Dr. Bratin Saha is the Vice President of Machine Learning and AI services at AWS where he leads all the ML and AI services and helped build one of the fastest growing businesses in AWS history. He is an alumnus of Harvard Business School (General Management Program), Yale University (PhD Computer Science), and Indian Institute of Technology (BS Computer Science). He has more than 70 patents granted (with another 50+ pending) and more than 30 papers in conferences/journals. Prior to Amazon he worked at Nvidia and Intel leading different product groups spanning imaging, analytics, media processing, high performance computing, machine learning, and software infrastructure.

Referred to as “the most famous astronaut since Neil Armstrong,” Colonel Chris Hadfield is a heavily decorated astronaut, engineer, and pilot who has become a worldwide sensation. Formerly NASA’s director of operations, Hadfield spent more than three decades working for NASA and the Canadian Space Agency.

Throughout his distinguished career, he has flown three space missions, built two space stations, performed two spacewalks, crewed the Shuttle and Soyuz, and in 2013 commanded the International Space Station for six months off planet. His many awards and recognitions include the Order of Canada, the Meritorious Service Cross, and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal.

His TED talk “What I Learned from Going Blind in Space” has been viewed more than 11 million times. He is also the co-host, with actor Will Smith, of National Geographic’s One Strange Rock, which was directed by Darren Aronofsky.

Kirsten Robinson is a senior business leader with 25 years’ experience in sales, consulting, and business operations. Having joined AWS in 2018, she currently serves as Federal Government Leader, where she focuses on shaping and delivering strategies to enable government digital transformation. Prior to joining AWS, Kirsten held senior leadership positions with both public and private sector organizations, spanning multiple roles within tech startups, enterprise firms, and academia. 

Kirsten is the past co-chair of Technation’s Cloud Working Group, and the co-author of a Government of Canada whitepaper titled “Governments Embracing Cloud: An Opportunity for Modernization, Innovation and Transformation”. An avid gardener and traveler, she lives in Ottawa with her husband, son, and dog, Bailey.

Ray Hession leads AWS Canada’s national security and defence practice, drawing on over 25 years of experience as a consultant, trusted advisor and sales executive in the IT, IM and BI/Analytics sectors.

Before joining AWS in 2016, Ray served key Government of Canada departments as a Key Account Executive at cloud data protection leader Commvault. Previously, he has held roles at SAS, HP, and other world-leading firms in the areas of data management, predictive analytics, and IT Service Management & Operations management software.