People

Nomi Bergman '85 is the president of Bright House Networks, the sixth largest cable company in the US. Bergman is an expert in industry innovation that improves customer value and satisfaction. Her genuine attentiveness to both people and culture combined with her ability to strategically navigate quickly evolving technologies and rapidly advancing platforms garners top results. She has served on the FCC Technical Advisory Committee and the CableLabs Technical Advisory Committee and several other boards. She is a Trustee of the University of Rochester.

David L. Ennist '78, PhD, MBA is a biomedical scientist and business leader with broad experience in the biotech and pharma industry. He is currently the CSO at Origent Data Sciences, Inc. Prior to that he was Scientific Expert and Program Team Head for Novartis and Genetic Therapy, Inc., and Principal at DLE Consulting, where he consulted on drug development products from preclinical through phase 4 stages. He has published over 25 scientific articles in journals including Blood, PNAS, Journal of Immunology and Clinical Cancer Research. His expertise encompasses drug development, molecular biology, immunology, oncology, gene therapy, data analytics and research management. Dr. Ennist holds a BA in biochemistry from the University of Rochester.

Dr. Bob Fiete is Chief Technologist and Senior Fellow at L3Harris with over 40 years of experience in imaging science. Previously he was manager of the Imaging Systems Analysis group in Kodak’s Government Systems organization where he pioneered the image chain modeling approach to create digital twins for designing and assessing imaging systems before becoming Director of R&D for ITT (later Exelis) Space Systems Division. He was an adjunct professor at the Center for Imaging Science at RIT, chaired conferences and seminars on imaging and optics, briefed the National Security staff at the White House Situation Room, generated satellite image simulations for President Obama, briefed the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in congressional hearings, and worked with the FBI and DOJ investigating criminal cases involving image exploitation. Dr. Fiete has authored three books, five book chapters, and over forty technical papers. He was the inaugural editor of the SPIE Spotlights book series and has received twelve patents, including one for a method used to focus many of the current imaging satellites and another for an image enhancement method used on the Harry Potter movies. He received his BS degree in Physics and Math from Iowa State University and his MS and PhD in Optical Sciences from the University of Arizona. Dr. Fiete was awarded the Rudolf Kingslake Medal by SPIE, is a Senior Member of OSA and SPIE, and is a Fellow of SPIE.

Dan Gallagher '84 MBA is President and CEO of Soleo Communications. Soleo’s mission is to make useful connections for people everywhere, every day. Its software-as-a-service platform is used by a variety of companies that provide consumer-facing services ranging from mobile applications to directory assistance. SOLEO provides these services with carrier-grade security, reliability and performance. Dan earned an MBA at the Simon School of Business, and Soleo’s headquarters is in the greater Rochester area, in Victor.

Luke Guerrero '05 is the chief operating officer at QbDVision, a company committed to helping pharma and biotech companies efficiently deliver the next generation of therapies. Prior to QbDVision, he was SVP of Technology at Brand Networks, where he developed and grew key practices including media and professional services, project management, analytics, and engineering. Luke previously spent six years at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the company’s CIO Advisory consulting unit, deploying technology and business strategies within the financial services industry across both North America and Asia. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Rochester.

Henry Kautz is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. From 2018 to 2022 he served as Division Director for Information & Intelligent Systems (IIS) at the National Science Foundation, where he led the National AI Research Institutes program. He was a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and was the founding director of the Goergen Institute for Data Science at the University of Rochester. He has been a researcher at AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, and a full professor at the University of Washington, Seattle. In 2010, he was elected President of the Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and in 2016 was elected Chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Section on Information, Computing, and Communication. His interdisciplinary research includes practical algorithms for solving worst-case intractable problems in logical and probabilistic reasoning; automated planning; models for inferring human behavior from sensor data; pervasive healthcare applications of AI; and social media analytics. In 1989 he received the IJCAI Computers & Thought Award, which recognizes outstanding young scientists in artificial intelligence, and 30 years later received the 2018 ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award for career contributions that have breadth within computer science and that bridge computer science and other disciplines. At the 2020 AAAI Conference he received both the Distinguished Service Award and the Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture Award. In 2022 he received the Most Impactful Paper Award from the ACM Intelligent User Interfaces Conference.

