Virtualitics

Michael is the CEO and Co-Founder of Virtualitics. Michael is a data scientist and entrepreneur with a background in finance and physics. He co-authored many of the patents underpinning the Virtualitics AI platform. He believes that AI applied to data analytics can help solve some of the world’s toughest challenges.

Prior to co-founding Virtualitics, he was a Managing Director at Deutsche Bank, where he started and headed a data driven trading desk in London, New York, and India focused on the insurance and pensions markets. Managed a large group of data scientists. Designed the group’s predictive modeling and risk management systems. Started and was technical advisor to the bank’s first insurance-linked fund. Previously was an interest rates derivatives trader at various large banks. Graduated from the Goldman Sachs analyst program.

Michael was also a researcher in nanotechnology at Caltech, where he contributed to two papers and obtained one patent. The patent is related to a quantitative method for determination of target molecules in the context of nanotechnology devices applied to medical research.

Michael is interested in science education, especially for early childhood, to reduce inequality. He is a member of the Board of Caltech’s Computer Science Department (IST division), a member of the Board of the Pasadena Math Academy, and judge at the LA County Junior High Physics Science Fair. He was a member of Caltech Children’s Center Board. He has an MBA from Harvard, an MS in Applied Physics from Caltech, and a BS in Physics with honors from Columbia University.

Ciro Donalek is a leading expert in Artificial Intelligence and data visualization. As a Computational Staff Scientist at Caltech he successfully applied Machine Learning techniques to many different scientific fields, co-authoring over a hundred publications featured in major journals (e.g., Nature, Neural Networks, IEEE Big Data, Bioinformatics). He holds several patents in the fields of AI and 3D Data Visualization, co-authoring the ones that define the Virtualitics AI platform. During his 20 years career in Data Science he has been awarded numerous grants and research fellowships.

Dr. Donalek has also pioneered some of the uses of 3D and Mixed Reality for data visualization, AI-assisted data exploration and collaboration, leading the iViz project at Caltech (Virtualitics Explore precursor).

Dr. Donalek is passionate about teaching and public outreach and has given many invited talks around the world on Machine Learning, Immersive technologies and Ethical, Interpretable and Explainable AI.

He also has a Minor Planet named after him as a reward for the work done in the automatic classification of celestial bodies and has been part of the small group that built the Big Picture, the single largest real astronomical image in the world, 152 feet wide and 20 feet tall, currently installed at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, the most-visited public observatory in the world (with 1.5 million visitors a year).

Dr. Donalek holds a PhD in Computational Sciences / Artificial Intelligence (University Federico II of Naples, Italy) and a MS in Computer Science (University of Salerno, Italy). He is married with two children.

Ken Ferguson is the Chief Revenue Officer and leads the Global Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, GTM Strategy Operations, and Partnership teams. Ken is a proven Revenue leader with over 20 years of Enterprise SaaS experience, building high performing teams in both larger scale SaaS businesses as well as several earlier stage companies in the Analytics, AI, Human Capital Management, and Performance Management markets. His leadership passions involve building and empowering highly diverse teams around innovative and disruptive technologies to solve big problems for customers.

Prior to joining Virtualitics, Ken was CRO at orgvue, led Global Sales for Visier, and was in Sales Leadership as an early employee at Workday during their successful build-out of a world-class sales organization. 

Outside of Virtualitics, Ken speaks at many leadership conferences and is also a Limited Partner at Stage 2 Capital, a Venture Capital Fund focused on helping early stage SaaS companies achieve scale and GTM excellence. His downtime is spent with his first passion which is his family.

Jerome Josz is the Chief Financial Officer and is responsible for strategic planning, finance, accounting, legal and operations at Virtualitics. Prior to joining Virtualitics, Jerome was the Director of Finance at GoGuardian, where he helped scale the company and manage a successful exit to private equity. Previous experience also includes working for JP Morgan in the investment banking division. Jerome holds a MSc in Finance from HEC Paris (France) and a Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Economics from Queen’s University (Canada). He enjoys being outdoors and spending time with his family.

