Singapore-MIT Alliance
Summer Conference 2002
The 2002 Summer Conference begins with a two–day Pre–Immersion session. See below for the Pre–Immersion agenda, and biographies of speakers for this event.
The Entrepreneurship Session (Pre-Immersion) was held at Wong Auditorium, Tang Center (E-51)
- Agenda
- Speaker
- Photo Gallery
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Speaker
Dr. John Ruark Co–Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Optiant
Abstract "From Research to Release: The Tale of an Optimization Software Company"
Too much research never enters the business mainstream because it is never successfully transformed from raw algorithms into robust, secure, scalable, and usable software. Combining the efforts of two MIT Ph.D. students, one focusing on supply-chain strategic inventory positioning, the other focusing on creating enterprise–class algorithmic software solutions, four entrepreneurs founded Optiant, Inc., in August 2000, with the mission of bringing advanced research into the hands of supply–chain engineers who do not have advanced mathematical degrees.
The talk will focus on the requirements of a successful software development environment, which naturally extend beyond simply having a correct algorithm. Areas for discussion include building the team, defining the market, executing a repeatable software process, improving performance of algorithms so that end-users can perform what–if analyses, and ensuring the quality of the finished product.
To date, Optiant has raised $7 million from Battery Ventures, a leading venture capital firm, and has received numerous awards, including ComputerWorld's Top 100 Emerging Companies for 2002 and inclusion on Start Magazine's 2002 Hottest Companies list. Optiant's Chief Scientist was named as one of the world's 100 Top Young Innovators by Technology Review. Optiant customers include Fortune 500 manufactures of high–tech products and consumer–product goods.
Biography Co–Founder and Chief Technology Officer
John spearheads the company's technical and product strategy and leads the software development team. His experience creating intuitive, enterprise–class applications directly influences how Optiant designs high-performance solutions for complex production environments. John's focus in developing Optiant's solution is to equip customers with the tools to identify the key issues impeding optimal supply chain performance. His approach helps companies pinpoint the most significant data, which in turn drives results, improves accuracy and increases the profitability of the supply chain. John wrote the initial versions of Optiant's software, including the core algorithms and interface. His expertise in operations research techniques includes optimization and queuing, which are applicable to inventory management and other critical supply chain problems.
Earlier in his career, John worked at Kenan Systems Corporation and as a Member of Technical Staff at Lucent Bell Labs, which acquired Kenan. There, he managed an engineering team that created a revolutionary design tool for generating bill formats as part of an award–winning enterprise–class billing software system. The application dramatically reduced the time required to customize clients' bill formats with easy-to-use report design tools, eliminating thousands of dollars in consulting services costs. He also was a senior systems architect for Mascot Networks, the higher–education enterprise portal, where he redesigned the core database and middle–tier architecture, improving stability and performance as the Mascot network expanded to more than 100 schools.
John earned a Ph.D. in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Harvard College.
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