HIT - Mini sites - AI2 2022

Speakers

Keynotes:

Dr. Roy Bar-Haim IBM Research AI

Roy Bar-Haim is a senior research scientist and project lead in the Debating Technologies group, IBM Research AI. Roy joined Project Debater in its early stages, and was responsible for several of its core components. He is currently leading a research team working on quantitative summarization of opinions, as well as on leveraging AI and language technologies for cloud compliance. Roy holds a Ph.D in Computer Science from Bar-Ilan University. Before joining IBM, Roy led NLP teams in several startup companies. Together with his colleagues, he presented tutorials on debating technologies in AACL 2020, ACL 2021 and IJCAI 2021.
Roberto Pieraccini Director of Engineering, Google, Zurich (CH)

Since 1981 Roberto Pieraccini has pursued a career of research and development in human-machine spoken interaction at institutions in Italy, US, and Switzerland. He is best known for his pioneering work on statistical natural language understanding and reinforcement learning for automated dialogue systems. He joined Google in March 2018 as a Director of Engineering, where he currently leads the Google Assistant’s ZRH-NLU team focusing on advanced natural language understanding. He is the author of "The voice in the Machine" (MIT Press, 2012), and "AI Assistants" (MIT Press, September 2021) and a fellow of IEEE and ISCA. He received the Primi Dieci award from the Italian-American Chamber of Commerce in 2016, and an honorary degree of Dr. in Science from the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK in 2019.

Wikipedia | Google Scholar | Personal Web Page

Speakers:

Dr. Omri Allouche Head of Research at Gong.io

Dr. Omri Allouche heads the Research group at Gong.io, which uses machine learning to help teams operate based on customer reality instead of opinions. Omri also teaches Data Science and Deep Learning at Bar Ilan University and the Y-Data program. He has over 20 years of experience in various research positions, and holds a Ph.D. in Computational Ecology from the Hebrew University (cum laude). He won several academic awards and scholarships, and his research papers had been cited thousands of times.
Prof. Yosef Ben Ezra Faculty of Electrical Engineering Dean, HIT

Prof. Yosef Ben-Ezra, received his Ph.D. from the Tel-Aviv University (TAU) in 1999. During 1998-2000 he was a senior researcher in TAU. He has co-authored over 95 papers in international journals, chapters in books and conferences, in fields of semiconductor physics and nonlinear effects, and optical communication. He is the author of 10 patents in fields of all-optical signal processing and communication, speech recognition and speech synthesis. Prof. Ben-Ezra current research fields of interest include optical communication, microwave photonics, semiconductor and photonic devices, non-linear optics, all-optical signal processing, speech processing and machine learning.
Dr. Arriel Benis Senior Lecturer Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Technology Management, HIT

Dr. Arriel Benis is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Technology Management, and head the department of Technology Management at the Holon Institute of Technology, Israel.
He holds a Ph.D. in Medical Informatics and Artificial Intelligence from Paris North University and an M.Sc. in Medical Informatics and Communication Technologies from Pierre and Marie Curie University. His main research interests focus on Customer Informatics, Decision Support, and Controlled Vocabularies in Healthcare and Industry.
Yakir Buskilla cocohub.ai CEO & Co-founder

Tech entrepreneur with over a decade of experience in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Big Data in various engineering and leadership roles.
In recent years was the General Manager for Nielsen RnD center in Israel. And in the last year, co-founder and CEO of Cocohub.ai, a platform for creating conversational virtual humans.
Adv. Lior Eldar Vice President Export Control, Legal & Compliance division - NSO Group

Key management role. Running Defense & Commercial Export Controls, Government relations, Compliance and Legal affairs related with Defense and Cyber technologies, products, services, etc., including international development, operations, marketing and sales.

