Senior Leadership

Listed Alphabetically, After CEO

John F. Elder IV, Ph.D.

Dr. John Elder heads a data mining consulting team with offices in Charlottesville Virginia, Washington DC, Mountain View California, and Manhasset New York (www.datamininglab.com). Founded in 1995, Elder Research, Inc. focuses on investment, commercial and security applications of advanced analytics, including text mining, stock selection, image recognition, process optimization, cross-selling, biometrics, drug efficacy, credit scoring, market timing, and fraud detection.

John obtained a BS and MEE in Electrical Engineering from Rice University, and a PhD in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia, where he’s an adjunct professor teaching Optimization or Data Mining. Prior to 15 years at ERI, he spent 5 years in aerospace defense consulting, 4 heading research at an investment management firm, and 2 in Rice University's Computational & Applied Mathematics department.

Dr. Elder has authored innovative data mining tools, is a frequent keynote speaker, and was co-chair of the 2009 Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining conference, in Paris. John’s courses on analysis techniques -- taught at dozens of universities, companies, and government labs -- are noted for their clarity and effectiveness. Dr. Elder was honored to serve for 5 years on a panel appointed by the President to guide technology for National Security. His book with Bob Nisbet and Gary Miner, Handbook of Statistical Analysis & Data Mining Applications, won the PROSE award for Mathematics in 2009. His book with Giovanni Seni, Ensemble Methods in Data Mining: Improving Accuracy through Combining Predictions, was published in February 2010.

John is a follower of Christ and the proud father of 5.

Zach Buckner

Vice President of Technology Zach Buckner earned BS and Master's degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia, where he won research awards for his work in Biomimicry and advanced digital design. Prior to Elder Research, Inc., Mr. Buckner was a Senior Embedded Software Engineer for GE Fanuc and co-founded a successful software company called Portris. Zach designed award-winning hardware and software products for the Virginia Transportation Research Council and Trimation -- one being named one of the "40 Best Products of 2000" by Control Engineering magazine. Mr. Buckner is named as an inventor on an array of pending and awarded US and international patents, including two that are currently being licensed through the University of Virginia's Patent Foundation.  Zach's current research is centered on text and web mining, where he has led several succesful R&D efforts for commercial and government clients and was an invited speaker on text mining at SAS's M2008 Data Mining Conference.

Jeff Deal

Vice President of Operations Jeff Deal leads tasks involving logistics, financial analysis, planning, and regulatory/legal issues. Mr. Deal has more than 20 years experience in business operations, planning, and government relations, primarily in the health care industry. Prior to ERI, Jeff was the President of a successful health planning consulting business that assisted hospitals and physicians with operational analysis, forecasting, and navigating through complex regulatory processes. He has a Master’s degree in health administration from Virginia Commonwealth University and an undergraduate degree from the College of William and Mary.

J. Dustin Hux

Vice President of Analytics Dustin Hux has 15 years of applied statistical modeling and data mining experience. He has led teams solving problems in the commercial, financial, and scientific domains including fraud detection, cross-selling, customer profiling, product bundling, direct marketing, biometric identification, stock selection, market timing, text mining, and atmospheric modeling. Dustin is particularly honored to be a part of projects that apply data mining and advanced analytics to challenges facing the intelligence community. Mr. Hux is expert with leading data mining software tools and advises vendors on enhancements. For KDD, he was on the 2004 Data Mining Standards, Services, and Platforms Program Committee and was 2006 Sponsorship Committee Co-chair. Dustin earned a Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia and Bachelor’s degrees in Biology and Economics from Emory and Henry College.

Directors

Listed Alphabetically

Antonia de Medinaceli

Director of Business Analytics and Fraud Detection Antonia de Medinaceli has been the technical lead on dozens of data mining projects, building predictive models for ERI clients in the financial, pharmaceutical, retail, insurance, and other industries. She is expert in fraud detection and prevention, and has led several successful projects enabling large organizations to detect and act on anomalous behavior.

Antonia has extensive experience teaching SPSS and SAS software to several audiences, and has also lectured on the latest analytic concepts and techniques, co-teaching Elder Research’s annual data mining course. She is a frequent presenter at conferences, and was the keynote speaker at a SAS conference in 2009.

In the business development arena, Antonia has been very successful -- with both government and commercial clients -- at converting their interest in analytics into multi-stage, quantifiable projects with tangible deliverables. Ms. de Medinaceli is fluent in French, and has a working knowledge of Spanish.

Stein Kretsinger

Director of Project Development Stein Kretsinger has over 15 years of experience successfully growing online marketing and consumer credit businesses. He was the CEO of The Loan Page, an internet-based mortgage marketing company. Prior to that, Stein was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with Battery Venture, where he developed the investment thesis around price value and growth of online mortgage marketing. Mr. Kretsinger was a founding executive for advertising.com, one of the largest online media networks, where he developed and implemented industry-leading optimization technology based on math programming. Prior to his work at Advertising.com, Mr. Kretsinger was a business manager at Capital One, where he used credit scoring to book over two million accounts presently valued at $160 million. Stein holds a B.A. in Economics and an M.S. in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia.