John Kelly is senior vice president of corporate operations at Xerox. Prior to Xerox, Kelly founded and served as president and chief executive officer of Niteo Partners Inc. and at Cap Gemini. He is a Trustee of the University of Rochester and serves on the University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business executive advisory council and dean’s forum.

Diane Litman ’86 PhD is a Professor of Computer Science, Senior Scientist with the Learning Research and Development Center, Associate Dean for Mentoring and Development in the School of Computing and Information, and Past (Co-)Director of the Graduate Program in Intelligent Systems, all at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research spans multiple areas of Artificial Intelligence, with a current focus on enhancing the effectiveness of educational technology through the use of spoken and natural language processing techniques. She is a Fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics and was twice elected Chair of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

Mikki Nasch is the co-founder and Vice President of Business Development at Evidation Health, a health data platform. She is also an entrepreneur who has built high-growth technology companies focused on data-driven decisions. She has held leadership roles in Sense Networks, Fair Isaac, Company DNA, BackWeb, and Reuters.

Lloyd Palum '87 joined fuel optimization software company Vnomics in 2013, after more than 25 years of experience in commercial and government electronics. He quickly assembled a world class team of embedded and cloud software developers that have lead Vnomics to become synonymous with “new telematics”. Lloyd’s mobile and signal processing background has also facilitated Vnomics industry recognition as a leader in transportation analytics.

Lloyd’s past experience includes leading the development of secure mobile wireless system design and the implementation of standards based embedded software systems. Prior to this role, he was Director of Digital Signal Processing Systems (DSP) application development at a startup company focused on configurable DSP systems.

Lloyd holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE) from Boston University and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) from University of Rochester. He holds five patents in the field of software and wireless communications. Lloyd has published a number of technical articles and speaks frequently at industry conferences. He is considered a leader in the design of communication and networking systems.

Peter Pirolli joined the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) as Senior Research Scientist in 2017. Previously he was a Research Fellow in the Interactive Intelligence Area at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where he studied human information interaction. Before joining PARC, he was a Professor in the School of Education at UC Berkeley. Peter received his doctorate in cognitive psychology from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985. He received a BS in psychology and anthropology from Trent University. He has been elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the National Academy of Education, and the ACM Computer-Human Interaction Academy. Peter is the author of “Information Foraging Theory: Adaptive Interaction with Information.” Peter is currently an Associate Editor for Human Computer Interaction.

Steve Prevost is the Director of Customer Insights and Market Research at Wegmans Food Markets, Inc. Steve began his career at Wegmans in 1983 while in high school and will be celebrating 40 years with Wegmans in April 2023. After attending the State University of New York at Brockport where he majored in Mathematics and Computer Science, Steve began his full-time career at Wegmans as a Marketing Research Analyst.

Currently, Steve leads a team of analysts who provide insights and decision support to senior leadership, Merchandising, Marketing and Store Operations. This team consists of Business Analysts, Market Research Analysts and Data Scientists.

Dr. Richard (Rick) Rashid '77 MS, '80 PhD founded Microsoft Research in 1991, and between 1991 and 2013, he oversaw the worldwide operations for Microsoft Research, an organization that grew to encompass more than 850 researchers across nearly a dozen labs worldwide. Under Rashid’s leadership, Microsoft Research conducted both basic and applied research across disciplines that include algorithms and theory; human-computer interaction; machine learning; multimedia and graphics; search; security; social computing; and systems, architecture, mobility and networking. His teams collaborated with the world’s foremost researchers in academia, industry, and government on initiatives that expanded the state of the art across the breadth of computing and helped ensure the future of Microsoft’s products. During his time at Microsoft, Dr. Rashid has held the positions of director, vice president, senior vice president and chief research officer.

