Speakers

We are currently working to build our speaker list for F2010. Please check back periodically to see the line-up. In the meantime, peruse our list of F2009 speakers to see what was discussed last year.

2010 Co-Chairs

Tim Rey, The Dow Chemical Company
Jerry Oglesby, SAS

2010 Keynote Speakers

Oral Capps, Texas A&M University

2010 Session Speakers

Andrew Fisher, Cisco Systems, Inc
Mike Gilliland, SAS
Brian Lee, EPA and Chip Wells, SAS

 

2009 Keynote Speakers

David Bessler, Texas A&M University
Jonathan Crook, University of Edinburgh, and Tony Bellotti, Credit Research Centre
Frank Diebold, University of Pennsylvania
Michael Leonard, SAS

2009 Session Speakers

Clark Abrahams and Mingyuan (Sunny) Zhang, SAS
Alan Antin, IPSO Innovation Group
Curtis Brewer, Bayer Crop Sciences
Scott Farris, State Farm Insurance Companies
Thomas B. Fomby
Susie Fortier, StatCanada
David E. Hamilton, Old Dominion Electric Cooperative
Evan Koenig, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
Christian T. Lundblad, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Peter R. Mueller, Amarillo Biosciences, Inc.
Alexis J. Ramirez, Orange Dominicana
Udo Sglavo, SAS
Jorge Vilaplana, Qualex Consulting Services
Bill Wachenheim, HAVI Global Solutions and
Jack Hymanson, SAS Clark Abrahams is Chief Financial Architect at SAS, where his responsibilities span R&D, marketing and sales. Inventor, author and former bank executive, he pioneered a revolutionary approach for lending based upon thirty years of experience as a banker and senior risk manager. In 2008, prior to the financial market meltdown, Abrahams testified about the need for a better consumer lending approach before a House of Representatives Financial Services Subcommittee. Over the past two years, Abrahams and his co-author Mingyuan Zhang have written two books: Fair Lending Compliance - Intelligence and Implications for Credit Risk Management (2008) and Credit Risk Assessment - The New Lending System for Borrowers, Lenders, and Investors (2010), both published by John Wiley & Sons. A San Francisco native, Abrahams is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Stanford University. He serves on the Board of Directors of Social Compact, a Washington DC-based non-profit that promotes community development through its inner-city neighborhood market analysis and innovative solutions. From January 2007 through June 2008, he served on the Advisory Board of the Metropolitan Program's Urban Markets Initiative at The Brookings Institution. Abrahams is a member of the CFA Institute, Risk Management Association, North Carolina Society of Financial Analysts, Global Association of Risk Professionals, and Professional Risk Managers' International Association.

Alan Antin has over 20 years of professional experience as an executive, entrepreneur and strategic consultant in the diverse worlds of consumer marketing, the application of technology and business development. At IPSO Innovation Group, Mr. Antin serves as a strategic consultant to CEO's and senior level executives. IPSO's client base includes companies with products and services spanning bio-technology, consumer health care, medical devices, consumer products, mobile marketing and educational curriculum. The core of IPSO's advisory services include strategic market planning, market and brand development, demand planning/forecasting and market analytics.

Mr. Antin began his professional career as a consultant with Booz, Allen & Hamilton's Information Technology Practice. After earning a Master's of Science degree from Carnegie Mellon University with a dual concentration in quantitative methods for management decision-making and marketing, he went on to serve in various roles within the consumer products industry. As a Senior Forecasting Analyst for the CPG leader Reckitt Benckiser, Mr. Antin helped to create a best practice Sales and Operations Planning (S+OP)/demand planning process that included the use of statistical forecasting methods and quantitative interpretation of market place data. With extensive knowledge of POS data and application of market analytic tools, he was recruited into Reckitt's Brand Marketing group and managed leading consumer businesses in both their household and food divisions. Mr. Antin went on to serve in Brand Marketing and General Management roles for category leading CPG brands at Unilever, Coty, Boyd's and Polar.

Mr. Antin is a member of the AMA, MENG and IBF. He serves on the Board of Trustees for his town's library, where he supports one of his personal interests, reading. Mr. Antin resides in Westchester County New York with his wife Roanne and their two children, Benjamin and Mitchell.

