Owen Astrachan
Owen Astrachan is Professor of the Practice of Computer Science at Duke and was the technical expert for Google in the Oracle v Google trial decided 6-2 by the US Supreme Court that Google's use of Java APIs in Android was a copyright fair use. Fair use is a common defense for OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic in training LLMs. He has M.A.T, M.S, and Ph.D. degrees from Duke and his son and daughter both graduated from Duke with degrees in Computer Science.
Luis von Ahn
Luis von Ahn is the CEO and co-founder of DuoLingo. He graduated from Duke summa cum laude in 2000 (with a degree in Math, but not Computer Science) , received a MacArthur award in 2006, and the Lemelson-MIT prize in 2018. Luis is the co-inventer of re-Captcha. AI is central to learning and development at DuoLingo.
Lindsay Tomson
Lindsay Tomson (Trinity '12) is a culture-building expert with a resume spanning Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Samsara (an IoT sustainability startup). Currently, she serves in the Office of the CFO at ServiceNow, driving employee experience strategy for one of the world’s leading software firms. She is joined by Samantha Dray, ServiceNow’s Director of the Early Career Finance Development Program (and an alum of the Duke Athletics department). Samantha specializes in empowering emerging talent (undergrads and graduate students entering the workforce) to reach their peak potential. Tune in to hear:
- How to navigate career pivots in the ever-changing tech industry
- Strategies for finding meaning and growth in your next role
- The real-world impact of AI on the future of work
Greg Badros
Greg Badros is the founder and CEO of Gluroo Imaginations and of Prepared Mind Innovations. He was the VP of Engineering and Products at Facebook/Meta and the Senior Director of Engineering at Google. Greg graduated from Duke in 1995, and received a Ph.D. from U. Washington in 2000. He will talk about his views on innovation, especially as AI is changing the landscape he is exploring.
Nick Millington
Nick Millington is the Chief Innovation Office at Sonos where he is helping build The Audio Internet. He is named on over 100 Sonos patents which have helped Sonos situate itself as a small, but central player in the home audio networks. Sonos combines software and hardware and strives to leverage AI rather than customer data. Nick graduated in 1998 from Duke as an AB Duke scholar with ECE and Computer Science majors
Eleanor Mehlenbacher
Eleanor Mehlenbacher is employee #1 at Layer Health which "has built the AI layer for chart review - physician-level reasoning that unlocks value and improves care." She was a software engineer for five years at PathAI, and worked at RedHat before that. Eleanor graduated in 2016 from Duke with a double major in Computer Science and Music. She worked as a UTA in many courses as well as working for OIT.
Nona Yadegar
Nona Farahnik Yadegar is currently Senior Director, Product, Strategy, and GTM. At Snap Nona has been Director of Product Strategey, of Platform Policy, Head of Trust and Safety. She is the co-founder and Chair of Origin a femtech startup. Nona was the campaign manager for Tim Wu when he ran for Lt. Governor in New York, a graduate of Columbia Law School, and graduated from Duke in 2008 with a degree in Political Science. Nona says taking the non-major's version of 342 has been instrumental in her career.
Luis Villa
Luis is Vice President, Legal at Sonar where he leads the product counseling function at a high-growth startup doing cutting-edge work at the intersection of code quality, AI, and open. Luis worked at the Wikimedia foundation, Mozilla, and Greenberg Traurig in different roles advocating for Open Source. He graduated in 2001 from Duke with degrees in Political Science and Computer Science. He is a Board Member of Creative Commons.
Melissa Gadebusch
Melissa Gadebusch (nee Dallis) is a Senior Data Science Manager at Meta after holding similar positions at Mindstrong, Uber, and Square. She graduated from Duke in 2014 with high distinction in Computer Science working with Vince Conitzer.
Nate Bronson
Nate is a member of technical staff at OpenAI, was a Principal Architect at Rockset, and a Software Engineer for nine years at Facebook after earning his Ph.D. from Stanford. Nate graduated from Duke in 1998 with an EE degree. He says "I am a systems programmer at heart. My passion is hard problems where performance and correctness matter, and a sophisticated solution can be hidden behind a clean interface... If the constant factors matter then I'm interested. I also enjoy extracting reusable lessons and sharing them.
Andrew Chatham
Andrew is VP of Engineering at Waymo where he is also a Distinguished Software Engineer. He was a Principal Enginner at Google starting in 2002 after graduating from Duke with degrees in Computer Science and Economics. Since joining Google's Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, he has built and scaled the backend data stack, maps, fleet infrastructure, and cloud services that underpin Waymo One. He specializes in turning ambitious autonomous-vehicle ambitions into reliable, production-grade systems—from large-scale data processing and offboard software to Linux kernel-level engineering and infrastructure.
Genesis Bonds
Genesis is a public speaker and a software engineer at Netflix. She says I'm particularly interested in roles that blend technical problem-solving with customer-facing impact, such as solutions engineering and consumer product development. She has been a software engineer at Bloomberg and Meta. Genesis graduated from Duke in 2016 with a degree in Computer Science.