Speakers NYC Apr « A-Team Group

Mr. Betts is directly responsible for the global sales team and works closely with all other aspects of the business. Mr. Betts holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Queen’s University.

Brett Kotch
Head of Architecture
Liquidnet

Brett Kotch is the Head of Architecture at Liquidnet. Brett joined Liquidnet in 2000 and is one of the founding members responsible for building Liquidnet’s core trading platform. From 2006 through 2008, Brett led the company’s R&D efforts - a period in which Liquidnet doubled in size. In 2008, Brett became Head of Architecture and currently leads the technical efforts to support the growth and changing new business requirements that Liquidnet has experienced over the past 10 years.

Prior to joining Liquidnet, Brett held positions at the Instinet, Dow Jones & Company, and AT&T/Bell Labs.

Insight Session Participants

Lloyd Altman
Senior Director, Core Trading & Settlement Services
Accenture

Lloyd Altman is a senior executive in Accenture’s Capital Markets practice, leading its Core Trading Services offering in North America. He is part of Accenture’s Capital Markets Solutions Group, a specialized unit within Accenture dedicated to developing custom technology solutions for the world’s leading investment banks, asset managers and hedge funds.

Altman has more than 20 years of experience in the Capital Markets industry. He joined Random Walk Computing in 1999 after spending more than a decade on Wall Street as a department head, project manager, and developer. Accenture’s Capital Markets Solutions Group was formed when Accenture acquired Random Walk Computing in 2006.

Altman has been involved in the delivery of solutions for a wide range of buy side and sell side products and functions, including Credit Defalut Swaps, Program Trading, Fixed income Trading and Risk Management.

Altman has a Master of Science in Computer Science from Columbia University, as well as a Master and Bachelor of Music in Music Theory from the Eastman School of Music. Altman was a professional cellist for close to a decade before changing careers.

Accenture’s Financial Services clients include 97% of financial services institutions ranked in the Fortune Global 500, 14 of the world’s top 15 investment banks, 19 of the world’s top 20 money managers, and 26 of the world’s equity, commodities, and futures exchanges.

Dan Bergman
VP, High Performance Engineering
Lime Brokerage

Dan Bergman is the Vice President of High Performance Engineering for Lime Brokerage. In his current capacity Dan oversees the design, development and testing of Lime’s high-throughput and low-latency trading and quote platforms.

Dan has extensive experience in software development in the data communications industry. Dan’s prior positions include Director of Engineering at Cisco Systems and Director of Platform Software at Juniper Networks. Dan received his undergraduate degree in Physics from Oberlin College and a MS degree in Physics from Carnegie-Mellon University.

Falke Bruinsma
Chief Architect, WebSphere Front Office and Low Latancy Messaging
IBM

Falke Bruinsma is Chief Architect of WebSphere Front Office (WFO) and Low Latency Messaging (LLM). In this role, Falke is responsible for creating high performance solutions in the areas of low latency market data and trade processing platforms. By combining innovative software design with years of domain experience, he has helped build competitive market data solutions deployed at investment banks, hedge funds and market data providers.

Prior to joining IBM, Falke was head of development at InfoDyne for 9 years and was responsible for product development and implementation.

Scott Caudell
Senior Vice President, Global Architecture
Interactive Data 7ticks

Scott Caudell is the Senior Vice President, Global Architecture for Interactive Data 7ticks. He is responsible for the architecture group, which manages the collection and distribution of exchange data, as well as handling the infrastructure design and performance engineering for Interactive Data’s Trading Infrastructure Services.

Scott was a founding member of 7ticks, which was established in 2002. He designed and built 7ticks’ highly-scalable, carrier grade network infrastructure to provide one of the fastest and most reliable trading experiences for users on a variety of proprietary and third-party ISV trading solutions. He has overseen the growth of this design to handle a significant percentage of overall daily trading volumes on exchanges such as the CME and ICE. Scott has also had a visionary role in creating proximity networks to support ultra-low latency access and cross-connectivity between leading world exchanges. Prior to his role at 7ticks, Scott was a technical consultant specialising in financial markets.

Nicolas De Vanssay
Operations Director
Colt Internet US Corp.

Nicolas de Vanssay joined Colt Technology Services in 2000 as Carrier Relations in France and has spent 18 years in the data, voice and wireless communication arena. Spent 4 years in India where Colt built a World Class Business Process Outsourcing Shared Service Center. After 1 year in London HQ, Nicolas is based in New York since Jan 2009, responsible for running Operations in the US, as well as business development in North America. Prior to Colt, he was founder and Managing Director of small venture specialized in infrastructure for wireless networks in France. Nicolas holds a degree in Civil Engineering from Le Havre University in France.

