Discovery Summit

Exploring Data | Inspiring Innovation

Steering Committee


B. Michael Adams

The University of Alabama

Mike Adams is Professor Emeritus at The University of Alabama, where he has been a faculty member for 25 years. His primary interests are in the areas of business analytics, statistical quality control and statistical education. His research appears in such journals as Technometrics, Journal of Quality Technology, Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, and Quality Engineering, and he has contributed to reference texts such as the Handbook of Statistical Methods for Engineers and Scientists, The Encyclopedia of Quality and Reliability and The Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. In addition to publishing research, Adams collaborates on corporate projects. He has had the pleasure of working with organizations such as NASA, Mercedes-Benz USA, U.S. Pipe and Steel, U.S. Veterans Administration, Wal-Mart and AT&T, among others. He is involved with statistical education initiatives, including the Alabama Quantitative Literacy Program (activity-based statistics lessons for K-12 teachers), the development of distance learning courses, and study abroad programs in China. In 2013, two student teams under his direction received honors at the SAS Analytics Shootout national data mining competition. One team took first place and the other received an honorable mention (top 6 team). Adams has a PhD in statistics from the University of Louisiana – Lafayette, a Master of Science in mathematics from the University of Arkansas, and a Bachelor of Science in mathematics from the University of Louisiana – Monroe.


Dan Beitzel

First Solar

Dan Beitzel is the Analytics Manager at First Solar, the largest thin-film solar module manufacturer in the world, leading a team of statisticians and engineers who provide innovative analytics via JMP and SAS. His JMP experience began with version 6, which he used for the automation of data extraction, analysis and visualization. He was instrumental in JMP adoption at First Solar, having developed several JMP applications for key processes throughout the company. Beitzel is an ASQ certified Six Sigma Black Belt and an instructor for a variety of in-house courses in statistical analysis, DOE and JMP scripting.

Dan Beitzel

Michèle Boulanger

Rollins College

Michèle Boulanger is an Assistant Professor in the International Business Department at Rollins College where she teaches courses in international business, operations management (also at the East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai), and statistics. Prior to joining Rollins, she had a multi-faceted career as an executive global manager (Vice President of Quality at Motorola), a consultant (President of JISC-Statistics), a researcher (Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories) and a teacher (University of Rhode Island, Columbia University). Boulanger has been involved in the development of international standards in statistics throughout her career, particularly in the areas of accuracy of measurement methods and Six Sigma and lean methodologies. She was recently confirmed as Chair of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) technical committee TC69 on Applications of Statistical Methods. She holds a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Rhode Island and a master’s degree in statistics from the Institute of Statistics of the University of Paris.

Michele Boulanger

Ian Cox

SAS

Ian Cox currently works in the JMP division of SAS as the Marketing Manager for Europe. He has worked for Digital and Motorola, was a Six Sigma Black Belt and also worked with Motorola University. Before joining SAS 10 years ago, he worked for BBN Software Solutions Ltd. and consulted with many companies on data analysis, process control and experimental design. Cox is part of the SPIE organising committee for process control and referees related papers for the IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing. He is the associate editor of Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry (Wiley Online) and has been a Visiting Fellow at Cranfield University. Cox is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in the UK and a member of its Committee of the Statistical Computing Section. He has a PhD in theoretical physics.

Ian Cox

Elaine Daniloff

Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment

Elaine Daniloff is an epidemiologist at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment where she uses JMP daily to measure and track the AIDS epidemic. She uses JMP for infectious disease surveillance, incidence estimates, statistical analysis and visualization of results. Daniloff discovered JMP in 1992 while working as a research assistant at National Jewish Health’s Division of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences. She is currently starting up the first Denver (CO) JMP Users Group. She studied economics at Beloit College and received her Bachelor of Science in applied sociology from Purdue University and a master’s degree in public health from the University of Colorado.

Elaine Daniloff

Kevin Gaffney

Medtronic

Kevin Gaffney is a Senior Principal Engineer and Design for Six Sigma Black Belt at Medtronic, the world’s largest medical technology company. Introduced to Six Sigma techniques using JMP more than 15 years ago, he has relied on the interactive and visual learning nature of JMP in all of his engineering roles: integrated circuit package development and test, materials and failure analysis, product and process development. Gaffney has validated the use of JMP within Medtronic with a focus on design of experiment and reliability assessment of implantable pacemakers, defibrillators and neurostimulator devices. Gaffney is passionate about using data visualization and statistical methods to continuously improve reliability of products designed to improve quality of life.

Kevin Gaffney

Rob Galfi

Enterprise Holdings

Rob Galfi is a Senior Marketing Analyst with Enterprise Holdings, the largest car rental service provider in the world. He has more than 10 years of experience developing direct marketing and CRM strategy through customer segmentation and behavioral analytics in the finance, pay television and retail industries. Galfi uses JMP to help identify how direct marketing efforts impact customer behavior and seeks to optimize marketing efforts to target the right message to the right customer at the right time.

Rob Galfi

Landon Jensen

IM Flash Technologies

Landon Jensen supports the development of data applications and analytical methods that enable discovery and identify opportunities for yield and quality improvement at IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture of Intel and Micron that manufactures leading-edge non-volatile memory. He began his career with Micron in 2000, and has worked in a variety of yield enhancement and process control positions across their network of manufacturing facilities. Jensen received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and statistics and a master’s degree in industrial mathematics from Utah State University and completed a graduate certificate in data mining and applications from Stanford University. He is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt and serves as the Website and Internet Liaison for the Statistics Division of ASQ.

