Speakers
- Keynote Speakers
- Breakout Speakers
Mike Cramer, Director of Operations Research for Worldwide Restaurant Innovation, McDonald’s
Mike Cramer leads a corporate group of 12 analysts providing decision support for operations at 34,000 restaurants in 118 global markets. His team’s work includes data modeling, ethnography and data mining. Before joining McDonald’s four years ago, Cramer was CLO for Hub One Logistics for eight years. He also has worked for Kellogg’s in Logistics and Competitive Intelligence, and for Tompkins Associates, an engineering consulting and implementation firm. He serves on the Council of Logistics Management, INFORMS and was a 1996 Edelman Award Finalist. He graduated in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in information science from North Carolina State University.
Dick De Veaux, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, Williams College
Richard D. De Veaux is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Williams College in Williamstown, MA. An expert in applied statistics, his professional interests include data mining methodology and its application to problems in science and industry, as well as model selection and other problems for large data sets.
De Veaux holds a doctorate in statistics and a master’s degree in education from Stanford University. A summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University, he earned bachelor’s degrees in civil engineering and mathematics.
Before joining the Williams faculty, he served on the faculty at Princeton and at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has also been a visiting research professor at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique in Montpellier, France; the Université Paul Sabitier in Toulouse, France; and the Université René Descartes in Paris. In 2006-2007 he was the William R. Kenan Jr. Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University.
De Veaux is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the author of many research papers. He is co-author, with Paul Velleman and David Bock, of several critically acclaimed textbooks, including Intro Stats and Stats: Data and Models.
Stephen Few, Principal, Perceptual Edge
Stephen Few has worked for 25 years as an IT innovator, consultant and teacher. Today, as Principal of the consultancy Perceptual Edge, Few focuses on data visualization for analyzing and communicating quantitative business information. He provides consulting and training services, writes the monthly Visual Business Intelligence Newsletter, speaks frequently at conferences, and teaches in the MBA program at the University of California, Berkeley. His most recent book has just been published: Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis. Few has also authored two additional books: Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten and Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data.
Malcolm Gladwell, Author, Outliers
Malcolm Gladwell has an incomparable gift for interpreting new ideas in the social sciences and making them understandable, practical and valuable to business and general audiences alike. He’s become so successful at this that, in 2005, Time Magazine named Malcolm one of its 100 Most Influential People. Gladwell's most recent book promises to have an even greater impact on both business and society than his first two books. In Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell suggests an exciting new approach to helping people succeed by using the factors that really foster success. Outliers debuted as a #1 bestseller for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, Barnes & Noble and Publisher's Weekly.
He is the author of two other New York Times #1 bestsellers—The Tipping Point and Blink. With his first book Gladwell embedded the concept of “the tipping point” in our everyday vocabulary and gave organizations new tools for understanding how trends work. In Blink he analyzed first impressions—the snap judgments that we all make unconsciously and instinctively—and he explores how we can master this important aspect of successful decision-making.
Gladwell is a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine. His editor describes his work as a new genre of story, an idea-driven narrative that’s focused on the everyday and combines research with material that’s more personal, social and historical. He was previously a reporter for the Washington Post.
John Sall, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President, SAS
John Sall is a co-founder and Executive Vice President of SAS, the world's largest privately held software company. He also leads the JMP business division, which creates interactive and highly visual data analysis software for the desktop.
Sall joined Jim Goodnight and two others in 1976 to establish SAS. He designed, developed and documented many of the earliest analytical procedures for Base SAS® software and was the initial author of SAS/ETS® software and SAS/IML®. He also led the R&D effort that produced SAS/OR®, SAS/QC® and Version 6 of Base SAS.
