Current Position:

Mr. Arvidson serves as the Special Assistant to the Office of the National Manager for National Security Systems (NSS) for the National Security Agency (NSA), providing oversight and guidance on Cybersecurity and computer security strategy and requirements to secure NSS. As Chair of a joint working group, NIPR/SIPR CyberSecurity Architecture Review (NSCSAR), he drives development of a framework to categorize threat and reduce risk to manageable levels to enable portfolio management for acquisition and design of computer systems. The Office of The National Manager is directly responsible for all NSS across the government containing classified and/or sensitive information critical to military and intelligence activities.

Professional Background:

Mr. Patrick Arvidson served 15 years in the United States Air Force as a Cryptographic Linguistic Technician. Since 2001 he has supported the Department of Defense in the areas of Information Assurance and Cybersecurity. From 2015-2016, in his most recent position, Mr. Arvidson was the Executive Director, Principal Cyber Advisor to the Office of the Secretary of Defense/Director for Defending DoD Networks and Information Systems that identify, synchronize, and coordinate Department-wide issues. In 2001 (after a transition from the Air Force to the Department of Defense) until 2015 he held multiple positions providing significant value to the Information Assurance Mission, to include, supporting USCYBERCOM with the establishment of the Cyber National Mission force, providing Senior Technical Advisement of commercial products for Cybersecurity to the DoD, representing the Information Assurance mission to the US Military Representative at the NATO headquarters in Belgium, and authoring one of the very first NATO Cyber Defense policies.

Education:

Mr. Arvidson graduated in 2004 from the University of Maryland University College with a Master’s of Science in Information Assurance. In 2010 he graduated from the Naval War College in Rhode Island with a Masters of Arts in National Security and Strategic Studies.

Mr. Stephen Dennis provides leadership and guidance for research, development and deployment of advanced computation and data analytics for the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) of the Science & Technology (S&T) Directorate and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As the Director of the Data Analytics Engine, Mr. Dennis leads a team of subject matter experts to address a variety of homeland security challenges, including automated risk assessment, social media analytics, and data driven investigations using big data and internet of things technologies.

Mr. Dennis has also served HSARPA as the S&T APEX Program Manager for the Border Enforcement Analytics Program to improve utilization of DHS Big Data sources for ICE Homeland Security Investigations. This program has delivered the first commercially supported open source platforms for big data analytics to ICE to support data driven investigations. Mr. Dennis represents S&T to cross-departmental working groups and represents DHS analytics interests to groups within the White House Office of Science and Technology Programs.

Mr. Dennis has more than thirty-seven years of experience managing research programs in information analysis and processing automation within the Intelligence & Defense Communities and in collaboration with other federal agencies. Mr. Dennis holds MBA and M. S. Electrical Engineering degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a BS in Computer Engineering from Clemson University in SC.

Dr. Alexander Kott serves as the Chief Scientist for the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. In this role, he provides leadership in the development of the laboratory’s technical strategy, which includes maintaining the technical quality of research and representing the laboratory to the external technical community.

Between 2009 and 2016, Dr. Kott served as the Chief of the Network Science Division, Computational and Information Sciences Directorate, U.S. Army Research Laboratory He was responsible for a diverse portfolio of fundamental research and applied development in network science and science for cyber defense.

In particular, he played a key role in initiating the Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance considered to be among the world’s largest efforts to study interactions between networks of different types. His efforts helped start the Cyber Security Collaborative Research Alliance, a unique program of creating basic science of cyber warfare.

In 2013, Dr. Kott served as the Acting Associate Director for Science and Technology of the ARL's Computational and Information Sciences Directorate. In 2015 he also served as the Acting Director of the Computational and Information Sciences Directorate.

From 2003 to 2008, Dr. Kott served as a Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency (DARPA) Program Manager responsible for a number of large-scale advanced technology research programs. Technologies developed in programs under his management ranged from adversarial reasoning, to prediction of social and security phenomena and command and control of robotic forces.

His earlier positions included Director of research and development at Carnegie Group, Pittsburgh, PA and Information Technology Research Department Manager at Allied Signal, Inc., Morristown, NJ. There, his work focused on novel information technology approaches, such as Artificial Intelligence, to complex problems in engineering design, and planning and control in manufacturing, telecommunications and aviation industries.

Dr. Kott received the Secretary of Defense Exceptional Public Service Award and accompanying Exceptional Public Service Medal, in October 2008.

He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1989, where his research proposed artificial intelligence approaches to innovative design of complex systems.

Dr. Kott has published over 80 technical papers and has served as the initiator, co-author and primary editor of over ten books, including Advanced Technology Concepts for Command and Control, 2004; Information Warfare and Organizational Decision Process, 2006; Adversarial Reasoning: Computational Approaches to Reading the Opponent's Mind, 2006; The Battle of Cognition: the Future Information-Rich Warfare and the Mind of the Commander, 2007; Estimating Impact: A Handbook of Computational Methods and Models for Anticipating Economic, Social, Political and Security Effects in International Interventions, 2010; Cyber Defense and Situational Awareness, 2015; Cyber Security of SCADA and other Industrial Control Systems, 2016; and Cyber Resilience, (to appear, 2018).

Navin Vembar is the CTO of the General Services Administration, and formerly lead the IT for the Integrated Award Environment. He's been in the federal space since 2001 across multiple agencies. His passion is to bring together technology and innovation to solve government and citizen problems.

Kirke is a managing director in KPMG’s Federal Advisory practice with management consulting experience focusing on federal information technology transformation, financial management, information assurance, and risk management. As KPMG’s Government Intelligent Automation lead, Kirke drives awareness of the business applications of automation in federal, state, and local governments and has spoken at multiple government conferences on the topic. Kirke is a CGFM, CISSP, CISA, PMP, CRSC, and CGEIT.

Author, speaker, and business leader Michael Marchuk has been working with organizations for over 35 years to provide a positive impact using technology to advance business objectives. Using innovation to transform the way business works, he has lead projects for IBM, AT&T, Accenture, and Avanade in financial services, manufacturing, health care, and telecommunications. As Blue Prism’s Chief Technology Evangelist for North America, Michael is responsible for educating the market on the value of leveraging and integrating Robotic Process Automation to drive digital transformation.

Geoff Marsh has spent the better part of 18 years in analytics.  He started his career within statistics and bench marking for a small professional services firm.  From there he moved to one of the largest and most advanced telcos for 10 years to be a SQL developer and eventually leading teams such as the Six Sigma team, consolidated customer experience analytics team, and then prior to leaving leading analytics strategy and planning. Since then he has been practice leader for multiple global systems integrators. Geoff has also spoke and written on numerous topics within the analytical space.