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Author:

Richard Ho

Head of Hardware
OpenAI

Richard Ho is Head of Hardware at OpenAI working to co-optimize ML models and the massive compute hardware they run on. Richard was one of the early engineers working on Google TPUs. Before Google, Richard was part of the D. E. Shaw Research team that built the Anton molecular dynamics simulation supercomputer. Richard started his career as co-founder and Chief Architect of 0-In Design Automation, a pioneer in verification tools for chip design (acquired by Mentor Graphics/Siemens). Richard has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University and M.Eng, B.Sc. from University of Manchester, UK.

Richard Ho

Head of Hardware
OpenAI

Richard Ho is Head of Hardware at OpenAI working to co-optimize ML models and the massive compute hardware they run on. Richard was one of the early engineers working on Google TPUs. Before Google, Richard was part of the D. E. Shaw Research team that built the Anton molecular dynamics simulation supercomputer. Richard started his career as co-founder and Chief Architect of 0-In Design Automation, a pioneer in verification tools for chip design (acquired by Mentor Graphics/Siemens). Richard has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University and M.Eng, B.Sc. from University of Manchester, UK.

Industrial Edge
On-Device ML
Enterprise Use Case

Author:

AK Karan

VP, Advanced Engineering & Innovation
Baxter International

A.K. Karan is the VP of advanced engineering & innovation at Baxter International, a leading medical device supplier. Karan joined Baxter in 2021 and currently leads the strategy for the company’s automation, digital-transformation, and operational-excellence processes. Prior to joining Baxter, Karan held a variety of leadership roles spanning engineering, operations and digital transformation.    

AK Karan

VP, Advanced Engineering & Innovation
Baxter International

A.K. Karan is the VP of advanced engineering & innovation at Baxter International, a leading medical device supplier. Karan joined Baxter in 2021 and currently leads the strategy for the company’s automation, digital-transformation, and operational-excellence processes. Prior to joining Baxter, Karan held a variety of leadership roles spanning engineering, operations and digital transformation.    

Agentic and Gen AI
Enterprise Use Case

Author:

Donald Thompson

Distinguished Engineer
LinkedIn

Donald is currently a Distinguished Engineer at LinkedIn, primarily overseeing the company's generative AI strategy, architecture, and technology. He has more than 35 years of hands-on experience as a technical architect and CTO, with an extensive background in designing and delivering innovative software and services on a large scale. In 2013, Donald co-founded Maana, which pioneered computational knowledge graphs and visual no-code/low-code authoring environments to address complex AI-based digital transformation challenges in Fortune 50 companies. During his 15 years at Microsoft, Donald started the Knowledge and Reasoning group within Microsoft's Bing division, where he innovated "Satori", an internet-scale knowledge graph constructed automatically from the web crawl. He co-founded a semantic computing incubation funded directly by Bill Gates, portions of which shipped as the SQL Server Semantic Engine. Additionally, he created Microsoft's first internet display ad delivery system and led numerous AI/ML initiatives in Microsoft Research across embedded systems, robotics, wearable computing, and privacy-preserving personal data services.

Donald Thompson

Distinguished Engineer
LinkedIn

Donald is currently a Distinguished Engineer at LinkedIn, primarily overseeing the company's generative AI strategy, architecture, and technology. He has more than 35 years of hands-on experience as a technical architect and CTO, with an extensive background in designing and delivering innovative software and services on a large scale. In 2013, Donald co-founded Maana, which pioneered computational knowledge graphs and visual no-code/low-code authoring environments to address complex AI-based digital transformation challenges in Fortune 50 companies. During his 15 years at Microsoft, Donald started the Knowledge and Reasoning group within Microsoft's Bing division, where he innovated "Satori", an internet-scale knowledge graph constructed automatically from the web crawl. He co-founded a semantic computing incubation funded directly by Bill Gates, portions of which shipped as the SQL Server Semantic Engine. Additionally, he created Microsoft's first internet display ad delivery system and led numerous AI/ML initiatives in Microsoft Research across embedded systems, robotics, wearable computing, and privacy-preserving personal data services.

Author:

Mark Kidd

EVP & GM, Data Centers & Asset Lifecycle Management
Iron Mountain

Mark Kidd is an executive vice president and general manager of the Iron Mountain Data Centers and Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) business units. Mark has led the data center organization since its inception in 2013 and additionally took over the ALM organization in early 2023. Mark is responsible for driving growth across the data centers and ALM platforms, including setting strategic direction, leading commercial efforts, and developing expansion opportunities. Prior to his current role, Mark was senior vice president of Enterprise Strategy where he worked alongside the executive team to shape the overall company strategy, directed various internal consulting projects to enhance business unit planning, and managed the Office of the CEO. Over his 19-year tenure with Iron Mountain, Mark has held four additional positions in strategic planning, portfolio management, capital investments, and financial analysis. Prior to joining Iron Mountain, Mark worked at Thomas Weisel Partners, a boutique investment banking firm. Mark graduated with his A.B. in economics from Harvard University.