Experienced Defense & Commercial trade control Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, and General counsel, with demonstrated history of working in the defense and public safety industry. Skilled in Legal Advice, Licensing, Corporate Governance, and International Law. Strong legal professional graduated from Department of International Law, Military Prosecutor's Office.
Dr. Dror Lederman Senior Lecturer, HIT

Dr. Dror Lederman received the B.Sc., M.Sc., B.EMS. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel in 1998, 2003, 2005, and 2009, respectively, and the LL.B. and LL.M. in Law from the Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel in 2014 and 2017, respectively. Between 2009 and 2011 Dror was a post-doctoral research associate at the Imaging Research Center, Department of Radiology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, where his research focused on developing models for breast cancer risk stratification. Dror is currently a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Engineering, Holon Institute of Technology, Holon, Israel. His research interests include mainly biomedical imaging.
Ariel Levanon VP Cyber Security, NVIDIA

Experienced Vice President with a demonstrated history of working in the Cyber and Intelligence industry. Skilled in Product Management, Analytical Skills, R&D, and Start-ups. Strong military and protective services professional with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) focused in Computer/Information Security & Markerting Management from Tel Aviv University.
Dr. Marina Litvak SCE

Dr. Marina Litvak completed her PhD degree in IS (current SISE) dept. at BGU under supervision of Prof. Mark Last in 2010.
She is currently a Senior Lecturer at Shamoon College of Engineering (SCE), department of Software Engineering.

Marina's research focuses mainly on Multilingual Text Analysis, Social Networks, Knowledge Extraction from Text, Summarization.

Marina published over 80 academic papers, including journal and top-level conference publications. She constantly serves as program committee and editorial board member in multiple journals and conferences, and collaborates in different research projects in Israel and abroad.
Shai Nissim Site Leader & Chief Product Officer, OSR Enterprises & ARK Trade

Leads the Israeli sites & Chief Product Officer at OSR Enterprises & ARK Trade. Experienced tech entrepreneur. Served in senior executive positions at pioneering technology companies. Co-authored 15 patents in fields of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, speech technology, and trading. Holds a BSc in Electronics Engineering from HIT, and an MBA from Bar-Ilan University.
Dr. Jonathan Schler Chair of Computer Science Department, HIT

Jonathan Schler is the chair of the computer science department at HIT. Jonathan's research focus is on machine learning based text processing, especially in the area of authorship profiling in modern as well as historical texts. In parallel, during the last 25 years Jonathan has been involved in leading technology teams in various companies including startups as well as public companies. Jonathan holds a Ph.D in Computer Science from Bar-Ilan University.
Dr. Nava Shaked School of Multidisciplinary Studies, HIT

Dr. Nava Shaked is the head of School of Multidisciplinary Studies in HIT - Holon Institute of Technology, Israel- and an Adjunct professor at the PhD program at CUNY GC, Computational Linguistics Department. Shaked is an expert in Natural Language processing, artificial Intelligence and in Human-Machine interaction, with 20 years' experience both in speech technology research as well as leading major projects in Israel, Europe and the US. Shaked specializes in AI & Voice Technologies. Her 1st book (co-authored by Ute Winter) "Design of Multimodal Mobile Interfaces" was published in 2016 and her 2nd book "The Grid of the Arts" (co-authored by Liora Bigon) was publishes Sep 2021 both by DE Gruyter publishing house.
Roi Shillo CTO, Keepers Child Safety Ltd.

Focus on delivery state-of-the-art NLP models to identify and monitor social behaviors in social media text messages to protect children from cyber bullying. Roi leads the technology department: development teams, architecture, strategy, partnerships and innovation.

Keepers is an award-winning, secure app, dedicated to helping parents protect their children against cyberbullying and other predatory behavior online. Every kid should be able to safely play in the digital world.
Dr. Talia Tron Staff Data scientist, HIT

Multidisciplinary by nature, with a wide range of interests and experience, from machine learning and statistics; to neuroscience and music. I'm passionate about everything that has to do with people and data. Specialties: Machine learning, computational neuroscience, AI for healthcare, customer driven innovation, explainable AI, big-data, statistics, affective computing, piano, singer-song writer.
Dr. Alon Zilburg Israel Securities Authority

Alon Zilburg is the Chief data scientist of the Israel Securities Authority (ISA). The ISA is active in two main areas: protecting investors and developing the regulatory infrastructure, tools and products for an advanced, diverse, competitive and innovative public capital market. Combined with extensive operations in the fields of econometric research and anomaly detection, the ISA's chief data scientist is also responsible for advancing the incorporation of NLP capabilities into the ISA's operations. As a sector which is driven by textual reporting and where timing is crucial, NLP capabilities hold far reaching consequences for capital markets. Alon's talk aims to broadcast both needs and possible effects in the field to leading organizations in academia and industry. Alon holds a PhD in applied mathematics from Tel Aviv University.