Each panelist will give a 10-20 minute talk and then the floor will be opened for attendees to ask questions of the panelists.

About the Speakers

Rob Baker is Director of Data Science & Artificial Intelligence at Procter & Gamble in Mason, OH. Through his 30+ years with P&G Rob has led groups in a wide range of areas including clinical trials, consumer research and quality control. His current group has responsibility for Corporate Functions R&D supporting all of P&G’s businesses. Rob holds a Master’s degree in Statistics from Purdue and a Bachelor’s in Mathematics from Rochester Institute of Technology.

Grayson Dill leads Advanced Analytics for Bank of America’s Consumer and Small Business Anti-Money Laundering (AML) business controls organization.  With a scope of responsibility spanning over 60MM client relationships, his team develops measurement techniques and automated strategies designed to improve compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act, related regulations, and company policies while reducing unnecessary client friction.  In addition, his team also supports the Consumer and Small Business At-Risk Persons program, as well as the Consumer and Small Business Sales Practice program. Based in Charlotte, NC, he holds undergraduate degrees in History (UNC-Chapel Hill), and in Political Science, Mathematics and Economics (UNC-Charlotte).  He attended graduate school at The Johns Hopkins University, where he obtained an M.S. in Applied Economics.  Outside of banking, he is an endurance athlete, yogi, and a member of the Wilderness Medicine faculty at the National Outdoor Leadership School. 

Peter Henstock is the Machine Learning & AI Lead at Pfizer and based in greater Boston.  His work has focused at the intersection of AI, visualization, statistics and software engineering applied mostly to drug discovery but more recently to clinical trials.  Peter holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Purdue University along with 6 Master’s degrees.  He was recognized as being among the top 12 leaders in AI and Pharma globally by the Deep Knowledge Analytics group.  He also currently teaches graduate AI, and Software Engineering courses at Harvard.

Qing Ji (Ji) is a statistician in the Advanced Consumer Modeling and Statistics at P&G.  He joined P&G in 2020 after finishing his Ph.D in Statistics at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.  Ji supports consumer research and product development teams within R&D at P&G.  He also has Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from Miami University.

Nathan Lally is an AVP of Data Science at HSB (Munich Re Group) where he leads a team of data scientists on projects focused on insurance analytics as well as projects supporting the company’s Engineering and Technology divisions. Nathan previously worked in data science and statistics roles at HSB, Pratt & Whitney (Raytheon) and The Hartford Insurance Group and holds undergraduate degrees in political science and mathematics as well as an MS in mathematics

Jianchang Lin is Senior Director, Statistics in Takeda Pharmaceuticals with extensive drug development experience across various therapeutic areas in oncology, cell therapy, immunology and rare disease including several successful global approvals and commercialization in US, EU, Japan and China. He has published over 50 papers in statistical and clinical peer-reviewed journals/book chapters and served as editors for two books published in Springer. He is also an Associate Editor of Journal of Biopharmaceutical Statistics with research interests in innovative trial designs, quantitative decision making, RWD/RWE and advanced data science. Jianchang holds a PhD in statistics from Florida State University.

Melinda Thielbar is a researcher and statistical software developer with over twenty years of industry experience. Her career ranges from statistics education to developing algorithms for commercial software to Hollywood script consulting. She co-founded Research Triangle Analysts, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit focused on education and training for people working in the analytics field in the Raleigh-Durham area. She currently works as a Practice Lead in Fidelity Investments’ Workplace Investing.