Dr. David A. Bessler is an applied econometrician who specializes in modeling observational data. His work includes contributions in the area of price discovery, probability forecasting, and causal inference. He was formerly associate editor of the Journal of Forecasting. He has published over one hundred refereed papers in the areas of forecasting and inductive inference. His forecasting work has two themes: first is that of probability forecasting and evaluation, and second, and more recently, is work in induction and causal structures.

Bessler has been recognized with numerous awards for his research contributions. A partial list of award granting associations include: American Agricultural Economic Association, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, Food Distribution Research Society, Transportation Research Forum, and the Southwest Finance Association. In addition, Bessler has coauthored a chapter in Elsevier Science's celebrated Handbook of Economics series and his work on price discovery in equity markets has been reprinted in Sage Publications' Major Works in Financial Markets. He was awarded a Simon Fellowship in Econometrics from The Victorian University of Manchester (1991). He delivered the Eighth Herbert Simon Lecture in Computational Economics at Feng Chai University, Taiwan in 2005. His biography is listed in Mark Blaug's Who's Who in Economics: A List of Major Economists Since 1700 (Cheltenham Press, UK).

Awards and honors bestowed by Texas A&M University include being named the inaugural recipient of the Presidential Award for Faculty Service to International Students in 2006, the Association of Former Students' Award for Distinguished Achievement in Graduate Student Mentoring in 2006, the Vice Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research in 2003, the Deputy Chancellor for Agriculture Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching, Texas A&M University System in 1987, and the Outstanding Graduate Teacher in Agricultural Economics given by the Graduate Student Association in 1985-86, 1998-99, and 2006-07.

Bessler received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Arizona in 1971 and 1973 respectively, and his Ph.D. in 1977 from The University of California, Davis. He spent five years at Purdue University before moving to Texas A&M University in 1982 where he is now a professor of Agricultural Economics, an adjunct professor of Economics, and a Regents Professor of the Texas A&M University System.

Curtis Brewer is the Head of Consumer Forecasting for Bayer Cropscience. In this role, he is responsible for the overall forecasting process and facilitates the S&OP activities. This requires gathering POS and other consumer data from channel sales and category marketing to generate an 18 month unit forecast, and then converting this unit forecast into a financial forecast for use in the financial planning of the business.

Additionally this role requires working with the Production planning group to generate a demand plan that will insure a 99% fill rate to our customers, and procurement to insure appropriate information is available for component price negotiations and advance purchasing.

Before Bayer, Brewer worked for 4 years with Novozymes as the Demand Planner for the Americas Region (which encompassed North America, Mexico, and Brazil). This position was responsible for the development of a monthly demand plan that used both qualitative and quantitative methods to determine demand over an 18 month horizon.

Previous to Novozymes, Brewer worked for 3 years at Square D Company in Materials Planning, and 1 year with Nomaco as a Supply Chain Analyst. With these jobs he worked with materials management, production planning, capacity management and demand planning.

Brewer holds a Bachelor of Science in Operations Management from North Carolina State University, a Masters of Business Administration in Supply Chain Management from Auburn University. He is also a past president of the Triangle Chapter of APICS and holds both APICS CFPIM and CSCP certifications.

Jonathan Crook is Professor of Business Economics, Director of the Credit Research Centre and Head of Management Science and Business Economics at the Business School, University of Edinburgh, UK. His research interests are in the incorporation of macroeconomic effects into credit risk models, reject inference in credit risk models and in the economics of consumer credit. He has published five books, including Credit Scoring and its Applications (SIAM) and Readings in Credit Scoring (Oxford University Press) and numerous articles in academic journals including in the Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of the Operational Research Society, European Journal of Operational Research, Expert Systems with Applications, IMA Journal of Mathematics Applied in Business and Industry, Managerial and Decision Economics, and Economics Letters. He has been a guest editor of special issues of Managerial and Decision Economics, Journal of the Operational Research Society, European Journal of the Operations Research Society and the IMA journal of Mathematics Applied in Business and Industry. He is a past joint winner of the Goodeve Medal for the best paper in any Operational Research Society journals. Together with two other universities he has recently had a research grant of $700k to work on various aspects of consumer risk modeling. Crook has been a Visiting Scholar at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; the McIntire School, University of Virginia; the Economics Department European University Institute; and the Economics Department, University of Warwick, UK. He is a Fellow of Wharton's Financial Institutions Center and of Nottingham University's Centre for Finance and Credit Markets. Crook's research on credit risk modeling has been the subject of news items on the web pages of the BBC and UK Stock Exchange. He is co-organizer of a large international conference in credit scoring and has given many presentations to executives from financial institutions, and manufacturing firms as well as at academic conferences. He holds a BA degree in Economics from Lancaster University and a MSc (Econ) degree in Economics from Cardiff University, UK and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2008.

