About Mana
Mana was born in Las Vegas and grew up along side the bright lights of the Las Vegas strip. Based out of Las Vegas, he leads a team of data scientists and researchers that drives innovation in the gambling industry.
Mana is passionate about driving innovation in the casino industry and empowering companies by helping them develop and implement data-driven solutions and strategies. Mana has served some of the world’s leading casinos in Macau, United States, Australia, and beyond in enhancing and implementing AI and analytical technologies.
He is also a known gaming and hospitality researcher, with his research published in top tier journals in the gambling and hospitality fields. He holds a research scientist position at the leading gaming research center, the International Gaming Institute at UNLV.
Expertise
- Data Science
- Responsible Gambling
- Innovation Strategy
- AI & Machine Learning
Publications
- “Across the bettor-verse: An open banking perspective on gambling in the United Kingdom” – Journal of Gambling Studies, 2025
- “Measurement invariance of the Problem Gambling Severity Index across sociodemographics and gambling modalities” – International Gambling Studies, 2025
- “Towards explainable artificial intelligence in machine learning: A study on efficient perturbation-based explanations” – Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 2025
- “Machine learning in hospitality: Interpretable forecasting of booking cancellations” – IEEE Access, 2025
Presentations
- “Characterizing UK online gamblers exceeding financial risk thresholds” – GLI Regulator Roundtable, 2025
- “Clustering slot machine players using session-level transaction data” – ICRG Conference on Gambling and Addiction, 2024
- “Detection of customer transaction decline using machine learning” – Webinar on Safer Gambling: Insights from Leading Researchers, 2023
- “Predicting declined transactions in gambling payments data” – International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking, 2023
- “Machine learning prediction of hotel room demand” – RevME Hospitality Management and Analytics Conference, 2023
Education
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Ph.D., Hospitality Administration
North Carolina State University
M.S., Statistics
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
B.S., Mathematics