Mark Kidd

EVP & GM, Data Centers & Asset Lifecycle Management
Iron Mountain

Mark Kidd is an executive vice president and general manager of the Iron Mountain Data Centers and Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) business units. Mark has led the data center organization since its inception in 2013 and additionally took over the ALM organization in early 2023. Mark is responsible for driving growth across the data centers and ALM platforms, including setting strategic direction, leading commercial efforts, and developing expansion opportunities. Prior to his current role, Mark was senior vice president of Enterprise Strategy where he worked alongside the executive team to shape the overall company strategy, directed various internal consulting projects to enhance business unit planning, and managed the Office of the CEO. Over his 19-year tenure with Iron Mountain, Mark has held four additional positions in strategic planning, portfolio management, capital investments, and financial analysis. Prior to joining Iron Mountain, Mark worked at Thomas Weisel Partners, a boutique investment banking firm. Mark graduated with his A.B. in economics from Harvard University.

Author:

Chris Crosby

CEO
Compass Datacenters

After years of working at the intersection of tech and real estate development, Chris Crosby set out in 2011 to take a new approach to data center development. His vision was to focus on greenfield projects and deliver customizable, scalable, sustainable, and low-cost data centers in an expedited time frame.

A testament to Chris’ bold vision and a solid culture centered around four core convictions from which the company has never wavered, Compass has grown at a remarkable rate. From completing its first 1.2 MW data center in 2012 to serving the campus-level hyperscale market with developments underway across the globe less than a decade later, Compass’s success is the result of Chris’ vision, a strong foundation, and a talented team of innovative thinkers.    

In 2023, Compass was recognized as one of Inc. Magazine’s 5000 fastest-growing companies. In the same year, Chris was named EY’s southwest area Entrepreneur of The Year®. Compass continues to drive industry-leading sustainability practices under Chris’ leadership, creating a lasting impact on the data center industry. 

Chris Crosby

CEO
Compass Datacenters

After years of working at the intersection of tech and real estate development, Chris Crosby set out in 2011 to take a new approach to data center development. His vision was to focus on greenfield projects and deliver customizable, scalable, sustainable, and low-cost data centers in an expedited time frame.

A testament to Chris’ bold vision and a solid culture centered around four core convictions from which the company has never wavered, Compass has grown at a remarkable rate. From completing its first 1.2 MW data center in 2012 to serving the campus-level hyperscale market with developments underway across the globe less than a decade later, Compass’s success is the result of Chris’ vision, a strong foundation, and a talented team of innovative thinkers.    

In 2023, Compass was recognized as one of Inc. Magazine’s 5000 fastest-growing companies. In the same year, Chris was named EY’s southwest area Entrepreneur of The Year®. Compass continues to drive industry-leading sustainability practices under Chris’ leadership, creating a lasting impact on the data center industry. 

Author:

Laura Ortman

CEO
Cologix

Laura was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Cologix in 2022 after serving as the company’s President and Chief Revenue Officer since 2018. Laura has over 25 years of experience in cloud and technology global leadership focused on GTM strategy, revenue growth, global customer success, sales and account management, and revenue and client relationship management.  Laura was EVP and Chief Customer Officer at Equinix, and prior she spent nine years at VMware, overseeing the Cloud Services business as co-General Manager and Vice President. Laura held global IT and technical support teams for Jeppesen, a Boeing Company, and served various technical and global leadership positions at Lockheed Martin.  Laura is also on the board of Digital Edge DC. Laura holds an MBA in Information Systems from Regis University and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) in Marketing from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where she played collegiate tennis.

Laura Ortman

CEO
Cologix

Laura was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Cologix in 2022 after serving as the company’s President and Chief Revenue Officer since 2018. Laura has over 25 years of experience in cloud and technology global leadership focused on GTM strategy, revenue growth, global customer success, sales and account management, and revenue and client relationship management.  Laura was EVP and Chief Customer Officer at Equinix, and prior she spent nine years at VMware, overseeing the Cloud Services business as co-General Manager and Vice President. Laura held global IT and technical support teams for Jeppesen, a Boeing Company, and served various technical and global leadership positions at Lockheed Martin.  Laura is also on the board of Digital Edge DC. Laura holds an MBA in Information Systems from Regis University and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) in Marketing from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where she played collegiate tennis.

The semiconductor industry is experiencing unprecedented growth, and this growth comes with significant challenges—more design starts, rising design complexities, shorter time-to-market, and a shrinking talent pool. To address these challenges, semiconductor companies are turning to AI-powered EDA solutions. While mainstream AI & GenAI technologies have seen rapid consumer adoption, adapting these AI technologies for EDA use cases is not straightforward due to stringent quality requirements for semiconductor design. 

