Take a look at ISPS 2017 Program:
–Speakers–
Keynote Speaker:
John Hennessey | Chairman at Alphabet, 10th President of Stanford University 2000-2016
Fireside Chat:
Hamid Moghadam| Chairman & CEO at Prologis, Stanford Board of Trustees 2006-2016
Moderator: Narges Baniasadi
Healthcare Panel:
Amin Nikoozadeh | PhD, Founder & CEO at Vave Health
Amirali Talasaz | PhD, Co-founder & President at Guardant Health
Josef Parvizi | MD, PhD, Professor of Neurology at Stanford University
Lily Sarafan | President & CEO at Home Care Assistance
Moderator: Julie Saffarian
Energy Panel:
Hedi Razavi | PhD, Co-Founder at Keewi
Mohammad Shahvali | PhD, Manager at QRI
Pooya Azadi | PhD, Project Manager at Stanford Iran 2040 Project
Reza Fassihi | PhD, Distinguished advisor at BHP Billiton
Moderator: Amir Hossein Delgoshaie
Social Impact Panel:
Amin Saberi | Professor at Stanford, Co-founder & Chairman at NovoEd
Noosheen Hashemi | Founder & CEO at January, Co-founder & President at Hand Foundation
Zohre Elahian | Co-founder School Online, Managing Director at Global Catalyst Foundation
Moderator: Mohammad Hekmat
Machine Intelligence Panel:
Amirali Kia | PhD, Sr. Manager at Illumina
Mehran Sahami | PhD, Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University
Mohammad Shoeybi | PhD, Research Scientist at Baidu
Nima Asgharbeygi | PhD, Senior Staff Engineer & Tech Lead Manager at Google
Moderator: Milad Mohammadi
–Speaker Biographies–
Keynote Speaker:
John Hennessey | Chairman at Alphabet, 10th President of Stanford University 2000-2016
John L. Hennessy is Chairman of the Board of Alphabet and Director of Knight-Hennessy Scholars, the largest fully endowed graduate-level scholarship program in the world. He serves on the Board of Directors for Cisco Systems and the Board of Trustees for Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Formerly the tenth President of Stanford University, he is also a computer scientist who co-founded MIPS Computer Systems and Atheros Communications. He and Dave Patterson were awarded the ACM A.M. Turing Prize for 2017.
Fireside Chat:
Hamid Moghadam| Chairman & CEO at Prologis, Stanford Board of Trustees 2006-2016
Hamid Moghadam is Chairman and CEO of Prologis, by far the largest and most global logistics real estate company in the word with more than $72B asset under management, operating in 19 countries and employing more than 1600 employees. In 1983, Mr. Moghadam co-founded the company’s predecessor, AMB Property Corporation, and led it through its initial public offering
in 1997, as well as its merger with ProLogis in 2011.
Mr. Moghadam received an MBA from the Stanford and a Bachelor and Master of Science in engineering from MIT. Mr. Moghadam has served as a trustee of Stanford University 2006-2016. He remains active with Stanford, currently serving on the board of the Stanford Management Company, which he formerly chaired. He also serves on Stanford’s FSI Council and the Stanford Graduate School of Business’ Advisory Council.
Previously, he served as a trustee and as a member on the board’s executive committee for the Urban Land Institute, chairman of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT) and Political Action Committee (PAC) sponsored by the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts®. Political Action Committee REITPAC, and as a member of several other philanthropic, community, and corporate boards.
Mr. Moghadam received the 2013 Ernst & Young National Entrepreneur of the Year Overall Award and is a recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. He has been named CEO of the Year and received multiple lifetime achievement awards from leading publications and industry organizations.
Narges Baniasadi
Narges grew up in Iran and studied Computer Engineering at the University of Tehran before coming to Stanford in 2004. She received her MSc and PhD in EE at Stanford Univ in 2010. Her research was focused on the intersection of Computer Science and Cancer research. She founded her company Bina technologies in 2011 with the focus of accelerating Genomics research in drug development and biomarker discovery. Later in 2014 Bina was acquired by Roche. Today she is the Vice President of Informatics for Roche Sequencing Business. Narges was also the president of the PSA between 2006-2007 and has been the driving force in bringing us together to strengthen our alumni community during the past year.
