Urvashi Shah is Chief of Staff on Stanley Black and Decker’s Global Operations team. In this role she reports directly to the SVP of Global Operations and supports a wide variety of initiatives across Strategic Sourcing, Supply Chain Planning, Distribution, Manufacturing, Industry 4.0 and EH&S.

Urvashi believes in a Lean, Agile, Resilient and Responsive Supply Chain. She supports projects that drive End-to-End Supply Chain Transparency, Strategic Footprint Optimization and World Class Service to Customers. With experience in various Supply Chain Analytics and Digital Manufacturing roles she is also passionate about finding more innovative and efficient ways for internal teams – from planners to shop floor operators – to be safe and effective every day.

Urvashi has a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from University of Mumbai. She has a Master of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering from University at Buffalo, SUNY. Here she specialized in Operations Research and completed her thesis in the Game-Theoretic Approach to Resilience of Cyber-Physical Network Infrastructures. This research was partially supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). She joined Stanley Black and Decker after completing her research with SUNY Research Foundation in 2015

Rajeev Kalamdani is a Data Science/Analytics Manager with experience in deploying AI/ML products in a global enterprise. He has expertise in all aspects of manufacturing (engineering, launch, production, maintenance & quality), specific expertise in 6Sigma & Lean Manufacturing and Big Data/IIoT Analytics within the Manufacturing domain.

Rajeev directs a global team (Dearborn, Cologne and Chennai) of Data Scientists to deliver analytics solutions supporting Manufacturing Operations and Engineering:

• Predictive Maintenance: AI/ML models to transition to condition based maintenance using machine signal and sensor data with the objective of improving equipment up-time
• Quality Monitoring & Improvement: Mine process and end of line inspection data to provide near real-time feedback to improve quality; Correlate machine signal data with sampled quality characteristics to migrate to 100% inspection using AI/ML models
• Optimization Based Decision Support: Batch production schedule optimization driven by demand and subject to manufacturing constraints to minimize cost and inventory; Optimize sourcing decisions based on capacity and logistics constraints to minimize cost; Allocation of operators to assembly lines and features to machining lines to maximize utilization and minimize cost
• Product Usage Feedback (Connected Vehicle Data) Utilization: Improve quality and reduce warranty through enhancing in-plant inspection strategies; Improve vehicle location efficiency based on GPS data
• Labor Management Support: Minimize the time to shift startup by tracking present employees and identifying the most suitable replacements from available unassigned employees
• Collaborating with the OT (Operational Technology) and IT (Information Technology) teams to plan and execute strategies for large scale (80+ plants, 0.5 M assets) data acquisition and ingestion into the data lake for development of analytics apps.
• Leveraging the following analytics technology components to deliver solutions: Qlikview, Tableau, Alteryx, Python, Spark, Hadoop, Hive, SQL, Kafka, MQTT, Springboot, Angular, Pivotal Cloud Foundry and Data Robot

Dr. Michelle Chrétien received her BSc in Chemistry from Dalhousie University and PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Ottawa. Her extensive experience leading applied research in 3D printing, automation, robotics, design, simulation, and printed electronics has resulted in new capabilities and infrastructure to support innovations in advanced manufacturing and beyond. Michelle is currently the Associate Vice President, Research & Innovation at Conestoga College. Previously, she was the inaugural Director of the Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Design Technologies at Sheridan College. Prior to joining the public sector in 2018, Michelle spent 12 years at the Xerox Research Centre of Canada in various roles including Global Program Manager (Electronic Materials), Senior R&D Manager (Materials Science), and Program Manager (Strategic Partnerships). Michelle is passionate about the commercialization of innovation and helping companies to innovate, solve problems, and achieve their business and technology goals.

Michelle has published 23 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals and been granted 88 US patents on novel materials and manufacturing technologies. She has been recognized with numerous awards including the IUPAC Prize for Young Chemists, the Xerox Certificate of Excellence, and the intelliFLEX Innovation Award for Women in STEM. She is also an appointed member of the Mitacs Research Council and serves as an advisor and mentor for various incubators and entrepreneurship hubs.

Hari Ambalam is a technology leader, with over 14 years of experience in consumer appliances and automotive industries. Currently, he is the Global Engineering Sensors / Actuator, Wiring Leader at Whirlpool Corporation leading a global team that provides strategic solutions from planning a roadmap, to the execution for all cross-category appliances. He is responsible for delivering innovative, high quality and cost-effective strategies and solutions that drive business growth, in a fast-paced environment.

