Kris West

Founder, CTO, Sr. Program Manager

Kris West (Founder, CTO, Sr. Program Manager) recently completed his Doctorate at the University of East Anglia with a thesis titled 'Novel Methods for Audio Music Search and Classification'. During his tenure at UEA he gained critical experience in Digital Signal Processing (DSP), Machine Learning and Statistical Modeling, Statistical Evaluation Procedures, Technical Reporting, Software Design and Programming. West has also authored two patents related to content-based music searching and is currently drafting several more. He has propelled the development of these technologies into encompassing, large-scale music search applications.

West also helped establish and execute the annual evaluation of Music Information Retrieval algorithms, generally known as the Music Information Retrieval Evaluation Exchange (MIREX). In particular, he helped develop evaluation software and datasets for various audio analysis tasks including Genre classification, Artist identification, Classical Composer Identification, Onset detection, Drum transcription, Tempo detection, Musical Key detection, Mood classification and Content-based Audio Search and Retrieval. In his salad days, West was an intern on the legendary "Search inside the music" project at Sun Microsystems under Paul Lamere.

Chad Olson

Founder, Director of User Experience

Chad Olson is the founder of Function 49, a design and programming outfit that services a wide variety of interactive, technical, and print projects. The firm's past undertakings have included web, tv, radio, cd-rom, and print. At present Olson is focused on implementing user interfaces and developing custom content management systems that allow clients to edit their own website content. After over eleven years in the field of design and advertising culminating in the genesis of Function 49 some 2 years ago, Olson's predilection for start ups led him to originate One Llama. Indeed, his track record, replete with stints at start-ups, is testament to his penchant for the rewards and challenges that come with that terrain.

Olson's design philosophy focuses on leading the viewer to the content being presented through the optimum use of design, color, typography, animation, and user interaction principles. His design credo revolves around facilitating a clear path to the content, with special emphasis on key elements. He believes that animation, video, and other new technology should be selectively used, only when they serve content. Simply put, design ought to be clean, simple and get the point across.

Amit Sudharshan

Founder

Amit Sudarshan is currently Senior Analyst at IllinoisVENTURES (www.illinoisventrues.com), and Technology and Strategy Consultant to One Llama Media Inc. His areas of focus are IT, digital media, and the iVentures10 program that aims to bring together elite student teams from around the country to compete for seed funding. Sudarshan brings to the table both cutting edge technical knowledge as well as strategic business insight. He is especially interested in new investment opportunities as well as supporting the Directors of the firm, managing existing portfolios, as well as helming the iVentures10 program. An alumnus of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Sudarshan has a BS in Computer Engineering.

As a board member and Director of Product Development at ONE LLAMA, Sudarshan has developed many of its core proprietary technologies. He was named one of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center's "Entrepreneurs to Watch for in 2008."

Michael Welge

Founder

Michael Welge is the Director of Automated Learning Group at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications as well as Co-Director of NSF National Laboratory for Advanced Data Research (NLADR). He also serves as adjunct faculty at the Institute for Genomic Biology(IGB) and as a faculty member at the Center for Information Technology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

In each of these capacities Welge has been helping Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, and academic institutions make sense of the data mining process, data mining applications and integrated frameworks that help support the process. He has worked extensively in the fields of data mining, mathematical modeling, and stochastic simulation, and his experience spans a diverse set of data-mining applications dealing with issues such as manufacturing, environmental engineering, medicine, education policy, fraud detection, customer relationship management, water treatment, business intelligence, telecommunications, risk management and crisis management. His work includes algorithm design and development of the D2K data mining test environment (http://alg.ncsa.uiuc.edu, http://dita.ncsa.uiuc.edu). D2K delivers a flexible and extensive architecture or "sandbox" for developing and evaluating the performance of a range of data mining techniques on a variety of data sets.

Welge is currently Principal Investigator on a Mellon Foundation Grant engrossed in developing cyber infrastructure to support scholarly research for Humanities (http://seasr.org). He is frequently invited to speak to groups of industry professionals and has presented briefs and courses on data mining to the NSF Alliance, DOD and the State of Illinois. He was awarded the Industrial Grand Challenge Award in 1995, 1997, 1998 and 2003 for his work in data mining with Motorola, Sears, Caterpillar and Allstate. Along with his team, Michael was the recipient of the University of Illinois Innovative Technology Award.

Welge is the founder of two University of Illinois economic development spin-outs - RiverGlass (http://riverglassinc.com) and One Llama (http://onellama.com).