Jeff Ferry
Director of Broadband Marketing
Infinera

Jeff Ferry is Director of Broadband Marketing for Infinera. He has been with Infinera since 2005. Previously, he served in a variety of marketing roles at Yafo Networks, Nortel Networks, and Bay Networks. He holds degrees in economics from Harvard and the London School of Economics.

Jason Gross
Founder
RNA Networks

Jason Gross is a co-founder of RNA networks and has an extensive background in large scale distributed management systems, Web 2.0 architectures and network management protocols.

Prior to founding RNA networks, Jason was a Senior Software Engineer at SilverStorm Technologies (now QLogic), where he focused on InfiniBand management systems. Jason also worked at Cisco Systems and General Instrument where he developed VOIP and cable head-end management systems.

Jason holds a BS(CE) degree from Drexel University.

Gerald A. Hanweck, Jr., PhD
Founder and CEO
Hanweck Associates

Gerald Hanweck, Jr., is founder and CEO of Hanweck Associates.

Previously, Mr. Hanweck served as JPMorgan’s Chief Equity Derivatives Strategist from 2000 to 2003, and led the bank’s U.S. Fixed-Income Derivatives Strategy team. He has taught master’s-level business courses at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management and the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, in addition to dozens of seminars on financial derivatives.

Before joining JPMorgan in 1993, he worked as a derivatives researcher at Discount Corporation of New York Futures, and as a software developer at Microsoft.

Mr. Hanweck holds the following degrees:

* PhD, Managerial Economics and Decision Science, Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University
* AB, Mathematics, Princeton University

Chris Janz
Senior Director of Portfolio Management
Ciena

Chris Janz is Senior Director of Portfolio Management at Ciena, focused on solutions for Managed Services and Enterprise. Chris has served in various engineering, strategic marketing, and portfolio and business development leadership roles at Ciena and has extensive experience with WAN technologies serving the enterprise data center. He has over 15 years of industry experience, including previous roles at Akara, Alcatel and Marconi. He holds a PhD from the University of Alberta in Edmonton and an MBA from Queen’s University in Kingston.

Duncan Johnston-Watt
Founder and CEO
Cloudsoft Corp.
Twitter: duncanjw

Duncan Johnston-Watt is a serial entrepreneur and industry visionary with over twenty years experience in the software industry.

Immediately prior to founding Cloudsoft Duncan was CTO at Enigmatec, the enterprise data center automation company he founded in 2001.

A Computerworld Smithsonian Laureate for his pioneering work introducing Java Enterprise to financial services, Duncan holds an MSc in Computation from Oxford University.

Satyam Kancharla
Senior Vice President, Client Solutions Group
Numerix

Mr. Kancharla currently heads the Client Solutions Group at Numerix that is responsible for Product Management, Requirements Gathering and Business Analysis. Prior to this, he has served in various roles in Quantitative Software Development, Financial Engineering and Pre-Sales at Numerix.

Before joining Numerix in New York, he was the CTO for Numerix Japan LLC in Tokyo, heading the Pre-Sales and Financial Engineering teams for Asia. Earlier in his career, Mr. Kancharla also worked with Merrill Lynch and GE Capital in Quantitative Finance and Product Development roles. He holds a MS degree in Applied Statistics and Informatics and a BS in Mathematics and Computers.

Shawn Kaplan
Director of Business Development
ACTIV Financial Systems

Shawn Kaplan is currently Director of Business Development for ACTIV Financial providing innovative low-latency content delivery systems to leading financial institutions. Previously, Shawn spent eleven years at Reuters as a business and product manager for several product lines including their real-time datafeed delivery mechanisms as well as the Asset Management, and Wealth Management business lines. A 20 year veteran of the market data industry, Shawn worked at Telerate and Dow Jones driving their datafeed businesses.

Russ Kohn
Managing Director - Global Connectivity
NYSE Technologies

Russ Kohn is the MD of SFTI® Americas of NYSE Technologies, a division of NYSE Euronext.

Mr. Kohn is responsible for the development of NYSE Technologies’ colocation and network products and services across the Americas, including client migration to NYSE Euronext’s new state-of-the-art US Liquidity Center (USLC) in Mahwah, New Jersey.

Mr. Kohn’s career has breadth and depth in several business disciplines – engineering, marketing, application development, OSS and BSS integration and sales operations. Prior to joining NYSE Euronext he served at RCN Metro with responsibility for leading sales and marketing operation activities, product development and management. Previous roles include Managing Director for Con Edison Communications; Vice President/Chief Technologist for Pitney Bowes’ subsidiary PitneyWorks where he was responsible for developing IP based services and their operational support systems; and 17 years with Verizon spanning various engineering, strategic planning, marketing and IT positions.

Mr. Kohn holds a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Ray La Chance
CEO
Lexent Metro Connect

Ray is an Information Technology industry veteran with more than 20 years experience designing, building and operating complex, high capacity networks, for large enterprise and telecommunications service provider clients. Ray joined Lexent Inc. as a Managing Director in 2003 and was appointed President and CEO of Lexent Metro Connect, LLC in 2007.

