The Conference
For AI Innovators,
Technologists,
and Creatives

Krish is the SVP and GM of VMware’s Cloud Platform Business Unit with responsibility for the vSphere product line. Krish drives our strategy, roadmap, and delivery of the vSphere platform that powers the VMware Hybrid Cloud, spanning on-premises, edge, and the VMware Public Cloud offerings. Krish Prasad has extensive experience in the enterprise software business, having held senior/executive management positions for the past 15 years. Prior to VMware, he worked at HP and BMC Software. During his 25+ years in the software industry, he has built a well-rounded background combining R&D with general management experience. Krish lives in Los Gatos, California with his wife and daughter.

Vicki Dobbs Beck has more than 30 years of broad-based management experience in the entertainment industry. Variety recently named her a “Digital Innovator to Watch in 2020”, and in 2019, the Advanced Imaging Society recognized Vicki with a Distinguished Leadership Award for being a significant “entertainment industry growth catalyst.” Currently, Vicki is the Executive in Charge of ILMxLAB, the award-winning division launched by Lucasfilm in 2015 to pioneer in the field of immersive storytelling. ILMxLAB wants to make it possible for people to ‘Step Inside Our Stories’ in ways never before possible. Using new technologies like virtual and augmented reality, ILMxLAB aspires to create connected experiences that transform places, spaces and our daily lives as we transition from story-telling to story-living.

Under Vicki’s leadership, ILMxLAB created the ground-breaking VR installation, Carne y Arena, which was the vision of Alejandro Iñárritu in association with Legendary Entertainment and Fondazione Prada. Carne y Arena was chosen as the first-ever VR Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival (2017) and was awarded a special Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, “in recognition of a visionary and powerful experience in storytelling.” In addition to producing multiple promotional VR experiences supporting major film releases and experiments in “all shades of reality”, ILMxLAB has collaborated with the VOID to develop and produce the critically acclaimed hyper-reality experience: Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire as well as Ralph Breaks VR and Avengers: Damage Control. Most recently, ILMxLAB released Vader Immortal, a three-part original VR Story Series for the Oculus Quest and Rift / Rift S headsets. Episode I of Vader Immortal won the inaugural PGA Innovation Award in 2020, GDC Best VR/AR Game (2020), was a 2019 Emmy Finalist for Outstanding Innovation in Interactive Media, and won ‘VR Experience of the Year’ from the London-based VR Awards (2019).

Vicki is a member of the Television Academy; the Producers Guild of America; a BAFTA Associate Member; and has served on the BAFTA Immersive Entertainment Advisory Group. She is also Chairman of AIXR’s VR Advisory Group and an Advisory Board member for the Los Angeles-based Infinity Festival. Vicki has spoken extensively at industry events and in business forums including CNBC’s Squawk Alley, the BBC, Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference, Bloomberg Design Conference, Vancouver Film Festival, Infinity Film Festival and YPO’s Global EDGE conference. As a member of Lucasfilm’s Franchise Team, ILM’s Senior Staff and CG Operations Team, Vicki has received credits on more than 24 films. Vicki received her MBA from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business where she also completed her undergraduate studies, earning a BA with distinction in International Relations.

Soumith Chintala is a researcher at Facebook AI Research, where he works on high-performance deep learning. Soumith created PyTorch, a deep learning framework that has traction among researchers. Before joining Facebook in August 2014, he worked at MuseAmi, where he built deep learning models for music and vision targeted at mobile devices. He holds a master's degree in computer science from New York University, and spent time in Yann LeCun’s NYU lab building deep-learning models for robotics, pedestrian detection, natural image optical character recognition, and depth images, among others.

Michael Kagan is NVIDIA CTO (Chief Technology Officer) since May 2020. He joined NVIDIA through Mellanox acquisition. Michael Kagan was previously Mellanox CTO and a co-founder of Mellanox that was founded in April 1999. From 1983 to April 1999, Mr. Kagan held a number of architecture and design positions at Intel Corporation. While at Intel Corporation, Mr. Kagan was architect of the i860XP vector processor, managed Pentium MMX design, and managed the architecture team of the Basic PC product group. Mr. Kagan holds a BSc. in Electrical Engineering from the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology.

