AI DAY

/Schedule

Two days of learning, networking, and innovation. April 21-22, 2026.

Day 2: Learning Forum

Wednesday, April 22, 2026 | 100 Constitution Plaza, Hartford, CT

8:30 AM

Registration for the Academic Symposium

GBLC - 1st Floor

Event Registration will be located on the first floor UConn School of Business Graduate Business Learning Center (GBLC). Building Entrances are available on Kinsley Street and Market Streets, and also on the 4th and 5th levels of the Constitution Plaza NORTH Parking Garage.

9:00 AM

General Registration: Arrival & Check-In

GBLC - 1st Floor

Special Events

CoWorking & Connections Zone

Hosted by CIC Innovation Campus

9:00 AM – 4:00 PM10 Constitution Plaza

Take a break from the action in a space designed for productivity and connection. Workspace, Wi-Fi and great vibes, with a preview of CIC Innovation Campus’s vision for helping to create an AI Community in Hartford.

Becoming a Super Hero

Hosted by MakerspaceCT

10:00 AM – 4:00 PMConstitution Plaza

Stop by and work with the MakerspaceCT crew to develop your own personalized, AI-generated action figure! In 5 to 8 minutes, you’ll take a series of photos that are rendered into a 3D model, and placed in a live VR environment. Participants will also receive a coupon to 3D print their figure at MakerspaceCT.

Drone Flight School

Hosted by Innovate Labs, UConn School of Business

12:00 PM – 2:00 PMConstitution Plaza

Come test your flight skills with drones on Constitution Plaza. The Innovate Labs will have a team on hand to help you learn basic drone flight skills, or test your capabilities through timed trials on a flight path with obstacles and targets.

