Information Technology Awards Judging Committee

Chair:     

Arvind Kumar, Advanced ERP Solution Architect/Information Technology Manager
Derex Technologies, Portland, Oregon, USA

Arvind Kumar has held various positions in engineering, manufacturing, and information technology. He has 20 years of enriched experience in designing niche solutions in SAP/Big Data, SAP HANA and IT Projects across the globe. He is a pioneer in analysis, design, development, testing, and implementation of customized ERP (SAP), Big Data, and Hadoop solutions for new implementations and upgrades. He is experienced in delivering complex solutions in various IT/SAP projects using expert-level skills. Arvind earned a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and an MBA in System Management in India.
   Arvind Kumar began his Information Technology career in 1998. From there, he progressed through several IT leadership roles in diverse industries and technologies. Arvind Kumar is a technology expert and passionate problem solver. He is SAP Order to Cash, SAP Procurement, SAP HANA and PMP Certified. His Articles on “MAP R and Hive” and “IOT” have been widely referred to by small and large-scale industries. Arvind also won “Best of IBM” and “Expert Author Award” from IBM. Based in the United States, Arvind is the proud father of two young children.
   On being appointed Chair of this committee, Arvind told us: "As a member of the Judging Committee for the New Product Management Awards last year, I was highly impressed by the number of new, efficacious products and techniques that are being developed. I look forward to some equally impressive entries in the IT categories this year.”

COMMITTEE:

Tarun Bahadur, Vice President
Nomura Securities, New York, New York, USA
Leading development of low latency client/ broker connectivity systems and prop algo trading at Nomura. Over the years, Tarun has created several high performance trading applications, the highlight being Zero GC fix engine for orders and market data.

Nehal Bharodia, Senior Analytical Consultant
SAS Institute Inc., Cary, North Carolina, USA
Nehal specializes in delivering risk business consulting and technology for financial risk management. He is a seasoned professional with deep expertise in risk and finance integration. He has been in the industry for 10+ years serving various financial institutions delivering business expertise and end to end risk architecture for large scale risk and finance transformations.

Satish Boguda, Software Engineer
Applexus Technologies, San Diego, California, USA
Satish Kumar Boguda, an exceptionally gifted IT software engineer situated in Sandiego, California, with more than 12 years of experience by serving different industry clients in Oil and Gas, Utilities, Production, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Sales, Finance, Transport and Energy divisions through significant implementing partners Wipro Technologies, Intelligroup – A NTT Data Corporation, Applexus Technologies, and so forth.  Mr. Satish is a technology evangelist with key aptitude through understanding the genuine estimation of center innovation in computerized change and by utilizing technology adequately as an upper hand in conveying business results. Through his insight, Satish enables organizations to exploit rising advances by adjusting innovation thoughts, addressing complex issues, cautiously delegating tasks, and appropriately overseeing time. This prompts more income, high productivity, consumer loyalty and focused client advantage.  Satish has valiantly strived to arrange his insight capital at apex of his profession with specializations from esteemed foundations including Stanford University's "Machine Learning," Harvard University's "High Dimensional Data Analysis." He is likewise one of the world's few Data Scientists specialized by IBM. He is among the best few data science executives around the world authorized from John Hopkins University.

Michal Cenkl, Director of Innovation and Technology
The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, Massachusetts, USA

Siddha Ganju, Solution Architect
Nvidia, Santa Clara, California, USA
Siddha Ganju - recently featured in Forbes' 30 under 30 list - is a self-motivated Architect at Nvidia. Previously at Deep Vision, she developed deep learning models for resource constraint edge devices. A graduate from Carnegie Mellon University, her prior work ranges from Visual Question Answering to Generative Adversarial Networks to gathering insights from CERN's petabyte-scale data. Siddha has been published at top-tier conferences including CVPR and NeurIPS. Serving as an AI domain expert, she has also guided teams at NASA and has featured as a jury member in several international tech competitions.

Arnav Gupta, Lead Full Stack Developer
Cognizant Technology Solutions, Denver, Colorado, USA

Steve Iffie, President & Chief Technical Officer
GlossiveTech, San Diego, California, USA
Steve Iffie is the President & CTO of GlossiveTech. He has over 21 years experience in designing and programming highly responsive mission critical Enterprise and Cloud-based Business / Education software that is accessible on Desktop, Tablet and Mobile.  He is the unique avid learner type that can best be described as a "No-relenting, no-quitting Student, Worker, and Innovator".   Where others see the glass as half full or half empty, he sees both sides as equally important.  He believes you can do both at the same time and excel beyond your limits.

 

Sripathy Kannappan, Senior Consultant
Cambridge Technology Inc, Irving, Texas, USA

Shashank Kaul, Principal Architect
VERSA Integrated Solutions, Arlington, Virginia, USA
Shashank is an established subject-matter expert and currently serves as the principal architect at VERSA, providing technical leadership to engineering teams, designing complex and secure communication solutions over IP networks, and implementing innovative IT solutions for a number of US Federal Agencies like DOL and NIH. Consistently awarded for his exceptional work and contributions, he continues to serve in the government technology space using his diverse experience and expertise in enterprise architecture and collaboration technologies. He previously served on Cisco's SME panel providing technical leadership to global teams and servicing global fortune 500 companies. He holds an active CCIE and other industry certifications in technology and IT project management.

