Martin Birk
Martin Birk is an optical consultant with more than 20 years of industry experience. Martin is a former Director of Optical Platforms at AT&T Labs, an AT&T Fellow, and an individual contributor in AT&T Research. He has a strong technology background in Optics, Microwave and Semiconductor Design, and Technologies. Martin holds a Ph.D., MS, and BS from the University of Ulm, Germany.
Michael Bortz
Michael Bortz has worked in a variety of high technology companies over the past 25 years developing key technologies for fiber optic communications. At SDL he developed high-power optical amplifiers and fiber-optic communication subsystems. He joined Corvis as one of the first technical employees and was responsible for all aspects of Corvis’ all-optical switching technology, including deployment in carrier networks. At Broadwing, a nationwide IXC acquired by Corvis, Mike was VP of Engineering and Planning, responsible for all aspects of equipment deployment in the network. Since leaving Broadwing, Mike has been a consultant to several high technology start-ups as well as a consultant with NASA on a variety of programs. Mike holds a BS from Cornell University and an MS and Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University.
Jason Eichenholz
Jason Eichenholz is a serial entrepreneur, executive and recognized pioneer in laser and optics enabled innovation, product development and commercialization. Over the past two decades he has started and founded multiple companies that raised over a billion dollars of investor funding and went public on Nasdaq.
Eichenholz has led the development of hundreds of millions of dollars of revolutionary products and companies that have enabled a variety of applications from autonomous vehicles, battlefield explosives detection, early cancer detection, new drug delivery systems and environmental studies from the depths of the oceans to the top of Mt. Everest and even on the Moon and Mars.
Eichenholz holds more than eighty U.S. patents and is a Fellow of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, as well as a Fellow of Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America) and a member of the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame and the Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine of Florida (ASEMFL).
Eichenholz has a M.S. and Ph.D in Optical Science and Engineering from CREOL – The College of Optics and Photonics at the University of Central Florida and a B.S. in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
An accomplished public speaker, he has given dozens of plenary and invited talks at major automotive and photonics conferences and universities as well as the commencement address at the University of Central Florida. In his free time, he likes to give back to his community and is especially passionate as an advocate for autism awareness, housing and employment and has served for 25 years as a Reserve Lieutenant and Emergency Medical Technician with Orange County (FL) Fire Rescue.
Manya Ghobadi
Manya Ghobadi is an associate professor in the EECS department at MIT. Her research spans different areas in computer networks, focusing on optical reconfigurable networks, networks for machine learning, and high-performance cloud infrastructure. Her work has been recognized by the Sloan Fellowship in Computer Science, ACM SIGCOMM Rising Star award, ACM-W Rising Star Award, NSF CAREER award, Optica Simmons Memorial Speakership award, best paper award at the Machine Learning Systems (MLSys) conference, as well as the best dataset, and best paper awards at the ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC). Manya received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and spent a few years at Microsoft Research and Google prior to joining MIT.
Sean Iraca
Sean Iraca is the former Global VP, Cloud and Service Innovation at Digital Realty (Nasdaq: DLR) and Senior Director, Global Cloud Business Development at Equinix (Nasdaq: EQX), and various product marketing and sales engineering roles at Verizon/MCI. Sean has a BS in Computer Science (George Mason University) and served in the U.S. Air Force as a Systems Engineer.
Jeff Parker
Jeff is a former Senior Vice President at MKS Instruments and currently founder of JRP Global Ventures LLC. He is a Senior Global Sales & Business Development Leader coupled with experience in running complex Multi-National Business Units. Extensive experience across the US, Europe, Middle East, and Asia in highly technical applications in the Life Sciences, Semiconductors, Telecommunications, Aerospace, and Industrial markets. Board of Directors engagement and Executive Advisor roles with particular focus on driving profitable top line growth. Well versed in Strategic Planning, Mergers & Acquisitions, Employee Development (DE&I) and Corporate Compliance. In addition, over the past decade he has served as a mentor to university STEM students.
John Seely Brown
John Seely Brown, also known as "JSB", is a researcher who specializes in organizational studies with a particular bent towards the organizational implications of computer-supported activities. JSB was the Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation until April 2002, as well as the director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) until June 2000. In his more than two decades as head of PARC, JSB transformed the organization into a truly multidisciplinary research center at the creative edge of applied technology and design. JSB is currently a visiting scholar and adviser to the provost at the University of Southern California (USC), where he facilitates collaboration between the schools for communication and media and the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT). JSB is also currently the Independent Co-Chairman for Deloitte’s Center for the Edge, where he pursues research on institutional innovation and a reimagined work environment built on digital culture, ubiquitous computing, IoT, IA/AI and the need for constant learning and adaptability.
JSB is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. He serves on numerous private and public boards of directors, including Amazon. He has published well over a hundred papers in scientific journals and nine books. His most recent book is Design Unbound – designing for emergence in a white water world with Ann Pendleton-Jullian. He has received 11 honorary doctorate degrees in four fields (science, design, public policy, humane letters) and a Ph.D from the University of Michigan.
Josh Snowhorn
Josh Snowhorn is the Founder/CEO of Quantum Loophole. Josh has led the interconnection industry for the last 20 years building over $10B of value. He served as an executive at Terremark and then Verizon (NYSE: VZ) after the acquisition of Terremark at 19 times EBITDA. After 12 years building Terremark he joined Cincinnati Bell with the purpose of building an interconnection portfolio in preparation of the successful IPO of CyrusOne (Nasdaq: CONE). Josh served for 6 years at CyrusOne creating an unrivaled and progressive network platform that was crucial in growing CyrusOne into the 3rd largest Data Center REIT in North America. Josh founded the Global Peering Forum 15 years ago, the annual meeting for the Internet interconnection and peering community where he serves on the board of directors.
Dominic Tobin
Dominic Tobin’s most recent position was SVP of Data Center Operations at CoreSite where he was responsible for all Data Center facilities, physical security and interconnection activities. During his tenure, Dominic served on CoreSite’s Executive Committee which was also responsible for the successful launch of CoreSite’s IPO in 2010. Dominic created CoreSite’s Operations Support Center, transformed CoreSite’s interconnection infrastructure and initiated the Operational Excellence Program enabling Eight-9’s availability. Prior to joining CoreSite, Dominic spent 20 combined years at First Level Technology and AT&T, where he held roles of increasing responsibility including Field Operations Director and District Manager.