Sammy Assefa

Head of Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Innovation at U.S. Bank

Speaker

Dr. Sammy Assefa is the Head of Artificial Intelligence Development at U.S. Bank, with a focus on advanced AI model development, research and innovation including generative and agentic AI applications across the enterprise. Prior to joining U.S. Bank, he was an executive director of AI Research at JPMorganChase where he established and led teams across London and New York on both the applied and research priorities of using advanced analytics, AI and ML to solve complex financial problems including the use of Generative AI applications. He also served as a Vice President of AI/ML & Data Science at Barclays Bank in London with a focus on payments and card transaction intelligence. Before joining financial services, he was a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in Population Genomics and Bioinformatics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK, where he conducted research on detecting drug resistance and finding vaccine targets for pathogenic diseases such as malaria. Dr. Assefa completed his PhD and MPhil research at the University of Cambridge in the UK, where he developed novel algorithms for the analysis of large-scale sequence data (including genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic data). He also holds a MSc in Information Systems and Data Mining and a BSc in Engineering. As the General Chair for the ACM International Conference on AI in Finance (ICAIF) in 2023 and currently serving as the Chair of the ICAIF Executive committee, Dr. Assefa continues to influence the broader AI community, shaping the future of AI applications in finance.