David Tcheng

Founder, Chief Science Officer

David Tcheng is an expert in the interrelated areas of "machine learning", "optimization", "data mining", and "predictive modeling". Over the last 23 years he has successfully applied predictive science to a vast range of challenging problems, developing unique and powerful machine learning algorithms while doing so.

Tcheng started programming at an uncommonly early age. His father ran the Illinois State University administrative computer center and instead of watching TV like most other kids, he was encouraged to spend a lot of time playing and writing text-based computer games. At 13, he started taking computer science classes at the Illinois State University. He graduated high school early and received a contract BS degree from Illinois State University (Suma Cum Lade), with a contract major in Applied Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics. He then spent a year interning at Argonne National Laboratory developing code for data visualization, automated theorem proving, and parallel processing. At 20, Tcheng started the Ph.D. program in Computer Science at the University of Illinois. His graduate work focused on advanced machine learning with a special emphasis on layered learning, hybrid learning systems, and the integration of learning and optimization of algorithms. While in graduate school, Tcheng applied his machine learning skills to music composition, cognitive psychology, medical diagnosis, protein structure prediction, engineering design, bio informatics, and speech recognition. Rather than focusing on a single area, Tcheng sought to develop universal tools that could apply to multiple fields.

After many years of graduate school and bouncing from one fascinating project to another, Tcheng met Michael Welge of NCSA. Welge hired Tcheng, and together they started the Automated Learning Group (ALG). At ALG, Tcheng continued to delve into new machine learning applications, including fraud detection, risk analysis, astronomy, targeted marketing, environmental modeling, and land use classification. He has also been a consultant for NeuroPace (brainwave analysis), and Hazard Management Systems (monitoring of toxic waste sites). For the past four years, Tcheng has been absorbed with using machine learning for music recommendation and search systems as well as systems to analyze animal vocalizations.

In his spare time David composes, performs, and records music. He is known for playing a variety of instruments in each performance. He is presently in a band called Lumus and performs regularly with them as guitarist and lead vocalist. David also enjoys flying, diving, and tinkering with new technologies.

Stuart Volkow

President

After a career in biomedical information technology and research, Stuart applied his skills to interactive media production and distribution as a Project Manager for Intellimation-ABC CLIO in Santa Barbara CA, where he Produced, and Managed the development of interactive courses in health and environmental sciences.

He completed a Fellowship in Producing at the American Film Institute in Hollywood CA. and made the difficult but irresistible transition to working in Film and Television. He worked in feature film development and production at Phoenix Pictures Inc. under Chairman Mike Medavoy.

Prior to joining One Llama, Stuart worked for EMI Music Publishing as part of the team designing and developing music search and digital distribution platforms for some of the world's largest music collections.

In 1999 Stuart became an Executive Producer and VP of Internet Operations for the 5th Avenue Channel out of Miami, FL. The NASDAQ Company broadcast lifestyle programming and personal financial news on Comcast and the Dish Network to 14 million homes. He produced shows such as STOCK TALK CENTRAL, BUSINESS TODAY and INSIDE HEALTH. While at 5AC he launched and managed one of the first television operations to simulcast live over the Internet, and offer searchable, on-demand video archives. 5AC's became one of the first broadband channels on MSN.

Volkow was a founder of Ionic Worldwide Studios, one of the first production companies focused on interactive TV.

During a one year hiatus from the media, Volkow worked on the architecture and prototyping of a technology transfer and knowledge management system for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Since 1993 Volkow has been teaching in the University of California, Los Angeles at the Anderson Graduate School of Management and through UCLA Extension's Department of Film and TV. He has taught over 30 courses on digital media, and delivered hundreds of lectures and conference presentations. He has been a contributing Editor for Videography Magazine, and CMS Newsline, covering technology trends. He has taught courses on media strategy in South Korea for the Ministry of Digital Information Promotion and to groups of Korean and Chinese business executives at UCLA.

Stephen Downie

Founder

Dr. J. Stephen Downie is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He is also Director of International Music Information Retrieval Systems Evaluation Laboratory (IMIRSEL) and Principal Investigator on the Networked Environment for Music Analysis (NEMA) as well as the Music-to-Knowledge (M2K) music data-mining projects. As a member of The International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR) steering committee, he has played a significant role in the establishment of the Music Information Retrieval and Music Digital Library communities through his ongoing work with the ISMIR series of MIR conferences.