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Charlie Greenbacker is VP of Analytics at In-Q-Tel, an independent, non-profit, strategic investment firm that works to identify, adapt, and deliver innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the United States Intelligence Community. He specializes in artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, data science, unstructured data analytics, and geospatial applications. Charlie earned an MS in Computer Science from the University of Delaware, received a Blackfriars Fellowship to study at the University of Oxford as an undergraduate, and has co-authored over a dozen academic publications in peer-reviewed journals and research conference proceedings. A veteran of the United States Air Force, he served overseas in Iraq, Kuwait, and Spain, attaining the rank of Captain and receiving the Air Force Commendation Medal. Prior to joining In-Q-Tel, Charlie worked as a Data Scientist supporting the CIA, DIA, DARPA, and other elements of the defense & intelligence communities.

Andrew Merlino, currently the CEO of Pixel Forensics, has over 30 years of industry experience in operational software systems development and multimedia analytics. He has gained technical, business and management skills from companies large and small. While at Raytheon, he was part of Raytheon’s electronic part analysis program involving CAD/CAM and decision tree analysis. At MITRE Corporation, Andrew managed “Broadcast News Navigator”, breaking new ground in automated on-demand news processing. At Virage, he established and managed the Virage Advanced Technology lab in Massachusetts; building it into a successful, self funded research and product development organization. At BBN technologies, Andrew established and managed a successful and profitable image analysis group. Pixel Forensics was founded by Andrew and two others in 2007. Pushing technology in new exciting and innovative ways is a repeated career theme which continues as Andrew leads Pixel Forensics forward. His thirst for taking on new challenges and developing solutions that address complex challenges is a driving force behind Pixel Forensics.
Andrew’s training comes his education and participation at technical conferences. Andrew graduated with a B.S. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a M.S. in Computer Systems Engineering from Northeastern University. He currently holds 3 patents.  As a recognized leader in his field, Andrew has attended and presented at numerous technical conferences. He has taken numerous business and management courses at Boston University as well as corporate seminars. Recently Andrew received an Outstanding Achievement in Entrepreneurship award from the University of Massachusetts.
Although he is proud of his career, he will tell you first hand that he is more proud of his accomplishments of his wife, two daughters and son.

Dave Carter is an engineer with the Text Analytics group in the Information and Communications Technologies portfolio of National Research Council Canada. He obtained an M.A.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Ottawa. He joined the NRC in 2006 and leads the development of NRC’s natural language processing platform for syndromic surveillance and situational awareness.

Dr. Sharon Flank has devoted her career to commercializing advanced technologies, including search engines and data fusion. She has led technical efforts for successful commercial products, and at SRA (now CSRA) helped create companies later sold to AOL and Kodak. She rose to Chief Technology Officer at eMotion, an NLP-based image search company, helping customers monetize their assets and manage their media and metadata. She developed and patented advanced linguistic search technology, used (by OpenText) to manage digital photo and video libraries at Discovery, McDonald’s, Conservation International, ExxonMobil, and others.

In her consulting practice, Dr. Flank has provided strategic guidance in language technologies, knowledge management, bioinformatics, and data-rich applications. She founded InfraTrac in 2006, expanding on sensor-based protection technology. InfraTrac protects against fakes and mistakes using fingerprinting to protect the substance itself, with spectroscopy (light) as the detector. Dr. Flank licensed the first patent, secured funding from state, venture, federal and angel sources, assembled talent, developed product, coordinated sales and marketing, and invented and patented additional techniques, including for 3D printing.

Dr. Flank has an A.B. from Cornell and a Ph.D. in linguistics from Harvard. She holds ten patents, with several more pending, and has authored dozens of papers and presentations on the implementation of complex technologies.