Healthcare Panel:
Amin Nikoozadeh | PhD, Founder & CEO at Vave Health
Dr. Amin Nikoozadeh is the founder and CEO of Vave Health, a healthcare startup in Silicon Valley with a mission to make clinical-grade medical tools widely accessible to physicians, patients, and consumers. Prior to Vave, he was a Senior Research Associate at the Ginzton Laboratory at Stanford where he worked on various projects involving ultrasound technology, including diagnostic medical imaging, image-guided therapeutics, high-intensity ultrasound, airborne applications, and neurostimulation.
Amin earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University in Electrical Engineering.
Amirali Talasaz | PhD, Co-founder & President at Guardant Health
Dr. AmirAli Talasaz is the President and Co-Founder of Guardant Health. An entrepreneur in the rare genomics and clinical diagnostics field, he was named the 2017 Fortune 40 Under 40 list. Prior to co-founding Guardant, he was Senior Director of Diagnostics Research at Illumina. Before Illumina, he founded Auriphex Biosciences, which focused on analysis of circulating tumor cells for cancer management. The technology was later acquired by Illumina in 2009. During his academic years, he led the Technology Development group at the Stanford Genome Technology Center. AmirAli received his PhD in electrical engineering and MSc in management science from Stanford.
Josef Parvizi | MD, PhD, Professor of Neurology at Stanford University
Dr. Josef Parvizi is a Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at the Stanford University Medical Center. He is a physician scientist taking care of patients with epilepsy and running a research lab in system and cognitive neuroscience. Currently, his lab’s mission is to study the functional architecture of the human brain by mapping the causal importance and fast temporal dynamics of activations or deactivations across regions of the brain during cognitive experimental conditions, rest, and sleep.
Dr. Parvizi received his MD at the University of Oslo Medical School in 1995 and received his graduate training at the University of Iowa in Neuroscience in 1999. After 3 years of research in the neuroanatomy of the primate brain, he started his clinical training in Neurology at Mayo Clinic (internship), Harvard (residency), and UCLA (fellowship) before joining Stanford in 2007.
Lily Sarafan | President & CEO at Home Care Assistance
Lily Sarafan is the Co-Founder and CEO of Home Care Assistance, the leading consumer health company in the one hundred billion dollar in-home care market, with a mission to change the way the world ages. Under Lily’s leadership, Home Care Assistance has grown from a startup to an industry champion with more than 7,000 employees across 160 global markets. The company is consistently recognized as an employer of choice and one of the fastest growing companies in the world, and Lily as a featured expert on digital health and innovation in aging at the White House and global conferences. Lily is also a director, investor and advisor for innovative companies, having most recently joined the board of genomics company Counsyl, and serves on the boards of high-impact organizations such as the Stanford Alumni Association and the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement.
Lily earned her Masters in Management Science and Engineering and Bachelors in Science Technology and Society with a Minor in Middle Eastern Studies from Stanford in 2003. She has been honored as Women Health Care Executives’ 2016 Woman of the Year, Ernst & Young’s 2016 Entrepreneur of the Year, and a Silicon Valley 40 Under 40.
Julie Saffarian
Julie completed her BA in Human Biology and MS in Biology, Genetics at Stanford in 2014. At Stanford, she did research on genetic disorders at the Stanford School of Medicine and studied contemporary topics in genetics abroad at the University of Oxford. In 2016, she completed the Ignite Program in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She was one of the early members of Bina Technologies in 2014, which was later acquired by Roche Sequencing. She is currently a product manager at Roche working on software to analyze genomic data from liquid biopsy for cancer research.
Energy Panel:
Hedi Razavi | PhD, Co-Founder at Keewi
Hedi Razavi is the co-founder and COO of Keewi, a company with a mission to transform the indoors into living and delightful communities that restore the pristine outdoors. Prior to founding Keewi, Hedi led a global team in the design and commercialization of various novel medical devices at St. Jude Medical in Germany, where she developed an interest in energy and electrical conservation. Hedi graduated with her B.S. from the University of California at Berkeley and received the departmental citation award, the highest recognition bestowed upon an undergraduate student. She completed her M.S. and PhD from Stanford University as a National Science Foundation Fellow and a Siebel Scholar.
