CMU AI Retail + Service Design Initiative (CAIRS) is a forum for industry leaders to share their challenges with academic experts at the forefront of new technology.
The first activities of CAIRS will be a series of focused, online conversations where CMU faculty will facilitate conversation on the immediate "pain points" of the retail and service industries due to COVID-19 — topics such as AI/Data, Forecasting, Omnichannel, Operations, and Customer & Employee Safety. These conversations are critical to shaping the workshop we are planning to hold on campus in the future.
This roundtable was moderated by Dokyun (DK) Lee, Assistant Professor of Business Analytics, Tepper School of Business and Paul Pangaro, Professor of Practice, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, School of Computer Science.
Panelists Included:
Nicholas Ahrens, Vice President, Innovation, Retail Industry Leaders Association
Chris Stephens, VP of Data Technology, American Eagle Outfitters
Sridhar Tayur, Ford Distinguished Research Chair, University Professor of Operations Management in the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University
Carrie Tharp, VP of Retail and Consumer, Google Cloud
John Zimmerman, Tang Family Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Human-Computer Interaction, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Retail and service industries are facing pressing and unprecedented challenges. In response, Carnegie Mellon is launching the AI Retail + Service Design Initiative (CAIRS) to collaborate with industry experts and generate new perspectives and solutions.
The forum will define novel approaches and apply collective knowledge, technology, talent, and resources to tackle industry’s problems. Together we will connect the best insights of service design, organizational change, robotics and automation, data analytics, and responsible artificial intelligence to core retail and service industry needs.
Nicholas Ahrens, Vice President, Innovation, is RILA's lead advocate on technology policy including, privacy, competition, cybersecurity, and innovation. In addition, Ahrens co-founded and leads RILA's Retail Innovation Center and oversees RILA's privacy and innovation executive communities.
Prior to joining RILA, Ahrens served at the U.S. Department of Commerce as the Counsel to the General Counsel. He provided strategic legal and policy advice on a variety of issues including data privacy and cybersecurity and managed a legal office with more than 325 lawyers across all Bureaus of the Department of Commerce.
Ahrens holds a B.A. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland and a J.D. from Wake Forest University School of Law. He is a Future of Privacy Forum Advisory Board Member and a member of the Rose Council, Wake Forest University School of Law's young alumni board. He lives with his wife, 2 daughters, and dog in Alexandria, VA.
Chris Stephens is Vice President of Data Technology at American Eagle Outfitters here in Pittsburgh. His teams are responsible for Data Engineering, Insights, Analytics, Data Science and Governance across the organization. As a part of that, Chris is responsible for AI/ML strategy and execution. Teams at AEO are working on applications of AI/ML in areas across the business value chain. We built a Voice of the Customer platform leveraging AL/ML to incorporate customer feedback on quality into the Production & Sourcing of products. We have a series of AL/ML-based product and promotion recommenders in place across the customer experience. The Data team is working on AL/ML-based forecasting to inform a forward view of the business for Planning and Supply Chain. Chris has been with AEO for two-and-a-half years helping to lead the retailer through a data and digital transformation. Prior to AEO, Chris helped lead a global Data Science team at Pivotal bringing similar transformations to organizations across the world; both big and small. Chris, his wife and 5 teenagers all live in Pittsburgh and take full advantage of the employee discounts!
Sridhar Tayur is the Ford Distinguished Research Chair and University Professor of Operations Management at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. He is an INFORMS Fellow, a Distinguished Fellow of MSOM Society and has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He has been a visiting professor at Cornell, MIT and Stanford. His research and teaching interests include Online to Offline (O2O) Platforms, On-line Rental Models and Omni-Channel operations, in addition to warehousing, logistics and supply chain management in several industries.
He received his Ph.D. in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Cornell University and his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Madras (where he is a Distinguished Alumnus Award winner).
Carrie Tharp is the VP of Retail & Consumer at Google Cloud. Carrie is responsible for creating and executing Google Cloud’s global product, partner, and go-to-market strategy in the Retail industry - helping Retail & Consumer businesses unlock the power of the Cloud, ML/AI to drive value for their businesses and improved customer experiences. Previous to Google, Carrie has a broad range of experience in the retail sector through a range of CXO roles across different segments. Most recently, Carrie was at The Neiman Marcus Group where she served as Chief Digital & Marketing Officer and was responsible for all aspects of its e-commerce business across Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Last Call and Horchow brands. She developed the company's customer experience focused, "digital first" strategy and the supporting technology roadmap to evolve Neiman's approach to the changing retail landscape driving 6+ quarters of positive comps. Prior to joining The Neiman Marcus Group, Carrie served as Senior Vice President of e-commerce and Chief Marketing Officer at Fossil Group, Inc., responsible for global e-commerce and online operations of all owned and licensed brands in the Fossil portfolio. Prior to Fossil, Carrie held various technology, operator and strategy roles at Travelocity, Bain & Company, Dean Foods, and TXU.
Carrie holds a bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems from Texas A&M University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern. She currently resides in Menlo Park, CA with her husband, Mark, and their three girls. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, scuba diving, tennis, skiing, and the arts.
John Zimmerman is the Tang Family Professor of AI and HCI at Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. He’s an interaction and service designer with twenty years of experience working on new AI products and services. John’s research operationalizes consumer behavior and service theories, exploring new ways for technical systems to generate value for users, customers, and enterprises. His recent work within retail contexts explores the behavior of computer agents and robots used by customers and workers; new types of personalization that make front-line service workers better at providing personal service; and new methods for understanding future service experiences where there are no social mores to guide the design of behavior for intelligent systems.
John holds a BS in History form Carnegie Mellon University and a Master's of Design (M. Des) from Carnegie Mellon University.
Dokyun "DK" Lee is an assistant professor of Business Analytics at CMU’s Tepper School of Business. Dokyun studies the {application, development, impact} of AI in e-commerce and the digital economy. Two of his current streams of research are (1) developing and applying interpretable machine learning & natural language processing algorithms in different business settings, and (2) the economics of unstructured data. Example application domains include content engineering, technological innovation, social media advertising, recommender systems, and persuasion.
His research has won many best paper awards as well as research grants from organizations such as Adobe, Bosch Institute, Marketing Science Institute, McKinsey & Co, Nvidia, Net Institute, and NSF I-Corp.
Dokyun holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Columbia University (Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence Focus), a Master’s Degree in Statistics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. from the Operation, Information and Decisions Department of the Wharton School.
Paul Pangaro is Professor of the Practice in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, part of CMU’s School of Computer Science, where he teaches core studio courses and an elective in conversational interfaces. Paul’s career spans roles as entrepreneur, researcher, consultant, and teacher. He has founded and led start-ups, served as chief technology officer and managed product teams, and consulted as future-caster for organizations such as Du Pont, Nokia, Samsung, Instituto Itaú Cultural (Brasil), and Ogilvy & Mather. He has published on design methodologies, conversational systems with text- or voice-based interfaces, and mechanisms for organizational change, lecturing on these topics in Brasil, Europe, and North America. In collaboration with TJ McLeish in February 2020, a full-sized working replica of Gordon Pask’s “Colloquy of Mobiles” was shown in an exhibition at Centre Pompidou and will become part of the permanent collection of the ZKM Museum in Germany.
Paul holds a B.S. in humanities / computer science (MIT), and a Ph.D. in cybernetics (Brunel University, UK). His personal web site and blog can be found at pangaro.com.
