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| Phil Aronowitz, Systems Engineer, DDN.
Philip is an IT industry veteran having spent the last 25 years in various roles working in the enterprise financial sector as well as on the vendor side in sales, technical, and leadership positions supporting traditional enterprise as well as large scale HPC and AI infrastructures. |
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| Dr. Sanjay Basu, Senior Director, Cloud Engineering – AI/ML, Oracle.
Dr. Sanjay Basu has worked in technology for more than 30 years and currently leads the AI infrastructure, Generative AI, and GPU Cloud Engineering teams at Oracle Cloud. Sanjay holds a Doctorate in organizational behavior and a double master’s in management & computer engineering. He is working on his second PhD in Artificial Intelligence. He is a Life Member of ACM, AAAI, AAAS, and IEEE, and a Fellow of IETE. He is a prolific blog writer and author of 5 technical books and holds 6 US patents. Read his blogs at https://sanjaysays.com and https://sanjaybasu0.medium.com/ |
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| David Bechtold, Principal Technical Specialist - Storage, IBM.
Information Systems Technology Professional with experience in the design, development, and implementation of Enterprise I/T Data Storage and Management solutions addressing High-Performance Compute & Quantitative Analytics to competitively position Hedge-Fund Trading Platforms; Core-to-Edge data management with a focus on business SLAs including High Availability, Disaster Recovery and Cyber Resiliency; Application Performance Enhancements (Parallel File Systems); S3/Cloud Computing. |
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| Bill Bodei, Regional Sales Director, Hammerspace.
Bill is a Hammerspace Sales Leader with deep expertise in data, AI, and Machine Learning and their supporting ecosystems. He is an alum of the Harvard Business Analytics Program and holds and MBA in Technology Management from Stevens Institute of Technology. |
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| Nate Bradac, Aeron Performance Engineer, Adaptive.
Nate is a seasoned Performance Engineer at Adaptive, where he is currently spearheading projects involving Aeron, a cutting-edge low-latency messaging and clustering technology. Previously Nate worked at ModelOp building out enterprise solutions to aid in the cloud/kubernetes based deployment and governance of ML and LLM models. Prior to that, he was a principal software architect at 29West/Informatica where he worked on the Ultra Messaging suite of products. Nate's interests include concurrent programming, both within a single process, as well as across processes on a network. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nate-bradac-1803192/ |
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| Scott Caudell, FSI Architect, Google.
Scott Caudell is currently an Exchange and Ecosystem Architect at Google Cloud, has been building and designing trading systems since 2000. As a member of the capital markets practice at Google Cloud, Scott designs financial infrastructure solutions and eases the transition to cloud for financial exchanges and trading firms. Scott designed and built highly-scalable, carrier-grade network infrastructure to provide fast and reliable trading experience for users on a variety of trading solutions. |
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| Matt Certosimo, Data Center FPGA Field Application Engineer, AMD.
Matt has over 12 years of experience working with FPGAs. Studied Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Matt has been working with AMD Xilinx since 2015. In his current role, Matt helps Product sales and support for Financial Services and Data Center applications. |
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| Amol Choukekar, AI Practice Leader, UDS Presales, Dell Technologies.
Amol leads the AI / Data Management Practice at Dell. He focuses on Unstructured Data Solutions. With an impressive two-decade track record, he has been instrumental in architecting large-scale infrastructure solutions for data management and analytics workloads. As a trusted advisor, he collaborates with clients in Finance, Pharma/Research, and HealthCare verticals, designing purpose-built, scalable solutions tailored to their unique needs. As an NVIDIA Accredited Advisor, Amol’s expertise is invaluable in today’s data-driven landscape, guiding organizations in implementing the right Data Management and AI solutions—a critical step toward achieving faster Time-To-Outcomes and maximizing ROI. |
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| Tom Coombs, Vice President of Sales, Orthogone.
As an experienced and accomplished global executive, technologist, and business developer, Tom has over 25 years of experience driving growth and expansion for both large-scale organizations and emerging startups. His strong business acumen, advanced technical mindset, and growth-oriented spirit have enabled him to lead teams in developing and delivering world-class strategies and high-value solutions. He is an expert in revenue generation, product design, project management, and various technologies, which allows him to provide valuable insights to his peers, partners, and customers. |
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| Liz Corrigan, Chief Product Officer, Myrtle.ai.
Liz has been running teams to create FPGA based products and systems for over 15 years. She has developed state of the art mobile telecommunications equipment, shipped defense systems into theatre and led verification activities for security critical applications. Liz is a Chartered Engineer with a technical background in RTL design, verification and electronic systems design. |
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| Olivier Cousin, Director, FPGA Solutions, Exegy.
