Keynote Speakers:

Dr. Geoffrey Ling, MD, Ph.D., Founding Director of the Biological Technologies Office (BTO), DARPA

Dr. Ling began his DARPA service in 2004 as a Program Manager in the Defense Sciences Office (DSO). He created and managed a broad research portfolio, encompassing over $400M in funding and spanning neuroscience, infectious disease, pharmacology, and battlefield medicine. His most prominent programs included the Revolutionizing Prosthesis (RP) and Preventing Violent Explosive Neuro Trauma (PREVENT). RP is an effort to develop a brain controlled robot prosthetic arm for amputees, and it has been featured twice on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” PREVENT aims to develop new understanding and treatment of blast-induced TBI and has been profiled in major news outlets, including USA Today and the NY Post. Dr. Ling also serves as an attending neuro-critical care physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He retired from the US Army in 2012 after serving as a military intensive care physician with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. From 2012-2013, Dr. Ling served as the Assistant Director for Medical Innovation in the Science Division at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He received his Ph.D. in pharmacology from Cornell University, and M.D. from Georgetown University. Dr. Ling is board certified in both Neurology and Neuro Critical Care.

Anthony (Tony) Neal-Graves, Intel Vice President, Internet of Things Group

Tony Neal-Graves is vice president and general manager of the Industrial & Energy Solutions Group at Intel Corporation. He is responsible for driving and developing compelling Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to support the automation and control of industrial machinery and processes in manufacturing and production environments; solutions for the generation, transmission and distribution, automation, security, and consumption of electricity; and solutions for the efficient extraction and refinement of oil and gas products. During his 22-year career in telecommunications, Neal-Graves was a general manager at Lucent Technologies and has held senior-level positions in product development, marketing and sales with AT&T, Bell Labs and Lucent. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree in electrical engineering from Polytechnic Institute of New York, and a Master’s Degree in computer science from the University of Southern California. He also is a graduate of the Congressional Fellows Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., where he was an aide to a member of the U.S. House of Representatives on the Ways and Means Committee. Neal-Graves was awarded the 2011 Black Engineer of the Year Award at the 25th BEYA STEM Global Competitiveness Conference.

Yoshiyuki Sankai, Ph.D., Professor at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, and CEO of CYBERDYNE Inc.

Dr. Sankai is a Professor at the Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, and Director of the Center for Cybernics Research at the University of Tsukuba. He is also a Program Manager of the Impulsing Paradigm Change through Disruptive Technologies (ImPACT) Program, initiated by the Council for Science, Technology and Innovation of the Cabinet Office in Japan, a fellow of both the Robotics Society of Japan and the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers, and the President and CEO of the social problem-solving venture company CYBERDYNE, Inc. Having established a new academic field he coined “Cybernics: the fusion and combination of humans, machines and information systems,” Dr. Sankai has pioneered innovative Cyborg-type robot technology, and led CYBERDYNE as an expert member of its committee on medical robots toward its intellectual property strategy and international standard setting by the ISO. He was a Visiting Professor at the Baylor College of Medicine, and served as Chairman and Executive Board member of the Advanced Robotics Journal, as well as an Executive Board member, congress head, and President of the Japan Society of Embolus Detection and Treatment. He was also a council member on one of the Global Agenda Councils of the World Economic Forum. Dr. Sankai received a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Tsukuba in 1987.

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