Steven Minton, the President and founder of InferLink, holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University and is internationally recognized for his contributions to Artificial Intelligence. In 1998, Dr. Minton was selected to be a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). In additional to founding InferLink and several other AI companies, he also founded a non-profit organization, AI Access Foundation, the publisher of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), currently one of the highest-impact journals in computer science. Dr. Minton served as the first executive editor of JAIR and continues to participate as a Managing Editor and as the Director of AI Access Foundation. He has served as an editor of the Machine Learning Journal and as an advisor to the Journal of Machine Learning Research, the Computing Research Repository, and various high-tech companies. Dr. Minton has taught courses in AI and Machine Learning at numerous universities, including Stanford, where he designed and taught the machine learning course (CS229) the first two years it was offered. After graduating from CMU, Dr. Minton became a Principal Investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center, and subsequently a Research Associate Professor at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute. He left USC to cofound Fetch Technologies in 2000, where he put together a team that delivered software and services to some of the nation’s largest enterprises. Since then, Minton has co-founded seven other AI companies (in addition to InferLink), including Evid Science, an InferLink spinoff that was acquired in December 2020. His awards include AAAI’s Englemore award for his contributions to AI research applications and leadership in the field. Other awards include the 2021 IJCAI Distinguished Service award, the 2008 AAAI Classic Paper award and the 1988 Best Paper award at the National AI conference.

Naveen Ashish is InferLink’s Chief Scientist. In this role he is involved as a Principal Data Scientist/Investigator in data science research projects as well as technical management of industry projects for InferLink Consulting. Ashish’s primary background and expertise is in applied data science, with work and interests in a variety of different domains. Prior to InferLink he was the founding director of data sciences at Fred Hutch Cancer Center, and his earlier work history includes faculty positions at USC and UC-Irvine, and R&D Staff Member at NASA Ames Research Center. His research has been funded, as PI or Co-I, by agencies such as the DoD, DARPA, NIH and others. He has published over a hundred technical papers and authored two books. On the entrepreneurial side, Ashish served as Consulting Chief Data Scientist for two Silicon Valley start-ups, Abzooba Inc. and DropThought Inc., where he built their data science & engineering teams from scratch; he has also been an expert advisory consultant to numerous other start-ups, and government organizations. Ashish received his PhD in Computer Science from USC.

David Abbondanzio leads the innovation and commercialization efforts at InferLink. Prior to joining our team, he directed strategic business units within multiple organizations from fortune 100 companies to tech startups. He recently led the global GTM strategy for a generative AI video synthesis platform and has expertise in machine vision, OEM relationships, B2B SaaS model development. Mr. Abbondanzio holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MS in Applied Cognition and Neuroscience from UT Dallas.

As Principal Scientist, Goran is a DARPA-funded researcher interested in a wide range of problems at the intersection of Machine Learning, Agent-based Simulations, Causal Modelling and Network Theory. He has extensive experience in managing large cross-domain scientific teams, as well as conducting the research independently. Goran studies complex machine-to-machine, machine-to-human and human-to-human interactions and address technical and societal problems leveraging the online and offline data and has built novel technologies and state-of-the-art methods for Machine Learning applications.

Neha Kansal contributes to all aspects of software engineering at InferLink. She is skilled at architecting, designing and developing software solutions for challenging technical problems. With a masters in Computer Science from University of Southern California, she has 20 years of experience in the software industry. Neha started her career with back-end development on data-focused products, and as she gained more expertise over the years, she now enjoys being involved in the entire product lifecycle. She also collaborates effectively with the engineering team, mentors other engineers, sets technical standards and manages project development.

Matthew Michelson is a technologist and entrepreneur. He's a founder, having led venture-backed companies from initial R&D through exit, building productive and high-growth teams along the way. And he's also a scientist, publishing more than 35 peer-reviewed papers and abstracts within the fields of machine-learning, AI, and applications in health care. Leveraging this dual experience he helps InferLink validate early commercial ideas based upon deep technologies developed by the firm. He has a BS from The Johns Hopkins University, and a MS and PhD from The University of Southern California.