Mohammad Shahvali | PhD, Manager at QRI
Dr. Mohammad Shahvali is currently a project manager at QRI where he leads an integrated team of engineers and geoscientists. Mohammad received his PhD degree in Petroleum Engineering from Stanford University in 2012 and has been involved in several academic and industry positions ever since. His technical areas of expertise are data-driven reservoir management strategies, field development planning, and analytical and numerical modeling of oil and gas reservoirs.
Pooya Azadi | PhD, Project Manager at Stanford Iran 2040 Project
Project Manager at Iran 2040, Dr. Pooya Azadi is leading the efforts of the new Stanford Iran 2040 Project. He studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Tehran (B.Eng) and University of Toronto (M.A.Sc. and PhD). After his graduation and prior to joining Stanford, he worked as a researcher at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and MIT for four years. Pooya has a strong interest in the areas of energy and the environment, subjects in which he has published a few dozen research papers and reviews.
The Stanford Iran 2040 Project is an academic initiative that serves as a hub for researchers all around the world—particularly scholars of the Iranian diaspora—to conduct research on economic and technical matters related to the long-term development of Iran and to evaluate their possible implications in a global context. They have so far published four reports on the future of Iran’s oil & gas sectors, agriculture, and population.
Reza Fassihi | PhD, Distinguished advisor at BHP Billiton
Mohammad Reza Fassihi is a Distinguished Advisor with BHP Petroleum in Houston where he is responsible for subsurface technical assurance on global projects. Prior to his current assignment, he was the Unconventional Technology Manager with BP. He has over 30 years of experience in petroleum research and development, as well as field application of reservoir management best practices. Dr. Fassihi has a broad experience on design, plan and execution of waterflood and EOR projects. He has authored or coauthored more than 40 papers in reservoir simulation, thermal recovery, SCAL methodology and integration, well testing, reserves estimation, depletion planning, surveillance, and unconventional resource development. He is also the co-author of a new SPE Monograph, Low Energy Processes for unconventional Oil recovery. He holds a BS degree in general engineering from Abadan Institute of Technology, an MS degree in chemical engineering and a PhD degree in petroleum engineering from Stanford University.
Amir Hossein Delgoshaie
Amir Hossein is the former president of PSA. He is a PhD candidate at the Energy Resources Engineering department. At Stanford, He completed the Ignite Program in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to Stanford he completed his Bachelors and Masters degrees both in Mechanical Engineering at Sharif UT and ETH Zurich.
Social Impact Panel:
Amin Saberi | Professor at Stanford, Co-founder & Chairman at NovoEd
Amin Saberi is Associate Professor and 3COM faculty scholar in Stanford University. He received his B.Sc. from Sharif University of Technology and his Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology in computer science. He is a recipient of the Terman Fellowship, Alfred Sloan Fellowship and several best paper awards for his research in theory of algorithms and applications.
Amin is also co-founder and chairman of NovoEd, a social learning environment used by top business schools including Stanford GSB, Berkeley Haas, and Wharton as well as non-profit and for-profit institutions for offering courses to millions of learners around the world.
Noosheen Hashemi | Founder & CEO at January, Co-founder & President at Hand Foundation
Noosheen Hashemi is a 1993 graduate of the Stanford Graduate school of business. She serves on the advisory boards of the GSB and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and supports research at Stanford School of Medicine.
In addition to a long career in tech, spanning 10 years at Oracle and several startups, Noosheen, along with her husband, Zod Nazem, manages their family office which includes almost 100 investments in private companies, a public company portfolio and their family foundation, HAND. HAND was founded in 2003 and with the mission of fighting child abuse and growing the global middle class and over the years, it has expanded to include education, diaspora and youth philanthropy, entrepreneurship and opportunities for women and girls.
