Dimitri Kusnezov

Under Secretary for Science & Technology

Department of Homeland Security

Dr. Dimitri Kusnezov [Kooz-NETS-off] was confirmed as the Under Secretary for the Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) on September 8, 2022. As the science advisor to the Homeland Security Secretary, Dr. Kusnezov heads the research, development, innovation and testing and evaluation activities in support of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) operational Components and first responders across the nation. S&T is responsible for identifying operational gaps, conceptualizing art-of-the-possible solutions, and delivering operational results that improve the security and resilience of the nation. 

Prior to DHS, Dr. Kusnezov was a theoretical physicist working at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) focusing on emerging technologies. He served in numerous positions, including the Deputy Under Secretary for Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Technology where he led efforts to drive AI innovation and bring it into DOE missions, business and operations, including through the creation of a new AI Office. 

Dr. Kusnezov has served in scientific and national security positions, including Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Energy, Chief Scientist for the National Nuclear Security Administration, Director of Advanced Simulation and Computing and the Director of the multi-billion-dollar National Security Science, Technology and Engineering programs. He created numerous programs, including for Minority Serving Institutions, international partners, private sector and philanthropic entities. He has worked across agencies to deliver major milestones such as DOE’s 10-year grand challenge for a 100 Teraflop supercomputer, and first of their kind and world’s fastest supercomputers. 

Prior to DOE and his pursuit of public service, Dr. Kusnezov had a long career in academia where he published more than 100 articles and edited two books. He joined Yale University faculty where he was a professor for more than a decade in Theoretical Physics and served as a visiting professor at numerous universities around the world. Before this post, Dr. Kusnezov did a brief postdoc and was an instructor at Michigan State University, following a year of research at the Institut fur Kernphysik, KFA-Julich, in Germany. He earned his MS in Physics and Ph.D. in Theoretical Nuclear Physics at Princeton University and received Bachelor of Arts degrees in Physics and in Pure Mathematics with highest honors from UC Berkeley.

 

Zaid Kahn

VP & GM, Cloud AI & Advanced Systems

Microsoft

Zaid is currently GM in Cloud Hardware Infrastructure Engineering where he leads a team focusing on advanced architecture and engineering efforts for AI. He is passionate about building balanced teams of artists and soldiers that solve incredibly difficult problems at scale.

Prior to Microsoft Zaid was head of infrastructure engineering at LinkedIn responsible for all aspects of engineering for Datacenters, Compute, Networking, Storage and Hardware. He also lead several software development teams spanning from BMC, network operating systems, server and network fleet automation to SDN efforts inside the datacenter and global backbone including edge. He introduced the concept of disaggregation inside LinkedIn and pioneered JDM with multiple vendors through key initiatives like OpenSwitch, Open19 essentially controlling destiny for hardware development at LinkedIn. During his 9 year tenure at LinkedIn his team scaled network and systems 150X, members from 50M to 675M, and hiring someone every 7 seconds on the LinkedIn Platform.

Prior to LinkedIn Zaid was Network Architect at WebEx responsible for building the MediaTone network and later I built a startup that built a pattern recognition security chip using NPU/FPGA. Zaid holds several patents in networking and SDN and is also a recognized industry leader. He previously served as a board member of the Open19 Foundation and San Francisco chapter of Internet Society. Currently he serves on DE-CIX and Pensando advisory boards.