Francis X. Diebold is a J.M. Cohen Professor of Economics, Professor of Finance and Statistics, and Co-Director of the Financial Institutions Center at the University of Pennsylvania and its Wharton School, and Faculty Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass. He is a leader in financial and macroeconomic modeling, forecasting and risk management, with extensive experience simultaneously in academic, corporate, and policy circles.

Diebold has published more than one hundred articles and ten books and edited volumes, including the leading text, Elements of Forecasting, now in its fourth edition, and the volume of collected macroeconomic works, Business Cycles: Durations, Dynamics, and Forecasting. He has received widespread recognition for his research, including election to advisory and editorial boards of numerous leading journals, election to Fellowship in the American Statistical Association and the Econometric Society, and Sloan, Guggenheim and Humboldt fellowships. Articles summarizing his work have appeared in leading popular press outlets, including Newsweek and The Economist.

Diebold is also active in policy and corporate affairs. He has served on numerous boards and is consulted regularly by financial firms, central banks, and policy organizations, worldwide. He is a founding member of the Oliver Wyman Institute, a cooperative undertaking between Oliver Wyman and the international academic community, whose mission is to facilitate and accelerate knowledge transfer between academia and the financial services industry. Diebold lectures actively, worldwide. He is active in executive education and has received several prizes for outstanding teaching. His ongoing annual lecture series include those at the Swiss Finance Institute (Geneva) and at the International Monetary Fund (Washington, DC). He has held visiting appointments in Economics and Finance at Princeton University, Cambridge University, the University of Chicago, the London School of Economics, Johns Hopkins University, and New York University.

Diebold received his B.S. from the Wharton School in 1981 and his Ph.D. in 1986, also from the University of Pennsylvania. Before returning to Penn in 1989, he worked as an economist under both Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington DC. He is married with three children and lives in suburban Philadelphia.

Scott Farris is an IT Architect in the Engineering Function of the State Farm Systems department. Scott started at State Farm in the Actuarial department. After working in the pricing area, he managed the department's Statistical Analysis and Research Unit. He moved to Systems in 2003 and currently works on IT Pricing, Analytics, and Capacity Planning. Scott is a member of the American Statistical Association and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

Thomas B. Fomby has been a Professor of Economics at SMU since 1975. He is co-author of the textbook Advanced Econometric Methods and has authored numerous articles in professional journals including the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Technometrics, Econometrica, Journal of Econometrics, and the Journal of Applied Econometrics. Professor Fomby has been Senior Co-editor of Advances in Econometrics (Emerald Publishing Ltd.) since 1986. Advances in Econometrics is a research annual specializing in recent developments in econometric techniques as applied to problems in economics, finance, marketing and forecasting. Professor Fomby's area of specialization is in time series analysis with emphasis on economic and business forecasting applications. His recent research interests include stable seasonal pattern models, threshold cointegration, outlier and intervention analysis, change point problems and applications of dynamic copulas in assessing market risk. Professor Fomby currently holds Research Associate positions with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and the World Bank in Washington, DC. He has consulted with the U.S. Treasury Department, The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and various corporations including Blockbuster Video, Texas Instruments, KPMG, Fireman's Fund Insurance Company and Zale Corporation.

Susie Fortier is a senior methodologist with Statistics Canada. She joined the Time Series Research and Analysis Centre in 2004 to lead the methodological development for Statistics Canada's Time Series Generalized System (project Forillon). She teaches various time series courses in English and in French, including one on Seasonal Adjustment. Her research interests focus on time series reconciliation and benchmarking, seasonal adjustment, assisted forecasting and SAS programming. Ms. Fortier is the assistant production manager for the Survey Methodology journal. She holds a Master's degree in Mathematics and a Bachelor's degree with a major in Statistics from the University of Sherbrooke.

David E. Hamilton has served as the senior forecast analyst for ODEC since December, 2007. David previously worked for a Texas Utilities Company located in Dallas, TX where he was the Manager of Load Analysis/SME for TXU Energy's wholesale and retail pricing desk. He has been involved with load research, load analysis & modeling, load forecasting; and, customer load simulation for some 24 years with companies such as Southern Company Services in Atlanta, GA; Wisconsin Energy in Milwaukee, WI; East Kentucky Power Cooperative in Winchester, KY; and West Texas Utilities Co in Abilene, TX. He received an MBA in Finance from Hardin Simmons University in Abilene, TX.

David has been married for 36 years and has three married children and 9 grandchildren. In his spare time, he enjoys golf and fishing.

Jack Hymanson is a SAS Business Process consultant who is responsible for providing support to customers by sharing his expertise in domain/industry knowledge, Sales and Operations Planning and Forecasting technology. His 20 years experience in Demand Planning and Supply Chain Management includes the implementations of Demand Solutions, i2 Technologies and SAP APO software as well as the development and facilitation of a comprehensive S&OP Planning process.

Prior to joining SAS, Mr. Hymanson was a Senior Manager of Corporate Demand Planning at Symbol Technologies where he was responsible for a team that forecasted and planned production for a 500 million dollar product line.

Mr. Hymanson holds a Bachelors of Science Degree in Electomechnical Engineering from City College of New York, New York and a Masters of Business Administration from Adelphi University, Garden City, New York.

Evan F. Koenig is a vice president and senior policy advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and an adjunct professor in the Economics Department at Southern Methodist University. He oversees macroeconomic research and analysis in the Dallas Fed's Research Department, briefs the president and directors of the Bank on national economic conditions and writes articles for Bank publications and scholarly journals.

In his research, Koenig seeks to predict and explain movements in prices, output and employment, particularly as these movements are affected by monetary policy. His articles have appeared in such publications as The Quarterly Journal of Economics, The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Journal of Public Economics, and the Dallas Fed's Economic and Financial Policy Review, Southwest Economy, and Economic Letter publications.

Koenig holds bachelor's degrees in mathematics and economics from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He joined the Dallas Fed in 1988 after teaching at the University of Washington, in Seattle.

Christian Lundblad is the Edward M. O'Herron Distinguished Scholar and Associate Professor of Finance at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School. He researches empirical asset pricing issues and international finance, with a specialization in emerging market development. He served as a financial economist at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C., where he advised the Board of Governors on international financial market developments. Lundblad's research has been published in top academic journals such as the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Financial Economics. He received a PhD in financial economics and a master's degree in economics from Duke University. He earned a BA in economics and English literature with highest honors from Washington University in St. Louis.

Dr. Peter Mueller has consulting expertise in: Forecasting, New Products & Marketed Products, Strategic Marketing, Sales Force Sizing & Optimization, New Product Launch, Global Marketing and Technology Evaluations.

Prior to his consulting activities, Dr. Mueller spent 21 years in the Pharmaceutical Industry. He held key positions during his career such as Vice President Global Marketing, Information & Technology, Aventis, Bridgewater USA Vice President Global Marketing, Business & Marketing Services Hoechst Marion Roussel USA Director Global Marketing, Cardiovascular and Metabolic TA, Marion Merrell USA Director Global Business Intelligence and Forecasting, Marion Merrell Dow USA General Manager Switzerland, Marion Merrell Dow Director Business Development Europe, Marion Merrell Dow Europe Director Marketing Research and Planning for Europe, Merrell Dow Europe Product Manager, Richardson Merrell German.

Dr. Mueller studied Pharmacy in Germany and holds a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of Mainz in Germany.

He has lectured at

• University of Mainz, Germany
• University of Frankfurt, Germany
• Rockhurst College Kansas City, USA
• MIT Boston, USA
• PBIRG and EPhMRA
• various conferences in Europe, Japan and USA.