In the late 1980s, Sall noticed a niche that SAS software was not filling. Researchers and engineers – whose jobs didn't revolve solely around statistical analysis – needed an easy-to-use and affordable stats program. A new software product, today known as JMP®, was launched in 1989 to dynamically link statistical analysis with the graphical capabilities of Macintosh computers. Now running on all platforms, JMP continues to play an important role in modeling processes across industries as a desktop data visualization tool. It also provides a visual interface to SAS in an expanding line of solutions that includes SAS Visual BI and SAS Visual Data Discovery. Sall remains the lead architect for JMP.
Sall was elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1998 and has held several positions in the association's Statistical Computing section. He serves on the board of The Nature Conservancy, reflecting his strong interest in international conservation and environmental issues. He also is a member of the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Board of Trustees. In 1997, Sall and his wife, Ginger, contributed to the founding of Cary Academy, an independent college preparatory day school for students in grades 6 through 12.
Sall received a bachelor's degree in history from Beloit College in Beloit, WI, and a master's degree in economics from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL. He studied graduate-level statistics at NCSU, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2003.
François Bergeret, PhD, General Manager
Ippon Innovation (France)
François Bergeret, PhD in statistics, has worked for 15 years with Motorola and Freescale in yield enhancement and zero defect teams. He is now managing Ippon Innovation, a statistics and process optimization consulting firm based in Toulouse, France, which develops advanced software using JMP.
Alberto M. Colombi, MD, MPH, Corporate Medical Director
PPG Industries Inc.
Alberto Colombi earned a Doctor of Medicine degree and an Occupational Medicine Specialty degree from the University of Milan and a Master of Public Health from the University of Pittsburgh. Since 2002, he has served as adjunct associate professor in the Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences at theUniversity of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health. He is a devoted advocate for health and productivity management (HPM).
Alexandre Couvrat, Senior Engineer
SOITEC
Alexandre Couvrat, Senior Engineer for SOITEC, a high-tech semiconductor company based near Grenoble, France, is responsible for yield enhancement in a large-volume manufacturing unit. He deals daily with a huge amount of data, discovering links between process and product parameters in order to increase yield.
Steve Figard, PhD, Senior Scientist
Abbott Laboratories
Steve Figard received a bachelor’s degree in neurobiology from Cornell University, a master’s in chemistry from Northern Illinois University and was finally ejected with a PhD in biochemistry from Florida State University in 1984. After a two-year postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory, he escaped to Abbott Laboratories in Chicagoland, where he’s been hiding ever since, developing automated in vitro diagnostic immunoassays. Having traumatized his PhD major adviser by consistently yet unsystematically changing multiple variables simultaneously between experiments, Figard became proficient over the ensuing years in a methodology that actually requires him to do so.
Marie Gaudard, PhD
Partner,
North Haven Group
Marie A. Gaudard is a Professor Emerita of statistics, having been on the faculty at the University of New Hampshire for 27 years. She has been heavily involved in statistical consulting since 1981. She has worked with a variety of clients in transactional areas, including government agencies and financial departments, as well as with manufacturers, including automotive, printing, paper, plastics, precision steel, paving companies and shipyards. She has also been involved in the analysis of medical data. She has extensive experience in providing consulting and training courses for business and industry in the areas of Six Sigma and data mining. Gaudard holds a PhD in statistics from the University of Massachusetts. She currently resides in Florida.
Joe Herman
Johns Hopkins University
Joe Herman completed MD and MS degrees from the University of Maryland, his internship and residency at the University of Michigan and returned to Johns Hopkins to specialize in pancreatic cancer treatment. He is the Director of Radiation Oncology and Molecular radiation Sciences at the Hopkins Pancreas Cancer Clinic.
Ed Hutchins, Sustaining Engineering Manager
Cree
Ed Hutchins is a Sustaining Engineering Manager in the Wafer Operations Division of Cree in Research Triangle Park, NC, an innovator and manufacturer of semiconductors that enhance the value of LED solid-state lighting, power and communications products by significantly increasing their energy performance. Hutchins’ specific role focuses on the manufacture of the common element in these diverse products, known as silicon carbide (SiC) wafers. He’s happy to be doing the type of work he studied as a materials science and engineering major at Cornell University. Hutchins has been using JMP extensively in his job for about nine years, and realizes that if he applied JMP to his personal life as much as he does to his professional, he might actually be a successful investor.
