President: Ammar Rayes, Director, Distinguished Engineer, Cisco

Ammar Rayes is a Distinguished Engineer at Cisco Systems. He has been at the core of developing IP-based network and service management solutions for over 20 years. His main areas of expertise include Smart Services, NMS/OSS, Big Data, Cloud, Mobility, Performance and Traffic Engineering, and Embedded management.

Dr. Rayes has authored / co-authored over a hundred papers and patents on advances in communications-related technologies, including a book on Network Modeling and Simulation and one on ATM switching and network design. He is an Associate Editor of ACM “Transactions on Internet Technology”, Editor-in-Chief for “Advances of Internet of Things” Journal.Dr. Rayes received his BS and MS Degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1986 and 1988, respectively. He received his Doctor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1994 where he received the Outstanding Graduate Student Award in Telecommunications

Vice President, BOD Member: Charlie Bess, VP, HP

Charles Bess is a Fellow in the HP Services and Solutions Research lab focusing on next generation business value generation. In his career, he has been the leader of HP’s global architecture capability, the Chief Technologist for numerous large clients and internal structures for HP and EDS. He is an avid blogger and regularly publishes outside HP. He has also led HP’s internal global technical conference. Charles received a BSEE degree from Purdue and an MBA from SMU. He is currently licensed as a professional engineer, certified as a distinguished architect by The Open Group and a senior IEEE member.

Secretary / Treasurer (acting), BOD Member: Jim Spohrer, VP, IBM

Jim Spohrer is the IBM Innovation Champion and Director of the IBM University Programs World Wide. He was the founding Director of service research at IBM and has widely published on service science and engineering. He received his undergraduate degree in Physics from MIT and his PhD in Computer Science/Artificial Intelligence from Yale University.

Executive Director: Yassi Moghaddam, ISSIP

Yassi Moghaddam is a go-to-market and service innovation and management consultant, entrepreneur, and Managing Director of Stradanet, a consulting firm based in Silicon Valley where she has served clients including Wells Fargo, Cisco Systems, Applied Materials, New Venture Partners, Mojo Mobility, and a number of successful start-ups. Yassi’s main areas of expertise include mobility, cloud computing, and collaboration. Prior to her consulting career, Yassi was the VP of Marketing at ASIP Inc, a venture backed Princeton University incubator, Director of Marketing Alliances at Avici Systems, and earlier in her career she held senior product and technical management positions in Lucent and AT&T. Yassi holds an MBA from Columbia University, MSEE from Georgia Tech, and a BSEE from University of Oklahoma.

BOD Member:  Ralph Badinelli, Professor, Virginia Tech

Ralph Badinelli is a professor in the Department of Business Information Technology of the Pamplin College of Business of Virginia Tech. He received Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Management from the Krannert Graduate School of Business of Purdue University, an M.S. degree in Physics from Purdue University, and a B.S. degree in Mathematics and Physics from Hofstra University.Prior to pursuing an academic career, Dr. Badinelli worked as Production Planning Supervisor for the optics division of a west-coast laser manufacturer. He has consulted with a number of companies on planning, forecasting, and software development for decision support.Dr. Badinelli’s teaching responsibilities are in the areas of operations management and quantitative methods for business. These responsibilities extend over undergraduate, MBA and doctoral levels. He has taught many executive-development seminars on the subjects of project management, quality improvement, production and inventory control, and business strategy. He has received the R. B. Pamplin College of Business Certificate of Teaching Excellence.Dr. Badinelli has published refereed articles across a wide range of topics including inventory control policies, revenue management, probability estimation, decision analysis and optimization. His publications have appeared in Operations Research, Management Science, Service Science, Decision Sciences, Naval Research Logistics, Computers and Operations Research, International Journal of Production Research, European Journal of Operational Research, and the Journal of the International Academy of Hospitality Research. He is a member of the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals (ISSIP), Service Research and Innovation Institute (SRII), Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), Project Management Institute (PMI) and a certified member of the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS).

BOD Member: Haluk Demirkan, Professor, University of Washington

Dr. Haluk Demirkan is a Professor of Service Science & Information Systems (transdisciplinary with Supply Chain Management and Strategic Marketing & Services Leadership), and a Research Fellow for the Centers for Services Leadership and Advancing Business through IT at W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. He received a Ph.D. in Information Systems & Operations Management; Post Master of Engineering and Master of Engineering in Industrial & Systems Engineering from the University of Florida, and Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Istanbul Technical University. He also holds a PMP Certification from the Project Management Institute.

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