SCF 2018 Keynote

Keynote 1: Industry Trends and Practices of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
(06/26 Tuesday, 8:45-10:40 Metropolitan Ballroom)

Keynote Speaker: Ali Arsanjani, VP Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, 8x8 Cloud Communications, USA

About the Speaker

Dr. Ali Arsanjani is Vice-president of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at 8x8, the cloud-native, Unified Communications, Collaboration, Contact Center company. He is responsible for a division focused on delivering practical research innovations to infuse AI in the UCaaS and CCaaS space, to create a delightful and proactive customer experience, Enhanced Context-Aware Communications.

Ali is also CTO of Analytics and Machine Learning at Deep Context, a deep learning startup focused on Amalgamation of data for deeper actionable insights. He is an advisor to startups and boards of larger companies.

In his previous role (1998-2018), he was an IBM Distinguished Engineer & CTO for IBM Analytics Hybrid Cloud and Machine Learning responsible for leading services teams in customized machine learning and analytics solutions. He builds teams of teams across multiple geos in large-scale agile solution development His career spans CTO responsibilities for SOA, BPM, Robotic Process Automation, Analytics, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence/Cognitive Systems.

He delivering actionable business insights thru' an amalgamation of structured and unstructured data using machine learning and artificial intelligence to augment traditional rule engines, custom/legacy systems.
In past jobs he has been CTO for SOA, BPM, Decision Management, Analytics, Content Management.

Ali Arsanjani has chaired standard bodies such as The Open Group and is responsible for co-leading the SOA Reference Architecture, SOA Maturity Model, and Cloud Computing Architecture standards. He & his team specialize in harvesting, developing best-practices for the microservices SOA and Web Services lifecycle on hundreds of projects WW across multiple industries, leading a community of practice of over 6000 people.

Keynote 2: Conversational AI
(06/26 Tuesday, 13:15-14:30 Metropolitan Ballroom)

Keynote Speaker: Professor Mari Ostendorf, University of Washington, USA

Abstract: Conversational AI is a fast advancing area in artificial intelligence (AI). It has a profound impact to AI research and applications. This talk will focus on recent developments in conversational AI and its applications, in particular the international competition of building a conversational AI system on Alexa platform.

About the Speaker

Dr. Mari Ostendorf is an IEEE Fellow, an endowed professor of electrical engineering, and associate vice provost for research at University of Washington Seattle. She is an influential figure in conversational AI and the recipient of IEEE James Flanagan Award in 2018. She and her team won the 2017 Amazon Alexa Prize for being the top team in the international competition of building a conversational AI system on Alexa platform.

Keynote 3: State-of-the-art of Speech Recognition Systems
(06/27 Wednesday, 10:50-12:00 Metropolitan Ballroom)

Keynote Speaker: Dong Yu, Vice general manager at Tencent AI Lab, Tencent, USA

Abstract: In this talk, he will introduce the state-of-the-art of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems. I will start from a brief description of key applications of, and core components in, speech recognition systems. He will then explain the important indicators of good ASR systems and where we stand today. He will further illustrate some of the recent advances, including end-to-end speech recognition systems and cocktail party problems. Possible future directions will also be discussed.

About the Speaker

Dr. Dong Yu is a distinguished scientist and vice general manager at Tencent AI Lab. He is an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Distinguished Scientist.  Prior to joining Tencent in 2017, he was a principal researcher at Microsoft Research. He is well known as the key inventor of the first successful deep learning-based speech recognition system. He has published 2 monographs and 170+ papers and is the inventor/coinventor of 50+ granted and 10+ pending patents. He received IEEE Signal Processing Society 2013 and 2016 best paper award.

Keynote 4: Huawei Cloud Computing Architecture and its Evolution
(06/27 Wednesday, 13:00-14:10 Metropolitan Ballroom)

Keynote Speaker: Jiongjiong Gu, Chief Architect of Huawei Cloud, China

Abstract: Cloud computing has been rapidly changing the global ICT industry landscape, while traditional IT architecture could not keep up with the pace of digital transformation, and silos with resources and information have hindered much needed further improvements in ICT efficiency and effectiveness. This keynote will first discuss how Huawei evolved its cloud architecture to provide critical cloud capabilities. Then it will discuss Huawei’s unique "3+1 Integration” with resources, data and platform, and also the vertical integration that greatly simplifies the integration complexity of complex cloud software and hardware stacks, on-line implementation, and scenario-based, automated operation and maintenance capabilities. Finally, it will discuss some future directions in R&D, especially the envisioned strategic partnerships to build a win-for-all ecosystem.