Pratik Kothari, IT Delivery Manager
John Deere, Pune, Maharashtra, India
Pratik is a result oriented IT leader having more than 17 years of experience in Software Development where he has designed, developed and managed small to highly complex software solutions for various industries. As a Portfolio Manager, he has managed large projects through Agile Portfolio Management, and he is passionate about solving complex business problems through the new and innovative way through technology.  He is a Fellow Member of the prestigious British Computer Society.

Anoop Kumar, Senior Program Manager
HCL America, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
IT Leader with multidisciplinary industry experience. Leading and managing IT staff of different disciplines to facilitate IT strategy and execution of customers’ organizations. Which involves but is not limited to meeting long term IT goals, developing and controlling budgets and activities, applying change, risk and resource management. As a Senior Program Manager I am responsible for program performance and maximizing program and projects’ ROI, managing team with diverse array of talents and responsibilities. In short term, I manage changes and interventions to ensure project goals are achieved and in long term ensuring goals are met in areas such as customer satisfaction with increased opportunity to grow business for organization. As account manager - strategizing and overlooking recruiting activities.  A highly motivated and successful international Business Technocrat with 19 years of IT Services, Management and Consulting experience. Engineering from IIT and MBA from ISB, continues the education in Leadership at Harvard.  Successfully advised CxOs & key leaders of Fortune 1000 companies across different industries like Communications, Technology, Retail, HealthCare, Life Sciences, Banking & Financials, Market Research.

Tony McGuinness, Head of Customer Boarding
sales-i, Solihull, West Midlands, United Kingdom
"Tony has worked in the Software-as-a-Service sector since 2008. Currently he is Head of Customer Boarding, looking after global Data and Support teams with a major focus on the implementation of all new clients. He was responsible for growing and scaling Customer Success and Training Teams in the USA and UK. Unrivalled retention rates remain at the core of all his activities as well as commercial and general management tasks."

Rishit Mishra, Manager
PricewaterhouseCoopers, Dallas, Texas, USA
Rishit Mishra is a Manager in the PwC - Digital Risk Solutions practice. For over 9+ years Rishit has been leading, delivering and managing a diverse range of multinational SAP security and GRC Access Control projects for Fortune 100 clients across various industries. Rishit’s project experiences include: SAP Security Design/Redesign, SAP GRC-AC implementations, SAP Security/GRC Assessments & SAP Security Remediation. Rishit’s experience includes catering to a wide array of clients in the Energy, Industrial Products and Consumer Products industries.  Rishit holds a Masters degree in Management Information Systems from Texas A&M University.

Sriram Nandiraju, Senior Software Engineer 
Techno-Comp Inc, Somerset, New Jersey, USA
Sriram is a Principal Software Developer in Techno-comp Inc. He has 14 years of experience in IT and has worked in multiple technologies. He previously worked in Sabre Corporation, Infosys Limited.  He has certifications in AWS, Dell Boomi, AHIP and Servicenow.  He published scholarly articles on REST based integrations between Servicenow & Rally, Elasticsearch in CA PPM etc.  He is currently focusing on Blockchain, SmartContracts and Solidity.

Suhas Pande, Lead Full-Stack Developer/Solution Architect
State of Oregon (consultant), Portland, Oregon, USA

Supriya Pande, Software Developer
File & ServeXpress, LLC, Irving, Texas, USA

Pavan Reddivari, Associate Vice President
Persistent Systems, San Francisco, California, USA
Pavan is part of the Persistent Digital team leading the efforts to build solutions and partnerships to drive digital transformation in Healthcare. Over a rich professional career spanning 17 years, Pavan has played multiple roles in Solution Sales, Product Management and Delivery. He is an innovative problem solver competent in assessing the business and technical sides of a problem. Pavan manages a couple of our key strategic partnerships and is responsible for building innovative business models and go to market strategies in these partnerships. Prior to Persistent Systems, Pavan began his career at Amazon.com in Seattle. Pavan holds a B. Tech (Hons.) in Computer Science & Engineering from MIT Pune, and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Maryland. Pavan is an avid reader and loves to travel, especially with his camera.

Ioannis Saratsidis, Founder
PC Pal Global, Norwalk, Connecticut, USA
Ioannis Saratsidis has been President of PC Pal Global since its inception is 1999. He has more than 15 years experience in information technology and business development supported by certification in numerous disciplines from several vendors.

Bharath Ram Srinivasan, Head of Demand Platforms
Hewlett Packard Enterprise, San Jose, California, USA
Marketing Professional and Technologist with over 15 years of experience building and scaling companies from startup to IPO and beyond. Right now responsible for building the marketing platforms and products at HPE and driving revenue digitally. Speaker at global marketing conferences (Marketing Nation Summit, MarTech).

Sasank Vemana, Lead Developer
Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA