Scott Corio, an enterprise cloud infrastructure architect at Bausch+Lomb and 2008 UMSL graduate, was part of a dynamic lineup of speakers at the two-day workshop. (Photos by Derik Holtmann)

Scott Corio returned to the University of Missouri–St. Louis campus on Thursday afternoon as part of a dynamic lineup of presenters for the second annual Business Intelligence Workshop on Emerging Technologies. Corio, an enterprise cloud infrastructure architect at Bausch+Lomb, graduated from UMSL in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, and he couldn’t help but think about how much everything has changed since then.

For one, the spot where he was presenting with Chad Lich, Microsoft’s director/Azure infrastructure specialist – Anheuser-Busch Hall room 103 – didn’t exist when he was a student; the state-of-the-art building opened in 2017. And the topic he was presenting on – explaining the intricacies of Azure, a cloud computing platform with global network of datacenters maintained and managed by Microsoft – wasn’t a thing back then, either.

“The cloud didn’t really exist when I graduated; there were still traditional data centers,” Corio said. “When I was here, we were programming, we were creating operating systems in Unix and doing traditional data center type stuff and traditional computer science stuff.”

So it was perfect that Corio was back at UMSL as part of the College of Business Administration’s two-day workshop highlighting emerging technologies. Through his role at Bausch+Lomb, Corio has Microsoft MVP status, which recognizes leaders who use Microsoft technology in solving challenges in their workspaces. As part of that status, which makes him essentially a Microsoft ambassador, Corio has worked with Lich to give similar presentations at multiple conferences, including dev up in St. Louis and at the Midwest Management Summit held at the Mall of America in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Vivek Singh, an assistant professor of information systems and technology, started the event with a welcome and introduced the speakers.

Vivek Singh, an assistant professor of information systems and technology, created the workshop last year with the goal of bringing the latest developments in the areas of Business Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence to UMSL. For this second year, the theme was “Cloud Technology for AI Research and Teaching.”

The Azure presentation by Corio and Lich was the ideal way to kick off the workshop.

“We are moving into cloud computing management, and for that, the key thing is bringing in and learning from technology leaders who are helping other organizations to adopt cloud technologies,” Singh said. “So when we invite leaders like Scott and Chad, these are the technology leaders who are helping companies in the region to adopt cloud. This technology has huge value, but the challenge is that it’s a complicated technology. So for our students and faculty to use that in our classrooms and in their research, they need a level of expertise in these technologies. For that reason, these technology leaders are very helpful in helping us quickly reach that level.”

Microsoft’s Chad Lich has teamed with Scott Corio to make similar presentations multiple times in different areas of the country.

Two more Microsoft employees participated in the workshop, too. Kenichi Segawa, who earned both his bachelor’s and master’s in information systems from UMSL, finished Thursday’s session. He’s worked at Microsoft as a cloud solutions architect since July 2022. Alex Powers, a senior program manager at Microsoft, kicked off the Friday session.

On Friday, FinLocker CTO Bryan Garcia delivered the event’s keynote address, an examination of cloud-enabled AI deployment in fintech, and discussed how cloud technologies enable operations at his company.

“We have an ongoing joint research collaboration with FinLocker for the past four years, wherein we look at how AI and cloud technology can be used for fintech,” Singh said. “FinLocker provides solutions in the personal finance management area, so we conduct joint research in AI to see how AI can help fintech customers. We have publications out of that collaboration, and we have presentations out of that collaboration. More recently, we are also looking into this new generative AI that is everywhere, like ChatGPT and other models, and how those can be used.”

An important element of a workshop like this is the presenter’s enthusiasm about the subject matter and willingness to pass along what they’ve learned.

“As an MVP, it’s about community outreach and sharing knowledge,” Corio said. “I was on the other end. I was the one learning from people that were up there sharing their experiences and sharing their knowledge. Being able to give back, I think, is a continuation of that. It would be selfish for me just to keep it to myself and not try to return that favor.”

He paused for a moment.

“And then the other thing, obviously, is just being an UMSL alum,” he said. “Most of the time we do this presentation for other professionals, and not for students or non-professionals, so this was really the first time that I was able to do that. And then to do it at UMSL, it was really cool to be able to come back and give something back to the school that helped me get my start.”