Prior to joining Lexent, Ray was President and CEO of Realtech Systems Corp., an enterprise network integration and professional services firm which he co-founded in 1989. Ray received a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Albany in 1985.

Dave Malik
Director, Solutions Architecture
Cisco Systems

Dave Malik is a Director of Solutions Architecture in Cisco’s Advanced Services organization responsible for developing data center architectures and low latency strategies for Financial Services firms. For the past 10 years, he has been involved in developing solutions to support market data and trading floor applications. Dave is active in industry forums and is an author of several publications. He has also been focusing lately on cloud computing and virtualization strategies as they pertain to the Financial Services vertical.

Dave has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and a Master of Science in Information Systems.

Neil Palmer
Partner
SunGard Consulting Services
Twitter: neilepalmer

Neil Palmer is a Partner at the New York-based practice of SunGard Consulting Services. Mr. Palmer has worked in technology for almost twenty years and has an extensive background in the custom development of numerous, complex systems across many domains using multiple technologies. His domain knowledge is strongest in the areas of media and online business.

Prior to joining SunGard, Mr. Palmer spent ten years as the lead architect for several start-up organizations.

Dan Romanelli
Managing Director, Managed Transactions
NYSE Technologies

Dan Romanelli is Managing Director of the Managed Transactions group at NYSE Technologies, a division of NYSE Euronext.

He is responsible for providing the Risk Management Gateway offering Sponsored Access to execution venues globally and enabling firms to outsource their trading infrastructure.

Mr Romanelli has been designing multi-asset high frequency trading systems for over a decade. He has previously worked with Merrill Lynch, where he managed the cash equity DMA and Sponsored Access support desks and was involved in multiple client facing projects ranging from options OMS development, low latency order routing, post-trade clearing processes, and compliance risk analytics. Prior to this role, Mr Romanelli was Managing Director at RISC, LLC, an options analytics and auto-quoting software vendor.

Patrick Ruppe
Head of Marketing
Options IT

Patrick Ruppe is Head of Marketing at Options IT, a global provider of technology Infrastructure-as-a-Service for the financial industry.

Prior to joining Options IT, Mr. Ruppe worked for several years as financial journalist and public relations consultant to financial services firms. In both roles he focused on identifying and analyzing the impact of technology and changing market structure on the financial industry.

He holds a bachelor’s degree from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Jason Stowe
Founder and CEO
Cycle Computing

Jason Stowe is the founder and CEO of Cycle Computing, a leading provider of open-source, High Performance Computing (HPC) technology on internal desktops, servers, and in the Cloud. Leveraging its expertise with internal HPC, Cycle helps clients provision large-scale, secure HPC clusters in the cloud on demand. Cycle supports open-source Condor & Hadoop, as well as PBS/SGE, to provide innovative functionality and reduce costs in managing small clusters to environments of 30,000+ CPUs. Jason attended Carnegie Mellon and Cornell Universities, guest lectured at Cornell’s Johnson Business School, and sits on Amazon’s Customer Advisory Board.

Pramod Srivatsa
Manager, Server Access Virtualization
Cisco Systems

Pramod Srivatsa is product line manager at Cisco Systems focusing on high performance, low-latency solutions with the Nexus 2000 and Nexus 5000 product lines. He has product management responsibility for integrated solutions that accelerate automated trading environments in the financial services vertical.

Before Cisco, Pramod was Vice President at Goldman Sachs where he was responsible for the architecture and operation of the Goldman Sachs WAN Network. Pramod has an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, M.S. in

Electrical Engineering from Columbia University, New York and a B.E. in Electrical Engineering from the Cooper Union for Advancement of Science and Art, New York.

Nancy Turbé
Executive, Core Trading & Settlement Services
Accenture

Nancy Turbé is an Executive in Accenture Financial Services.

Nancy’s 20 years of experience in the Capital Markets industry include her service to Accenture’s financial services clients, leadership roles in Investment Banking Technology, as well as work for key technology vendors. Nancy’s portfolio of work is the source of her deep knowledge of Capital Markets functions and technology from Front Office to Back office, and across asset classes.

At Sun Microsystems, Nancy worked with Wall Street clients in Systems Engineering and Professional Services roles. Nancy also played a key role in introducing Illustra (now part of IBM), an object relational technology, to Investment Banks. At Bear Stearns, Nancy managed Program Trading Technology, and then Prime Brokerage Risk Technology. Nancy currently leads Capital Markets engagements for Accenture, focusing on Risk and Data Management Architecture and Technology.

Nancy is active in Women’s Bond Club, and enjoys travel, gardening, genealogy, and reading.

