Schedule 

8:00 a.m. EST

(1:00 p.m. UTC)

Lobby

Sign-In

Complimentary light breakfast

8:45 a.m. EST

(1:45 p.m. UTC)

Live Oak Pavilion

Welcome

Welcome from FAU and college leadership. Review of itinerary.

9:00 a.m. EST

(2:00 p.m. UTC)

Live Oak Pavilion

"The Impact of AI in Financial Market Investment Strategies"

Plenary Talk: Moustapha Awada, Ph.D., Physicist and Chief Risk and Investment Sciences Officer at Alpha Innovations Global Investment LLC

Quantitative Finance is one of the most important pillars in financial economics. Major financial institutions consider it as a critical domain of its operation particularly when it comes to investment in financial markets. We will discuss how the advent of data science and machine learning in the last two decades gave rise to predictive analytics and AI trade execution that has generated billions of dollars in profitability and cost effectiveness. 

9:50a.m. EST

(2:50 p.m. UTC)

Live Oak Pavilion

Coffee Break

10:15 a.m. EST

(3:15 p.m. UTC)

Grand Palm Room

Minisymposium Session 

Talks in this session will take place in parallel at three separate time slots of 30 minutes each: 10:15 a.m., 10:45 a.m., and 11:15 a.m., unless otherwise noted. Session topics and talks listed below.

South Florida Tech Hub Sponsored: Health Tech Panel Discussion

10:15-11:45 a.m., Room 4
"Digital Transformation and Data-Driven Insight in Healthcare: Where We Are and Where We’re Going"
Moderator: Meggie Soliman, Director of Strategic Innovations at DSS, Inc.
Panelists: Pete Martinez, CEO of Sivotech Bioinformatics; Aliya Aaron, Founder of Nursing Innovation Hub; Yenvy Truong, Founder of LSM Group; Christopher Kunney, Chief of Strategy & Business Development at DSS, Inc.

Urban Applications of Data Science 

10:15 a.m., Room 1
"Person-Activity Tracking with Smartphones as a Way to Measure the Impact of Government Lockdowns During the COVID-19 Pandemic"
Louis Merlin, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, FAU Department of Urban and Regional Planning

10:45 a.m., Room 1
"Structured Additive Regression and Tree Boosting"
Michael Mayer, Ph.D., Pricing Actuary, La Mobilière, Bern, Switzerland

11:15 a.m., Room 1
"How Does Street Space Influence Crash Frequency? An Analysis Using Segmented Street View Imagery"
Jonathan Stiles, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow, FAU Urban and Regional Planning  

Computational Perspectives on Brain Function and Behavior

10:15 a.m., Room 2
"What Can and Cannot Be Concluded About Neural Representations From Neuroimaging Data"
Fabian A. Soto, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Florida International University

10:45 a.m., Room 2
"Normalization in Neuroscience and Deep Neural Networks"
Odelia Schwartz, Ph.D., Associate Professor, University of Miami

11:15 a.m., Room 2
"Thalamocortical Function in Sleep and Wakefulness"
Carmen Varela Castro, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Florida Atlantic University

AI in Chemistry and Molecular Medicine 

10:15 a.m., Room 3
"Incorporating Biological Context into Data-Driven Models"
Mohammed Ali Eslami, Ph.D., Chief Data Scientist, Co-founder, Netrias, LLC

10:45 a.m., Room 3
"Data-Guided Protein Stabilization"
Jedediah M. Singer, Ph.D., Principal Research Scientist, Two Six Technologies

11:15 a.m., Room 3
"Topological Data Analysis Algorithms in Robot Motion Planning"
Chinwe Pamela Ekenna, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University at Albany

11:45 a.m. EST

(4:45 p.m. UTC)

Break

Includes complimentary coffee

12:00 p.m. EST

(5:00 p.m. UTC)

Live Oak Pavilion

"Using Data and AI to Discover New Solar Energy Materials in the Laboratory"

Plenary Talk: Joshua Schrier, Ph.D., Kim B. and Stephen E. Bepler Chair Professor of Chemistry at Fordham University

New materials are essential for many clean-energy technologies, but the materials discovery process is often a tedious process of trial and error. In this talk, I'll discuss ways that we have been able to combine laboratory data collection and automation with data-science and AI tools to accelerate the synthesis and characterization of novel halide perovskites, a class materials with applications for photovoltaics and sensors.

12:50 p.m.

