Soma Venkat is an accomplished technology leader with over 25 years of experience in providing innovative solutions to Automotive, Manufacturing, High-Tech, Higher-education and Media industries. Soma Venkat is currently Vice President, Information Technology and in this role he leads Global IT and Digitization and Innovation initiatives for Cooper Standard (NYSE: CPS). He is also on the board of Liveline Technologies, a Spin-off from Cooper Standard to harness the power of Artificial Intelligence to automate complex manufacturing processes. Prior to this role, he has held various leadership positions in Meritor, MASCO, ProQuest, Bell & Howell and Oracle. He also co-founded Infoshuk a Big Data/ AI Startup. Before entering into the corporate world Dr. Venkat was part of the teaching and research at the University of Windsor. He is a certified six sigma Black Belt, Certified PMP (2005-2018) and is a graduate of the CIO institute at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago. He holds a Ph.D. in Computational Mathematics from the University of Windsor.