Jacobs: If/When

Matt Walton’s career has spanned over 28+ years of entrepreneurial and enterprise C-Suite experience, most recently as Oracle’s Chief Design Officer of Adaptive and Artificial Intelligence, focused within ERP/Supply Chain automation. Now the chief executive officer of Yorcue, Matt holds multiple patents in Big Data/Analytics and Location-based Supply Chain Logistics. Matt has deep expertise in Supply Chain and Logistics, Fleet and Field Service Management, artificial intelligence and machine learning, product realization, and IP generation. Across his career, he has invented, designed, scaled and managed over 300 individual web, mobile and cloud systems for companies such as AT&T labs, DARPA, McKesson, IBM, John Deere and GE Fleet. Matt’s career has encompassed being an award-winning illustrator, Walt Disney character animator, toy designer, game designer, application designer, product management leader, business strategist and futurist.

Natasha Luthra is the Director of Emerging Technologies at Jacobs. Currently, she runs an Emerging Ideas Innovation program which is focused on incubating transformational ideas, technologies, and tools in parallel to cultivating and validating emerging ideas based on client needs as well as the Jacobs strategic mission, to advance the practice through innovative processes. She has spoken about technology, innovation and architecture at conferences like the Leadership Forum at Autodesk University, BILT NA, BILT Asia, BIMForum and the AIA National Convention. Natasha has been featured in and written articles for the Architect Magazine, YAF Connection and AUGI World. She was also the 2018 Chair for Technology in Architectural Practice, the AIA knowledge community focused on the intersection of technology and architecture. In this capacity, she hosted the 2018 Building Connections Congress in Washington DC, a conference that looked at the themes of the future of design in the age of AI and machine learning.

Paul Reed Smith is a guitar maker, musician, founder, and Managing General Partner of Paul Reed Smith Guitars and has held that position for over 30 years. PRS Guitars is the third largest US manufacturer of electric guitars. Additionally, Paul is a founder and manager of a new start-up, Digital Harmonic. The fundamental technology of Digital Harmonic was developed by Paul and his father, Jack W. Smith, an applied mathematician who developed and implemented math models and engineering solutions for the Navy and Air Force. Both companies combined hold over 100 registered trademarks and nearly three dozen patents that Paul developed and/or directed.

As Chief Technology Officer, Mason Baron leads the technology department at Digital Harmonic with 18 years of software development, artificial intelligence, machine learning, surveillance reconnaissance systems design, imagery, signal, and radar processing experience. Most recently, Mason served as Minotaur Chief Naval Architect at Alion Science and Technology. Before Alion, Mason was Chief Engineer of Battle Force Projects at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory where he was a principal designer, lead developer and lead engineer.

During her tenure at Jacobs, Dr. Lisa Vanderbloemen managed the International Space Station’s Earth Science and Remote Sensing (ESRS) group at NASA Johnson Space Center. The ESRS group provides operations and science team functions for handheld camera crew photography of Earth from the ISS, coordinates ISS remote sensing response to natural disasters and other dynamic events, and builds regional remote sensing capability in support of climate change science. Lisa’s technical expertise includes database management, temporal/spatial analysis of oceanographic and hydrographic data, and algorithm development. Her distinguished career involves a variety of academic positions in the fields of oceanography and environmental science, as well as serving for nearly 30 years as a US Navy Reserve Commander.   

Sarah Deitrick is a Lunar Exploration Geoscientist in the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. She uses remote sensing and lunar sample data to understand lunar surface properties and the resource potential of the Moon. Sarah also studies the development of planetary surface simulants for engineering systems and helps with advanced mission planning such as identifying safe landing sites for the Artemis missions that will return humans to the surface of the Moon by 2024. 

Kevin Slack brings more than three decades of transportation experience, ranging from project development and planning to design, design-build and program management. He began his career as a transportation engineer and gained extensive experience conducting highway safety research for the Federal Highway Administration and the National Cooperative Highway Safety Research Program, including serving as the Co-Principal Investigator for the development of Guidance for implementation of AASHTO’s Strategic Highway Safety Plan. 

