​2026 Asian American Engineer of the Year (AAEOY) Awards Ceremony & Conference

​There are "Technology Session" and "Education Session".

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Technology Session:
Engineering the AI-Native Future

​
How AI Is Transforming Technology, Business, and Innovation

​Artificial intelligence is transforming software engineering, cybersecurity, accessibility, autonomous systems, and the way organizations build and compete. The 2026 AAEOY Afternoon Technology Session brings together Silicon Valley founders, technology leaders, investors, and innovators to examine the emerging AI-native future.

​Keynote Speaker

​Jeremiah Owyang
General Partner, Blitzscaling Ventures
Founder & Host, Llama Lounge

​The AI-Native Era: How Organizations Will Compete, Build, and Scale

​Jeremiah Owyang will discuss AI-native organizations, agentic AI, enterprise transformation, and how artificial intelligence is changing the way companies innovate, compete, and scale.

​Featured Fireside Chat

​Bernard Harguindeguy
Founder, Executive Venture Fund (EVF)

​AI, Enterprise Innovation, Cybersecurity, and Leadership

​A serial entrepreneur, former CTO of Ping Identity, and venture investor, Bernard Harguindeguy will share perspectives on how AI is reshaping enterprise technology, cybersecurity, innovation, and leadership.

​Featured Technical Talk

​Leo Tchourakov
Principal Engineer, Factory

​Beyond Coding Agents: Inside the Self-Improving Software Factory
(Tentative)

​Leo Tchourakov will explore how autonomous Software Factories are transforming the software development lifecycle through AI agents, continuous feedback, model evaluation, and self-improving engineering systems.

​Startup Leaders Panel

​How AI Is Transforming Startups and Creating New Industries

​Startup founders will discuss how AI is enabling new products, industries, and real-world applications.

​Xiaoran Wang
CEO & Co-Founder, AGIGA AI

​Xiaoran Wang leads the development of EchoVision, an AI-powered smart glasses platform that assists blind and low-vision users through real-time scene understanding.

​Tom Pritsky
CEO & Co-Founder, Captify

​Tom Pritsky leads the development of AI-powered smart glasses that provide real-time captioning for people with hearing loss.

​More Speakers to Be Announced

​Additional speakers from AI infrastructure, software engineering, semiconductors, robotics, cybersecurity, venture capital, enterprise AI, and emerging technologies will be announced soon.

​Join founders, engineers, researchers, investors, executives, and students for an afternoon of technical insights, industry perspectives, and meaningful networking.

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​Education Session

​The Engineering Lifecycle: Empowering the Next Generation in the AI Era

​Short Description

​Join CIE/USA-SF for an afternoon exploring how AI is transforming education, entrepreneurship, engineering, and career development.

​The program connects every stage of the engineering journey, from promising high school students to university, industry, research, entrepreneurship, and global leadership. It features keynote talks, an alumni panel, the 2026 CIE/USA-SF High School Scholarship Awards, and the national “Engineering Changes the World” AIGC Video Challenge awards.

​Featured Speakers

​Dr. Arun Majumdar
Inaugural Dean, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
Topic: Preparing students and higher education for an increasingly automated future.

​Johnny Ho
Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Perplexity
Topic: How AI is redefining problem-solving and why future engineers must think like entrepreneurs.

​Alumni Panel

​The Rising Stars: Homecoming of Past CIE/USA-SF Scholarship Awardees

​Former scholarship recipients will share their journeys from high school to leading universities, technology companies, startups, and research institutions.

​Moderator: Shawn Flynn, Managing Director of SVH Capital and host of The Silicon Valley Podcast

• ​Helen Chang, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft, UC San Diego alumna

• ​Allen Hsing

• ​Krystal Lan, Ph.D. Student Researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology

• ​Ray Lin, Co-founder and Head of Technology at Endevre Technologies, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumnus

• ​Bonnie Liu, Machine Learning Engineer at Pinterest, UCLA alumna

• ​Annie Liu, Software Engineer at Netflix, Harvard University alumna