Bradley Jones, PhD, Director of JMP Research and Development
SAS
Bradley Jones, PhD, is Director of Research and Development in the JMP division of SAS. At JMP he developed the Custom Designer, a general and powerful tool for generating optimal experimental designs. Before joining JMP, he was the Chief Statistician at The MathWorks Inc., where he wrote the Statistics Toolbox for MATLAB. Before that he was a founding partner of Catalyst Inc. where he created the first interactive graphical computer tool for the design and analysis of experiments. He is the inventor of the prediction profile plot - an interactive graph for exploring multivariate response surfaces. He is also holds of a patent on the use of designed experiments for minimizing registration error in multi-layer laminated circuit boards. He holds a master’s degree in statistics from Florida State University and a PhD in applied economic sciences from the University of Antwerp, Belgium.
Edward Kram, PE, President
Blue Arc Energy Solutions Inc.
Edward Kram is an entrepreneur specializing in power systems and electric reliability. He is the owner and principal consultant for Blue Arc Energy Solutions Inc., which has been providing consulting services, reliability analysis and research for the electric utility industry since 2001. He has been an industry leader in reliability standards development. Prior to his consultancy, he worked for 20 years in all facets of the electric power delivery chain, including nuclear construction and delivery operations for a large investor-owned utility. Kram is a University of Illinois electrical engineering graduate, a registered Professional Engineer and a member of several industry organizations. In his spare time, he competes in triathlons and is actively applying the principles of performance measurement to his sporting avocation. When he is not working or training, he likes to spend time with his family skiing or hiking in our national parks.
Don Lifke, MS, Process Engineer
Sandia National Labs
Don Lifke is a Senior Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. Lifke is a Master Black Belt at Sandia and serves on Sandia’s Lean Six Sigma Council. His current assignment is in manufacturing operations engineering. He also teaches the statistics modules for the corporate black belt and green belt training programs. Lifke’s experience includes work with employers such as AlliedSignal, the Department of Energy, Medtronic and Emcore. He also teaches business statistics courses at the University of Phoenix. Lifke received his BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering from the University of New Mexico.
Brian McFarlane, Senior Consultant
Predictum Inc.
Brian McFarlane was educated at Glasgow University, Scotland, where he received an honors degree in physics and a diploma in education. He has more than 20 years experience in the semiconductor industry where he has worked in areas from design to final test. He has four US patents to his credit for innovation in logic chip processing. McFarlane joined Predictum Inc. as a senior developer in 2007, where he has worked on JSL scripting projects designed for both academic and manufacturing applications.
Kelly M. McVearry, PhD
Georgetown University Medical Center
Kelly McVearry is a clinician-scientist who studies fetal exposure to neuroactive drugs, with an emphasis on cognitive deficits and autism spectrum outcomes. She is the principal investigator of the FEND-ASD Study (Fetal Exposure to Neuroactive Drugs – Autism Spectrum Outcomes) and a co-investigator for the NEAD Study (www.neadstudy.org ). She recently launched the Hypatia Project, which promotes science education for girls (www.neurochocolate.com). McVearry obtained a PhD with distinction in neuroscience from Georgetown University, an EdM in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University and an MA in special education from American University. The research presented in this paper was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the NIH, the Medical College of Georgia and Georgetown University's General Clinical Research Center.
Christopher K. Mitchell, MS, Research Analyst
Army National Guard Bureau
A 2003 Master of Science graduate from the organizational development program at Case Western Reserve University, Christopher Mitchell brings a diverse background of leadership, training development and organizational development. His career spans 20 years of military service and more than 10 years of related professional experience in the fields of instructional technology, technical-based training and adult education. Currently, Mitchell is a Research Analyst for General Dynamics Information Technology, working with the Army National Guard Bureau.