Olivier, Director of FPGA product development at Exegy, encompassing wireless distribution, IPs, and integrated trading platforms. His journey includes roles as Systems Architect at AMD, shaping fintech solutions, and pioneering FPGA Financial libraries at Intel. He also accelerated trading platforms at RBS as a front-office quantitative developer. With a master's in Digital Electronics and Parallel Processing Systems, Olivier combines his technical expertise with a Certificate of Quantitative Finance from the FitLearning Institute. His career is a testament to his commitment to innovation and excellence in the dynamic world of financial technology. |
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| Dr. Lawrence Der, Application Engineering Director, Cadence.
Dr. Lawrence Der is an Application Engineering Director at Cadence Design Systems, managing the Multi-physics System Analysis (MSA) Application Engineering team in the East Coast and Central North America. He joined Cadence in 2017 as a Senior Product Marketing Manager for the Sigrity product line and transferred to the Application Engineer team to support the release of the Clarity 3D Electromagnetic Solver. Prior to joining Cadence, Lawrence has lead engineering and marketing teams at RF Micro Devices, Silicon Laboratories, Beken Corporation, and Witricity. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2001. |
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| Dan Edmunds, Solutions Architect, Options Technology.
With nearly two decades of experience in network architecture, Dan has been instrumental in designing and implementing resilient, low-latency network infrastructures for leading financial services companies. Complementing his experience in low-latency networks, his expertise in cloud computing and cybersecurity has driven innovation and efficiency, ensuring robust financial data protection, making him a key asset in the fintech sector. |
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| Aaron Foo, CEO, FMAD Engineering.
FPGA Engineer, Software Engineer & Entrepreneur, Aaron Foo leads FMADIO, a company with a packet capture appliance which does so much more than just recording data. In a previous life Aaron worked on FPGA pre-trade risk solutions. In a previous, previous life he was a key engineer for the Playstation console. In a previous, previous, previous life he squeezed the maximum performance from GPUs when they first arrived in the form of Nvidia RIVA128 (1997). He also collects cacti. |
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| Seth Friedman, CEO, Liquid-Markets-Holdings.
As CEO of LMS, Seth is responsible for product vision. He has been an active leader at the forefront of electronic trading for over 23 years, with deep sales-trading, technology, and consulting experience. His history of technology vision includes the invention of a multi-patented FPGA order processing technology proven in the field since 2010. Seth headed Program Trading at Morgan Stanley Japan before establishing the Electronic Trading Services business, which he expanded throughout Asia. At Nomura, Seth established the Quantitative Prime Services business, played a key role in the post-acquisition integration of Lehman Brothers, and was responsible for Electronic Product Management across Asia. |
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| Bob Gaines, HPC/ AI Technical Solutions Architect, Intel Corporation.
Bob has spent more than a decade helping firms leverage HPC and AI technologies to discover patterns and anomalies in data to drive measurable business outcomes from trading strategy development to treasury and risk optimization while minimizing compliance exposures. Bob has a deep history in HPC architecture, analytics, and AI. Bob has led the financial services solutions practice for many industry leaders, including DDN, Seagate, Cray, and IBM, before joining the Intel HPC +AI technical solutions team. |
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| Mike Galime, Director - Finance and Capital Markets, Keysight.
Mike is part of Keysight’s team which focuses on solutions directed at exchanges, investment banks, and the overall finance industry, with added focus on the integrity of market data and its access in the cloud. Based in NY, Mike was responsible for the development of TradeView, the first packet broker to feature in-built FPGA based multicast gap detection, and enjoys putting the garnered financial markets expertise to use within Keysight’s Finance industry solutions team. Mike, who previously worked as an Air Force contractor in the field of Bayesian and causal analysis, has a background in music and entertainment to fill his time outside the technology community. |
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Jack Gidding, CEO, Strategic Technology Analysis Center.
Jack has over 30 years of experience in development and business management of financial technology. As CEO of STAC, Jack leads the expansion of the STAC community and the value that STAC delivers to that community. Prior to this, Jack was Head of FX Technology at London Stock Exchange Group, Global Head of Trading Technology at Refinitiv, Global Head of Wealth Management Technology at Refinitiv, Head of Elektron Real-Time Platform at Thomson Reuters. Earlier in his career, Jack was second in command at STAC, helping build it from the ground up in its first seven years. Jack has a BS in Computer Science from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana and a MS in Financial Markets and Trading from Illinois Institute of Technology Stuart School of Business.
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| Robert Glanzman, Global Strategic Alliances Principal Architect, Financial Services, Pure Storage.
