Keynote Speakers

Path Umaharan is a Professor of Genetics and the Director of the Cocoa Research Centre (CRC) of the University of the West Indies (UWI). The center curates the International Cocoa Genebank, the largest and most diverse conservatory of cocoa in the public domain; is regarded as the oldest cocoa research center in the world and houses the International Fine Cocoa Innovation Centre - a University-Private sector collaboration interface to commercialize innovations in the cocoa value chain. Research at the center is focused on harnessing the genetic resources to enhance yield, improve resistance to diseases, minimize cadmium bioaccumulation in cocoa, improve tolerance or avoidance to climate change as well as development and sharing of breeding technologies. Prior to 2010, he served as Professor of Genetics in the Department of Life Sciences of UWI involved in teaching undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Prof. Umaharan has thirty-five years’ experience in studying the genetics of resistance to bacterial, fungal and viral diseases affecting a number of crops including cocoa. He has successfully supervised 21 PhD and an equal number of M.Phil students. He has published extensively with over 150 publications in refereed journals. His work has led to the development of resistance cultivars in cowpea, pigeonpea, hotpepper, anthuriums and cocoa. He serves a Jury for the UNESCO Life Sciences Prize. He has also served as Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Science and Agriculture, an expert in the CARICOM appointed expert group working and advising on Biotechnology and Biosafety, member of boards of governance of the Caribbean Industrial Research Institute and the chairman of the Cabinet appointed a committee on establishing a virtual center of excellence in agriculture and biotechnology.

Dr. Sabesan Manivasakan completed his under-graduation specializing in Computer Science from the Department of Computer Science, University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka. Then in 2010, he completed his PhD from the Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, Sweden. His research primarily focused on query optimization with web services and mediator engines. After the graduation, he continued as a Research Associate with Uppsala Database Laboratory and during that period he contributed towards several European Academic and Industrial projects. A year later, he joined Oracle as a Software Engineer at the headquarters in Redwood Shores, California, United States and worked alongside an automated SQL tuning group to develop key features in Database performance tuning. From 2019, he’s a Senior Database Engineer with Relational Database System, Amazon Web Services and continues his research and development towards automated performance tuning with various Database engines. Love to collaborate and connect on ML related technologies with Database performance tuning.