The Daniel J. Smyczek '10 Symposium on Innovation and Technology honors the memory of Daniel J. Smyczek '10 through an endowed fund established in 2024. This fund supports a dynamic speaker series created to bring thought leaders to USM for presentations and panel discussions on topics Smyczek was passionate about—particularly discoveries and advancements in the physical, social, and applied sciences. Speakers are selected collaboratively by the donors and Upper School faculty. 

Dr. Jeremy Kedziora is an award-winning researcher and scientist with 17 years of experience developing new methods in machine learning, Bayesian inference, and game theory. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Rochester and is the PieperPower Endowed Chair for Artificial Intelligence at Milwaukee School of Engineering.

Previously, Kedziora was a director of data science and analytics at Northwestern Mutual, where he managed the development of cybersecurity machine learning, and at Giant Oak, where he focused on natural language processing. Kedziora also served for nine years at the Central Intelligence Agency as a chief methodologist, where he led applied research and design efforts in data science and modeling.