With over 20 years of Information Technology and Cybersecurity experience, Alfred Valerio is the Chief Information Security Officer of Virtualitics. He has consistently delivered world-class cybersecurity performance and improvements for technology companies in startups, finance, and US government contractor.

He advises companies on cybersecurity solutions, partnerships, and alliances. He was a speaker for (ISC)2 Security Congress in 2021. He obtained his MBA in IT Management and holds a Certified Information Systems Security Professional certification.

Bio Michael is a data scientist and entrepreneur with a background in finance and physics. He co – authored many of the patents underpinning the Virtualitics AI platform. He believes that AI applied to data analytics can help solve some of the world’s toughest problems.

Prior to co-founding Virtualitics, he was a Managing Director at Deutsche Bank, where he started and headed a data driven trading desk in London, New York, and India focused on the insurance and pensions markets. Managed a large group of data scientists. Designed the group’s predictive modeling and risk management systems. Started and was technical advisor to the bank’s first insurance – linked fund. Previously was an interest rates derivatives trader at various large banks. Graduated from the Goldman Sachs analyst program.

Michael was also a researcher in nanotechnology at Caltech, where he contributed to two papers and obtained one patent. The patent is related to a quantitative method for determination of target molecules in the context of nanotechnology devices applied to medical research.

Michael is interested in science education, especially for early childhood, as a way to reduce inequality. He is a member of the Board of Caltech’s Computer Science Department (IST division), a member of the Board of the Pasadena Math Academy, and judge at the LA County Junior High Physics Science Fair. He was a member of Caltech Children’s Center Board. He has an MBA from Harvard, an MS in Applied Physics from Caltech, and a BS in Physics with honors from Columbia University.

Ciro Donalek is a former Computational Scientist at Caltech where he successfully applied Machine Learning techniques to many different scientific fields, co-authoring over a hundred scientific and technical publications (e.g., Nature, Neural Networks, IEEE Big Data, Bioinformatics).

Dr. Donalek has also pioneered some of the uses of Mixed Reality for immersive data visualization, exploration and machine learning, leading the iViz project at Caltech (Virtualitics Immersive Platform precursor); he has also four patents in the fields of AI and 3D Data Visualization.

During his 20 years career as a data scientist Dr. Donalek has been awarded different research fellowships, served as reviewer for numerous major scientific journals, and has given many invited talks on Machine Learning, Virtual Reality and Data Visualization.

He also has a Minor Planet named after him as a reward for the work done in the automatic classification of celestial bodies and has been part of the group that built the Big Picture, the single largest real astronomical image in the world, 152 feet wide and 20 feet tall, currently installed at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, the most-visited public observatory in the world (with 1.5 million visitors a year).

Dr. Donalek holds a PhD in Computational Science (University Federico II of Naples, Italy) and a MS in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (University of Salerno, Italy). He is married with two children.

George Djorgovski is a Professor and the Executive Officer (Dept. Chair) for Astronomy at Caltech, as well as the founding Director of the Center for Data-Driven Discovery. He was one of the founders of the Virtual Observatory framework, which is now a global data grid of astronomy, as well as of the emerging field of Astroinformatics. He was the Director of the Meta-Institute for Computational Astrophysics, the first professional scientific organization based in virtual worlds, and he pioneered some of the uses of virtual reality as a scientific and scholarly platform. He and his group also pioneered uses of machine learning and other advanced data analytics methods in astronomy and other fields. Prof. Djorgovski is the author or a co-author of several hundred scientific and technical publications, and a recipient of numerous professional honors and recognitions, including the Presidential Young Investigator, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science, a Harvard Junior Fellow, a NASA Group Achievement Award, several Distinguished Visiting Professorships, etc.

Virtualitics is proud to announce that General (ret) Frank Gorenc is joining its advisory team. He retired from the United States Air Force after 37 years of active duty service. His career culminated as the Commander US Air Forces Europe, Commander US Air Forces Africa, Commander NATO Allied Air Command at Ramstein Air Base, Germany and Director, Joint Air Power Competence Centre, Kalkar, Germany.

