DSI Spring Symposium 2025

Join us for a day of learning, networking, and innovation with industry leaders, researchers, and innovators in AI and data science.

📅 Date
April 5, 2025
📍 Location
Reitz Union, UF
👥 Speakers
21 Experts

Keynote Speaker

Jack Kendall
Keynote Speaker

Jack Kendall

RainAI

Keynote: Building Next-Generation Brain-Inspired Processors

📅 8:00AM - 9:00AM • 📍 Auditorium

Jack Kendall is the Co-Founder and current CTO of Rain AI, a company building next-generation brain-inspired processors for artificial intelligence. Jack's mission is to build a brain — bridging neuroscience, physics, and computing to reimagine how machines learn. His research includes highly cited papers on analog neural networks and neuromorphic architectures. Rain is backed by leading figures in AI, including Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. Jack is a University of Florida alum and one of the original founders and the second President of DSI, making his keynote today a full-circle moment for the community he helped shape.

All Speakers

Jack Kendall
Keynote Speaker
8:00AM - 9:00AM • Auditorium

Jack Kendall

RainAI

Keynote: Building Next-Generation Brain-Inspired Processors

Dr. Aapo Hyvarinen
Research Track
9:15AM - 10:15AM • Room 2330

Dr. Aapo Hyvarinen

University of Helsinki

Painful Intelligence: What AI Can Tell Us About Human Suffering

Jhonathan Herrera
Workshop Track
9:15AM - 10:15AM • Room 2325

Jhonathan Herrera

Colorstack

Intro to State Space Models and MAMBA

Carlos Bastos Neto
Industry Track
9:15AM - 10:15AM • Room 2335

Carlos Bastos Neto

Google Cloud

Living a Life within Big Tech

Michael Vega-Sanz
General Track
9:15AM - 10:15AM • Auditorium

Michael Vega-Sanz

Gail

You Can Just Do Things

Norman Bukingolts
Workshop Track
10:30AM - 11:30AM • Room 2325

Norman Bukingolts

Association of Computing Machinery

Transforming our Humanity into Job Security

Dr. Hubert Wagner
Research Track
10:30AM - 11:30AM • Room 2330

Dr. Hubert Wagner

University of Florida

Trojan horses, Pavlov's dogs and self-driving cars

Tony Barr
General Track
10:30AM - 11:30AM • Auditorium

Tony Barr

SAS Institute, AMOR

Developing a Model of Reality

Luciane Galuppo
Industry Track
10:30AM - 11:30AM • Room 2335

Luciane Galuppo

Microsoft

Lessons from 30 years at Microsoft

Raul Valle
Workshop Track
12:45PM - 1:45PM • Room 2325

Raul Valle

IEEE Signal Processing Society

Introduction to Signal Processing

Dr. Jim Hoover
General Track
12:45PM - 1:45PM • Auditorium

Dr. Jim Hoover

University of Florida

The Latest Developments in the Implementation of AI in Business

Dr. Andrew Gelman
Research Track
12:45PM - 1:45PM • Room 2330

Dr. Andrew Gelman

Columbia University

Principles of Bayesian Workflow

Antonio Knez
Industry Track
12:45PM - 1:45PM • Room 2335

Antonio Knez

Sentient Foundation

Open and Loyal AGI for Everyone

Kausthubh Konuru
Workshop Track
2:00PM - 3:00PM • Room 2325

Kausthubh Konuru

American Statistical Association

Introduction to NLP: Embedding Techniques for Healthcare Applications

Tyler Richards
Industry Track
2:00PM - 3:00PM • Room 2335

Tyler Richards

Snowflake, Ex-Meta

Overcoming Rejection as an Aspiring Data Scientist

Wesley Deng
Research Track
2:00PM - 3:00PM • Room 2330

Wesley Deng

Carnegie Mellon University

Supporting Responsible AI on the ground

Dr. Sarah K Luger
General Track
2:00PM - 3:00PM • Auditorium

Dr. Sarah K Luger

ML Commons

AI: trends, data, and low-resource languages

Jacques Fleischer
Workshop Track
3:15PM - 4:15PM • Room 2325

Jacques Fleischer

AI Club

Computer Vision and Data Annotation Workshop

Dr. Megan Higgs
General Track
3:15PM - 4:15PM • Auditorium

Dr. Megan Higgs

Critical Inference

Pausing to Take a Deeper Look at Assumptions

Dr. Olivia Dizon-Paradis
Industry Track
3:15PM - 4:15PM • Room 2335

Dr. Olivia Dizon-Paradis

University of Florida

Intro to AI Research

Stephen Wormald
Research Track
3:15PM - 4:15PM • Room 2330

Stephen Wormald

University of Florida

RAPID-XAI - Toward Explainable Models with Single-Cycle Inference

Collaborators & Sponsors

Speaker Affiliations

Speaker Affiliations

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Workshop Organizations

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