9th Annual NJBDA Symposium, Monday May 9, 2022

Building the Workforce Pipeline for a Data-Driven Economy

Host: New Jersey Institute of Technology

The New Jersey Big Data Alliance (NJBDA) is an alliance of 18 higher education institutions, as well as industry and government members, that catalyzes collaboration in advanced computing and data analytics research, education and technology.

The NJBDA Annual Symposium brings together academia, government and industry from across the state and beyond, to share information on the latest innovations, research and future directions in Big Data.

Our 2022 event will showcase education and training of a big data workforce with a focus on Big Data, AI and Machine Learning.

This year’s symposium will be held in person at the Campus Center, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey. (Google Map)

For questions, please contact David Bader, Ph.D., NJIT. For sponsorship inquiries, please contact Selenny Fabre, NJIT, at info.datascience@njit.edu.

Keynotes

Stephen Ezell

Vice President, Global Innovation Policy, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF)

The State of Digital Skills in the U.S. Economy

An increasingly digitalized global economy requires ever-more digitally skilled workforces for nations to remain productive. Countries that wish to successfully compete in the global digital economy must cultivate work forces possessing the requisite digital skills so that industries, enterprises, and even individuals can thrive in the digital environment. ITIF’s report explores the state of digital skills across the U.S. economy, examining what they are, why they matter, the current extent of workforce digitalization, and how the United States fares in international digital skills comparisons. It concludes by providing a brief overview of some of the best practices and programs being introduced by nonprofit, academic, and corporate organizations to deepen the U.S. digital skills base and suggesting policy recommendations to further foster U.S. digital skills development. Unfortunately, the report finds that domestic and international assessments of digital skills show the United States is lagging its competitors.

Florence D. Hudson

Executive Director, Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub at Columbia University

Building the Workforce Pipeline for a Data-Driven Economy

The NSF Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub is a community convener, collaboration hub, and catalyst for data Science, Innovation and Technology with groundbreaking and innovative programs engaging over 5,000 individuals from over 1,000 organizations since the Hub was launched in 2015. In this session, you will learn about the Hub’s signature programs, including the National Student Data Corps (NSDC), which brings open, online, free data science education to students of all ages around the world, especially in underserved communities.The Hub and NSDC are increasing awareness and skills in data science while enabling a valuable community of support to build the workforce pipeline for a data-driven economy.

Presentation (PDF)

Agenda

8:30 – 9:30

Registration/Refreshments/Exhibits

Registration: Campus Center Gallery, 2nd Floor
Refreshments: Campus Center, Ballroom B
Exhibits: Campus Center, Ballroom A

9:30 – 10:15

Welcome

Campus Center, Ballroom A, 2nd Floor

Matthew Hale, President, NJBDA
A welcome and brief overview of NJBDA

David Bader, Director, NJIT Institute for Data Science
Introductions

Atam Dhawan, Senior Vice Provost for Research, NJIT

Kathleen Nestor Comanto, Deputy Secretary of Higher Education, State of New Jersey

10:15 – 11:00

Keynote

Campus Center, Ballroom A, 2nd Floor

Stephen Ezell, Vice President, Global Innovation Policy, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

“The State of Digital Skills in the U.S. Economy”

11:00 – 11:15

Break/Exhibits/Networking

Campus Center, Campus Center Gallery and Ballroom A & B, 2nd Floor

11:15 – 12:15

Research Workshop Sessions

Campus Center, Campus Center Gallery, Conference Rooms 230, 235, 240

The symposium Research Track features presentations on current applied research in Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning. Presentations are categorized based on three themes: Cybersecurity and Visualization, Science and Technology, and Business Analytics. 

Research Track Chair: Forough Ghahramani, Associate Vice President for Research, Innovation, and Sponsored Programs, Edge

Session Moderator: Abhishek Tripathi, The College of New Jersey

  • Business Analytics Professional or Data Scientist? (Jay Liebowitz, Seton Hall University; Akhil Bhaskar, Seton Hall University)
  • How Do Firms View Climate Change Risks? (Huijian Dong, New Jersey City University)
  • Resolving Representational Harms in NLP: Identifying and Addressing Big Data Driven Gender Bias in Natural Language Processing Models (Jin-A Choi, William Paterson University)
  • Machine Learning Approach to Predict the Continuous Usage of Mobile Food Delivery Apps (Thi Diem My Nguyen, New Jersey City University; Preeta Jha, New Jersey City University)

