Established leaders from the world of Astronomy, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Finance, Law and Statistics.

SoKat Consulting, LLC was founded by Dr.  Jim Liew in 2014 as a way to bridge academics with industry in the field of AI. Since then, SoKat has evolved into one of the most innovative AI tech companies providing full-stack software solutions for the federal government and private companies. SoKat’s competitive niche is that our small business is leveraging the value of applying the brightest minds in academia to develop AI solutions to real world problems. Our executive and advisory team are faculty at Johns Hopkins University, and our talented AI engineers are Johns Hopkins University graduates. With this rich pipeline of creativity, rigor and talent, SoKat has and continues to exceed client expectations in creating AI tools to enhance and improve human lives.

Our team

Susan An, Esq.

Susan An, Esq.

Chief Executive Officer

Susan has a long history with guiding entrepreneurial ventures, including having helped academics commercialize their intellectual property as a contracts attorney at Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures. Prior to that, she served as the Chief Compliance Officer at a young, start-up hedge fund in NYC with $1B in assets, providing legal guidance to the investment manager, senior management, and analysts on Federal securities regulation. In addition to her passion for technology entrepreneurism, she is equally dedicated to empowering marginalized communities, which is the basis for her work in the 2021 AI technology accelerator program at Women in AI (WAI), in which she is creating a mechanism to bring more women to the AI table, globally. She is also part of the 2021 SBA Emerging Leaders cohort. Along with a BA in Political Science and Economics, she also earned a JD from the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law and is admitted to the New York State Bar.

Dr. Jim Kyung-Soo Liew

Dr. Jim Kyung-Soo Liew

PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER

Biography
Jim is an Associate Professor of Finance at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and revels in pushing the boundaries of financial knowledge both as an academic and FinTech Entrepreneur. He has published pioneering research in the intersection of social media big data and financial markets. He currently teaches Blockchain, Big Data Machine Learning AI, and Leading Entrepreneurship Innovation. Additionally, he serves as the Chairman of the Johns Hopkins Innovation Factory and has received the Dean’s Award for Faculty Excellence in 2015-2018. He also serves on the Editorial Board of Journal of Portfolio Management. Previously, Jim has worked at the Carlyle Asset Management Group, Campbell and Company, and Morgan Stanley. He holds a BA in Mathematics from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Finance from Columbia University. He currently lives just outside of Baltimore with his wife and two daughters, who he plans to raise as the next generation disruptors.
Dr. Tamás Budavári

Dr. Tamás Budavári

Scientific Advisor Chief Machine Learning Scientist

Biography

Dr. Tamas Budavari is Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics & Statistics at The Johns Hopkins University, where he focuses on computational and mathematical aspects of Big Data analytics with applications in astronomy, materials research, urban planning and finance. He is a builder of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and its data science solution as well as the Hubble Source Catalog: the ultimate legacy of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. In addition to research, he currently teaches “Data Mining” in JHU’s Whiting School of Engineering. Budavari is the Data Science PI in the Center for Materials in Extreme Dynamic Environments, affiliated with the Institute for Data Intensive Engineering & Science (IDIES), and is Steering Committee Member of the 21st Century Cities signature initiative (21CC) at Hopkins. He is founding Editor of the Journal Astronomy & Computing.

Avinash Sharma, MSE, JHU

Avinash Sharma, MSE, JHU

Director of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Biography

Avinash Sharma is the Director of Artificial Intelligence at SoKat. He brings in his unique experience and perspectives from engineering, neuroscience, and AI. Avinash graduated from The Johns Hopkins University with a Master of Science in Engineering (MSE) in Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering with a Neuroengineering Research Track. He obtained his Bachelor of Technology (B. Tech) from the Mechanical Engineering Department from the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi). At Johns Hopkins, he served as the head of Teaching Assistants for Professor Jim Kyung Soo Liew’s Big Data Machine Learning course and Professor Najim Dehak’s Machine Learning for Signal Processing. Mr. Sharma master’s thesis weaved myoelectric prosthesis/bionic technologies of tactile, sensory substitution, and EMG classification into Augmented Reality systems.

Dr. NAJIM DEHAK

Dr. NAJIM DEHAK

SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR CHIEF SPEECH PROCESSING AND EMOTION RECOGNITION SCIENTIST

Biography
Dr. Najim Dehak is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining Johns Hopkins, he was a research scientist in the Spoken Language Systems Group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His research interests are in machine learning approaches applied to speech processing, audio classification, and health applications. He is a senior member of IEEE and member of the IEEE Speech and Language Technical Committee.
Najim Dehak received his PhD from School of Advanced Technology, Montreal in 2009. During his PhD studies he worked with the Computer Research Institute of Montreal, Canada. He is well known as a leading developer of the I-vector representation for speaker recognition which has become one of most known speech representations in the entire speech community.