Andrew Gibson has 30 years of experience in the design, construction and planning of airport infrastructure both as a client and a consultant, undertaking projects in the UK, Europe, India, Latin America and Africa. During his 17-year career with BAA (the former UK British Airports Authority), Andrew served in a range of planning and engineering roles including aerodrome safeguarding, airfield maintenance and terminal engineering. He was involved in the design and planning of facilities at airports across the BAA group, including Heathrow Terminal 5.

Mark Newsome assists health providers in matters of strategy, clinical and service reviews, leadership development, performance improvement and management, health planning and business case development. A Registered Nurse and a Master of Public Health, Mark’s dissertation focused on pandemic planning, and over his career, he has held a variety of emergency preparedness leadership positions, dealing with crises ranging from the SARS outbreak in Australasia, the 2009 Swine Flu outbreak in New Zealand, and the Canterbury and Kaikoura earthquakes.

Matthew Holmes is a chartered UK and French Registered architect who leads Jacobs’ Global Healthcare solutions business. After completing the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Clermont-Ferrand in France, he relocated to Australia in 2011 where he has been instrumental in leading the Jacobs healthcare advisory and design services teams across a wide range of project typologies. His more recent projects support the delivery of healthcare services in rural locations across Australia, New Zealand, and Kiribati through to the planning of major tertiary facilities. His current work and research are focused on the sustainable delivery of healthcare services and acknowledging the levers of policy setting, while challenging the how, what and where as key components in the delivery of sustainable healthcare system.

Professor Michael Keith is Director of the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at the (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford, co-ordinator of Urban Transformations (The ESRC portfolio of investments and research on cities), co-Director of the University of Oxford Future of Cities network and the Director of the PEAK Urban Research programme, a global network of cities research in China, India, Colombia and South Africa. His research focuses on migration related processes of urban change.

A registered professional engineer with 30 years of experience as an electrical engineer, Brian Burkhard is the Global Technology Leader - Advanced Mobility Systems at Jacobs. In this role, he leads its communities of practice in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), road use charging systems, and automated, connected and electric vehicles. He also recently served as an appointed panel member for a Transportation Research Board (TRB) analysis on the use of dedicated highway lanes for connected and automated vehicles (CAV).

In his role at Innoplexus, Stratos Davlos is charged with developing an Innoplexus Research Lab in Silicon Valley to accelerate its AI development for the firm’s Drug Discovery and Development program. Just prior to this role, Stratos was the vice president of Watson, AI & Engineering at IBM, where he led a team of cognitive technologists to create industrial strength AI Watson products by combining IBM’s extensive research and engineering capabilities. Prior to joining IBM, Stratos was the CTO and Sr. Vice President of Platform Engineering and Data Science at Reliance Jio. His AI-focused career spans many years of executive technology management and development at Apple, Kaidara, eGain, Inference Corporation and National Energy Services.

Reuben Maher brings over 20 years of experience providing visionary, strategic C-level direction to government and commercial clients. He is the Global Director and Data Analytics Lead for the Jacobs Connected Enterprise digital innovation and transformation team across the Aerospace, Technology, and Nuclear (ATN) line of business. Reuben is also the planning lead for Jacobs' enterprise-wide BlueSpark Predictive Analytics initiative to stand up a global Innovation Hub incorporating leading edge artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to facilitate rapid idea generation and agile solutioning. He is both an innovator and data strategist, as well as an evangelist for smart data sharing while maintaining strong cybersecurity controls.

A multiple award-winning technology leader whose 30-year career has spanned both the private and public sectors, Dr. Jonathan Reichental was named a top 100 chief information officer (CIO) in the world in 2017, and in 2016 he was named one of the top 20 most influential CIO’s in the United States. He is recognized as a global thought leader on a number of emerging trends including the fourth industrial revolution, urban innovation, the future of cities, and blockchain technology. In 2013 he was recognized as one of the 25 doers, dreamers, and drivers in government in America, and his innovative work in government has also been recognized by the White House.

In his role as the global director for Digital Solutions and the Jacobs Connected Enterprise, Dr. Raja Kadiyala is focused on smart infrastructure and digital offerings. He is responsible for technology leadership, service/solution offerings, and marketing across a multitude of digital practice areas including artificial intelligence, digital twins, IoT/smart sensors, data analytics, simulation and optimization, IT integration, real-time networking, control systems, smart metering and security (physical and cybersecurity).