Ken Goldberg is an artist, inventor, and roboticist. He's also the William S. Floyd Jr Distinguished Chair in Engineering at the University of California Berkeley, and chief scientist at Ambidextrous Robotics. He co-founded the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering. As director of UC Berkeley’s AUTOLab, Ken trains the next generation of researchers and entrepreneurs. Ken and his students have published 300 peer-reviewed papers and nine U.S. patents. Ken's artwork has been exhibited internationally and he founded the Art, Technology, and Culture public lecture series in 1997. He's an adviser to RoboGlobal ETF, and has presented over 500 invited lectures worldwide. Learn more here: http://goldberg.berkeley.edu

Danielle is the Chief Technology Officer of GE Renewable Energy, reporting to the CEO. In this role, she leads technical efforts to develop differentiated products and services across the broadest renewable energy portfolio in the industry, including onshore wind, offshore wind, grid solutions, solar PV, batteries, and hydro. She also champions sustainability efforts across the business, leading a team focused on achieving carbon neutrality, and leads the GE Renewable Energy Edison Engineering Program. Additionally, Danielle serves as co-leader of the GE Women’s Network, a global organization focused on the recruiting, retention, development and promotion of talented women across GE. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2021. Danielle was recognized by the New York Capital Region Chamber of Commerce with the “Women of Excellence Award” in 2016, was named “Woman of the Year” by the Cleanie Awards in 2018 and recognized in the top 5 on the 2020 North American Power List. Prior to her role at GE Renewable Energy, Danielle was the Vice President & General Manager at GE Global Research where she advanced disruptive technology platforms across the industrial sector. As a thought leader in the industry, Danielle has delivered remarks and participated on panels at conferences and symposiums on topics like digital platforms, advanced controls, the energy transformation, the future of renewable energy, grid challenges and solutions, and microsystems. Danielle received her B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University. She has authored or co-authored over 70 papers in refereed technical journals and has given presentations at conferences and symposiums around the world. Danielle is a member of several technical associations and on the Board of Trustees at the University of Notre Dame. She serves on the boards of Texas A&M University’s Smart Grid Center, focused on modernizing the electrical grid; and Advanced Energy Economy, an organization of businesses working to make energy secure, clean, and affordable. Danielle is also an Ambassador to the Clean Energy, Education and Empowerment (C3E) initiative representing the United States.

Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri is responsible for continuing Epic's tradition of fusing state-of-the-art technology with the pinnacle of visual artistry, and for defining the studio's Unreal Engine as the platform of choice for all types of interactive experiences including games, movies, visualization, augmented reality and virtual reality. Prior to joining Epic Games, Kim was the Chief Strategy Officer at Lucasfilm, where he was responsible for the company's Star Wars technology strategy and innovations in interactive storytelling, including the highly-awarded 1313 prototype. Kim’s career in digital technology and visual effects spans over 20 years, and he has credits on more than 25 films including ‘Super 8’, ‘Speed Racer’, ‘Poseidon’ and ‘The Matrix Trilogy. He led the development team for the award-winning ‘What Dreams May Come’ as well as for the original ‘Matrix,’ developing the now-legendary Bullet Time technology. Kim is a respected member of many visual effects bodies, including the visual effects branch of the Academy. He has received numerous awards for his work and contributions to Motion Picture technology including an Oscar nomination in 2006 and two Academy Awards in 2000 and 2015.

Rommie E. Amaro holds the Distinguished Professorship in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego. She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering (1999) and her Ph.D. in Chemistry (2005) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Rommie was a NIH postdoctoral fellow with Prof. J. Andrew McCammon at UC San Diego from 2005-2009, and started her independent lab in 2009. She is the recipient of an NIH New Innovator Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the ACS COMP OpenEye Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, the ACS Kavli Foundation Emerging Leader in Chemistry, the Corwin Hansch Award, and the 2019 Gordon Bell Special Prize for COVID19. Rommie’s scientific interests lie at the intersection of computer-aided drug discovery and biophysical simulation. Her scientific vision revolves around expanding the range and complexity of molecular constituents represented in such simulations, the development of novel multiscale methods for elucidating their time dependent dynamics, and the discovery of novel chemical matter controlling biological function.

Chris Wright is senior vice president and chief technology officer (CTO) at Red Hat. He leads the Office of the CTO, which is responsible for incubating emerging technologies and developing forward-looking perspectives on innovations like artificial intelligence, cloud and edge computing, distributed storage, software-defined networking and network functions virtualization, containers, automation and continuous delivery, and distributed ledgers. During his 25 years as a software engineer, Wright has worked in the telecommunications industry and beyond on high-availability and distributed systems. He is passionate about open-source software as the foundation for next-generation IT systems.

Kate is currently Head of Emerging Areas at NVIDIA. In this role, Kate oversees ecosystem, strategic alliances and developer relations for emerging markets, segments and use cases. She works closely with partners and influencers to create disruptive AI applications and aims to build a truly global and inclusive AI community. Prior to NVIDIA, Kate spent close to a decade at various semiconductor companies holding product, ecosystem and business positions in AI, computer vision, and IoT. Kate has won multiple accolades throughout her career, including Business Insider Top 100 Business Transformers 2020 and VentureBeat Women in AI Rising Star 2020.