Tom Watson
Product Management
ORC Software

Tom Watson is Product Manager for North American market connectivity at Orc Software, a leading global provider of derivatives trading software. Tom is responsible for charting the product vision for Orc’s exchange and broker connectivity products, as well as cultivating and maintaining strategic relationships with North American exchanges.

Tom has spent nearly 20 years in trading and financial services. Prior to Orc, Tom spent three years in product management with a Chicago-based trading software firm and nearly 15 years with ABN AMRO in operations and technology management.

Tom earned a Bachelor of Arts from Wabash College and an MBA from The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Jeff Wells
Vice President, Product Management & Marketing
Exegy
Co-Chair FIF Market Data Capacity Working Group

Jeff Wells is Vice President of Product Marketing at Exegy and Co-Chair of the Financial Information Forum’s Market Data Capacity Working Group.

Prior to Exegy, Mr Wells was at Reuters, Senior Vice President of Product Development for Bridge Analytics and Index Pricing products. Mr Wells held various senior management positions at Bridge Information Systems including Head of Quality Assurance, Program Manager for Decimalization, Y2K and the Euro. He was also the originator of the BridgeStation workstation product. Prior to Bridge, Mr Wells was a stock, bond and derivatives trader for Scandinavian Bank Group in London.

Mr Wells holds an MSc (Econ) in International Relations from the London School of Economics and a BA in History from the University of London.

Drill-Down Session Participants

Mats Andersson
CTO
NASDAQ

Bio to come.

Nick Ciarleglio
Systems Engineer
Arista Networks

Nick Ciarleglio arrived at Arista Networks in 2008 as the company’s first System Engineer. In his current role, Nick is responsible for network architecture consulting in the financial services vertical, and has specifically focused on end to end low-latency architectures. He also provides field feedback and "real world" expertise to the Arista development team. Prior to his arrival at Arista, Nick was a Senior Technical Consultant for Hewlett Packard’s enterprise networking group.

John Cogman
Vice President, autobahn Equity
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.

John is responsible for delivering Deutsche Bank’s global low-latency equity trading products to high frequency and statistical arbitrage traders. Prior to his current role, John was the US product manager for Deutsche Bank’s low-latency smart order router and sponsored access systems.

John has 10 years experience in equity trading, previously working in transition management and portfolio trading at Merrill Lynch in New York and Deutsche Bank in London.

Germán Creamer
Associate Professor of Quantitative Finance & Financial Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology

Germán Creamer is an Associate Professor of quantitative finance and financial engineering in the School of Systems and Enterprises and in the Howe School of Technology Management at Stevens Institute of Technology.

Dr. Creamer has been a senior manager in the Risk, Information and Banking Division in American Express where he worked in the enterprise-wide risk management and the information management groups. He has taught at Columbia University, Tulane University, and in several leading Latin American business schools.

Dr. Creamer has a PhD in Computer Science (specialized on computational finance), a MSc in Financial Engineering, both from Columbia University, and a PhD in Economics from the University of Notre Dame. His articles have appeared in leading journals including Quantitative Finance, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, Computational Economics, Decision Support Systems and World Trade Review. Professor Creamer is also a CFA charter holder. His current area of research is on risk management, algorithmic trading, financial decision support systems and data mining/machine learning applications to finance.

Silvano Gai
Distinguished Fellow
Cisco Systems

Silvano Gai, who grew up in a small village near Asti, Italy, has over twenty-seven years of experience in computer engineering and computer networks. He is the author of several books and technical publications on computer networking as well as multiple Internet Drafts and RFCs. He is responsible for 30 issued patents and 50 patent applications. His background includes seven years as a full professor of Computer Engineering, tenure track, at Politecnico di Torino, Italy and seven years as a researcher at the CNR (Italian National Council for Scientific Research). For the past thirteen years, he has been in Silicon Valley where in the position of Cisco Fellow, he was an architect of the Cisco Catalyst family of network switches, of the Cisco MDS family of storage networking switches, and of the Nexus family of data center switches. Silvano teaches a course on the topics of this book at Stanford University.

Jitesh Ghai
Director, Systems Engineering
29West-Informatica

Jitesh Ghai has specialized in high-performance messaging/middleware and custom hardware development for more than a decade. Prior to joining 29West, Jitesh was a product manager and later a senior systems engineer with Solace Systems. During his tenure with Solace, Jitesh identified requirements and use cases for content networking in financial markets.

Earlier in his career, Jitesh was a hardware designer for Cisco, working on the Gigabit Switch Routing platform. At Cisco, he worked with IBM Microelectronics and Texas Instruments to deliver high performance packet forwarding chip sets for Cisco’s OC-192/10GE linecards, receiving a number of awards for leadership in high performance hardware design.