Chris Nachtsheim, PhD, Professor and Chair of Operations and Management Sciences
University of Minnesota
Christopher Nachtsheim is Chair of Operations and Management Sciences at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. He specializes in experimental design, regression and analysis of variance, and has co-written several related books, including Applied Linear Regression Models and Applied Linear Statistical Models. He teaches university courses and consults with government, oil and gas, consumer products, and the banking industries on experimental design and employing data analysis for decision making. He has served as an examiner for the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award. Nachtsheim holds a PhD in operations research from the University of Minnesota and an MS in operations research and statistics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Jim Nelson, Manager IT, Yield Management Systems
Freescale Semiconductor Inc.
Jim Nelson began his career as a resident research analyst for North Dakota State University. From there he went to work for SAS. He later transitioned into the education arena, as the Director of the SAS Austin branch office. He joined Motorola in 1991 and then Freescale Semiconductor when it was spun off from the company. Nelson has been using SAS products since 1973, becoming a JMP user in the ‘90s.
José G. Ramírez, PhD, Industrial Statistician
W.L. Gore and Associates Inc.
José G. Ramírez, PhD, is an industrial statistician at W.L. Gore and Associates, makers of Gore-Tex® and other innovative products, where he is responsible for promoting business intelligence through innovative analytical applications. He works closely with associates to help them make sense of data and, through collaborative education, helps promote statistical thinking and JMP usage. He has been using JMP and SAS for more than 15 years as a catalyst to turn data into knowledge. He received a degree in mathematics from Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela, and an MS in applied statistics and a PhD in statistics both from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was one of the founding members of the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1998 (at SUGI 23) he won the best contributed statistics paper, and in 2002 he was awarded the SAS User Feedback Award. His book, Analyzing and Interpreting Continuous Data Using JMP: A Step-by-Step Guide, written with his wife, Brenda Ramírez, will be out in the fall of 2009.
Phil Ramsey, PhD
Partner,
North Haven Group
Philip J. Ramsey is an industrial statistician with more than 20 years of experience in applying statistical methods to products, processes and R&D programs within such diverse industries and disciplines as aerospace, chemicals, metals, microelectronics, automotive, apparel, construction, nondestructive testing and general manufacturing. Ramsey has held the following relevant industrial positions: Senior Engineer for Materials and Processes Development, McDonnell Douglas, St. Louis; Staff Scientist/Statistician, Alcoa Technical Center, Pittsburgh; and Corporate Statistician/Senior Engineer, Shipley Division of Rohm & Haas, Marlboro, MA. He also has extensive experience with the design and delivery of industrial training courses in statistical process control, design of experiments and response surface methods for process optimization. Currently, he splits his time between industrial consulting and teaching statistics at the University of New Hampshire. Ramsey holds a PhD in statistics from Virginia Tech.
Rob Reul, MS, Founder and Managing Director
Isometric Solutions LLC
Robert Reul is the Founder and Managing Director of Isometric Solutions LLC, an international market research firm that specializes in customer intelligence research in business-to-business markets. Reul has more than 20 years of experience in quality management systems and performance improvement. He has BS and MS degrees in business and management science and has been a practicing Six Sigma black belt since 1986. Reul is a tenured Quality System Consultant, a certified Quality System Lead Auditor and a three-term Quality Award Senior Examiner. Isometric Solutions is an industry-leading research concern that provides worldwide research for firms seeking world-class standards. Isometric Solutions has optimized powerful methods of leveraging the Internet to gather and deliver satisfaction and loyalty information. Isometric Solutions provides actionable information about customers, employees and suppliers at a highly competitive price.
Manny Uy
Johns Hopkins University
Manny Uy obtained his PhD in physical chemistry from Case-Western Reserve University and held postdoctoral fellowships at Rice University and the Free University of Brussels. He has published more than 100 papers, has 10 patents and teaches statistics and design of experiments at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