About the Speaker

Mr. Gu led the technology planning and architecture design of Cloud Operating System (FusionShpere) , Public Cloud solution, Private Cloud & Telco NFVI soluion, as well as hyper-converged infrastructure system (FusionCube), supporting the strategic transformation of Huawei's ICT strategy. He directed Huawei's effort in completing the commercial deployment of Huawei Public Cloud, Deusche Telecom OTC, Orange Flexible Engine, Telefonica B2B public cloud, and China Telecom eCloud 3.0, and hundreds of private cloud projects around the globe. He also used to serve as Chief Architect of Huawei Mobile Softswitch and IMS solution and owned over 30 issued patents worldwide.

Keynote 5:The Orleans Programming Framework for Scalable, Fault-tolerant Services
(06/28 Thursday, 10:35-12:00 Metropolitan Ballroom)

Keynote Speaker: Phil Bernstein, Distinguished Scientist, Microsoft, USA

Abstract:High-scale interactive services demand high throughput with low latency and high availability, difficult goals to meet with a traditional stateless 3-tier architecture. The actor model makes it natural to build a stateful middle tier that achieves the required performance. However, most popular actor frameworks still pass many distributed system and database problems to application developers.

We present solutions to these problems that are integrated into the Orleans programming framework. Orleans introduced the virtual-actor abstraction, which liberates developers from dealing with many reliability and distributed resource management problems. Actors are activated on demand and, if idle for too long, are de-activated. Orleans supports geo-distributed actors, which can be globally single-instanced or replicated, and invoked across many datacenters. It also supports grouping operations on distributed actors into an ACID transaction. We will explain the programming model of these abstractions, aspects of their implementation, and briefly touch on other features, such as stream processing, indexes to support fast querying, and in-place upgrades.

About the Speaker

Philip A. Bernstein is a Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Research. He has published over 150 papers and two books on the theory and implementation of database systems, especially on transaction processing and data integration, which are still the major focus of his research. He is an ACM Fellow, a AAAS Fellow, a winner of ACM SIGMOD’s Codd Innovations Award, a member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences, and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. He received a B.S. degree from Cornell and M.Sc. and Ph.D. from University of Toronto.

Keynote 6: Artificial Intelligence for Speech, Natural Language, and Finance
(06/28 Thursday, 13:15-14:20 Metropolitan Ballroom)

Keynote Speaker: Li Deng, Chief AI Officer of Citadel, USA

Abstract: Artificial intelligence is changing the landscape in speech, natural language and finance – leading to various breakthroughs and new applications. This talk will focus on the recent advances of AI in these three key areas, the technical challenges, and future research directions.

About the Speaker

Dr. Li Deng is an IEEE Fellow and Chief AI officer of Citadel - one of the most successful investment firms in the world. Previously, he was Chief AI Scientist of Microsoft and a partner research manager at Microsoft Research. He is the recipient of IEEE SPS Technical Achievement Award in 2015 for his contribution to deep learning in speech and language processing. He received numerous best paper awards, published several hundreds of papers, and authored or coauthored six technical books on deep learning, speech processing, discriminative machine learning, and natural-language processing.

 

About the Services Society

The Services Society (S2) is a non-profit professional organization that has been created to promote worldwide research and technical collaboration in services innovations among academia and industrial professionals. Its members are volunteers from industry and academia with common interests. S2 is registered in the USA as a "501(c) organization", which means that it is an American tax-exempt nonprofit organization. S2 collaborates with other professional organizations to sponsor or co-sponsor conferences and to promote an effective services curriculum in colleges and universities. The S2 initiates and promotes a "Services University" program worldwide to bridge the gap between industrial needs and university instruction. The Services Society has formed 10 Special Interest Groups (SIGs) to support technology and domain specific professional activities.

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