25+ year veteran of the Cloud and Data industry. Rob currently leads Pure's Financial Services Vertical world-wide. At VMware, Rob was a founder of VxRail, the world’s leading Hyper-converged Infrastructure Appliance and multi-billion-dollar run rate business for Dell | EMC. He also co-founded and led VMware’s Global Innovation Incubator xLabs in the Office of the CTO. Prior to that Rob managed the VMware / EMC relationship for all Global Financial Accounts and architected some of the largest storage and virtualized environments in existence at the time. Rob also worked in various engineering and executive positions at AT&T and Morgan Stanley. |
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| Sebastian Jug, Principal Performance Engineer, Red Hat.
Sebastian has been working at the bleeding edge of Linux performance for years; benchmarking, enabling the latest technologies, and helping optimize applications to run their best. |
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| Troy Kaster, Vice President of AI, Penguin Solutions.
Troy is Vice President of Generative AI at Penguin Solutions. Penguin designs, builds, integrates, and manages customized end-to-end technology solutions to address the specific needs of Fortune 500 companies, financial services companies, academic institutions, startups, and public sector institutions. Troy has sold and delivered some of the largest AI factories in the world, with over 50,000 GPUs under management. Troy prides himself on his ability to apply technology to solve a wide array of customer problems, leveraging AI/ML solutions to solve real word problems and provide business value at scale. A graduate of Algonquin College, Troy resides in Arizona. |
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| Matthew Klos, Senior Solutions Architect, IBM.
Senior Storage Architect with years of experience designing, implementing, and deploying high-performance storage solutions for HPC and AI/ML workloads across disciplines, including Financial Services, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Hyperscaler, and Cloud computing. |
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| Ivan Kunyankin, Senior Data Scientist | FinTech, Devexperts.
Data Scientist focused on applications within the fintech industry. I contribute to the development of our personalized assistant platform for brokers and funded trading firms |
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| Louis Liu, CEO, Shengli Technologies.
Louis is a serial entrepreneur who has founded multiple successful technology companies. At Shengli, he led an engineering team to build the first pure FPGA hardware-based trading system for China’s financial markets. Prior to Shengli, Louis was co-founder and co-CEO of Sonic Trading in New York, a pioneering trading technology firm. Louis designed Sonic’s core system from scratch and evolved it from a professional trading system to an institutional platform. After Sonic’s acquisition by Bank of New York, Louis served as Managing Director responsible for equity trading systems. Louis received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Columbia University in operation research. |
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| James Lupton, CTO, Blackcore Technologies.
Based in Bristol, UK at Blackcore Technologies HQ; and regularly spending time in New Jersey at the US Blackcore facility. James’ knowledge and experience have been essential in propelling Blackcore Technologies into the global market.
James’ passion for technology, engineering, and innovation began at a young age. Building PCs, working on software projects and then starting his first job at his father's technology company. James is devoted to designing innovative servers built for electronic trading and other performance-demanding industries. James has spent considerable time building out various departmental teams and working closely with clients to improve features and service sets. |
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| Cliff Maddox, Director of Business Development, NovaSparks.
Cliff has over 30 years’ experience in the trading industry. He joined NovaSparks in 2017 as a U.S. Sales Manager and now leads the sales team. Prior to joining NovaSparks, Cliff worked at Activ Financial Systems for eight years, holding various positions in the business and sales organization. Prior to that, Cliff spent 20 years developing his capital market expertise by leading numerous software development projects for wide variety of major banks and trading firms. |
| 
| Bernie Malouin, CEO, JETCOOL Technologies.
Dedicating over 15 years to cooling innovation, Dr. Bernie Malouin is at the forefront of revolutionizing liquid cooling solutions in high-power electronics for data centers. Launching his career at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Malouin pioneered and patented microconvective liquid cooling technology, an evolution of microjet impingement. This breakthrough technology enhances cooling efficiency by directing fluid jets at processor hotspots, establishing a new standard for thermal management. As the CEO of JetCool, Malouin works closely with chipmakers, OEMs, and hyperscalers to advance high-performance computing and AI workloads. His efforts are instrumental in driving the industry towards improved efficiency and environmental sustainability. |
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| Michael McGuirk, Sr Manager, Data Center Marketing, AMD.
Michael leads the Data Center technical marketing team within the Adaptive and Embedded Computing Group (AECG) at AMD. In his role, Michael defines new products and solutions based on customer input and ensures they are easy to use and successful across the data center market. Michael has over 20 years of experience at Xilinx, now AMD, and has extensive FPGA and Embedded systems experience. In his current role he is working to define how FPGA’s can leverage AI to better serve the Financial Technology market. |
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| Attila Narin, Vice President of Cloud Engineering, Oracle.