(5:50 p.m. UTC)

Break

1:00 p.m. EST

(6:00 p.m. UTC)

Live Oak Pavilion

Lunch and Student Poster Session

Complimentary lunch

2:15 p.m. EST

(7:15 p.m. UTC)

Grand Palm Room

Minisymposium Session

Talks in this session will take place in parallel at three separate time slots of 30 minutes each: 2:15 p.m., 2:45 p.m., and 3:15 p.m. Session topics and talks listed below.

South Florida Tech Hub Sponsored: Career and Internship Panel

2:15-3:45 p.m., Room 4
"Data/AI and Tech Career and Internship Experiences Panel"
Rich Viens, Chief Financial Officer, PeakActivity; Valeria Tineo, Incoming Account Executive, Organizational Business Development at Cleveland Cavaliers, and recent FAU Alumna; Jose Delgado, Software Developer, Office Depot and recent FAU Alumnus; Lakshamana Sankarakuttalam, Senior Manager, IT, Enterprise Intelligence, Office Depot

Medical Physics and Image Processing 

2:15 p.m., Room 1
"A Socio-technical Approach to Reduce the Digital Divide: A Case of Biomedical Content Authoring and Publishing Retrieval"
Syed Ahmad Bukhari, Ph.D., Assistant Professor and Director of Healthcare Informatics at St. John's University, New York

2:45 p.m., Room 1
"Designing an IT-Based Decision Support System for Optimizing Cancer Treatment"
Adnan Muhammad Shah, Ph.D., Data Scientist, Postdoc Research Associate, Department of Physics, Florida Atlantic University

3:15 p.m., Room 1
"Finding the Trees in the Forest: Bulk Analysis of Scientific Literature"
Silke Dodel, Ph.D., Founder, DeepScience, LLC; Sophie Schuelke and Radleigh Santos, Department of Mathematics, Nova Southeastern University

Geoscience Data Mining using Machine Learning Techniques

2:15 p.m., Room 2
"Machine Learning Applications in Remote Sensing and Environmental Management"
Sara Durgan, Ph.D., Remote Sensing & UAS Data Scientist at AECOM

2:45 p.m., Room 2
"Augmenting Geological and Image Analysis Techniques with Machine Learning for Sand Characterization"
Molly Smith, Ph.D., Scientist and Teacher, Omni Middle School

3:15 p.m., Room 2
"Permafrost Characterization in Alaska and Greenhouse Gases Estimation in the Everglades using AI and Multiple Earth Data Sources"
Caiyun Zhang, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Geosciences, Florida Atlantic University

Mathematical Tools for Biological Networks and Neuroscience

2:15 p.m., Room 3
"Comparing Topological Measures of Neural Structure and Function"
Chad Giusti, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Mathematical Sciences, University of Delaware

2:45 p.m., Room 3
"Computational Characterization of Large-scale Brain Dynamic Landscapes and Attractor Transition Networks"
Mengsen Zhang, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Researcher, University of North Carolina

3:15 p.m., Room 3
"Efficient Selection and Falsification of Network Models Via Combinatorial Dynamics"
Shane Kepley, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Researcher, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

3:45 p.m. EST

(8:45 p.m. UTC)

Break

4:00 p.m. EST

(9:00 p.m. UTC)

Live Oak Pavilion

"BioNFTs: Enabling Decentralized Consented Genomics in the Metaverse"

Plenary Talk: Daniel Uribe, MBA, Co-Founder & CEO, GenoBank.io

Biosamples and their multi-omics data (genomics, proteomics, epigenomics, etc.,) pass through a sequence of events, a supply chain of custody, from preanalytical biosample collection to post analytical results interpretation, dissemination, and application to vendor commercialization. This presentation examines risks in this chain of custody and the asymmetries of power and knowledge between parties from donors to controllers and the multitude of ways our biosamples are accessed inevitably create opportunities for expanded risks and benefits across stakeholders. The purpose of this presentation is to serve as an introduction to the biodata provenance journey with an ethical risk analysis of who benefits, who is at risk, and who decides on the biological assets (biosamples + biodata). Lastly, we present a use case for promoting transparent consent in the supply chain with the introduction of Biological Non-Fungible Tokens or BioNFTs that resolve in a public blockchain. We offer a description of how BioNFT, a decentralized biosample consent platform, could serve as a sentinel mechanism that mitigates risks and expands benefits to stakeholders. BioNFTs are proposed as a dynamic blockchain solution which provides liability coverage for the stakeholders at the top and a negotiation mechanism for data originators and donors at the bottom of the supply chain. 

4:50 p.m. EST

(9:50 p.m. UTC)

Wrap Up