Talk Nerdy to Me
🧠 What are today’s top AI researchers working on—and what’s keeping them up at night?
Whether you’re deep in the field or just AI-curious, this event is your chance to hear directly from the minds shaping the future of artificial intelligence.
As part of our Higher Learning series, this evening features a series of 5–7 minute talks where leading researchers share what they’re currently working on, what’s exciting them, and where they see things headed. You’ll get a glimpse into some of the newest ideas in AI—straight from the people building and exploring them. Expect real substance, a bit of technical depth, and plenty to spark your curiosity.
Come to learn, get inspired, and connect with others who love a good nerd-out.
SPEAKER LIST (so exciting!):
David Pitman – What's next for AI agents?
David is the former tech lead for Google Cloud’s gen AI org in data analytics and an expert in Responsible and Explainable AI. With 15+ years in AI/ML and two MIT degrees, he’s led teams across Google Cloud’s ML Platform, coauthored Explainable AI for Practitioners (O’Reilly), and built systems from autonomous drones to healthcare tools named to TIME’s “100 Best Inventions.” A serial entrepreneur and former national team athlete, David bridges cutting-edge tech with real-world impact.
Vijay Gaikwad – Agentic flows & current industry trends in AI agents
Vijay is a Staff ML Engineer at Meta and formerly led AI at Found, where he launched generative AI products in healthcare with state-of-the-art performance. He’s also held technical leadership roles at Loftium, 98point6, and Microsoft, consistently driving innovation across industries using AI.
Tanmay Gupta – Advances in agentic systems at AI2
Senior Research Scientist at AI2, Tanmay is known for his work on VisProg (CVPR 2023 Best Paper), GPV models, and CodeNav. His research blends vision, language, and action to build intelligent, general-purpose AI agents. He holds a PhD from UIUC.
Huong Ngo – Open-source speech recognition to rival Whisper
Huong is a Predoctoral Young Investigator at AI2, where she and her team built a robust, open framework for speech recognition comparable to OpenAI’s Whisper. Her work blends deep learning, large-scale data pipelines, and transformers.
Kiana & Matt (Vercept Co-founders) – The new era of Vy-b computing!
Kiana and Matt are co-founders of Vercept. Kiana previously led the robotics and embodied AI team at AI2 and holds a PhD from UW in visual reasoning. Matt’s work at AI2 and UW has pushed the frontiers of embodied intelligence with projects like Molmo, ProcTHOR, and Objaverse.
Ghazaleh Saniee Monfared - When the Gut and the Graphs Don’t Agree
Giselle is a User Experience Researcher at Microsoft, where she explores how people interact with emerging AI technologies to design more intuitive and ethical systems. She previously led HCI research at Huawei and contributed to academic work at the University of Toronto. With a background bridging engineering and behavioral science, her work sits at the intersection of AI, design, and human connection.
Talks start at 2pm. Conversation to follow :)