Attila is Vice President of Cloud Engineering at Oracle with focus on various technical go-to-market strategies for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). He joined Oracle in 2020 with a strong background in public cloud after leading the customer-facing engineering teams at Google Cloud, Palo Alto Networks, and Amazon Web Services across EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa). In his earlier career, Attila held several software development roles including serving on Bill Gates’ Executive Strategy Team at Microsoft. Attila holds a Computer Science degree from the University of Florida and is an inventor of over 30 patents. |
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| Eric Powers, Director, Global Head of Markets Technology: High Performance Architectures, Citi.
Financial Technology Professional with over 27 years of full stack systems engineering experience. Currently at Citi – Director, Head of Markets Technology: High Performance Architectures – Infrastructure. Responsible for all architecture and engineering of electronic trading infrastructure globally for Citi independent of asset class. Proficiency and proven track record of driving electronic trading technology, innovating new technologies both internally and fostering external development. Recognized leader advising Venture Capital, leading industry publications and organizations. BSEE, STAC Fellow. |
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| Vahan Sardaryan, Co-Founder and CEO, LDA Technologies.
Vahan is a Co-Founder and the CEO at LDA Technologies, a known provider of leading high-performance FPGA-based networking products. Vahan’s experience in software design goes back 20 years and encompasses various fields such as high-performance networking, information security, realtime systems and such. He has been involved in electronic trading industry for over 12 years, 8 years of which was dedicated to HFT companies’ needs. Vahan holds a PhD degree equivalent in Applied Mathematics and is an avid chess player. |
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| Mike Schonberg, Director, Market Data Technology, Quincy Data.
Mike is a seasoned engineer with over 25 years of experience in the technology industry. He shows great enthusiasm for finding cutting edge and elegant solutions to difficult problems. For the past 19 years he focused on providing low latency, high performance solutions for hedge funds, proprietary trading firms, and large financial institutions. He currently co-runs the technology group at Quincy Data and McKay Brothers. Mike has been instrumental in the design and implementation of Quincy's market data distribution platforms. He currently oversees a variety of technology projects including market data distribution and custom low latency network endpoint devices. |
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| Conor Twomey, Head of AI Strategy, KX.
Conor has spent 12 years solving the most demanding data problems for leading corporations around the world. He was shortlisted by GradIreland as "Graduate of the Year" in Ireland 2011 and appeared in Sunday Independent’s "30-under-30 Who Will Shape the Future of Ireland." Conor has also previously represented Ireland at the World Economic Forum Under 30 community and was a recipient of the Irish Echo’s 40-under-40 Award in New York. Conor holds a BSc. in Financial, Mathematical and Actuarial Sciences from University College Cork and a Msc. in Computational Finance from the University of Limerick. |
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| Dino Vitale, AI/ML Platform Engineering, TD Securities.
Dino Vitale is a Distinguished Engineer in ITS Cloud Engineering team at TD Bank, responsibilities include cloud strategy, architecture, and building data/analytical platform services including AI/GenAI, ML platforms, data platforms, and CD/CI automation. Dino's major focus is enabling AI capabilities in the cloud and defining the tooling stack. Dino has an extensive background in the HPC space with expertise in building shared grid/compute services environments and helped various FSI revolutionize their grid-computing environments by implementing a utility model in supporting pay-per-use consumption models, sharing compute across multiple applications, implementing workload distribution patterns, scavenging server-side/desktops, and bursting into the cloud. |
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| Michael Watson, Director of Field Application Engineering, Supermicro.
Manages East Coast Field Engineering and Solutions & Technology Enablement teams responsible for understanding large enterprise, cloud GPU/AI, and service provider customer requirements for deployment of optimized solutions to meet customer needs. Michael travels often to drive strategic partner initiatives, customer satisfaction, and lead technology & roadmap discussions with leaders of organizations and strategic customers. In the past Michael has held senior Business Development and Engineering roles at Supermicro, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Broadcom/Serverworks, and Marvell. Michael holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson University/SUNY New Paltz. |
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| Daniel Wisehart, FPGA & ASIC Engineer, Cubist Systematic Strategies.
Daniel began trading professionally in 1993 and worked on his first FPGA and ASIC designs in 1997. He has worked for 10 different trading firms in all of the electronically tradable asset classes with differing latency needs. He has designed FPGA and ASIC solutions for both trading and hardware design shops. He has designed and built systems that split trading applications into a mixture of hardware and software to create systems that meet the needed latency profiles. He holds FINRA series 57 and series 24 registrations. |