Ideally, EDA AI solutions that provide productivity boosts to chip designers and engineers should (a) seamlessly analyze design and verification data, (b) optimize complex processes, and (c) generate better designs. Across these functional areas, we will discuss illustrative ML, GenAI, and Agentic approaches. Additionally, we will also discuss the challenges associated with AI adoption, including data availability, model interpretability, and computational demands. 

Further, we will discuss the grand vision of having a purpose-built centralized EDA AI platform. Such a platform framework can be very powerful by combining sophisticated foundational models or even IC domain-specific foundational models with a multimodal data lake to bring GenAI capabilities to push the boundaries of semiconductor innovation, paving the way for more efficient, scalable, and intelligent design processes.

Join us to explore the capabilities of EDA AI and see what the future holds!

Author:

Ankur Gupta

Senior Vice President and General Manager
Siemens EDA

Ankur Gupta is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Digital Design Creation at Siemens EDA. This includes Test, Embedded Analytics, Digital IC design, Power Optimization, and Power Integrity Analysis. Formerly he was head of Product Management and Applications at Ansys, Semiconductor and Head of Applications Engineering for Digital Implementation & Signoff at Cadence Design Systems.

Ankur has 20+ years of experience in EDA, working on some of the industry’s most innovative Test, Digital Design, Implementation and Signoff products. He holds a Master’s Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, from Iowa State University.

Ankur Gupta

Senior Vice President and General Manager
Siemens EDA

Ankur Gupta is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Digital Design Creation at Siemens EDA. This includes Test, Embedded Analytics, Digital IC design, Power Optimization, and Power Integrity Analysis. Formerly he was head of Product Management and Applications at Ansys, Semiconductor and Head of Applications Engineering for Digital Implementation & Signoff at Cadence Design Systems.

Ankur has 20+ years of experience in EDA, working on some of the industry’s most innovative Test, Digital Design, Implementation and Signoff products. He holds a Master’s Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, from Iowa State University.

Author:

Cynthia Stoddard

CIO
Adobe

As Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Adobe, Cynthia Stoddard oversees Adobe’s global Information Technology and Cloud Operations teams. In her leadership role, Cynthia spearheads a global strategy for delivering services and operations that form the mission-critical backbone for the company. She has 25-plus years of business experience and IT expertise leading large global organizations including Adobe, Netapp, Safeway, and APL Limited in supply chain, retail, and technology development. 

Cynthia Stoddard

CIO
Adobe

As Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Adobe, Cynthia Stoddard oversees Adobe’s global Information Technology and Cloud Operations teams. In her leadership role, Cynthia spearheads a global strategy for delivering services and operations that form the mission-critical backbone for the company. She has 25-plus years of business experience and IT expertise leading large global organizations including Adobe, Netapp, Safeway, and APL Limited in supply chain, retail, and technology development. 

Author:

Barry Cooks

VP of SageMaker AI
AWS

 

Barry Cooks is a global enterprise technology veteran with 25 years of experience leading teams in cloud computing, hardware design, application microservices, artificial intelligence, and more. As Vice President of Technology at Amazon, he is responsible for compute abstractions (containers, serverless, VMware, micro-VMs), quantum experimentation, high performance computing, and AI training. He oversees key AWS services including AWS Lambda, Amazon Elastic Container Service, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, and Amazon SageMaker. Barry also leads responsible AI initiatives across AWS, promoting the safe and ethical development of AI as a force for good. Prior to joining Amazon in 2022, Barry served as CTO at DigitalOcean, where he guided the organization through its successful IPO. His career also includes leadership roles at VMware and Sun Microsystems. Barry holds a BS in Computer Science from Purdue University and an MS in Computer Science from the University of Oregon.

Barry Cooks

VP of SageMaker AI
AWS

 

Barry Cooks is a global enterprise technology veteran with 25 years of experience leading teams in cloud computing, hardware design, application microservices, artificial intelligence, and more. As Vice President of Technology at Amazon, he is responsible for compute abstractions (containers, serverless, VMware, micro-VMs), quantum experimentation, high performance computing, and AI training. He oversees key AWS services including AWS Lambda, Amazon Elastic Container Service, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, and Amazon SageMaker. Barry also leads responsible AI initiatives across AWS, promoting the safe and ethical development of AI as a force for good. Prior to joining Amazon in 2022, Barry served as CTO at DigitalOcean, where he guided the organization through its successful IPO. His career also includes leadership roles at VMware and Sun Microsystems. Barry holds a BS in Computer Science from Purdue University and an MS in Computer Science from the University of Oregon.