CONFERENCE SPEAKERS

Mike Desens
Vice President and Business Line Executive of z Systems

Mike Desens is the Vice President and Business Line Executive of z Systems, responsible for all facets of IBM’s mainframe business, including strategy, architecture, technology development and overall financial performance. 

Previously, Mike was Vice President of Power and System z Development with responsibility for leading a global hardware and software development team to design, develop and deliver IBM’s System z and Power Systems. He was located in Shanghai, China, with the additional responsibility for leading the Systems and Technology Group’s laboratories in China and Taiwan. 

Mike has over 30 years of experience in the IT industry leading global development and business teams delivering high quality hardware and software solutions. Mike joined IBM in 1984 and has held a wide range of management and executive positions in the strategy, development, manufacturing, marketing and brand management areas.

Mike received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Clarkson University.

 

Dean Marsh
Vice President Client Success
IBM Analytic Solutions

Dean J. Marsh is responsible for the Global Sales of Cloud Solutions for IBM, including hardware, software, services and solutions spanning IaaS, PaaS, Saas, and Cloud Managed Services. 

Dean’s involvement in Cloud Computing began 7 years ago with Tivoli Software, where he managed the Technical Support team responsible for the Cloud Service Management layer. 

From 2010 through 2012, Dean was responsible for Cloud Infrastructure Sales for IBM’s Systems and Technology Group. 

Based in Boston, MA , Dean is a 29 year veteran of IBM and has held numerous executive level positions in Software Development, Marketing, and Sales.

 

James Hendler
Tetherless World
Prof. of Computer & Cognitive Science, RPI

 

James Hendler is the Director of the Institute for Data Exploration and Applications and the Tetherless World Professor of Computer, Web and Cognitive Sciences at RPI. 

 

He also serves as a Director of the UK’s charitable Web Science Trust.

Hendler has authored over 350 books, technical papers and articles in the areas of Semantic Web, artificial intelligence, agent-based computing and high performance processing. 

One of the originators of the “Semantic Web,” Hendler was the recipient of a 1995 Fulbright Foundation Fellowship, is a former member of the US Air Force Science Advisory Board, and is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, the British Computer Society, the IEEE and the AAAS. 

He is also the former Chief Scientist of the Information Systems Office at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and was awarded a US Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Medal in 2002. 

He is also the first computer scientist to serve on the Board of Reviewing editors for Science. 

In 2010, Hendler was named one of the 20 most innovative professors in America by Playboy magazine and was selected as an “Internet Web Expert” by the US government. 

In 2012, he was one of the inaugural recipients of the Strata Conference “Big Data” awards for his work on large-scale open government data, and he is a columnist and associate editor of the Big Data journal. 

In 2013, he was appointed by the governor as the Open Data Advisor to New York State.