The 2015 program featured keynotes Dr. Harry Leider, Chief Medical Officer and Group Vice President of the Walgreen Company; Girish Rishi, Executive Vice President of North America Installation & Services and Tyco Retail Solutions at Tyco International; and State University of New York Chancellor, Dr. Nancy Zimpher, delivering powerfully intuitive presentations respectively on the future of value creation in the sphere of mHealth, the vision of operational interconnectivity in infrastructure, and the evolution of interdisciplinary networks in leveraging academic excellence; together offering a unique commentary on the leading ideas in harnessing the power of innovation to drive a smarter, more technologically deterministic, global environment. Another prominent visitor, Dr. Itzhak Peterburg, Chairman of the Board of Teva Pharmaceuticals, gave an overview of the future of pharma and medical and health technologies.
Over 65 presenters took the podium in 9 breakout sessions on Big Data Analytics and Visualization, Cybersecurity, the Internet of Things, Smart Energy and Smart Urban Systems, Health Technologies and Medical Devices, Information Technology and Society, and Emerging Technologies, with special speaker forums on pivotal topics in cybersecurity hosted by the National Security Institute and in healthcare challenges, specifically addressing IT and communication access for the ventilator-dependent populations by VENTure Think Tank; both Stony Brook University derived multidisciplinary organizations developing solutions for two diverse, but extremely relevant, unmet socio-technological needs.
An additional 18 distinguished intellectual property lawyers, venture capital professionals, and executive entrepreneurs led a two-day business track featuring dual Entrepreneur's Toolkit sessions, discussions on Funding 101, License Negotiation, Trends in Venture Capital and Alternative Routes to Success, the Investor Thought Process and the Importance of Communicating Technology to the Business Community, closing with leading government officials on New York State Funded Resources for Entrepreneurs. Parallel Big Data and Data Science Tutorials hosted a full house of attendees learning the fundamentals of programming languages R and Python.
The atrium show floor was the focal point of the conference hosting over 45 high-profile regional and international exhibitors across IT, Engineering, Health, Law, Education, and Media sectors, accompanied by the 40+ Research Poster Session showcasing a wealth of current technical research at Stony Brook University and beyond. Over 175 national and international companies and universities were represented at the event, co-hosted by SUNY Korea and supported by major contributions from CA Technologies, CEWIT Korea, Softheon, and Zebra Technologies with Henry Schein, Inc., Hoffmann & Baron, LLP, Northrop Grumman Corporation, MATIMOP - The Israeli Industry Center for R&D, The Israeli Government Office of the Chief Scientist, SVAM International, Inc, Stony Brook University, FlexTrade Systems, Inc., F. Chau & Associates, and with technical co-sponsorship by IEEE Region 1 and its Long Island Section.
International partners further teamed to host 50 company delegations from Israel and Korea, that along with CEWIT's prominent industry network, anchored the Conference's international business-to-business sessions creating valuable, cross-border networking opportunities and fostering global collaboration and new enterprise development. More than 150 privately held meetings between the visiting and US companies were conducted with senior officers in IT's top industries.
The Conference additionally welcomed an ideal blend of 475 industry and academia participants across 12 countries, in 15 unique sectors including Information Technology, Higher Education, Law, Energy, Health, Government, General Media, Manufacturing, FinTech, Communications, Defense, and Biotechnology. CEO, President, Vice President, and Director level executives accounted for 40% of the audience base, followed by a generous mix of Engineers, Business Managers, Professors, Graduate Students, Attorneys, Program Developers, Data Analysts, Healthcare Professionals, Researchers, Technical Staff, and Consultants.
With the increasingly successful outcomes and highly regarded experiences, we look forward to maintaining the annual CEWIT Conference as a destination for disseminating cutting edge ideas in information technology and for driving the local, regional, and global innovation economy through the university medium.