Presentation Schedule
EVOLVE 2021
August 12th - 13th
8:30 AM – 5 PM CDT

Thank you for attending Evolve 2021!
Conference Schedule
*All times listed are Central Standard Time
Join us early at 7:45am for a sponsored breakfast-and-learn | |||
DAY 1 | |||
TIME | SPEAKER(S) | PRESENTATION | |
SPEAKING SESSIONS | |||
8:15 AM - 8:30 AM | Francklin Rivas Chief Production Officer | Welcome Introduction Challenges and opportunities of using AI in Asset Management | |
8:30 AM - 9:00 AM | Anthony Ambler Dean of the College of Technology Konrad Konarski Chairman | Opening Remarks Introduction to the event, its content, and speakers. | |
9:00 AM - 9:30 AM | Marc Spieler Transformation Leader | Keynote: Transforming Industry at the Edge Leading GPU manufacturer NVIDIA shares with the audience about how edge computing is transforming the application possibilities of AI in various industries. | |
9:30 AM - 10:00 AM | Kris Skrinak Global Segment Leader ML | Artificial Intelligence, AWS, and the Cloud Amazon Web Services (AWS) shares its latest advancements in AI cloud service capabilities and their use in specific industries and use cases. | |
10:00 AM - 10:30 AM | Dr. Lov Khur Managing Principal & Fellow-Solutions Architect | 5G and How it’s Transforming AI Verizon Wireless shares how 5G ultrawide band technology is empowering a new frontier in application cases and possibilities of Artificial Intelligence. | |
BREAK - 15 MINS | |||
10:45 AM - 11:15 AM | Adam Singer Senior Principal Architect | The Future of AI in the Energy Industry Exploring the realm of possibility of AI and how to get there. | |
11:15 AM - 11:45 AM | Annie Wang Director of Pricing & Analytics | Using AI for a Better Customer Understanding Learn how AI is used to improve customer understanding and streamline operations | |
11:45 AM - 12:30 PM | William Aiken AI Team Lead | Miniworkshop: How AI is transforming quality control A hands-on demonstration on the use of computer vision for quality inspection. | |
12:30 PM - 1:15pm | Osama Qazi Solutions Architect & Innovation | Miniworkshop: Getting started with Image segmentation | |
LUNCH & LEARN | |||
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM | Hemanshu Rukadikar Product Manager | Lunch & Learn: Getting started with RPA | |
PANEL DISCUSSIONS | |||
2:45 PM - 3:30 PM | Konrad Konarski (moderator) Chairman Guillermo Romero Supervisor Adam Berg Director of Learning Solutions Xiao-Hui Wu Senior Principal Computational Scientist Francklin Rivas Chief Production Office Shashank Tomar Director of Technology Jovita Nsoh Principal Program Manager John Nixon Senior Director Energy & Utilities Francklin Rivas Chief Production Officer | Panel: Oil & Gas Diverse Oil & Gas experts discuss their successes and challenge of implementing Artificial Intelligence in Oil & Gas. | |
WORKSHOPS | |||
3:30 PM - 5:30pm | Kris Skrinak Global Segment Leader ML | Workshop: Bring your own data Using AWS Cloud services and their own data set, attendees will transform, feature engineer and then use AI to predict. | |
3:30 PM - 5:30pm | Rajdeep Biswas Solution Architect Leader | Workshop: AI in Azure | |
3:30 PM - 5:30pm | David Crawley Professor of Practice | Workshop: Innovation & Mind Mapping | |
DAY 2 | |||
SPEAKING SESSIONS | |||
8:30 AM - 8:45AM | David Crawley Professor of Practice Amaury Lendasse Department Chair | Opening Remarks University of Houston thought leaders welcome audience and preview the day’s events. | |
8:45 AM - 9:15 AM | Jay Gorajia Director of Global Services | Keynote: Transforming Industry with AI powered Digital Solutions Thought leader at Siemens Digital shares the transformational benefits of Artificial Intelligence with Digital Twins, Electronic Design Automation (EDA), and Product Life Cycle Management (PLM). | |
9:15 AM - 9:45 AM | Muge Wood Director, Houston Technology Center | Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Work. Microsoft shares how products like the Microsoft HoloLens are using AI to solve problems in various organizations. | |
9:45 AM - 10:15 AM | Marco Benavides Enterprise Architect AI Cecilia Stark Solutions Engineer | Transforming Industry with Watson IBM shares how Watson been a catalyst in the transformation of the enterprise - making AI accessible to business users, removing the hurdles to AI-adoption. | |
BREAK | |||
PANEL DISCUSSIONS | |||
10:30 AM - 11:15AM | David Crawley (Moderator) Professor of Practice Lila Carden Assistant Professor Jeff Guan Associate Dean Jungwoo Ryoo Division Head Bruce Muller Professor Andrew Karem Associate Professor | Panel: Academia Keeping up with Artificial Intelligenc in Academia. A diverse panel of professors and researchers. | |
11:15 AM - 12:00 PM | Siva Juturi (Moderator) Executive VP Manoj Iragavarapu VP Digital Strategy, Consulting and Security Khushwant Shah Director Software Delivery Amin Kargarian Marvasti Professor Chetan Raval SVP and CIO | Panel: Robotic & Intelligence Process Automation (RPA/IPA) Join a cross-functional group of experts from industry, academia and technology providers for a discussion on process automation, its application, and how to get started. | |
LUNCH & LEARN | |||
12:00 PM - 1 :00 PM | John Kalfayan Vice-President | Get your head out of the cloud - Empower your data at the edge. | |
1:00 PM - 1:45 PM | Konrad Konarski (Moderator) Chairman Annie Wang Director of Pricing & Analytics Chris Martin Professor Mechanical Engineering Jerry Chen Global Manufacturing Leader | Panel: AI in Manufacturing Lead manufacturers, technology providers, and academics come together to discuss the current and future applications of AI. Including physics-based AI, Augmented reality technologies, the future of work and industry 5.0. | |
WORKSHOPS | |||
1:45 PM - 2:45 PM | John Nixon Sr. Director Industries, Energy & Utilities Chris Piela Portfolio Development Executive Josh Green Manager, Enablement and Partnerships John Tappan Director of Marketing | Presentation: How Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning Can Be Leveraged To Optimize Drilling Fluid Formulations | |
3:00 PM - 3:30 PM | John Nixon Sr. Director Industries, Energy & Utilities | Panel: Discussion and Open Feedback on presentation: How Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning Can Be Leveraged To Optimize Drilling Fluid Formulations | |
3:45 PM - 4:45 PM | Baris Erol Research scientist in sustainability & automation | Presentation: Bringing Edge and AI to the shopfloor in Automotive factories’ | |
1:45 PM - 5:00 PM | Osama Qazi Solution Architect Brian Barran Data Scientist, NVIDIA | Workshop: AI workflows for Intelligent Video Analytics with DeepStream | |
1:45 PM - 5:00 PM | Cecilia J Stark Solutions Engineer | Workshop: AI for Smart Manufacturing Experience how business users with no previous coding experience can take advantage of Point-and-Click AI model building to perform visual inspections from their personal mobile devices. |