Presently, I hold the position of Chief Scientific Officer at a highly successful fintech/lending company. Prior to this, I was Co-Founder, CTO, and CSO at Predikto, Inc., a machine learning startup acquired by United Technologies Corp. (now Raytheon Technologies) in 2018. As the lead inventor of Predikto MAX, a dynamic machine learning feature engineering optimization service (US Patent: US20160350671A1), I played a critical role in driving the innovation in our successful AI/ML driven software. I also had the privilege to serve as Sr. Director for Hitachi Ltd.’s Social Innovation Business, leading solution prototyping and supporting commercial success, and was honored by having been appointed as a Hitiachi Brand Ambassador in 2018. My career began in academia. I was Associate Professor of Criminology (with tenure), and Director of the Center for Crime and Justice Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. I have authored/co-authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications, received multiple awards for both research and teaching, and had the privilege of designing and teaching graduate-level machine learning/data science courses as far back as 2009.Over the years, my experience has grown from working alongside many Fortune 100 and smaller entities, particularly within aviation, rail, shipping, and financial services. This experience has also allowed me to collaborate with many brilliant individuals and I've been fortunate to partner with some very impressive and inspirational teams. In all, I thrive in designing and delivering machine learning and AI solutions to tackle complex and contextualized longitudinal business problems, particularly around highly nuanced contexts where data are often scarce.Outside of my professional endeavors, I am passionate about surfing, physical fitness, lifelong learning, and above all, family.Specialties: Applied Machine Learning, AI, IoT, Start-ups, Predictive Analytics, Risk Assessment, Operations Research, Statistics, and Longitudinal Research/Analysis Design.