Introduction and Opening Remarks

Stephen Elkins

Session 1 - Smart Cities

“Stephen Elkins signed on as the City of Austin’s CIO in 2010, he and his team have helped transform the technologies and data used across the city to make it one of the most technologically progressive places in the country.” – Built in Austin, 2016

Appointed as Chief Information Officer in 2010, Stephen Elkins came to the City of Austin with more than 17 years of senior management experience in the semiconductor industry. Since his appointment, Mr. Elkins has led the City in transforming its approach to systems and data, receiving numerous awards for his leadership as an innovator in the technology and local government field.

A key element of his success as the City’s CIO, Elkins championed IT Governance, a framework and ideology for an informed, transparent decision-making process used to address the technology needs of other departments, improving their services for residents of Austin. His approach engaged other department directors and City leaders, creating broad participation and support for the City’s IT strategy.

Currently, Elkins leads the City’s adoption of Smart Cities technologies, including electronic timekeeping, a redesign of the City’s public website, and improved cyber-security tools. He also oversees the support of regional public-safety technology partnerships, ensuring interoperability of communications and IT systems and the coordination of emergency response efforts.

Under his leadership, the City’s central IT group—Communications and Technology Management (CTM)—delivered several award-winning initiatives, including Infrastructure Management, Mapping, Planning and Coordination Tool (IMMPACT), Austin Police Department’s Digital Mobile Audio Video (DMAV) Project, and Austin’s Open Data Portal. IMPPACT provides City planners a comprehensive data analysis on strategic capital investments, allowing for the coordination of processes among projects, operations, and maintenance. DMAV provides Austin Police Department with recordings of all traffic stops, police activities, and other police interactions, resulting in increased transparency and unbiased accounts of events. The Open Data portal, which provides transparency into city government, contains more than 1.4 billion points of publicly available data. Since its inception, it has attracted a local community of coders and business owners who have used the data to develop applications and tools.

Prior to his appointment as CIO, Mr. Elkins served as Director of the Small, Minority Business Resources department at the City. He holds a Master of Business from St. Edwards University and a Bachelor’s of Science in Electronic Engineering Technology.

Dan Stanzione

Welcome to TACC

Dr. Dan Stanzione, Associate Vice President for Research at The University of Texas at Austin since 2018 and Executive Director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) since 2014, is a nationally recognized leader in high performance computing. He is the principal investigator (PI) for a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to deploy Frontera, which is the fastest supercomputer at any U.S. university. Stanzione is also the PI of TACC’s Stampede2 and Wrangler systems, supercomputers for high performance computing and for data-focused applications, respectively. For six years he was co-PI of CyVerse, a large-scale NSF life sciences cyberinfrastructure. Stanzione was also a co-PI for TACC’s Ranger and Lonestar supercomputers, large-scale NSF systems previously deployed at UT Austin. Stanzione received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and his master’s degree and doctorate in computer engineering from Clemson University.

Fawzi Behmann

Intro to Smart City Summit

Fawzi Behmann held various executive and leadership positions with Tier 1 companies in the areas of communications and networking in Canada and US. He championed the development of Telecom Network Management systems, led efforts in rolling out product releases for network edge and core switch and marketed SoC product line and roadmap. In 2009, Fawzi founded TelNet Management Consulting Inc. offering professional services in the areas of technology positioning, and building smart networking solutions. Fawzi engaged in international forums speaking on disruptive technologies and use cases. Fawzi co-authored a book on Collaborative IoT, and received several awards from Industry and IEEE. Fawzi holds a Bachelor of Science with honors and distinction; Masters in Computer Science and Executive MBA.

Tom Coughlin

Remarks from the IEEE

Tom Coughlin, President, Coughlin Associates is a digital storage analyst as well as a business and technology consultant. He has over 37 years in the data storage industry with engineering and management positions at several companies.

Dr. Coughlin has many publications and six patents to his credit. Tom is also the author of Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics: The Essential Guide, which is now in its second edition with Springer. Coughlin Associates provides market and technology analysis as well as Data Storage Technical and Business Consulting services. Tom publishes theDigital Storage Technology Newsletter, the Media and Entertainment Storage Report, the Emerging Non-Volatile Memory Report and other industry reports. Tom is also a regular contributor on digital storage for Forbes.com and other blogs.

Tom is active with SMPTE (Journal article writer and Conference Program Committee), SNIA (including a founder of the SNIA SSSI), the IEEE, (he is past Chair of the IEEE Public Visibility Committee, Past Director for IEEE Region 6, President of IEEE USA and active in the Consumer Electronics Society) and other professional organizations. Tom was the founder and organizer of the Storage Visions Conference (www.storagevisions.com as well as the Creative Storage Conference (www.creativestorage.org). He was the general chairman of the annual Flash Memory Summit for 10 years. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a member of the Consultants Network of Silicon Valley (CNSV). For more information on Tom Coughlin and his publications and activities go to www.tomcoughlin.com.