics Center at Carnegie Mellon University and a Full Tenured Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He received his Bachelor of Engineering in Microelectronics Systems Engineering from University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in 1997 in the United Kingdom, his Master of Science in Robotics from the Robotics Institute in 2000 and his PhD from the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at CMU in 2004.

His research is focused on developing core AI and machine-learning algorithms that were successfully applied for robust face detection, face recognition, iris biometrics, and most recently, general object detection and scene understanding.  He and his team were the first in the world to develop a long-range iris capture and matching system capable of acquiring irises up to 12m away in an unconstrained manner. His recent work includes ranking first in Vision for Intelligent Vehicles and Applications competition for hand detection on steering wheels in natural challenging driving conditions.  Some of his recent work can detect heavily occluded faces and objects in general under very challenging real-world conditions, developing low-shot object detection and recognition utilizing only a small number of images.

His early achievements include leading the R&D in CMU's participation in NIST's Open Face Recognition Grand Challenge 2005, ranking first in both Academia and Industry. Professor Savvides and his team also participated in NIST's Iris Challenge Evaluation resulting in CMU to rank first in Academia and second against iris commercial vendors. Professor Savvides was then chosen as one of four researchers to form the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s first Center of Academic Excellence in Science and Technology in the area of biometrics and advanced algorithm development.

Professor Savvides spun off a CMU startup called HawXeye with one of his former students where he served as CTO. As the CTO, he assembled a team and lead the research and productization of efficient, fast, low-form factor AI algorithms making current generation of home security cameras smarter where the AI algorithms developed have been deployed to over 3 million ADT home security cameras with a successful exit.

In the last 24 months, he served as the Chief AI Scientist of Bossa Nova Robotics, where he and his CMU research team, completely re-built from ground-up the AI algorithms for Bossa Nova robots for performing real-time inventory analysis and scaling the autonomous robot deployment of this inventory analysis AI from 20 stores to deploying 500 autonomous robots in 500 retail stores while completely removing any Human-in-the-Loop (HITL).

He served as the Vice President of Education for the IEEE Biometric Council in 2015-2016. He also served on the main steering committee and helped co-develop the IEEE Certified Biometrics Professional program.

He has authored and co-authored over 240 journal and conference publications, including 22 book chapters and served as the area editor of the Springer's Encyclopedia of Biometrics. His IP portfolio includes over 40 filed patent applications with 15 issued patents. He is the recipient of seven Best Paper awards. His work in facial recognition was presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2018. His work has been featured in over 100 news media articles. He is the recipient of CMU’s 2009 Carnegie Institute of Technology (CIT) Outstanding Research Award,  the Gold Award in the 2015 Edison Awards in Applied Technologies for his biometrics work, 2018 Global Pittsburgh Immigrant Entrepreneur Award in Technological Innovation, the 2020 Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award in “Theory of Mind”, the Gold Award in 2020 Edison Awards for Retail Innovations on Autonomous Data Capture and Analysis of On-Shelf Inventory, and the “2020 Outstanding Contributor to AI” award from the US Secretary of the Army Mr. Ryan McCarthy.

Brian Buzzell is Red Hat’s Law Enforcement Solution Advisor for Red Hat’s Federal Public Sector’s GTM and Emerging Technology team.  

Brian has 20 years of experience in architecting, developing, and enabling system integrators to drive adoption of industry leading solutions both as an architect and a pre-sales leader.   

This includes many leading commercial organizations like Apple, Equifax, Bank of America, AT&T, Verizon, JP Morgan Chase, TheHartford and Liberty Mutual and federal civilian customers Department of Homeland Security, GSA, FBI/DOJ, US Clerk of Courts, NASA, and the Department of State and USAID. 

Brian has led and created many data driven and identity focused solutions and experiences during his career including being on the original team to create Oracle Analytics (Hyperion Analyzer) Business Intelligence solution and leading adoption of Oracle technologies at many large scale web content, portal and transactional focused customers as part of Oracle Digital Experience.  He then led teams focused both on commercial and federal customers as part of Oracle’s Solutions Hub with a strong focus on cloud adoption, and platform application services.

After joining Red Hat a year ago and is focused on creating Law Enforcement solutions leveraging Red Hat’s leading emerging technologies with a strong focus on cybersecurity, data analytics and ai/ml, biometrics and other digital operations from a field of complimentary system integrators and ISV related partners.

Brian is very passionate about open-source software, the community of federal systems integrators and fostering the right solution for federal customers. 

He attended the University of Florida where he studied Computer Science and recently moved to Ashburn, Virginia from Florida where he enjoys all outdoor activities (running, biking and hiking) with his wife Tracy and his three kids Ethan, Eliza and Eloise.

Constance Sayers is the President of GovExec Media.

Taka is the first Chief Data Scientist appointed by the Comptroller General of the United States for the Government Accountability Office. He also leads GAO’s newly established Innovation Lab in driving problem-centric experiments across audit and operational teams through novel use of advanced analytics and emerging technologies. As a member of the Senior Executive Service, Taka is also responsible for working with GAO stakeholders to adopt prospective views on oversight impacts of emerging capabilities such as AI, cloud services, blockchains, RPA, 5G, and IoT.

Taka is natively fluent in both Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. In his spare time, he is also a serious classical chamber musician and a competitive tennis player.

Brian Buzzell is Red Hat’s Law Enforcement Solution Advisor for Red Hat’s Federal Public Sector’s GTM and Emerging Technology team.  

Brian has 20 years of experience in architecting, developing, and enabling system integrators to drive adoption of industry leading solutions both as an architect and a pre-sales leader.   

This includes many leading commercial organizations like Apple, Equifax, Bank of America, AT&T, Verizon, JP Morgan Chase, TheHartford and Liberty Mutual and federal civilian customers Department of Homeland Security, GSA, FBI/DOJ, US Clerk of Courts, NASA, and the Department of State and USAID. 

Brian has led and created many data driven and identity focused solutions and experiences during his career including being on the original team to create Oracle Analytics (Hyperion Analyzer) Business Intelligence solution and leading adoption of Oracle technologies at many large scale web content, portal and transactional focused customers as part of Oracle Digital Experience.  He then led teams focused both on commercial and federal customers as part of Oracle’s Solutions Hub with a strong focus on cloud adoption, and platform application services. 

After joining Red Hat a year ago and is focused on creating Law Enforcement solutions leveraging Red Hat’s leading emerging technologies with a strong focus on cybersecurity, data analytics and ai/ml, biometrics and other digital operations from a field of complimentary system integrators and ISV related partners.

Brian is very passionate about open-source software, the community of federal systems integrators and fostering the right solution for federal customers. 

He attended the University of Florida where he studied Computer Science and recently moved to Ashburn, Virginia from Florida where he enjoys all outdoor activities (running, biking and hiking) with his wife Tracy and his three kids Ethan, Eliza and Eloise.

.