Michael Reddington

Director of Financial Research Michael Reddington has 24 years of experience building and executing sophisticated proprietary investment systems for hedge funds, and has worked closely with ERI’s founder, John Elder, for the last 15 years. Their primary fielded system generated annualized returns of 18.3% without leverage (vs. the S&P-500’s 6.3%) over its 8-year run, while experiencing only 3/5ths the volatility of the index. When ERI’s proprietary technology showed the strategy’s edge was fading, the client and ERI brought the fund to a soft landing, and shut it down while the system was still beating the market, retaining strong credibility with its investors.

Mike is expert in the use of proprietary and commercial research software, and is responsible for the vital functions of trading, compliance, client relations, and reporting. Mr. Reddington heads ERI’s New York office. He earned a BS in Finance from NYU, and an MBA in Finance from CW Post – Long Island U, and in his spare time enjoys coaching Lacrosse.

Technical Staff

Listed Alphabetically

John E. Ainsworth

Senior Data Miner John E. Ainsworth earned a BS in Computer Science from Wake Forest University, and is an expert object-oriented programmer.  A decorated war veteran, Captain Ainsworth spent 5 years in the U.S. Army, where he gained practical experience in applied problem solving.  John has designed and implemented cutting edge research tools in multiple languages and has co-written a paper on a novel non-linear optimization technique for the Bounded Knapsack problem.

Ben Bullard

Analyst Ben Bullard graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, where he performed research in the Materials Science metallurgical laboratory. At ERI, Ben has contributed to projects in investment modeling, text mining for national defense, and customer relationship management for the pharmaceutical industry.

Justin Cruz

Software Engineer Justin Cruz earned a BS in Computer Science from James Madison University. His interests include information security, interface design, object-oriented programming, and developing applications for mobile devices. Justin contributes to projects involving web crawling, and design of databases and user interfaces for web applications.

John Dimeo

Software Engineer John Dimeo interned at Elder Research for two summers before joining ERI full time in 2007. John earned a BS in Computer Science from the University of Virginia, and has interests in graphics, interfaces, usability, and object-oriented design. Under the advisement of CEO John Elder, John wrote a software tool that manipulates two-dimensional tables to make them easier to read and enhance their aesthetics for his senior thesis. His current work at ERI includes applying data and text mining to the fields of intelligence, IT, financial forecasting, and diabetes research.

Andrew Fast, Ph.D.

Research Scientist Dr. Andrew Fast earned Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where his research focused on improving the structural accuracy of Bayesian network learning algorithms. Andrew's research and application interests include causality, experimental design, knowledge discovery, collective classification, and fraud detection. Dr. Fast is expert in the burgeoning field of social network analysis, where he has developed solutions to an array of applications, including peer-to-peer music file sharing, academic citation analysis, and predicting playoff performance for NFL head coaches. Andrew graduated magna cum laude from Bethel College.

Stephen D. Gawtry

Senior Scientist Steve Gawtry contributes 15 years of experience in modeling and data analysis, applied to a broad range of applications in the commercial, governmental, policy, and scientific domains. Recent work includes the successful, high-ROI application of data mining techniques and methodology to such projects as: predictive analysis and discovery for multiple federal agencies; government and commercial fraud detection; data and text mining tool evaluations; investment modeling; CRM analytics; credit scoring; energy demand and price forecasting; atmospheric modeling; and climate forecasting and trends analysis. He has previously taught at the University of Virginia, where he is a PhD candidate in Climatology. Steve holds an MS in Science and Technology Policy from the University of Minnesota and a BA in Math and Physics from St. Olaf College.

Isaiah Goodall

Isaiah Goodall, Director of ERI Washington, DC, joined the Elder Research team in 2007. Mr. Goodall has led and contributed to analytics projects involving fraud detection, text mining, sentiment analysis, and financial modeling. Since, June of 2009, Mr. Goodall has been leading the opening of ERI's office in Washington, DC. In addition to developing relationships with current and prospective clients in the DC area, he is also the project manager for ERI's long-term fraud detection engagement with Hewlett-Packard. Before his current role at ERI, Isaiah co-founded a thriving ERI joint venture Internet startup company in Charlottesville, VA. Mr. Goodall graduated from Virginia Tech summa cum laude with a B.S. in Business Management and a focus in Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Technology.

Associate Nathan Heatwole is part of the software development team designing database and web applications. He will soon have a BS in Computer Science from James Madison University. Nathan's interests include web design, object-oriented design, and information security.

Senior Software Engineer JR Lawhorne earned a BS in Computer Science from Bridgewater College in 2002.  From 1997 to 2004, Mr. Lawhorne served in the Virginia Army National Guard as an All Source Intelligence Analyst.  Prior to Elder Research, JR designed and implemented high volume data fusion software systems.  He manages large software projects and teams at ERI and is skilled in software planning, design, development, testing, and documentation.  Also, he enjoys developing software applications for mobile devices and web sites.  Mr. Lawhorne is serving as the webmaster for the 15th annual ACM SIGKDD conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (http://www.sigkdd.org/kdd2009/).  