Landon Jensen

Katharina Lankers

SCHOTT AG

Katharina Lankers is an R&D Scientist at SCHOTT AG, a technology-based company developing and manufacturing specialty materials, components and systems. She studied mathematics and physics in Bonn, Stuttgart and Novosibirsk and received her PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Stuttgart. Since 1998 she has been working in the department of mathematical simulation and optimization at SCHOTT, focusing mainly on data-based modeling of production processes. With several years of JSL experience, she develops customized JMP applications and applies data mining methods to a variety of manufacturing problems. Moreover, she enjoys teaching JMP courses for the corporate training program.

Katharina Lankers

Alex Pamatat

NXP Semiconductors

Alex Pamatat is a Principal Process Development Engineer at NXP Semiconductors, and has been using JMP since college to transmute data into decisions. While currently deployed in a films process engineering capacity, Pamatat also manages the global applied statistics training program at NXP where he manages curriculum and trainees worldwide. In an engineering capacity, Pamatat has worked across two different continents, developing semiconductor manufacturing processes and integrations for integrated circuits and MEMS devices. He has consistently used JMP in all aspects of his career to drive continuous improvement, and throughout each development phase of new manufacturing processes. As a Motorola Six Sigma Black Belt, Pamatat trains multidisciplinary peers within NXP on structured problem-solving techniques, data exploration and analysis, as well as applied statistics using JMP software.

Alex Pamatat

Philip J. Ramsey

North Haven Group

Philip J. Ramsey is the owner of the North Haven Group, a firm offering full-service statistical training and consulting in all levels of Six Sigma, as well as comprehensive training in design of experiments and predictive analytics. Ramsey is also a Principal Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). He has held the following relevant industrial positions: Senior Engineer for Materials and Processes Development, McDonnell Douglas, St. Louis, MO; Staff Scientist/Statistician, Alcoa Technical Center, Pittsburgh, PA; and Statistician/Senior Engineer, Rohm & Haas Electronic Materials (now Dow), Marlboro, MA. Ramsey has a PhD in statistics from Virginia Tech. He lives with his family and assorted pets in Brookline, New Hampshire.

Phil Ramsey

John Sall

SAS

John Sall is a co-founder and Executive Vice President of SAS, leader in business analytics software and largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. 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® and SAS/IML® software. He also led the R&D effort that produced SAS/OR® software, SAS/QC® software and Version 6 of Base SAS.

In the late 1980s, Sall saw 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 Windows and Macintosh, 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.

Sall was elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He serves on the board of World Wildlife Fund and was a member of the board of The Nature Conservancy from 2002 to 2011, reflecting his strong interest in international conservation and environmental issues. He also serves on the advisory board of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He is a former 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.

He 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.

John Sall

Marianne Toft

Novozymes

Marianne Toft is a statistician at Novozymes in Denmark. Novozymes is the world leader in industrial enzymes and microorganisms. Through industrial biotechnology, it re-engineers processes to deliver enhanced sustainability performance, energy cost savings and decreased raw material costs. Toft and her department (Projects, Statistics and Information) support the entire organization from R&D to supply chain through general statistics and JMP support, teaching, and participation in quality projects. Before joining Novozymes, she taught and consulted on multivariate data analysis and design of experiments for Umetrics. She graduated from the University of Copenhagen with a master’s degree in food science and technology and earned a PhD in chemometrics and spectroscopy from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Queensland.

Marianne Toft

Ledi Trutna

SAS

Ledi Trutna joined SAS in 2012 after 13 years as a consultant teaching statistics. She has been using JMP since version 3 and loves teaching with the software. Prior to consulting, she worked at AMD and Texas Instruments. While at Texas Instruments, she developed the catapult as a tool for teaching design of experiments and Statistical Process Control. She then shared that knowledge with others so that it could be adopted in many types of classes. She has a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from Duke University.

Ledi Trutna

Peter Wiebe

Abbott Laboratories

Peter Wiebe is a scientist, programmer, database designer and quality engineer at Abbott Laboratories. He leads a team of data scientists, statistical programmers, web developers, database developers and validation experts. Their mission is to provide global analytical and data management solutions that enable accurate, efficient and timely data-driven decisions for new product development. His team has received several awards for leading process improvement, optimization, and automation excellence in research and development. He has several years of experience developing applications in JMP using the JMP scripting language. He also regularly uses JMP as a database interface to perform analytics on billions of data points. He received his doctorate in molecular physiology and biophysics from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.

Peter Wiebe

Kyle Wills

Raytheon

Kyle Wills is a Senior Electrical Engineer and Raytheon Six Sigma™ Expert at Raytheon Space & Airborne Systems. Wills uses inferential and predictive statistics for issues on a wide variety of complex radio frequency (RF) electronic products. He also provides robust design analysis and modeling for newly developed and redesigned RF electronic products. Prior to his current role in Mission Assurance as an enterprise continuous improvement project manager, he spent 10 years in product development. Wills received his Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from the University of South Florida and a master’s degree in systems engineering from Texas Tech University. He currently serves on the Georgia Tech Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory External Advisory Board and is President of the 4000-member Dallas Running Club.

Kyle Wills