Amir Halfon
Sr Director, Technology, Capital Markets
Oracle

Amir Halfon is Senior Director of Technology at Oracle’s Financial Services Global Business Unit. In this role he represents Oracle to the industry and advises customers and ISVs on harnessing technology to target business concerns such as low latency trading, high performance analytics and cloud computing.

Amir came to Oracle via the Sun acquisition, where he was the CTO for Global Financial Services. At Sun Amir also held several other field and engineering positions, including Solutions Architect with the Financial Services field organization, Software Architect with Sun’s Cloud Computing R&D team and Senior Java Architect with the Sun Java Center.

Ernie Hoffmann
VP, Product Management
Optimum Lightpath

As Vice President of Product Management, Ernie Hoffmann is responsible for managing and enhancing the Optimum Lightpath product portfolio to drive new customer acquisition and increase revenue from invested capital.

Prior to joining Optimum Lightpath, Mr. Hoffmann served as Senior Vice President of Network Services at FiberNet Telecom Group where he was responsible for all activities related to network engineering and operations. Before that, he spent 12 years at Verizon, holding a variety of engineering and construction management positions of increasing scope throughout the boroughs of New York City.

Mr. Hoffmann holds a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Boston University and a M.S. in Telecommunications and Computing Management from Polytechnic University.

Aldrin Isaac
Head of Core Network Design
Bloomberg

Aldrin is the manager of the Core Network Design group at Bloomberg and the principal technologist behind Bloomberg’s global core IP networks. He has played a central role in the architecture and development of Bloomberg’s core data center and wide area networks since starting at Bloomberg in 1996. Among the many large-scale projects he has led in recent years is the transformation of Bloomberg’s vast multi-vendor WAN from several purpose-built networks into a unified carrier-class MPLS-based multi-service network. Lately his team has been collaborating with the Enterprise Products and Services (EPS) business to open up Bloomberg’s broad technology strengths to customers that need special latency-optimized services for electronic trading. Aldrin holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the City College of New York.

Saro Jahani
Chief Information Officer
National Stock Exchange

Saro Jahani joined NSX as Senior Vice President of Information Technology on November 1, 2007. On March 1 2008, he was appointed Chief Information Officer (CIO). Saro is responsible for all IT functions at NSX, including systems development and the operation of the Exchange’s IT real-time production systems and all related tasks.

Saro Jahani has over 2O+ years of professional carrier in Information technology and a depth of technology experience in the securities industry, most recently as Global Head of Infrastructure, IT Operations and Facilities at Townsend Analytics, a leading provider of market data and direct access trading software and a subsidiary of Lehman Brothers. In this position, he was responsible for the strategic and global operation of Townsend’s data center facilities, data center operations and operational quality of a high volume and distributed production environment.

Before that, Mr. Jahani served as Executive Vice President of IT Operations at SunGard Trading Systems. There he was responsible for Information Systems/Information Technology and production operation, including the continuous development and planning of SunGard’s production network, network security, telecommunication, ASP and data centers. Prior to that, he served as CIO at SunGard Data Systems in Stockholm, Sweden.

His work experience also includes IT positions at CAP Gemini, Swedish Telecom and Crosfield Electronics. Saro Jahani has a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering with concentration on Computer Operations from University of Uppsala, Sweden. In addition, Saro Jahani brings 20 years of International experience.

Soni Jiandani
Vice President, Server Access and Virtualization
Cisco Systems

Soni Jiandani is Vice President, Server Access and Virtualization Business Unit at Cisco. In this capacity she is responsible for the development and implementation of the Cisco-wide strategy for data center access and virtualization solutions.

Jiandani was previously co-founder and Senior Vice President of Marketing and Partnerships for Nuova Systems. She was responsible for the development and implementation of marketing, technology partnerships and sales strategy programs for this data center transformation focused start-up.

While at Cisco, Jiandani has played key roles in creating and executing strategic initiatives and driving product marketing development in the LAN switching arena. She was Vice President and General Manager of Cisco’s LAN and SAN switching business unit within the Data Center, Switching and Wireless Technology Group. In this capacity, she was responsible for the industry leading Catalyst modular switches and a comprehensive portfolio of intelligent SAN switches.

Jiandani also served as Vice President of Marketing for the Cisco Internet Systems Business Unit and Vice President, Marketing for the Workgroup Business Unit. Her contributions enabled Cisco to secure its leadership position in Ethernet LAN switching.

Prior to her tenure at Cisco, Jiandani was a marketing executive at UB Networks where she was responsible for Virtual LANs and LAN switching market development. She also took on a sales role as Regional Manager, developing markets for the company in India. Prior to UB Networks, she drove numerous market development programs at Novell.

Jiandani holds a B.S. degree in Computer Science from London University in England.

Gary Kim
Telecom Industry Analyst

Gary Kim has been a communications industry analyst and journalist for more than 25 years, and currently produces social media in the IP communications and mobility industries, contributing material for five different content sites, including Carrier Evolution, TMC Net, IP Carrier Blogspot, Mobile and Marketing & Technology.

