Professor Min Song moderating a panel of five speakers on stage.

iCNS AI Engineering and Science Symposium

Come for the Research. Stay for the Conversation.

iCNS Ai and Engineering Symposium Logo

AI isn’t just advancing — it’s converging. Systems that once operated in isolation now integrate sensing, reasoning, and decision-making into unified, intelligent workflows.

The iCNS AI Engineering and Science Symposium brings that shift into focus, convening the researchers building these systems, the industry leaders deploying them at scale, and the students preparing to push them further.

Hosted by iCNS and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, this is where ideas get tested, assumptions get challenged, and conversations carry beyond the room. Students will have direct access to speakers and industry attendees throughout the day, creating space for interactions that often extend into research collaborations, internships and full-time roles.


Audience members seated during a presentation at the iCNS Launch.

Spring 2026 Event

Tuesday, May 5, 2026 · 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
University Center Complex, Tech Flex Auditorium
Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ

Join us for a full day of keynote talks, original student research, Elite Poster awards, raffle prizes and complimentary lunch. Open to students, faculty, researchers and industry professionals.


Details and Registration

Program Overview

A focused, single-day program designed for depth — not noise.

Event Agenda

10:30 a.m. - 10:40 a.m.

Opening remarks: Jean Zu, Lore E. Filer Dean, Schaefer School of Engineering and Science

10:40 a.m. - 11:10 a.m.

Keynote speech: Dorin Comaniciu, SVP & Chief Expert, Healthcare AI Siemens Healthineers

11:10 a.m. - 11:40 a.m.

Keynote speech: Ching-Yung Lin, Founder & CEO, Graphen, Inc.

11:40 a.m. - 12:10 p.m.

Keynote speech: Zhangyang "Atlas" Wang, Research Director, AI Lab, XTX Markets

12:10 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Lunch + Networking

1:30 p.m. - 1:40 p.m.

Raffle

1:40 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Posters, Awards & Networking

Beyond the talks, the symposium is designed for access — giving students the opportunity to connect directly with researchers and industry leaders working at the forefront of AI.

Spring 2026 Speakers

Speaker Kevin Loughran on stage with a microphone while a student wearing a red Stevens hoodie is back-facing in the foreground.

Each symposium brings together a small group of speakers working at the leading edge of AI — from foundational research to large-scale deployment in industry.

While their domains vary, they share a common challenge: building intelligent systems that don’t just perform in theory, but operate reliably in complex, real-world environments.

Across talks and discussion, the focus is on what it actually takes to move from model to system, integrating data, infrastructure, and decision-making under real constraints, where performance, robustness, and trust all matter.

Zhangyang "Atlas" Wang
Zhangyang "Atlas" Wang.

Research Director, AI Lab, XTX Markets | On leave: Temple Foundation Endowed Associate Professor, UT Austin

Talk: Algorithmic Trading with Large-Scale Deep Learning

At XTX Markets, we view algorithmic trading as one of the most compelling real-world frontiers for deep learning and foundation models. Every day, our systems generate forecasts for tens of thousands of financial instruments and execute over $300B in global trading volume — fully automated, with no discretionary human intervention. This domain combines massive data scale with high noise, adversarial dynamics, and frequent regime shifts, making it both scientifically challenging and commercially impactful. For machine learning researchers, it serves as a rigorous proving ground where advances in time-series modeling, large-scale optimization, representation learning, and foundation models can translate directly into measurable real-world outcomes. This talk will provide a high-level overview of XTX's research agenda, infrastructure, and key open challenges at the intersection of large-scale AI and quantitative finance.

About:

Dr. Wang is Research Director at XTX Markets, one of the world's leading high-frequency trading firms, where he founded and leads the firm's AI Lab in New York City. His lab focuses on developing large-scale foundation models for financial time series, powered by XTX's proprietary AI infrastructure. Currently on leave from UT Austin, his academic research has received numerous awards. He has mentored a broad network of Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers — eight alumni now hold tenure-track faculty positions and nineteen hold senior industry roles.

Dorin Comaniciu
Dorin Comaniciu.

Senior Vice President and Chief Expert, Healthcare AI Siemens Healthineers

Talk: Intelligent Systems in Healthcare: The Road to Autonomy

Artificial intelligence is transforming healthcare by advancing the full engineering stack—from sensing and signal acquisition to image reconstruction, machine perception, and intelligent decision-making. Modern medical systems increasingly rely on algorithms that enable machines to see, sense, reconstruct, interpret, and assist in ways once reserved for human experts.

This talk explores the evolution of intelligent systems in healthcare through the lens of engineering and control theory - from physics-based sensing and signal processing to data-driven reconstruction, multimodal learning, and world models. We will discuss how advances in deep learning and agentic AI are enabling integrated systems that understand clinical context, reason and support decision-making under uncertainty, while assisting complex image-guided medical workflows.

About:

Dr. Comaniciu serves as Senior Vice President and Chief Expert for Healthcare AI at Siemens Healthineers. His scientific contributions to computational imaging and machine intelligence have translated into a broad portfolio of clinical products focused on improving the quality of care across diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, and precision medicine.

An elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, and the Romanian Academy, Comaniciu is recognized as a Siemens Top Innovator and is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and the MICCAI Society, among other scientific organizations. He is the recipient of the IEEE Longuet-Higgins Prize for fundamental contributions to computer vision and has recently been awarded an honorary doctorate from Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.

With more than 550 granted patents, 350 peer-reviewed papers, 69,000 citations, and an h-index of 111, his work has played a significant role in advancing medical imaging to become faster and more automated, while providing efficient and precise solutions for detecting, quantifying, and treating disease.

A graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Comaniciu holds doctorates in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rutgers University and in Electronics and Telecommunications from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest.

He is a passionate advocate for transformative technologies that save and enhance lives, addressing critical issues in global health.

Ching-Yung Lin
Ching-Yung Lin.

Founder and CEO, Graphen, Inc.

About:

Dr. Lin is the founder and CEO of Graphen, Inc., an AI company ranked among the top ten in the world, with a focus on advancing AI for biotechnology and drug design. Previously Chief Scientist at IBM's Watson Research Center, where he spent 17 years leading large-scale global AI projects, he has also held adjunct professorships at Columbia University, NYU, and the University of Washington. An IEEE Fellow since 2011, Dr. Lin has authored more than 200 publications, holds 75+ patents, and has been cited approximately 13,000 times.

People sit in an auditorium watching a presentation.
Three students stand in a lab together, smiling at the camera
Three students stand next to each other in a lab looking at the camera.
A crowd of students, with four people in the foreground and more in the background, walk around talking and looking at posters.
A photo of Min Song standing at a podium.
People sit in an auditorium watching a presentation.
Three students stand in a lab together, smiling at the camera
Three students stand next to each other in a lab looking at the camera.
A crowd of students, with four people in the foreground and more in the background, walk around talking and looking at posters.
A photo of Min Song standing at a podium.
People sit in an auditorium watching a presentation.
Three students stand in a lab together, smiling at the camera
Three students stand next to each other in a lab looking at the camera.
A crowd of students, with four people in the foreground and more in the background, walk around talking and looking at posters.
A photo of Min Song standing at a podium.

“It was a pleasure meeting all the professors and fellow presenters,” said Santosh Borse, Senior Research Engineer at IBM.

Class of 2026 computer science students Sudharshini Harisaravanan, Krishna Sai Srinivas Venigalla and Pradhyumna Nagaraja Holla.

First-year Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Ph.D. students (from left) Zixun Xiong, Qingyang Yu and Rui Wei.

Inspired by Humanity, Powered by Technology — DuckAI fostered conversations across disciplines, academia and industry.

Professor Min Song, Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Chair, and director of iCNS.

“It was a pleasure meeting all the professors and fellow presenters,” said Santosh Borse, Senior Research Engineer at IBM.

Class of 2026 computer science students Sudharshini Harisaravanan, Krishna Sai Srinivas Venigalla and Pradhyumna Nagaraja Holla.

First-year Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Ph.D. students (from left) Zixun Xiong, Qingyang Yu and Rui Wei.

Inspired by Humanity, Powered by Technology — DuckAI fostered conversations across disciplines, academia and industry.

Professor Min Song, Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Chair, and director of iCNS.

“It was a pleasure meeting all the professors and fellow presenters,” said Santosh Borse, Senior Research Engineer at IBM.

Class of 2026 computer science students Sudharshini Harisaravanan, Krishna Sai Srinivas Venigalla and Pradhyumna Nagaraja Holla.

First-year Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Ph.D. students (from left) Zixun Xiong, Qingyang Yu and Rui Wei.

Inspired by Humanity, Powered by Technology — DuckAI fostered conversations across disciplines, academia and industry.

Professor Min Song, Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Chair, and director of iCNS.

This shift highlights a rapid maturity in our students' work. It's exciting to see them moving from general application bias and standard model training to optimizing and securing the cutting-edge architecture of LLMs.
Min SongChair, Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Students and professionals examine poster and phsycial presentations.

About the Symposium

The iCNS AI Engineering and Science Symposium brings together researchers, practitioners, and students at the intersection of artificial intelligence and real-world systems. It serves as a forum for rigorous exchange — where ideas are tested through direct engagement with experts across academia and industry, with a focus on systems-level thinking that spans data, infrastructure, and decision-making in complex environments.

iCNS AI Engineering and Science Symposium speakers (from left) Joseph Helsing, Min Song, Tianhao Wu, Yingchao Zhang, Mingyu Derek Ma, Yulong Cao, Hao Wang and Jessica Gruich standing in front of a stage and podium.

Fall 2025: Where Student Research Met Industry

Thirty-four student teams took the stage alongside keynote speakers from opAIda, Prescient Design (Genentech), and NVIDIA — tackling efficient LLMs, model safety, and the system optimization challenges keeping the field up at night.

A photo of a man in a black suit holding a microphone on the left, with two figures of people behind a table and podium in the background.

Spring 2025: The Inaugural Class Makes Its Mark

The inaugural symposium, held May 15, 2025, attracted more than 150 students, faculty, researchers, and industry professionals. Research spanned adversarial robustness, reinforcement learning, healthcare AI, fairness and bias, and depression detection from user-generated text. Keynote speakers included representatives from Google, IBM, and Armistice Capital.

A student examines an electrical board with her phone.

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