Analytics Day

Dr. Warren Hearnes is an expert in optimization, machine learning, and artificial intelligence with over 30 years of experience applying these technologies to solve business challenges. He currently leads OptiML AI and Sportslytx, where he applies AI and ML to industry challenges and educates executives on these technologies. He also teaches AI courses to Department of Defense personnel.

Previously, Warren was Chief Data Scientist at Best Buy, where he led AI/ML strategy, vision, and execution, driving AI/ML growth, sophistication, and impact across the enterprise. His career also includes key roles at Cardlytics, The Home Depot, UPS, and Lucent Technologies, where he implemented AI/ML systems for customer analytics, inventory management, fraud detection, pricing optimization, and operational improvements, generating significant business value through reduced costs, increased revenue, and faster throughput.

A U.S. Army veteran, Warren graduated from both Airborne and Ranger Schools and served as a Field Artillery officer. He holds a BS from West Point (1989) and an MS and PhD (1999) from Georgia Tech, where his research focused on reinforcement learning for robotic control. He contributed to early ML research funded by the National Science Foundation, the Electric Power Research Institute, and NASA.

Warren is actively involved with INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and Management Science) as VP of Technology Strategy and Chair of the AI Integration Committee. He serves on analytics advisory boards for graduate programs at Georgia Tech and previously served a similar role at Emory University. His current interests include AI education for executives, sports analytics, and leveraging large language models to assist in optimization modeling.

Colonel Trent D. Geisler is the deputy director and senior military advisor for the Army Materiel Command Analysis Group at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama.
COL Geisler was commissioned in 2004 from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Upon completion of Engineer Dive training in 2005, he was assigned to the 74th Engineer Dive Team in Fort Eustis. COL Geisler served in multiple roles at Fort Eustis, with notable assignments as the team commander for both the 74th and 544th Engineer Dive Teams.
Upon completion of graduate studies in 2013, COL Geisler was assigned to the Department of Mathematical Sciences at West Point where he served as an instructor and taught classes in calculus, statistics, and computational finance. In 2015, he was assigned to the US Army Marketing and Research Group (AMRG) in Crystal City, Virginia where he served as the data and analytics team lead to quantify the return on the Army’s marketing investments. Following his assignment at AMRG, COL Geisler returned to graduate school with a follow-on assignment at West Point in the Department of Systems Engineering where he taught classes in statistics and open-source coding techniques and applications.

COL Geisler is a graduate of the Basic Diving Course, Salvage Diving Course, Sapper School, and Airborne School. He graduated from the Engineer Basic Officer Course in 2004 and from Command and General Staff College in 2015. He holds a BS in Mathematical Sciences from the United States Military Academy, a Master of Science in both Operations Research and Business Administration from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a PhD in Data Science and Analytics from Kennesaw State University.

Lauren Staples is a Senior Data Scientist at Microsoft, specializing in advanced analytics, machine learning, and operational excellence within the Microsoft Threat Protection Research US OPEX team. With expertise in Python, Azure Machine Learning, and data-driven performance evaluation, Lauren designs scalable solutions that optimize business processes and enhance decision-making.

Lauren has been at Microsoft for 3+ years. Prior to Microsoft, she spent a year forecasting sales at Inspire Brands.  Her dissertation research was on reproducible clustering frameworks with healthcare data.