Session Moderator: Bala Desinghu, Rutgers University

  • Big Data-Enabled AI-Powered Solar Eruption Prediction (Haodi Jiang, NJIT)
  • Scalable K-Truss Implementation in Arkouda (Joseph Patchett, NJIT)
  • Causal Inference with Interpretable Decision Trees (Maria Lentini, Rowan University)
  • Diagnosing Chest X-Ray Images with AI methods – Benchmarking the Performance Metrics of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) (Aromal Suresh, Rutgers University)

Session Moderator: JD Jayaraman, New Jersey City University

  • Secure collaborative computation using Prism (Shantanu Sharma, NJIT)
  • Visual Exploration of Billion Edge Graphs (James Abello, Rutgers University; Haoyang Zhang, Rutgers University)
  • Fraud Detection with Machine Learning Techniques (Jennifer Leach, Rowan University)
  • AI-Web3 Big Data Risk Mitigation: Use of Decentralized Artificial Intelligence on Web3 to Address Risks (Nasser Sotudeh, Rutgers University)

Session Moderator: Demetrios Roubos, Stockton University

  • A Bayesian Weighted Support Vector Data Description Approach to Resolve Algorithmic Bias (BWSVDD) (Mehmet Turkoz, William Paterson University)
  • Using GIS applications and Visualizations to understand the Covid-19 Pandemic (Andres Arauz, Kean University)
  • An Empirical Study on the Stock Market Returns of Five Developing Countries and the United States from the start of COVID-19 Through December 2021 (Subhashis Nandy, Rowan University)
  • Improving PDF Text Recognition with Tools from Metric Geometry (Josh Faber, University of Illinois Chicago)
  • Stronger Considerations for Managing Captured Data in the Wake of Big Data Growth and Emerging Cybersecurity Challenges (Stanley Mierzwa, Kean University)

11:15 – 12:15

Education Pipeline Workshop Sessions

Campus Center, Ballroom A, 2nd Floor

  • George Avirappattu, Associate Professor, Kean University (moderator)
  • Aaron Fichtner, President, New Jersey Council of County Colleges
  • Liana M. Summey, Principal, Newark School of Data Science and Technology
  • Mike Reagan, Senior Vice President, Commercial and State Government Industry sectors, CGI, Inc.

12:15 – 1:15

Lunch/Exhibits/Networking

Campus Center, Campus Center Gallery & Ballroom A & B, 2nd Floor

1:15 – 2:15

Keynote Address

Campus Center, Ballroom A, 2nd Floor

Introduction by Judith A. Sheft, Executive Director, New Jersey Commission on Science, Innovation and Technology

Florence Hudson, Executive Director, Co-Principal Investigator, Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub

“Building the Workforce Pipeline for a Data-Driven Economy”

2:15 – 3:15

Panel Discussion – Industry

Campus Center, Ballroom A, 2nd Floor

  • Sherry Marcus, Director, Data Science, Global Head of Analytics and Insights Professional Svcs, Amazon (moderator)
  • Ron Bekkerman, Chief Technology Officer, Cherre Inc.
  • Mukesh Dalal, Chief AI Officer, Stanley Black & Decker

2:15 – 3:15

Workshop – Cybersecurity Skills

Campus Center, Conference Room 240, 2nd Floor

  • Margaret Brennan, Associate Vice President for Economic Development, Rutgers University (moderator)
  • Amanda Galante, Cybersecurity Training and Education Services, New Jersey Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Cell
  • Michael Geraghty, New Jersey Chief Information Security Officer, Director, New Jersey Cybersecurity Integration Cell
  • Haifeng Chen, Department Head, Data Science and System Security, NEC Laboratories America
  • Karen Worstell, Senior Cybersecurity Strategist, VMware
  • Christina Halikiopoulos, Security Solutions Specialist, SHI International Corp.

3:15 – 3:30

Closing Remarks

Campus Center, Ballroom A, 2nd Floor

David Bader, Director, NJIT Institute for Data Science

Matthew Hale, President, NJBDA

Speakers

Aaron Fichtner headshot

Aaron Fichtner

President, New Jersey Council of County Colleges

Abishek Tripathi

Abhishek Tripathi

Associate Professor of Information Systems, The College of New Jersey

Amanda Galante headshot

Amanda Galante

Education and Training Outreach Coordinator, NJ Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell

Aromal Suresh headshot

Aromal Suresh

Undergraduate Student, Rutgers University

Atam Dhawan headshot

Atam Dhawan

Senior Vice Provost for Research. New Jersey Institute of Technology

Bala Desinghu headshot

Bala Desinghu

Senior Scientist, Office of Advanced Research Computing (OARC), Rutgers University

Christina Halikiopoulos headshot

Christina Halikiopoulos

Security Solutions Specialist, SHI International Corp.

