Michael L. Brodie has over 45 years of experience in research and industrial practice in databases, distributed systems, integration, artificial intelligence, and multidisciplinary problem-solving. Dr. Brodie is a research scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; advises startups; serves on advisory boards of national and international research organizations; and is an adjunct professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway and at the University of Technology, Sydney. As Chief Scientist of IT at Verizon for over 20 years, he was responsible for advanced technologies, architectures, and methodologies for IT strategies and for guiding industrial-scale deployments of emerging technologies. He has served on several National Academy of Science committees. Current interests include Big Data, Data Science, and Information Systems evolution. Dr. Brodie holds a Ph.D. in databases from the University of Toronto and a Doctor of Science(honoris causa) from the National University of Ireland.