Jerry L. Oglesby holds a Ph.D. in Statistics from Texas A&M University, an M.S. in Mathematics from Lamar University, and a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Mississippi. He currently works for SAS as the Director of Higher Education Consulting and Global Certification within the Education Division. This department is charged with supporting SAS in the university-wide community. It has, as its major goal, the introduction of SAS training materials and software in the curriculums of courses across many units within the universities. Prior to starting this group, he was Director of Analytical Consulting within the Professional Services Division. As Director of Analytical Consulting he grew the Department from its formation to approximately forty modelers and business analysts whose primary function was to provide analytical support and expertise to SAS' sales force and customers. This group was largely responsible for the support of the successful launch of SAS' award winning data mining solution, Enterprise Miner.

From 1990 until joining SAS in July of 1996, Jerry was employed by Monsanto Chemical Company as plant statistician and Manufacturing Technologist. He was CEO and founding President of SCI Data Systems from 1977 to 1990. Following completion of his doctorate at Texas A&M in 1971, he was a professor of Statistics at the University of West Florida where he established the Institute for Statistical and Mathematical Modeling for doing analytical and computational consulting for clients on and off campus.

Jerry serves on several advisory boards in support of statistics and data mining:

• Data Mining Advisory Board, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Central Florida
• Central Michigan University Research Corporation, Center for Applied Research & Technology, Central Michigan University
• Center for the Management of Information Systems, Department of Information & Operations Management, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University
• Master of Marketing Research Program, Coca-Cola Center for Marketing Studies, Terry College of Business, University of Georgia
• Institute of Business Intelligence, Department of Information Systems, Statistics, and Management Science, Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration, The University of Alabama
• Department of Statistics & Operations Technology, Daniels College of Business, University of Denver
• Industry Advisory Committee, North Carolina Community College System
• Information Technology Advisory Committee, Pennsylvania College of Technology
• Computer Information Systems Division Advisory Board, Wake Technical Community College
• Decision Sciences & Center for Quality & Productivity Advisory Board, Business Computer Information System, College of Business Administration, University of North Texas

Alexis J. Ramirez obtained a graduate studies degree in Macroeconomics at the Catholic University of Chile and a M.A. in Economics at the New York University. He has worked with government institutions like the Dominican Ministry of Finance and the Dominican Superintendence of Pensions, also has lectured at the PUCMM University in Santo Domingo. Since 2004 he has been involved in the telecommunications industry, mainly working in data mining and modeling support for Verizon Dominican Republic and currently for Orange DR. Alexis, in collaboration with Qualex Consulting Services, directly participated in the implementation of the SAS Telecommunication Intelligence Solution (TIS) for Orange DR.

Udo Sglavo has been at SAS since 2001 and has been involved with SAS 9 almost since its inception. He has made significant contributions in product management of the analytics components of the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform - which includes SAS Forecast Server, SAS/ETS, SAS/OR and SAS Enterprise Miner. Prior to SAS, he spent over 5 years providing and consuming advanced analytical content and solutions to various enterprises ranging from Fortune 500 companies to internet startups. He received his diploma in mathematics from the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt, Germany. He enjoys public speaking and working with customers to show how SAS can be utilized to solve their analytical challenges. Udo is also a member of the practitioner advisory board of Foresight magazine, published by the International Institute of Forecasters.

Jorge Vilaplana did graduate work at The Ohio State University, where he obtained a M.A. in Economics and a M.Sc. in Agricultural Economics. He is ABD in Agricultural Economics. Since 1994 he has worked in Financial Institutions like Discover Card, American Express, and Bank of America applying econometrics and analytics to acquisitions and portfolio risk management. He also worked at Sears supporting Marketing for Direct Response and at LexisNexis developing forecasting models for fraud, risk, and collections. In 2007 he joined Qualex Consulting Services providing modeling and analytical support for SAS BI implementations for Telecommunications and Banking, as well as on Gaming econometric applications. He has an extensive experience in statistical modeling and forecasting as well as in the development of platforms to support modeling.

Mingyuan (Sunny) Zhang is a principal consultant for SAS Financial Services. Over the last ten years with SAS, he has successfully developed and implemented many forecasting, data mining, optimization, and risk management solutions for various industries. Previously, he served as an economic and financial analyst for a leading telecommunications consulting firm. A member of the American Statistical Association, Zhang holds an MBA and a PhD in financial economics. Zhang is the co-author of the books: Credit Risk Assessment: the New Lending System for Borrowers, Lenders, and Investors (2010) and Fair Lending Compliance: Intelligence and Implications for Credit Risk Management (2008).