Gary graduated from the University of Oregon with degrees in history and management and is a member of Mensa.

John Knuff
General Manager, Financial Services
Equinix

As General Manager of Equinix Financial Services, John Knuff is responsible for business development across all major financial markets. He and his team regularly advise clients on complex network and systems deployment strategies for their trading infrastructure. Prior to joining Equinix, John was Managing Director at NYFIX in New York where he was responsible for the deployment and ongoing operations of their global network and trading systems. John grew the NYFIX network into one of the largest FIX routing networks where customers in 21 countries routed hundreds of millions of shares on a daily basis.

Peter Lankford
Founder and Director
STAC

Peter Lankford is founder and director of STAC® , the Securities Technology Analysis Center (www.STACresearch.com). STAC facilitates the STAC Benchmark Council™, a group of leading trading organizations and vendors that specifies standard ways to measure the performance of trading solutions. End-user members can use published STAC Benchmarks™ to assess new technologies and can also relate these reports to their existing systems by using standardized STAC Test Harnesses™ in the privacy of their own labs.

Prior to STAC, Peter was Senior Vice President of Information Management Solutions at Reuters, where he led the $240M market data systems business. Peter’s team led Reuters into the business of low-latency direct exchange feeds and catalyzed the widespread adoption of Linux on Wall Street by making the Reuters Market Data System (RMDS) the first major product for the securities industry on that platform. Prior to Reuters, Peter held management positions at Citibank, First Chicago Corp., and operating-system maker IGC. Peter has an MBA, Masters in International Relations, and Bachelors in Chemistry from the University of Chicago.

Chris Liou
Vice President, Network Strategy
Infinera

Chris Liou is the Vice President of Network Strategy at Infinera, where he focuses on strategies for developing low-latency transport networking solutions, along with general long term strategic product planning and next-generation optical network solutions for service providers worldwide. Previously, Chris has also served in the roles of Vice President of Product Planning and Vice President of Product Management at Infinera, where he oversaw all product management and technical marketing activities for the DTN™ product lines, including product planning, product definition, and product lifecycle management.

Prior to Infinera, Chris was at Ciena as the Senior Director of Product Management and Marketing for the CoreDirector™ switch product line and LightWorks intelligent optical networking software, and was responsible for cradle-to-grave product management functions, including product definition, strategy and marketing. Chris joined Ciena through the Lightera Networks acquisition, where he drove product definition and product management of the CoreDirector from inception.

Chris has previously held product management and marketing positions at StrataCom and Cisco, and systems architecture and engineering positions at Hewlett-Packard and Telcordia. Chris received his B.S.E. with high honors in Electrical Engineering and a certificate in Operations Research and Financial Engineering from Princeton University, and received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Stanford University.

Shawn McAllister
Chief Technology Officer
Solace Systems

Mr. McAllister is responsible for deepening Solace’s understanding of requirements and use cases across industries and organizations, evangelizing our unique approach and solutions, and working closely with our customers to identify ways of improving our technology and value proposition.

Prior to joining Solace, Mr. McAllister led software, hardware, and test engineering teams at Newbridge Networks (later Alcatel Canada), where he was responsible for carrier-oriented network testing and was a regular attendee and contributor to the ATM Forum. Mr. McAllister holds a Bachelor of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, with majors in both Computer Science and Combinatorics/Optimization.

Cliff Maddox
Technical Sales and ISV Relationships
ACTIV Financial Systems

Cliff Maddox is Technical Sales Manager at ACTIV Financial Systems, Inc. where he helps customers design market data solutions using ACTIV . Before joining ACTIV, he spent the previous 20 years developing Financial Software for many of Wall Street’s most successful firms including Barclays Capital, Citadel Investment Group and Morgan Stanley. He has a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Economics from Rutgers University.

Naoki Nakashima
Chief Representative, Senior Researcher
Daiwa Institute of Research

Bio to come.

Folu Okunseinde
Solutions Architect, WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging
IBM

Folu Okunseinde is an Industry Solutions Architect for IBM’s Financial Services Solutions Group. He is responsible for creating high performing systems for financial markets clients from the full breadth of IBM hardware, software and services. He specializes in low latency messaging and trade processing platforms for exchanges and capital markets firms. Folu has served as lead developer for IBM’s low latency messaging and market data distribution products. He helps lead the integration of emerging IBM technologies for the financial markets industry and contributes to the technical strategy of IBM’s offerings in this area. Prior to his current role, Folu focused on high performance computing and distributed computing systems. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin.

John Panzica
VP, Financial Services
Switch and Data

With over 20 years of industry-leading experience, John Panzica joined Switch and Data in 2008 to create and lead the company’s Financial Services Practice. As Vice President, Mr. Panzica is responsible for building the Practice by spearheading its strategy, sales and product solutions, which target all participants of an electronic trading eco-system including buy, sell side community, service and liquidity providers for low-latency infrastructure and proximity trading solutions.