Matthew Strampe

Data Miner Matthew Strampe has contributed to ERI projects in a wide range of fields, including fraud detection, medical diagnosis, customer segmentation, investment forecasting, civil defense, reliability forecasting, and customer relationship management. Matt has also taught courses on SPSS and SAS data mining software. He previously was a network software developer for eXmeritus Software Inc., and earned a B.S. in Physics from the University of Virginia.

Jeffrey Whittemore

Engineer / Analyst Jeffrey Whittemore joined Elder Research full time in 2007.  Jeff has worked on projects involving fraud detection, text mining, credit scoring, medical diagnostics, collaborative filtering, crime analysis, and risk scoring.  He previously worked as a research assistant in the Computational Systems Biology Laboratory at the University of Virginia. Jeff earned a B.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Virginia.  His thesis project, "Reconstruction and Analysis of the Leishmania major Metabolic Network", involved modeling the metabolism of a disease-causing parasite.

Daniel Worley

Support Staff

Listed Alphabetically, after Office Manager

Meredith Noble

Office Manager Meredith Noble is a graduate of Dartmouth College where she received the Bachelor of Arts degree.  Since then, Meredith has administrated the financial and human resources infrastructure for a number of local firms.  Meredith joined ERI in 1998 as the office manager.  In that capacity, Meredith oversees and administrates ERI's financial accounts and investments, personnel resources and benefits, and general company logistics.  Previously, Meredith managed the offices for two architecture firms in the Charlottesville area and oversaw customer service for a software firm.

Meredith has traveled extensively for international missions and is a proud mother of three.

Joshua Lee

Associate Joshua Lee is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where he majored in Psychology. Joshua has held numerous positions in an administrative capacity, and as a research assistant for a Psychology research lab while at the University of Virginia.

Debbie Owen

Partners

Listed Alphabetically

Dean W. Abbott

Consultant Dean W. Abbott of Abbott Analytics has over a decade of experience as a Data Mining researcher and is often asked to advise DM software tool vendors on the effectiveness of their products. Earlier, as a researcher with three engineering firms, Mr. Abbott employed modern statistical and network techniques extensively in the solution of challenging problems in a wide range of areas, including cancer cell detection, underwater signal classification, character recognition, image processing, aircraft control, and missile guidance. Mr. Abbott is author or co-author of more than two dozen conference papers and technical reports on a wide variety of Data Mining techniques and applications.

Vincent Corruble, Ph.D.

Consultant Vincent Corruble has a Masters in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Paris. He is an expert in decision trees, and in automated acquisition of knowledge, particularly for medical and business applications. Dr. Corruble has performed research at universities in Johannesburg, South Africa (AI and Statistics), and Aberdeen, Scotland (Machine Learning). Dr. Corruble is a French citizen, a jazz pianist, and the translator into French of the Addison-Wesley text, Genetic Algorithms by D. E. Goldberg.

Robert C. Gardner

Karl Rexer, Ph.D.

Dr. Karl Rexer and his company, Rexer Analytics, partner with Elder Research to design and deliver data mining solutions. Dr. Rexer has broad experience in analytic consulting that includes predictive modeling, statistics, data mining, direct marketing, CRM, and market research. He has provided analytic solutions to corporate, academic, and military clients since 1990. Dr. Rexer's corporate clients have included retail, airline, technology, telecommunications and financial services companies. He has also held leadership and consulting positions at several consulting firms and two multi-national banks. Dr. Rexer holds a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Connecticut.

Stephan R. Sain, Ph.D.

Consultant Dr. Stephan R. Sain received a Ph.D. in Statistics from Rice University in 1994 where his dissertation research focused on improvements to kernel density estimators to better determine the structure present in data. Since receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Sain has been involved in a number of projects including the development of statistical classification methods for use in high-energy physics experiments and the development of methodology for detecting clandestine nuclear explosions from a complex distribution of earthquakes, mining blasts, etc.

Currently, Dr. Sain is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Colorado at Denver and is affiliated with the Geophysical Statistics Project at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Current research is in methodological and computational development for large-scale, multivariate spatial models. Applications include, for example, the analysis of microarray data in biological and medical experiments and combining climate models to assess climate change and for model evaluation. Other projects include the development of (spatial) models for agricultural soils and weather generators. These statistical models are used to quantify the uncertainty and the sources of variation associated with crop yields predicted by deterministic crop models.

Dr. Sain is the coordinator for the applied statistics certificate program at CU-Denver and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics. Recently, he was elected as chair of the American Statistical Association Section on Statistical Computing.

Eric V. Siegel, Ph.D.

Eric V. Siegel, Ph.D., is a widely credited expert in data mining and analytics, and an award-winning teacher of graduate-level courses in those areas. Eric served as a computer science professor at Columbia University, where he forwarded data mining technology in the realms of machine learning performance optimization, text mining, and data visualization. Eric also co-founded two New York City-based software companies for customer/user profiling and data mining, as well as west-coast-based Prediction Impact , providing predictive analytics services. With data mining, Eric has solved problems in computer security, fraud detection, computational linguistics and information retrieval.