Before joining Microsoft, Rashid was professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). As a faculty member, he directed the design and implementation of several influential network operating systems and published extensively about computer vision, operating systems, network protocols and communications security. During his tenure, Rashid developed the Mach multiprocessor operating system, which has been influential in the design of modern operating systems and remains at the core of several commercial systems.

Rashid’s research interests have focused on artificial intelligence, operating systems, networking and multiprocessors. He has participated in the design and implementation of the University of Rochester’s Rochester Intelligent Gateway operating system, the Rochester Virtual Terminal Management System, the CMU Distributed Sensor Network Test bed, and CMU’s SPICE distributed personal computing environment. He also co-developed of one of the earliest networked computer games, Alto Trek, during the mid-1970s.

Rashid received master of science (1977) and doctoral (1980) degrees in computer science from the University of Rochester. He graduated with honors in mathematics and comparative literature from Stanford University in 1974.

Danny Sabbah '74, '78 MS, '82 PhD is currently retired from IBM. He has over 40 years experience as a software professional with experience in software management, research and software development. His last assignment was to shepherd the evolution of IBM’s Cloud business as it’s CTO and chief product strategist. He and his team created the PaaS solution that IBM currently sells (Bluemix) on it’s core IaaS offering. Prior to his CTO role, he was General Manager for two of IBM’s multibillion dollar software businesses. He was a founder of IBM’s open source policy and had a leading hand in such projects as Eclipse, Web Services, and CloudFoudry. As a researcher in IBM's Research division in the late 80’s and early 90’s, he did work in AI and was the first ever Director of Software Technology there. His own research work was in the early days of so called “connectionism”, a precursor to today’s deep learning. He has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Rochester and a business degree from the Wharton School of management at U of Penn.

Bart Selman is a professor of computer science at Cornell University. He has (co-)authored over 100 publications, including six best paper awards. His papers have appeared in Nature, Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and a variety of conferences and journals.

Walter obtained his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in statistical signal and image processing, and computer vision with applications in medical imaging. He currently is a Senior VP and the Global Head of AI at SAP, leading the product engineering work for the company's AI initiatives which span across a broad set of business applications.  Previously, Walter spent the last 18 years working at Microsoft, leading global technology teams including being the Vice President of Copilot Applied AI for their business applications. In this capacity, Walter led an interdisciplinary team in developing business-ready AI and machine learning capabilities, shipping many AI features across Microsoft’s portfolio over the years, including applications like Bing Search, Windows, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform. In addition, he founded Bing Predicts which leveraged anonymized and aggregated data to do predictive analytics which were applied both to consumer and business outcomes. Previously, he worked at Blackrock Financial Management as a quantitative portfolio analyst, and at Apple Inc. as a senior codec engineer and scientist. Beyond his work at SAP, Walter currently serves on the ECE Advisory Board at Georgia Tech and is a member of the MIT Technology Review Global Insights Panel.

Kush R. Varshney is an IBM Fellow based at IBM Research's T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY, where he leads human-centered trustworthy AI research as well as innovation in AI governance. He completed a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010. He and his team created the open-source tools AI Fairness 360, AI Explainability 360, AI Factsheets 360, Uncertainty Quantification 360, and Granite Guardian. He co-founded and co-directed the IBM Science for Social Good initiative from 2015-2023. He independently published the book Trustworthy Machine Learning in 2022, which is available at no cost www.trustworthymachinelearning.com.

Dr. Talitha Washington is the Director of the Atlanta University Center Data Science Initiative and a Professor of Mathematics at Clark Atlanta University. As Director, she oversees and provides strategic direction of data science across Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, Morehouse School of Medicine, and Spelman College to increase the number of African Americans with expertise in data science. Washington is a former Program Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society and the Association for Women in Mathematics.