TechTalks

Paul English Co-Founder, CTO, Kayak

Paul English is the cofounder and Chief Technology Officer of Kayak.com, a travel search engine that helps consumers find travel deals from hundreds of travel providers. English graduated with a Bachelor's and Master's in Computer Science from UMASS Boston in 1989. English was previously on the product advisory boards for LinkedIn and Pixable. He also served as the Vice President of Technology for Intuit Inc following its acquisition of Boston Light Software, of which he was a co-founder. English won 2008 CTO of the Year from Mass Technology Leadership Council and 2012 New England Entrepreneur of the Year from Ernst and Young.

Ari Gesher Senior Engineer, Palantir

Ari Gesher is a Senior Software Engineer at Palantir Technologies.  Palantir Technologies is a thriving startup that is building the next generation of human-driven data analysis platforms and applications, now broadly deployed in a variety of applications in government, industry, and non-profits.

An alumnus of the University of Illinois computer science department, Ari has worked in the software industry for the past ten years, including a stint as lead website and infrastructure maintainer for the SourceForge.net open source software archive.

During his tenure at Palantir Technologies, Ari has split his time between working as a backend engineer on Palantir's analysis platform and thinking and writing about Palantir's vision for human-driven information data systems as well as devoting about half of his time working on Palantir’s Philanthropy Engineering team.

Yoky Matsuoka VP Technology, Nest

Yoky Matsuoka is VP of Technology at Nest Labs (www.nest.com). She received her Ph.D. at MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Computational Neuroscience. She received an M.S. from MIT and a B.S. from UC Berkeley, both in EECS. She was also a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and in Mechanical Engineering at Harvard University.

She was Torode Family Endowed Career Development Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, Director of NSF ERC Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering, and Ana Loomis McCandless Professor of Robotics and Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work has been recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship, acclaimed as one of “The Brilliant Ten” in Popular Science Magazine, “Top 10 Women to Watch in 2010” by Barbie, and "Power 25” in Seattle Magazine.

John Bicket Co-Founder, Meraki

John Bicket is responsible for the technical direction and development of Meraki. John holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Cornell University and an S.M. degree in Computer Science from MIT. He was most recently a Ph.D. student in the Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems group at MIT, where he co-led the research project that won several academic awards and later became the foundation of Meraki’s wireless mesh technology. John, along with Sanjit Biswas and Hans Robertson, was able to turn the idea of Meraki into a reality.

Meraki brings the benefits of the cloud to edge and branch networks, delivering easy-to-manage wireless, switching, and security solutions that enable customers to seize new business opportunities and reduce operational cost. Whether securing iPads in an enterprise or blanketing a campus with WiFi, Meraki networks simply work. In December 2012, Cisco acquired Meraki, forming Cisco’s new Cloud Networking Group. John continues to lead the technical team to improve and expand Meraki while innovating new and exciting products.