CONFERENCE AGENDA

A full day of insight, discussion, and connection
May 9, 2026 at the KSU Center, Kennesaw, Georgia.

7:30 – 8:30
Breakfast
8:30 – 8:45
Welcome Remarks
8:45 – 9:30
Keynote Speaker: Ray Quintana
9:30 – 9:45
Breakout Session 1
Industry Track
Research Track
9:35 – 9:55 Annie Eaton
CEO, Futurus
9:35 – 9:50 "Hierarchical Multi-Level LLM Agent Swarms for Financial Research Synthesis and Trading Decision Support in Multi Strategy Hedge funds"

Puneet Gandhi and Rishab Gulati
9:55 – 10:15 Juan Cora
CEO, Aquatio
9:50 – 10:05 "Creating IT Capabilities in Workflow Automation with Unstructured Data"

Gary Braswell
10:15 – 10:35 Rajan Gupta
Partner, Centelli
10:05 – 10:20 "Human-like or System-like Trust? A Comparison of Trust Measures for Intelligent Assistants"

Denise McWilliams and Adriane Randolph
10:35 – 11:00
Break
11:00 – 12:00
Executive Panel Discussion
  • Priya Sarathy (Moderator) Director, Center for Data Sciences and Analytics, Kennesaw State University
  • Sandeep Sivadas Georgia Pacific, Vice President Technology
  • Jim Lester Longitude Health, CEO
  • Stephen Helwig Microsoft, General Manager, Azure
  • Julie Rachel Microsoft, Regional Director Cloud Solution Architects
12:00 – 1:30
Lunch (Expo Floor Open)
1:30 – 3:30
Breakout Sessions 2 & 3
Industry Track
Research Track
1:30 – 1:50 Hemant Soni
Digital Product Delivery & Management Leader, Capgemeni
1:35 – 1:50 "Agentic Implementation in Business Processes with Guardrails"

Kunal Kumar
1:50 – 2:10 Drew Pearson
CEO, XR DOJO
1:50 – 2:05 "An Alternative Approach to the Problem of AI Ethics: Moving Toward Conscious Empathic AI"

Reza Vaezi
2:10 – 2:30 Anthony Lloyd (Tec Tony)
Owner, Pathfinder Digital Marketing, LLC
2:05 – 2:20 "LLMs Are Not the Answer: Relevant AI for Business Transformation"

Christopher Simpkins
2:30 – 2:50 Ani Agnihotri
CEO, Marshall Automation America, Inc.
2:20 – 2:35 "The Paradox of Perfection: Hidden Risks of High-Performing AI in Human-in-the-Loop Governance"

Chen Zhong, Alper Yayla and Xueping Liang
2:50 – 3:10 Jairo de Jesus
Vice President of Bakeries’ Operations, Sugar Bowl Bakery
2:35 – 2:50 "When Humans Stop Thinking: Cognitive Offloading, Atrophy Risk, and the Design of Human-AI Intelligence"

Pravinya Mandalapu, Adriane B. Randolph and Andrea Taylor
3:10 – 3:30 Shalmali Joshi
Senior Advanced Analytics Analyst, Elevance Health
2:50 – 3:05 "From Configuration to Cognition: A Self-Configuring Agentic CRM Architecture for Small-Scale Retail Enterprises"

Praveen Manimangalam
3:30 – 3:45 Aaron French
The Future of Innovation
3:05 – 3:20 "Insights from AI Tutors in Undergraduate and Graduate Engineering Courses"

Billy Kihei, Sumit Chakravarty and Sheila Hill
3:30 – 4:00
What Comes Next (Aaron French)
4:00 – 4:45
Keynote Speaker: Fotios Fitsillis
4:45 – 5:00
Closing Remarks
5:00 – 10:00
Social Event: Horned Owl Brewing
2765 S Main St, Kennesaw, GA 30144