One of the most successful initiatives of the HAND Foundation is providing scholarships to Persian-speaking students to pursue PhDs in the world’s top economics schools such as the Chicago School, MIT, and University of Pennsylvania. The program’s graduates are professors at Sharif, Princeton, and UC Berkeley to name a few.
Zohre Elahian | Co-founder School Online, Managing Director at Global Catalyst Foundation
Zohre Elahian has been actively involved in international development for over 15 years. She is co-founder of Schools Online, a not-for-profit organization that has brought computers to schools and introduced ICT in education in many countries around the world and within the US.
As the Managing Director of Global Catalyst Foundation, Ms. Elahian has also evaluated many projects, addressing critical needs in education, ICT and microfinance. She has also served on the Board of Directors of Relief International for over 8 years working on different developmental and humanitarian projects in countries such as Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan and many other countries. Prior to her humanitarian activities, she co-managed a successful private business for 15 years. She is currently on the board of Partners for Sustainable Development, a local NGO in Palestine, Goorulearning, Iranian American women Foundation and Polyup. Zohre was named Philanthropist of the Year by the Public Affairs Association of Iranian Americans (PAAIA) in 2011. In 2009 Zohre received the Unsung Heroes of Compassion award and special blessing from His Holiness, The Dalai Lama.
Mohammad Hekmat
Mohammad received his PhD in EE from Stanford in 2011. In 2008-2009 academic year he served as the PSA president for which the PSA received the Dean of Students Outstanding Achievements Award. He continues his lifetime passion for social impact through his involvement in various causes mostly focused on arts and literature, the latest of which is serving on the organizing committee of the Wiki Loves Monuments, the world’s largest open photography contest to document cultural heritage on Wikipedia.
Machine Intelligence Panel:
Amirali Kia | PhD, Sr. Manager at Illumina
Amirali Kia finished his Bachelor’s and Master’s at Sharif University working on the application of various artificial intelligence algorithms in computational fluid mechanics. He then started his PhD at Stanford University where his focus was high performance computing and developing fast algorithms with applications in computational biology.
He started his career at Illumina by joining Protein Engineering group to apply machine learning algorithms to enzyme engineering. He is now a senior manager at Illumina in the computational and applied biology department, leading Deep Learning group. The focus of his team is to bring new AI algorithms to genomics and Illumina’s internal technology.
Mehran Sahami | PhD, Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University
Mehran Sahami is a Professor and Associate Chair for Education in the Computer Science department at Stanford University. He is also the Robert and Ruth Halperin University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty in 2007, he was a Senior Research Scientist at Google for several years. His research interests include computer science education, machine learning, and web search.
Mohammad Shoeybi | PhD, Research Scientist at Baidu
Mohammad studied Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University and received his PhD in 2010. Since then, he has worked at Cascade Technologies, Nor1, Jetlore and Baidu mainly focusing on developing models, efficient and scalable algorithms, and software for end-to-end machine learning systems. Mohammad is currently the Team Lead – Research Scientist at Baidu’s Silicon Valley AI lab in the applied machine learning team. His mission is developing new AI technologies using world class deep learning based speech and language technologies and applying cutting-edge AI to improve the experience of Baidu’s users.
Nima Asgharbeygi | PhD, Senior Staff Engineer & Tech Lead Manager at Google
Nima Asgharbeygi is a Sharif and Stanford University graduate, and former co-founder and CTO of Clever Sense, acquired by Google in late 2011. Since then Nima has been working on various machine intelligence related projects at Google. He is currently an Area Tech Lead for machine learning in Google Maps.
Milad Mohammadi
Milad completed his undergraduate study in Nanotechnology and Microsystems at The University of British Columbia. He obtained his Master’s in Software Engineering and PhD in Energy Efficient Computing from Stanford University, and also served as a PSA board member for two years. After graduating in 2015, Milad joined Apple as a Data Scientist to develop analytical models and machine learning algorithms that improve the iOS energy efficiency and iPhone battery life while delivering superior processing capacity for state-of-the-art technologies such as augmented reality.
Iranian Stanford Professional Symposium 