David Bader headshot

David Bader

Distinguished Professor, Director of the Institute for Data Science at New Jersey Institute of Technology

Demetrios Roubos headshot

Demetrios Roubos

Information Security Officer, Stockton University

Florence Hudson headshot

Florence D. Hudson

Executive Director, Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub

Forough Ghahramani headshot

Forough Ghahramani

Associate Vice President for Research, Innovation, and Sponsored Programs, Edge

George Avirappattu headshot

George Avirappattu

Associate Professor of Mathematics, Kean University

Haifeng Chen headshot

Haifeng Chen

Department Head of Data Science and System Security, NEC Laboratories America

Haodi Jiang headshot

Haodi Jiang

Adjunct Professor, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Haoyang Zhang headshot

Haoyang Zhang

Ph.D. Candidate, Rutgers University

Huijian Dong headshot

Huijian Dong

Associate Professor, New Jersey City University

JD Jayaraman headshot

J.D. Jayaraman

Associate Professor and Chair, Finance and Data Science Department, New Jersey City University

James Abello headshot

James Abello

Director, Master’s Program, Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University

Jay Liebowitz headshot

Jay Liebowitz

MSBA Co-Program Director and Visiting Professor, Seton Hall University

Jennifer Leach headshot

Jennifer Leach

Undergraduate Student, Rowan University

Jin-A Choi headshot

Jin-A Choi

Assistant Professor, William Paterson University

Joseph Patchett

Joseph Patchett

Graduate Student, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Josh Faber headshot

Josh L. Faber

Founder, bizbumps

Judith Sheft headshot

Judith Sheft

Executive Director, NJ Commission of Science, Innovation and Technology

Karen Worstell headshot

Karen Worstell

Cybersecurity Strategist, VMware

Katie Comanto headshot

Kathleen Nestor Comanto

Deputy Secretary of Higher Education, State of New Jersey

Liana Summey headshot

Liana Summey

Principal, Newark School of Data Science & Information Technology

Margaret Brennan-Tonetta headshot

Margaret Brennan

Director, Resource and Economic Development, Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station

Maria Lentini headshot

Maria Lentini

Graduate Student, Rowan University

Matt Hale headshot

Matthew Hale

President, New Jersey Big Data Alliance

Mehmet Turkoz headshot

Mehmet Turkoz

Assistant Professor, William Paterson University

Michael Geraghty headshot

Michael Geraghty

Chief Information Security Officer, State of New Jersey and Director, NJ Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell

Mike Reagan

Mike Reagan

Senior Vice President, Commercial and State Government Industry sectors in NJ, NY & CT, CGI

Mukesh Dalal headshot

Mukesh Dalal

Chief AI Officer, Stanley Black & Decker

Nasser Sotudeh headshot

Nasser Sotudeh

Graduate Student, Rutgers University

Preeta Jha headshot

Preeta Jha

Graduate Student, New Jersey City University

Ron Bekkerman headshot

Ron Bekkerman

Chief Technology Officer, Cherre Inc.

Shantanu Sharma headshot

Shantanu Sharma

Assistant Professor, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Sherry Marcus headshot

Sherry Marcus

Director of Data Science, Amazon

Stan Mierzwa headshot

Stan Mierzwa

Managing Assistant Director, Center for Cybersecurity, Kean University

Stephen Ezell headshot

Stephen Ezell

Vice President, Global Innovation Policy, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

Subhashis Nandy

Subhashis Nandy

Faculty, Rowan University

Thi Nguyen headshot

Thi Diem My Nguyen

Graduate Student, New Jersey City University

NJIT Covid Policy

All in-person events may be held with adherence to campus mask requirements and City of Newark Executive Order MEO-21-0010, as applicable. Masks are required for everyone, regardless of vaccination status, in all indoor public and common areas except when eating and drinking.

Sponsors

NJBDA thanks our sponsors for their support of this year’s Symposium.

Industry Leader

CGI logo (the letters CGI)

Lunch Sponsor

National Security Innovation Network

Industry Networking Sponsor

SHI logo

Marketing Partners

Choose New Jersey logo
Einstein's Alley logo
Middlesex County NJ
New Jersey Business Action Center logo
New Jersey Council of County Colleges (NJCCC)
TechUnited New Jersey logo