Advisory Board
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Roger Byford
Roger Byford is Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Vocollect, Inc., the world leader in voice solutions for mobile workers. Mr. Byford's career spans more than 20 years in the industrial application of voice technologies. Since the company's inception in 1987, Mr. Byford has held numerous roles in the company, including Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer. He also led the company's effort to broaden its market beyond the supply chain, and was the first President of Vocollect Healthcare Systems, the Vocollect business unit that is bringing the benefit of voice to the long-term care industry. Prior to joining Vocollect, he was a member of the senior management team at Westinghouse Voice Systems, which was known for pioneering work in voice technology applications. He also worked for Westinghouse's corporate Research and Development Center, where he collaborated to develop a voice-based access control system for apartment building elevators. Mr. Byford holds one United Kingdom and six U.S. patents, and earned his M.A. degree in Electrical Engineering from Cambridge University.
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Dr. Mike Dillinger
Mike Dillinger is Principal of Translation Optimization Partners, an independent consulting group that helps clients optimize communication in global markets. He focuses on aligning authoring with business goals and optimizing machine translation at clients including Apple, eBay, HP, Welocalize, Cisco, MRO Software (now a part of IBM), Borland, Raritan, Motorola, and others. Dr. Dillinger is also Past President and Vice President of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas, and an experienced developer of commercial machine translation systems. He wrote the widely circulated LISA Best Practices Guide: Implementing Machine Translation, edited MT at Work, the proceedings of an international meeting of the MT community, published many technical papers, contributed to the emerging standards OLIF and UNL, and was awarded a patent for translation technology. He has taught at more than a dozen universities in several countries and has been a visiting researcher on four continents.
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Dr. Raul Valdes-Perez
Raul Valdes-Perez co-founded and is currently Executive Chairman of Vivisimo, Inc. Dr. Valdes-Perez led Vivisimo as its CEO since its inception in 2000 until 2009. During his tenure, he was recognized as a 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (North Central Region), top 10 reader favorite for Entrepreneur of the Year by Inc. Magazine, twice a CEO of the year finalist by the Pittsburgh Technology Council, CEO Communicator of the Year by the Public Relations Society of America (Pittsburgh chapter), and an Outstanding Alumni Career Achievement by the University of Illinois at Chicago. Before Vivisimo, Raul was on the Carnegie Mellon University Computer Science Department faculty, where his research on new methods and applications of knowledge discovery led to publishing nearly 50 journal articles in natural, social and computer science. He has been a principal investigator on seven grants from the National Science Foundation, served on its advisory committee for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, and was an action editor of the journal Machine Learning. He serves on the Boards of Directors of the Pittsburgh Technology Council and the Pittsburgh World Affairs Council. Raul received a Ph.D. in computer science at Carnegie Mellon, where his adviser was Herbert A. Simon (Turing Award 1975 and Nobel Laureate 1978), and B.S. and M.S. degrees in information engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
