PROGRAM OVERVIEW
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See emerging ideas before they become industry standards.
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Learn how responsible AI principles translate into operational decisions.
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Connect with Columbia researchers and industry peers who are moving applied AI forward.
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Network with researchers, AI professionals, start-ups, and more. A post-event summary PDF will be provided to all attendees.
Session Overviews
Privacy & Security
Trust begins with how data is protected.
As AI systems rely on complex and sensitive data, organizations must safeguard privacy while securing models, pipelines, and infrastructure. What are emerging and practical approaches to protecting data, mitigating risk, and building AI systems that earn and maintain trust?
Safety & Agentic AI
The deployment of AI Agents requires demand new approaches to control and accountability.
As agentic AI moves from experimentation to deployment, questions of safety, oversight, and human-in-the-loop design become critical. How are organizations managing risk, defining guardrails, and ensuring responsible behavior? How is this new technology helping with productivity and cost reduction? What are some of the workplace challenges surfacing?
Governance: Explainability & Compliance
AI cannot scale without governance that executives can stand behind.
Regulatory expectations and stakeholder expectations are reshaping how AI systems are designed and deployed. What does it take to build governance frameworks that support explainability, compliance, and confident decision-making?
KEYNOTE
SPEAKER
Retired Global Chief Data Officer, Visa
Research Fellow, MIT’s Initiative for the Digital Economy
Bob Hedges
AGENDA
April 14, 2026
Doors Open for Coffee and Networking
8:00 AM
9:00 AM
Garud Iyengar
Avanessians Director, Data Science Institute
Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia Engineering
Angela V. Olinto
Provost of Columbia University
Rutherfurd Professor of Astronomy and Professor of Physics, Columbia University
Opening Remarks
9:10 AM
How Consumers Will Drive the Success of AI and How We Can Help Them
AI has the transformational power to change work, improve lives, and support society-level gains. Consumers' embracing of AI, however, is dependent on establishing a level of trust and confidence that data scientists and technologists have carelessly taken for granted. Achieving the required level of consumer trust will come not through regulation, but a collective commitment to keep consumers at the center of our data and AI innovation efforts. Here is what we can do.
Bob Hedges
Retired Global Chief Data Officer, Visa
Research Fellow, MIT’s Initiative for the Digital Economy
Keynote Address
9:50 AM
Kelly Moan
Chief Information Security Officer, Cyber Command
Omar Santos
Distinguished Engineer Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) Security Research and Operations
Rachel Cummings
Associate Professor, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research; Affiliate, Department of Computer Science; Co-chair of Cybersecurity Research Center, Data Science Institute, Columbia University
Rebecca Wright
Druckenmiller Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Vagelos Computational Science Center, Barnard College
Moderated by:
Kara Miller
Host, It Turns Out Podcast
Session 1: Privacy & Security
10:30 AM
Brittny Cantor
Agentic Commerce Lead, Accenture's Center for Advanced AI
Eugene Wu
Associate Professor of Computer Science and Co-director of the Data, Agents, and Processes Lab (DAPLab), Columbia University
Zhou Yu
Associate Professor, Computer Science Department, and Co-director of the Data, Agents, and Processes Lab (DAPLab), Columbia University
Moderated by:
Kara Miller
Host, It Turns Out Podcast
Session 2: Safety & Agentic AI
11:10 AM
Session Break
Buka Gurgenidze-Steinau
Head of Centralized Intelligence and Automation for Enterprise Infrastructure,
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Alessandro Petroni
Head of Quality Engineering - Fraud Payment Services, The Clearing House
Talia Gillis
Daniel G. Ross Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Micah Goldblum
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University
Moderated by:
Kara Miller
Host, It Turns Out Podcast
Session 3: Governance: Explainability & Compliance
11:30 AM
Francesca Rossi
IBM Fellow and the IBM Global Leader for Responsible AI and AI Governance,
T.J. Watson IBM Research Lab, New York
Lecturer, MS in Technology, Columbia University School of Professional Studies
Moderated by:
Garud Iyengar
Avanessians Director, Data Science Institute
Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia Engineering
Fireside Chat
12:10 PM
Lightning Round: Innovation Expo Introductions
12:40 PM
1:10 PM
Closing Remarks
Innovation Expo: Exhibits from the latest research at Columbia and demos of some of the start-ups spun out of the university
1:15 PM
Data Science and AI Exchange 2026 Concludes