Date: Monday, November 6, 2023

Time: 12:30 p.m. - 1:20 p.m.

Location: Van Leer, C240

Speaker: James A. DeBardelaben

Speakers' Title: President and CEO

Speakers' Affiliation: IvySys Technologies, LLC

Seminar Title: The Path Beyond the Wall: My Journey from Engineer to National Security AI Technology Entrepreneur

Abstract:
During this seminar, I will discuss my experience starting with growing up on the South Side of Chicago to becoming a national security technology entrepreneur, focused on the dynamic field of artificial intelligence (AI). With over 25 years of experience in the national security technology community, I have faced many “walls” along the way that could have impeded my career path. During this presentation, I will describe how the technical skills, mentoring relationships, and mindset that I gained at Georgia Tech helped me effectively break through these “walls” to create a non-traditional path to success.

This talk will highlight the founding of IvySys over a decade ago and transforming it into a deep AI technology company that targets the rapidly changing cyber threats facing national security and commercial customers. Our discussion will focus on AI challenges facing the national security community and AI trends. In addition, we will explore key areas where a significant demand for ECE skills exists, both within the national security sector and IvySys specifically.

Biographical Sketch of the Speaker:
Dr. James DeBardelaben is the president and CEO of IvySys Technologies with over 20 years of experience providing advanced technology solutions and services to the defense and intelligence communities. He founded the deep tech company, which provides innovative AI-driven synthetic data generation solutions and related data preparation services that enable organizations to rapidly discover threats hidden in big data to keep our nation safe. Dr. DeBardelaben leads a team of expert data scientists and software engineers have advanced skills in synthetic big data generation, AI/ML, and cloud-native application development. Under his strategic direction and oversight, IvySys has become a leader in providing AI-driven synthetic data generation and advanced analytics capabilities for cyber threat awareness challenges.

Prior to founding IvySys, James was the program manager for Special Operations Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) programs at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). While at APL, James served as a subject matter expert to the DARPA Advanced Technology Office and Naval Special Warfare Sea Eagle program. As the APL project manager for the NAVSEA Silent Hammer Limited Objective Experiment, he led the Special Operations Land Products Team that developed unattended ground sensors; an unattended land mesh network for high data rate, long-range persistent communications; and custom software applications to enhance special operations forces’ situational awareness. 

James served on the Advisory Board of the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and is a recipient of the Georgia Tech Council of Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni Award. He earned a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Georgia Tech, an M.S.E in computer engineering from Princeton University, and a Sc.B. in electrical engineering with honors from Brown University. He has authored over twenty technical journal and conference papers in synthetic data generation, signal processing, embedded system design, and rapid system prototyping.