Prior to this role, Hari was an Electrical and Electronics systems architect accountable for developing and deploying global strategy, related to product performance, user experience and connectivity experience for the cooking platform.

Hari has an MBA from Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and a Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Dayton.

Dr. Steve Jia is the Chief Engineer at Litens Automotive Group, Canada. He has invested more than 30 years of his professional career in Product Development, Engineering Materials, Sustainable Energy, Metal Forming, FEA, CFD, MBD, CAE, VPD and NNW Technologies. He contributed two chapters to the book, Sustainable Material Forming and Joining, published by CRC Press, New York, USA in 2019 and has published more than 30 research papers at international conferences and journals.

He was invited as a Keynote Speaker and invited speaker at several international and regional conferences, seminars, and/or webinar series. Dr Jia received his Ph.D. in Integrated Engineering and M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the Ohio University, USA in 1990’s and was an Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) of Mechanical Engineering at Ohio Northern University, Ohio, USA in early 2000 and has been a registered Professional Engineer (P.Eng.) in Ontario, Canada since 1999.

At Whirlpool, Snita Menon started by leading a team of engineers to design sensor based control algorithms for various home appliances to enhance features and functionality. In her current role, Snita’s team is responsible for the complete integration of electrical, electromechanical components into dishwashing applications across the globe.

Prior to this, Snita worked at Cummins Engine Company for about 9 years in the Engine controls department, and the application for Off Highway Engines. She was also part of defining emission control strategies for Heavy Duty and High horsepower applications.

Snita completed her Masters in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University and an MBA from Kelley School of Business (Indiana University).

Saiman Shetty helps build robots! He was part of the Manufacturing Automation team at Tesla, and the Autonomous Vehicle Hardware development team at Lyft. His current job role involves helping build autonomous delivery robots at Nuro, based in the US.

Saiman received his Masters in Electrical Engineering from the Arizona State University, and comes from a technical background of Control Systems Engineering.

Dr. Christine Richardson is the Director of Sensor Technology at Ecolab. A trusted partner at nearly three million customer locations, Ecolab is the global leader in water, hygiene and energy technologies and services that protect people and vital resources. Ecolab delivers comprehensive solutions, data-driven insights and on-site service to promote safe food, maintain clean environments, optimize water and energy use, and improve operational efficiencies for customers in the food, healthcare, energy, hospitality and industrial markets in more than 170 countries around the world.

Dr. Richardson has over 20 years of technology leadership experience and prior to joining Ecolab was CTO at Rubicon Technology and VP, Crystal Growth Systems Development and Engineering for GT Advanced Technologies. Her earlier experience includes leading photovoltaic technology development for GTAT; Senior Director of Advanced Process Development for Evergreen Solar; and process development engineering for Advanced Micro Devices.

Dr. Richardson has her Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology, M.S. degrees in Applied Physics and Materials Science and Engineering from Harvard University and Stanford University respectively, and a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

Andrey Morochko brings experience from technology roles spanning regional leadership, SaaS operations, product management, and business process transformation. In his current role, Andrey is improving IT function ability to deliver products and projects faster and better through adoption of agile and SAFe, transition to DevOps, automation through CI/CD, and effective use of public cloud and cloud-native services. He’s also leading a product portfolio in support of business lean efforts and enjoys hands-on engagement in building serverless applications and deploying IOT services at scale.

Pooja Suresh is the Director of Research & Innovation at Gastops in Ottawa, Canada. In her current role, she manages the Research department and leads her team on technology advancement programs that serve the long term vision and strategic interests of the business in the aerospace, defence and energy markets. She has built Canadian and international partnerships with industry and academia to understand the future market needs and bring to market innovative technology solutions. Pooja first started working at Gastops ten years ago.

Her diverse career includes experience in environmental policy for aviation and management consulting. She has a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Carleton University and a masters in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT. As a champion of diversity and inclusion, Pooja has founded two initiatives and contributes to several others with the goal of building a network of allies and advancing diversity in leadership in the aviation and technology sectors in Ottawa. She is a Women in Engineering ambassador at Carleton University and actively volunteers for STEM outreach programs.

After graduating from Colorado State University, Amanda Nickels began her career with Hewlett Packard’s elite Innovation Team developing agile applications to rapidly respond to pressing business needs. Her diverse technical path has spanned from roles in DevOps, software engineering, fintech, and full stack architecture.

Amanda now serves as lead developer on Tyson’s Emerging Tech team, where she has spearheaded many successful projects designing and deploying IoT-based solutions. Her contributions have impacted organization-wide IT and OT architecture standards and she continues to play a pivotal role in positioning Tyson at the cusp of modern technology and innovation.