General (ret) Gorenc was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He was commissioned after graduating from the USAF Academy in 1979. He commanded units at every level and served in staff positions at HQ USAF, HQ Air Combat Command, the Joint Staff, and US European Command/Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. As a command pilot, he flew over 4,800 hours in the F-15C, T-38A, MQ-1B, UH-1N, and C-21.

He participated in Operations DESERT STORM, PROVIDE COMFORT, SOUTHERN WATCH, NORTHERN WATCH, IRAQI FREEDOM, ENDURING FREEDOM, ODYSSEY DAWN, UNIFIED PROTECTOR, and INHERANT RESOLVE. In addition, he commanded three standing NATO operations: Air Policing, BMD, and Augmentation to Turkey missions.

His education includes Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering, a Master of Aeronautical Science, and a Master of Science degree in National Security. He graduated from the Air Force Fighter Weapons Instructor Course and the NATO Tactical Leadership Programme.

General (ret) Gorenc is now a defense and leadership consultant, a public speaker and serves on several boards.

Shay Badie is a partner at Centricus, a global investment platform backed by a select group of sophisticated, global and long-term investors. Centricus currently has four investment verticals: technology, financial services, infrastructure and FEMS (fashion, entertainment, media and sport). Shay has over 17 years financial services experience.

His most recent role was at Goldman Sachs where he was responsible for structuring and executing strategic financing solutions, principal investments, hedging and asset liability management as well as complex derivatives in the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Shay was Head of Local Rates and FX Derivative Structuring for Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions at Deutsche Bank. Prior to this, Shay held roles in structured and project finance, FX structuring, Interest Rate structuring at Deutsche Bank. Shay holds PhD and Masters in Engineering (First Class Honours) both in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine.

Marco is the co-founder and a general partner of The Venture Reality Fund (The VR Fund), where he oversees the company’s investments in early-stage virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) startups. He has extensive experience in executive roles with leading technology companies and in global investments. For more than ten years Marco has focused on strategic investments across media, entertainment, lifestyle, sports and technology with firms most recently with Evolution Media Capital (Evolution), where he led its investment in JauntVR, as well as Trinity Ventures, Selby, GameChange Ventures, U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray Ventures.

In addition to his role at The VR Fund, Marco actively advises numerous media and technology companies in the VR and AR sectors. Marco started his career as a programmer and then researcher at NASA/Ames Research Center. Prior to joining Evolution, he served as president and chief executive officer of the leading mobile game studio, PlayFirst, which he sold to Glu Mobile (NASDAQ: GLUU) in 2014.

Marco’s previous exec roles included president and chief executive officer of Racktivity, and chief financial officer of General Magic, where he managed its Initial Public Offering raising over $100 million, and worked alongside some of the most talented engineers and visionaries in Silicon Valley’s history developing intelligent communications devices and technologies that were essential to today’s smartphones, online communication and commerce. Marco holds a Master of Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University; a postgraduate Engineer degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University; a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from San Jose State University; and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the United States Naval Postgraduate School. His postgraduate studies and research at NASA focused on mathematical modeling and digital control of helicopters, drones, and robotics.

Sara Varni is currently the CMO of Attentive, where she drives the end-to-end marketing strategy for one of the world’s fastest-growing software companies. Prior to Attentive, Sara was the CMO of Twilio where she helped reaccelerate revenue growth by bringing a developer first company to the enterprise market. She also spent over a decade in various leadership roles at Salesforce, most notably as the SVP of Product Marketing for the Sales Cloud, the company’s flagship product.

Sara holds a BS in Business Administration from Bucknell University and an MBA from The Anderson School of Management at UCLA.

Brian Miller is the Chief Investment Officer of North Sound Partners, which he founded in 2013. Brian has worked closely with many of the firm’s portfolio companies including joining boards, committees, and gaining board observer status. Prior to founding North Sound, Brian spent 21 years at Elliott Associates, a $40 Billion AUM hedge fund based in New York. When Brian retired from Elliott in 2012, he was one of four equity partners and held the title of Chief Trading Officer and was a member of Elliott’s Management Committee. Prior to starting with Elliott in 1991, Brian was a Vice President at Yamaichi International where he specialized in arbitrage strategies. Brian received a B.Sc. in Economics from the University at Albany in 1988. Mr. Miller is a Chartered Financial Analyst and received his C.F.A. designation in 1992. Brian served on the Board of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in NYC and currently serves on the board of Inseego (Symbol: INSG), a leading provider of 5G CPE, FWA and edge devices.