Sessions

Tap any session title for more details

Time	Day 2 Kickoff	Skill-Building with AI	AI Powered Startups	AI in Insurance	AI in Manufacturing	AI in Education	Google Gemini Demos & Interactive Workshops	Keynotes	Academic Symposium (Track 1)	Academic Symposium (Track 2)
Time	10 Constitution Plaza	GBLC Classroom 605	GBLC Classroom 302	Nassau Financial	GBLC Classroom 602	GBLC Classroom 504	GBLC Classroom 601	GBLC - 2nd Floor	GBLC Room 501	GBLC Room 502
Session 110:00 AM		Workshop Intro to developing Agentic AI with OpenClaw & LangChain DeepAgents Div Pithadia	Presentation AI Without the Hype: How Smart Business Owners Are Using AI to Grow Their Companies and Free Up Time Linda Albright	Presentation AI that Transforms Customer Experiences Vijay Laknidhi	Panel AI at Scale: Designing the Next Enterprise Operating Model Moderators Allison Cheney Panelists Amy GraceJanelle O'NeillAlyson RuffJo Tetsill	Presentation DOTBOT – CTDOT Internal AI Assistance Carman CaterEric Jackson		9:00 AM – 9:35 AM Keynote From Tokens to Topology: System-Level LLM Optimization for Latency, Throughput, and Cost in Production Workflows Yiran Chen 10:35 AM – 11:10 AM Keynote Signals, Structure, and Dynamics: AI-Driven Time-Series Modeling to Unravel Complexity in Modern Systems Haifeng Chen	5:45 AM – 6:30 AM Presentation Digital Intelligence, Physical Resilience: A Generative AI Framework for Autonomous Inverse Design of Water Sensors Yu Lei 9:45 AM – 10:30 AM Presentation Precision Exercise Prescription: Where do Digital Health Technologies FITT? Linda Pescatello 9:45 AM – 10:30 AM Presentation A Foundation Model for Microbiome Data Using Transformer Architectures Mohit Raiyani	9:45 AM – 10:30 AM Presentation Human-AI Collaboration for Digital Twins: A Neuro-Symbolic Approach to Automating Knowledge Acquisition and SHM Across the Lifecycle Krishna Pattipati 9:45 AM – 10:30 AM Presentation FedAVOT: Exact Distribution Alignment in Federated Learning via Masked Optimal Transport Dionysis Kalogerias 9:45 AM – 10:30 AM Presentation Toxic by Design: Psychophysiological Evidence That AI Personality Shapes Cognition, Emotion, and Work Quality Leon Ciechanowski
Transition10:40 AM
Session 210:55 AM		Workshop From Unstructured Docs to Answers: A Hands-On RAG Workflow Astik Mehta	Presentation Raising Money with Angel Investors Marty Isaac	Presentation Future of Autonomous Insurance Rajesh IyerSteve Jones	Presentation The Emerging AI-Driven Manufacturing Stack: From Edge Intelligence to Business Impact Andreas Savvides	Presentation Generative AI for Human Robot Interaction and STEM Education Dongbin Kim Presentation Improving ICU Length-of-Stay Prediction using Clinical Notes; Noshini Naina			11:15 AM – 12:15 PM Presentation Every iota counts - Leveraging AI Predictive Analytics to Improve Student Success! Hasan Baig 11:15 AM – 12:15 PM Presentation Quantum-Enhanced AI for Scientific Simulation: From DOE-Funded Research to Integrated Education at UConn Kyungseon Joo 11:15 AM – 12:15 PM Presentation Parameter Efficient Fine-Tuning of Foundation Models Jonathan Ji	11:15 AM – 12:15 PM Presentation From Convolutions to Attention: Comparing CNN and Transformer Models for Medical Imaging Kehan Gao 11:15 AM – 12:15 AM Session Impact of AI in Pharmacy Sean Jeffery 11:15 AM – 12:15 PM Session Leveraging AI Tools to Explore Systems Biology Resources Michael Blinov 11:15 AM – 12:15 PM Session Consistency Is Not Safety: Paraphrase Sensitivity Reveals Text-Driven Selection in Medical Vision-Language Models Vahid Behzadan
Transition11:35 AM
Session 311:50 AM		Workshop NotebookLM 101: Organize Smarter and Work Faster with Google AI Darrell DeMakes	Fireside Chat Lessons from Building AI Startups Speakers Ned Gannon Moderators Doug Roth	Fireside Chat Regulatory Considerations for AI in Insurance Speakers Josh Hershman Moderators Susan Winkler	Presentation Building Your Business's Digital Operations Platform with AI Ryan Shultz	Panel Education to Workforce: Preparing Connecticut for the AI Shift Moderators Doug Casey Panelists David FerreiraMatt MervisJosh SmithCheryl Tokarski		11:45 AM – 12:30 PM Session Art of the Possible with AI Mike Snodgrass	11:15 PM – 12:15 PM Presentation Reinforcement Learning for Optimal Decision Making in Constrained Simulation-Based Engineering Systems Burcu Beykal 11:15 AM – 12:15 PM Presentation The Invisible Handshake: Dynamic Bargaining with LLM Agents in Supply Chains Chen Liang
12:30 PM Lunch & Networking Boxed lunches will be available on Floors 1, 5 & 6 of the GBLC; inside the Co-Working & Connections Zone, and within the AI in Insurance Track at Nassau Financial
Session 41:45 PM		Workshop AI as a Strategic Thought Partner: From Disruption to Decision Samantha Mulcahy	Special Startup Showcase Presenters Michael BerlingoEsther ChiangJeanine DeFalcoDaniella DennisCourtney DubinAnthony LombariLance MaldSmita SawantVamsi SripadaMaggie Stys Organizers Nisreen CainKal Deutsch Judges Ashwini GhogareSteve SchwartzKira Vanderwert	Session Disruption to Differentiation: AI and the Independent Agent David MeinenAnurag Shah	Presentation From Rigid Automation to Adaptive Automation: Unlocking Flexibility and ROI Dilip NairMohammed Razeen	Presentation From AI Hype to Workforce Impact: Building and Deploying AI Workflow Agents in Engineering George Bollas	1:45 PM – 3:00 PM Presentation Google AI Stack Demos & Program Accelerated Research Platform Colin MaxeyPratap Ramamurthy	1:00 PM – 1:30 PM Keynote Robotics and Learned Behaviors for USACE Missions Anton Netchaev 1:45 PM – 2:25 PM Keynote How Are We Going to Power All of This AI? Dan Gottfried	1:45 PM – 2:30 PM Presentation Robust Coordination under Misaligned Communication via Power Regularization Vahid Behzadan 1:45 PM – 2:30 PM Presentation AI Tools for Enhancing Forest Ecology Representation in Landscape Architecture Julia Smachylo 1:45 PM – 2:30 PM Presentation Dynamic Automated Risk Mapping for Archaeological Looting Michelle Fabiani 1:45 PM – 2:30 PM Presentation Self-Organized Criticality and Early Warning Framework for Predicting Collapse Mary Salvana	1:45 PM – 2:30 PM Presentation Working With AI: The Trust Verification Paradox in Human-AI Collaboration Beth Kanyiri 1:45 PM – 2:30 PM Presentation Teaching Symbolic AI through Ontologies, Linked Data and Knowledge Graphs Neli Zlatareva 1:45 PM – 2:30 PM Presentation AI Tutoring in Computer Science Education Carolyn Pe Rosiene
Transition2:25 PM
Session 52:40 PM		Workshop Decentralized AI: Why It Matters, and How to Put It to Work for You Dmitrii TuzovDave Wanik		Session The Workflow Gap: Why Your AI Pilots Aren't Transforming Anything Wei Chen	Presentation Towards Autonomous Manufacturing: The Value of Digital Twin and AI for Manufacturing on the Shop Floor Nasir MannanAmy Thompson	Session AI Literacy Is a Mindset, Not a Skill Set Arash Zaghi		2:35 PM – 3:10 PM Keynote Benchmarking the Next Generation of Industrial AI: The AssetOpsBench Framework Dhaval Patel
Transition3:20 PM
Session 63:35 PM							3:15 PM – 4:15 PM Presentation Google Gemini Enterprise Platform for EDU and Government presented by EGEN Tim DeGregoryWes Wiggins		3:30 PM – 4:30 PM Presentation Linguistic Insight into Errant Learning Trajectories of Large Language Models Alokesh Manna 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM Presentation DepWatch: Predicting Treatment Outcomes in Depression Management (NIMH supported) Jinbo Bi 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM Presentation Model Forensics: Characterizing Nondeterminism in Locally Hosted Quantized Language Models across Heterogeneous Inference Environments Jacob Mancini	3:30 PM – 4:30 PM Presentation Financial Literacy as a Driver of Financial Innovation Adoption: Evidence from AI-Based Advice and Cryptocurrency Holdings Li Liang 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM Presentation Explainable RAG-based Agentic System for Conversational Scams Detection Ahmed Omar Salim Adnan 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM Presentation Generating Quality Word-Association Puzzles Muhammad Aminul Islam 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM Presentation HazDepth: A Fused Depth-Aware Detection Pipeline for Real-Time Hazard Recognition Shruti Brahma
Transition4:15 PM

Day 2: Closing

Wednesday, April 22, 2026 | 100 Constitution Plaza, Hartford, CT

4:30 PM

Closing Remarks & Acknowledgments

GBLC - 2nd Floor

4:45 PM

Reception & Networking

GBLC - 2nd Floor

Lite bites and beverages will be available on both the 1st Floor of the GBLC and in the Co-Working & Connections Zone.

AI DAY

Special Events

Sessions

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