Prior to Switch and Data, Mr. Panzica served as General Manager of the Global Financial Markets for Reliance Globalcom, where he led the development of several products including the financial industry’s first Ethernet-based Extranet and a high-value colocation product creating a financial industry eco-system and proximity to exchanges for trading. Prior to Reliance, Mr. Panzica built InterNap Network Services’ Eastern Alliance Development program and signed partnerships with major partners including Edison Communications and IBM.

John has completed executive education programs in finance and marketing from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Thomas Edison State College.

Dhiru Patel
Chief Quantitative Strategist
Thomas Weisel Partners

Dhiru Patel has been the Chief Quantitative Strategist at Thomas Weisel Partners since March 2001 working closely with Thomas Weisel Partners’ trading desk. Dhiru is responsible for managing the design, implementation and operations of Weisel Execution Services (WES), TWP’s electronic trading platform. Previously, Dhiru was a Vice President at Bear Stearns in Bear Stearns’ Risk Analytics group. Dhiru graduated from M.S. University of Baroda, India with honors in Physics and also graduated from the same university with a B.E (Electronics) degree in engineering.

Dr. Jock Percy
CEO
Perseus Telecom

Jock is a Finance Professional within the telecommunications sector with 12 years experience in companies such as BT Group, BT Global Services, Double Helix Solutions and Ace*Comm. On completion of the sale of Double Helix to ACE*COMM Jock took up post as CEO of Perseus Telecom Limited who specialize in designing ultra low latency connectivity and collocation solutions. Jock attended University of Canterbury NZ, University College and is a member of a number of finance and telecoms research and peer groups. Jock is also a Board Member and Director of FXecosystem.

Alessandro Petroni
Director, Platform Services
Deutsche Bank

Bio to come.

Edward Pring
Senior Programmer
IBM

Edward Pring is a Senior Programmer at the IBM T.J.Watson Research Center. He has contributed to a wide range of IBM products and technologies, including operating systems, publishing applications and terminal emulators for mainframes, virus protection for personal computers, network automation for the Digital Immune System, and visualization and performance analysis for Web Services. He is currently developing streaming applications for financial services. His patent portfolio spans all of these fields. He holds an M.S. degree in computer science from New York University and a B.S. degree in mathematics from Stanford University.

Brian Quigley
Director of Financial Business Development
ADVA Optical Networking

Brian Quigley is currently the Director of Enterprise Strategy and Business Development for North America at ADVA Optical Networking. His focus is low-latency optical transport for the financial markets. Brian has over fifteen years of experience with optical networking, including President and CEO at CTI and Vice President at Sunesys. He was also a charter member of the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband coalition, has presented to both the FCC and the NTIA regarding next generation broadband regulations and is a frequent presenter at international conferences.

Mark Skalabrin
Founder and CEO
Redline Trading Solutions

Mark Skalabrin is the founder and CEO of Redline Trading Solutions, a leading provider of accelerated market data solutions. He is a 20 year veteran of the high performance computing space most recently serving 8 Years as General Manager and Corporate Officer at Mercury Computer Systems.

Throughout his career Mark has built engineering centered businesses that combine leading-edge technology with application acceleration expertise to the solve some of the most challenging computing problems across multiple markets. Mark has a BS degree in Electrical and Computer engineering from Washington State University.

Mary Stanhope
Sr. Director, Marketing
RCN Metro

Mary Stanhope is Senior Director Marketing for RCN Metro Optical Networks. Ms. Stanhope is responsible for marketing, product lifecycle management as well as new market development for the business unit. Ms. Stanhope has over 22 years in the communications industry holding Marketing and Operations roles of increasing responsibility with companies such as Teleport Communications and SchlumbergerSema and its various predecessors. Ms. Stanhope holds a B.A. degree from Syracuse University, Syracuse NY.

Scott Sumner
VP Marketing
Accedian Networks

Scott Sumner has held senior product management and business development positions in a number of leading telecom-focused companies, including VP of Marketing at Minacom (Tektronix), Director of Marketing at Aethera Networks, and Program Manager at EXFO. Scott has authored several patents, and has published numerous conference papers and technical articles for telecom trade organizations and publications. Previous, he held a number of project and engineering management roles at PerkinElmer Optoelectronics and MPB Communications.

Scott has Masters and Bachelor degrees in Engineering (M.Eng, B.Eng) from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and management training at the John Molson School of Business, the Alliance Institute at Cambridge, and the Project Management Institute (PMI).