Major General Taliaferro retired from the U.S. Air Force after 32 years of service. Jeff first served in a variety of B-1 flying positions, including U.S. Air Force Weapons School Instructor, and his career culminated as the Vice Director for Operations on the Joint Staff, Pentagon. He has commanded at the squadron and wing levels and last commanded the 9th Air and Space Expeditionary Task Force and NATO Air Command-Afghanistan as the senior Airman in Afghanistan.

He has extensive experience in corporate decision-making within the Department of Defense, including programming over $44 billion dollars a year into combat air force portfolios, and guiding several major weapons systems through the requirements and acquisition process. His experience includes various operations, strategy, programming and military planning positions within headquarters U.S. Air Force, Air Combat Command, U.S. Central Command, U.S Northern Command and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Maj. Gen. (ret) Taliaferro is a command pilot with over 2,600 hours, including combat over Iraq, Serbia, and Afghanistan.

Jeff graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy (BS Human Factors Engineering), with follow on degrees from George Washington University (MA Organizational Management), and the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (MA Operational Art and Science). He also served as a National Defense Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington, DC.

Vice Adm. T.J. White is a native of Spring, Texas. He is the grandson of a Sailor and son of a soldier. White is a 1987 graduate of the United States Naval Academy where he received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. He holds a Master of Science in Systems Technology (Command, Control and Communications) from the Naval Postgraduate School and a Master of Science in National Resource Strategy from the National Defense University–Industrial College of the Armed Forces in Washington, District of Columbia. He is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Seminar XXI fellow.

He was originally a surface warfare officer. White served aboard USS Missouri (BB 63) as electronic warfare officer, combat information center office er, and assistant operations officer. He was selected for re-designation as a cryptologist, now cryptologic warfare officer, in 1992 and was assigned to the Operations Directorate at the National Security Agency, Fort Meade, Maryland.

His operational fleet tours include assignments as assistant cryptologist, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command/U.S. 5th Fleet in Manama, Bahrain, and assistant chief of staff for Information Operations, N39, commander, U.S. 7th Fleet embarked aboard USS Blue Ridge (LCC 19), home-ported in Yokosuka, Japan.

White has served on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations as the Joint Military Intelligence Program and Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities (now Military Intelligence Program) program resources director, as the deputy director of intelligence and chief of staff, Joint Functional Component Command–Network Warfare, U.S. Strategic Command, and as the director, Commander’s Action Group at U.S. Cyber Command.

His command tours include Naval Security Group Activity Bahrain and Navy Information Operations Command Maryland. As a flag officer, he has served as deputy director, Tailored Access Operations, NSA and as director for intelligence, J2, U.S. Pacific Command. White’s last tour was as Commander, Cyber National Mission Force, USCYBERCOM. He assumed command of U.S. Fleet Cyber Command/U.S. 10th Fleet in June 2018.

John “Mike” Murray is a retired United States Army General, the first Commanding General of United States Army Futures Command (AFC), a four-star Army Command headquartered in Austin, Texas. Murray was previously the Army G-8, a deputy to the Chief of Staff of the United States Army. As the G-8, Murray served as the principal advisor to the CSA for materiel requirements and as the military counterpart to the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology.

Murray was born in Kenton, Ohio, the son of John and Janet Murray.  He received his commission as an infantry officer via the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program upon graduation from The Ohio State University in 1982. Throughout his career, Murray has served in leadership positions and commanded from company through division, with various staff assignments at the highest levels of the army.

He stepped down as AFC commanding general on 3 December 2021 and was officially retired from the Army on 1 February 2022, completing nearly 40 years of service.

Since retirement from the Army, he has founded a LLC, is a member of several boards of advisors and directors, and individually consulting with defense focused companies.