|
|
Keynote Speakers
Keynote speakers, renowned experts in industrial engineering and management, set the tone for the various sections of the annual conference.
Sunday, May 19
|
|
|
S. David Wu
Dean and Lee A. Iacocca Endowed Chair
P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science
Lehigh University
S. David Wu is dean of the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science at Lehigh University, where he holds the Lee A. Iacocca endowed chair. Wu was appointed dean of the engineering college in 2004. A well-known scholar in operations research, he specializes in optimization, game theory and statistical analysis. He has received significant support for his research from the National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Defense, Semiconductor Research Corp. and Sandia National Laboratories. Wu’s work in the high-tech industry has been widely recognized and cited, earning best paper awards and significant media coverage. He was a finalist for the 2009 Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice, and his work has been tested or implemented at firms such as Intel, Infineon, Freescale, Lucent, and IBM. An IIE fellow, Wu has published more than 100 scholarly papers and served as editor or editorial board member on many journals in his field. His articles have been published in Operations Research, Management Science, IIE Transactions and Naval Research Logistics, and he co-edited the best-selling book Handbook of Quantitative Supply Chain Analysis with David Simchi-Levi and Max Shen.
Spearheading the development and implementation of the Lehigh Engineering’s strategic plan, Elevating Engineering Excellence via Multidisciplinary Innovation, Wu helped reinvent and develop one of the most prestigious and reputable engineering schools in the United States. Leveraging and transforming its long-standing strengths in material science, structural engineering, microelectronics and systems engineering, the college pursues a progressive research and educational agenda designed to create new knowledge that makes direct societal impact in addressing the grand challenges of our time: health and healthcare delivery, energy and the environment, and sustainable infrastructure systems.
Wu has served on various national and international panels such as NSF and the Science Foundation of Ireland. He currently serves on the board of overseers for Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering, the engineering advisory board for the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), and the expert review panels for the Science & Engineering Research Council of Singapore. Wu received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Pennsylvania State University in 1987. He was a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania and HKUST.
|
Monday, May 20
|
|
|
Guy Primus
Chief Operating Officer, Overbrook Entertainment
Guy Primus is chief operating officer at Overbrook Entertainment, the film, TV and transmedia production company founded by producer James Lassiter and actor/producer Will Smith. As COO, Primus oversees Overbrook’s operations and manages the company’s staff. He also leads Overbrook's strategic ventures group and is co-founder and managing director of Tentpole Ventures, a seed-stage technology investment fund that focuses on consumer lifestyle companies.
Primus serves on the board of directors of StarlingTV, the social TV platform that allows viewers to chat, play and interact with one another while watching TV, and on the advisory boards of JibJab Media, a leading provider of digital greetings and online entertainment, MoviePass, a subscription service heralded as the “Netflix for movie theaters,” and Interactive One, the leading online platform serving the African-American community through news, information, entertainment and social networking. Primus also is a member of the Georgia Tech Advisory Board and the advisory board of Georgia Tech’s School of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
Prior to joining Overbrook, he was director of digital media at Starbucks Entertainment. In this role, he was responsible for setting the strategic direction of Starbucks’ digital entertainment initiatives, including negotiation and product planning for Starbucks' groundbreaking deal with iTunes. Primus has served as group product marketing manager at Microsoft, where he oversaw marketing and revenue advertising for MSN Entertainment. “The Scenario,” which Primus conceived for Sprite while at Microsoft, was named Best Branded Entertainment Campaign at the 2005 ad:tech awards. Before joining Microsoft, Primus worked at Bad Boy Entertainment, where he served as vice president of strategy and planning for Blue Flame, the marketing and advertising agency founded by Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Primus' passion for technology and entertainment has resulted in experiences that range from being a patent-pending inventor (Managing Demographic-Based Customer Ratings and Collaborative Moderation of Social Media Posts) to serving as A&R for Universal Music recording artist Anjulie. His success in the worlds of media and technology led to his selection as a CUP Catalyst in Media & Entertainment by the Council of Urban Professionals and being named to Georgia Tech's Council of Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni.
Primus earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech and his MBA from Harvard Business School.
|
Tuesday, May 21
|
|
|
Felix Diaz
President, Latin American Region, Pall Corp.
With more than 35 years of professional experience, Diaz describes himself as a mentoring team builder, visionary change agent, and global operations and business leader.
Shortly after completing a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering, Diaz began his career in 1975 as a manufacturing engineer with Baxter Corp.’s Puerto Rico operations. Subsequently, he was promoted through a series of manufacturing, sales, marketing and general business management positions. For seven years, he directed commercial organizations and businesses in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal. As vice president of manufacturing and operations, he developed and deployed manufacturing, supply chain and distribution strategies for a Baxter global business unit that managed annual revenues of more than $1 billion in Europe, Latin America and Asia. In that role, he directed the establishment of Baxter’s first manufacturing facility in China. He was promoted in 1993 to president of Baxter Latin America, managing more than $250 million in annual revenues, a 2,000-member staff and four manufacturing facilities. From 1996 to 1999 he served as president of Baxter Southeast Asia. In that role, Diaz directed geographic expansion programs, including the establishment of commercial offices in India and manufacturing facilities in China, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Diaz joined Pall Corp. in 2000 as vice president and general manager of the Life Sciences Business Center in California. Under his leadership, the organization was transformed from mostly low-tech manual management systems and operations to a high-tech R&D, engineering and manufacturing center of excellence. A new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility was built, validated and USFDA-certified in Mexico, and by 2003, the combined California/Mexico operations supported 70 percent of the revenues of the Pall Life Sciences Global Blood Processing Business.
In 2004, Diaz became president of global operations for the Pall Life Science Business Group. He was responsible for 12 manufacturing facilities located in the Americas and Europe, with more than 3,500 employees and more than $500 million in annual value of production. The manufacturing organization was fully aligned with a global cost and quality improvement program, delivering more than $80 million in savings in four years.
Diaz was selected in 2008 by then-president of Pall Corp. to be the senior Pall business leader who would drive a major geographic expansion initiative in Latin America. Under Diaz’s leadership, a regional strategic planning process was implemented; resources were hired in key markets like Brazil, Mexico and Argentina; and Scientific Laboratory and Engineering Centers of Excellence were established in Brazil in less than 18 months. Diaz directed the acquisition, merger and integration of the largest Pall Corp. regional distributor in Brazil. In the four years of Pall’s Latin America geographic expansion initiative, with Diaz’s vision and leadership, the business compound annual growth has been more than 25 percent.
|
|
|
|
|
|