Jim Theodoras
VP, Technology, Office of the CTO
ADVA Optical Networking

Jim Theodoras is currently Vice President of Technology, Office of the CTO at ADVA Optical Networking working on multi-protocol optical transport products for enterprises and service providers. He is currently focused on low-latency transport of Ethernet, InfiniBand, and Fibre Channel traffic, and specifically solving challenges unique to Financial Markets. Jim has over 20 years experience in the fields of both optical transport and Ethernet switching, including technical positions at Cisco Systems and Alcatel Networks.

Jim was optical liaison editor for IEEE Communication Magazine from 2006-2010. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Ethernet Alliance, as well as chairing its Carrier Ethernet subcommittee. Jim has 14 patents in the fields of telecommunication, is a frequent contributor to industry publications, presenter at international conferences, and an active contributor to the Blogosphere.

Barry Thompson
Founder and CTO
Tervela

An entrepreneur and innovator, Barry Thompson brings 20 years experience to Tervela, a company he founded in 2004 serves as its Chief Technology Officer. A frequent speaker on trading infrastructure, Barry also works with the Securities Technology Analysis Center (STAC) on establishing quantifiable benchmarks and metrics for high-performance capital markets technology.

A self-taught technologist, he began his career as a consultant, designing solutions ranging from embedded robotics and imaging to traditional enterprise systems. His clients included MCI, American Mobile Satellite, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other government and private organizations.

In 1995 he moved to Wall Street, leading the adoption of new transformative technologies in the financial services industry while working for firms such as AIG, NatWest and UBS where he was Head of North American Architecture. In 2002, Barry began to pursue his passion for emerging technologies through incubating research projects in materials manufacturing and carbon nanotube growth, virtual reality and gaming infrastructure. Barry is also a trustee with the X-Prize Foundation, one of the world’s leading philanthropic organizations chartered to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity thereby inspiring the formation of new industries, jobs and the revitalization of markets that are currently stuck.

Geno Valente
VP, Sales and Marketing
XtremeData
Twitter: xtremedata

Geno Valente is Vice President of Sales and Marketing for XtremeData, maker of very high-performance database Decision Support Systems (DSS) and other acceleration appliances. He is responsible for strategy, marketing, and leading the world-wide sales team that helps customers derive the business benefit of faster performance through XtremeData’s DBX Data Warehouse Appliance and patented FPGA Acceleration Technologies.

Prior to XtremeData, Geno spent over 10 years helping support, sell, and market FPGA technology into markets such as financial services, bio-informatics, high performance computing, and WiMax/LTE, while working for Altera Corporation in various sales, support, and leadership roles.

Geno holds a BS degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois and has published more than 20 articles and white papers related to FPGA technology, Low Latency Trading, High Performance Computing, and Data Warehousing.

Bob Van Valzah
Director of Product Marketing
29West-Informatica

Bob Van Valzah left TIBCO in 2004 to be one of the four founders of 29West, which defined a new market for ultra-low-latency messaging and pioneered the daemonless, serverless design that now sets all the performance standards. Now that all of 29West is a part of Informatica, their leadership is expected to grow even stronger.

Bob was in on the ground floor of microprocessors in 1975, C in 1977, Unix and the ARPAnet in 1979, TCP/IP and the Internet in 1985, the World Wide Web in 1992, and reliable multicast in 1998, all culminating in the birth of low-latency messaging. Bob has a pair of Computer Science degrees from the University of Illinois, but he tries hard not to let those get in the way of communicating with people who have business problems to solve. Bob gives technical seminars to those in the financial market industry seeking to better understand the trade-offs involved in performance, latency, and reliability. Bob’s knowledge of networks is among the most extensive in the industry.

Henry Young
Founder and Director
TS-Associates

Henry Young is a founding director of Trading Systems Associates plc (TS-Associates), a firm that specialises in monitoring and analysis of networks and real time financial middleware products. TS-Associates’ “TipOff” middleware analysis appliance leverages both FPGA and ASIC based hardware acceleration techniques in order to achieve real time capture, decode and analysis of 1GE and 10GE data flows. With a built in high resolution hardware based time stamping capability, TipOff is leading the charge into high resolution passive latency monitoring of direct exchange feed and transaction infrastructures.

Prior to founding TS-Associates in 1999, Henry was a roving industry consultant splitting his time between London and New York with engagements for a variety of banks and exchanges. Henry led the team at MSB Consultants that, in the mid 90s, developed the RT Emulator – a product that delivered Reuters Terminal functionality integrated with six of the then available market data platforms.

Henry holds an MSc in Computing from Imperial College and a BSc in Physics & Electronics from Edinburgh University.

Vladimir Zilberman
Vice President
Bank of America Merrill Lynch

With over 13 years of electronic trading experience from professional Trader to Electronic Trading Support Manager, Mr Zilberman’s technology background is a perfect fit for today’s dynamic trading environment. His current client facing projects include providing low latency solutions for equities, options, futures and Swaps.