Schedule subject to change.
Day 1 – Monday, March 30
9:00 AM – 9:20 AM
Welcome Remarks & MIDAS Introduction
Arthur Lupia, Vice President for Research and Innovation, University of Michigan
Jing Liu, Executive Director, MIDAS
9:20 AM – 10:20 AM
Keynote Speaker – Jun Li, Founding Chair of the Department of Molecular Genetics and Genome Sciences, University of Oklahoma Health Science Center
Scientific Culture in the Age of Generative Intelligence
Session Chair: Brian Athey, Michael Savageau Collegiate Professor, Chair, Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics
45 min + 15 min Q&A
10:20 AM – 10:35 AM
Break
10:35 AM – 11:35 AM
AI Journey Talks
Session Chair: Nathan Fox, AI Scientist, MIDAS
10:35 AM
Intelligent Histology: Real-Time AI for Intraoperative Brain Tumor Diagnosis and Margin Assessment
Presented by Todd Hollon
10:50 AM
Beyond the Black Box: Generative AI and Synthetic Data for Trustworthy Medical Image Analysis
Presented by Mathias Wilms
11:05 AM
BacterAI: Self-driving microbiology labs at scale
Presented by Benjamin David
11:20 AM
Real-time AI-based Health Monitoring of ICU Patients Using STREAM
Presented by Ali Namvar
11:35 AM – 1:05 PM
Lunch, Networking, & Poster Session
Poster Session
📍Assembly Hall, Rackham Building
Meet the AI Sandbox @ the AI in Research Symposium (AIIR)!
Attendees are invited to meet members of the MIDAS Research team in an informal, drop-in setting. The session will feature brief demonstrations of applied AI tools across a range of research domains. Participants will also have the opportunity to discuss their own ideas and challenges with the team.
An intake form will be available for those interested in scheduling follow-up consultations or exploring potential collaborations.
📍 West Conference Room (4th floor), Rackham Building
1:05 PM – 2:05 PM
Keynote Speaker – Venkat Viswanathan, Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Michigan
Foundation Models for Discovery and Exploration in Chemical Space
Session Chair: Dani Jones, Associate Research Scientist, Data Science and Modeling
45 min + 15 min Q&A
2:05 PM – 3:05 PM
AI Journey Talks
Session Chair: Dani Jones, Associate Research Scientist, Data Science and Modeling
2:05 PM
Accelerating Drug Discovery Through AI-Driven Molecular Simulation
Presented by Paige Bowling
2:20 PM
Interpretable and Decision-Making Artificial Intelligence for Catalyst and Materials Discovery
Presented by Bryan Goldsmith
2:35 PM
AI-Driven optimization for decision-relevant power grid operations
Presented by Rabab Haider
2:50 PM
AgriTwin: An Attention-Based Multimodal Deep Learning Framework for Simultaneous Yield and Price Forecasting in U.S. Specialty Crops
Presented by Vijay Giri
3:05 PM – 4:05 PM
Conversations Across Cultures Panel
Moderator: Jing Liu, Executive Director, MIDAS
Panelists:
Annie Hsieh, Associate Professor of Music Theory, Carnegie Mellon University and Composer
Jun Li, Founding Chair of the Department of Molecular Genetics and Genome Sciences, University of Oklahoma Health Science Center
Vukosi Marivate, Professor of Computer Science and ABSA UP Chair of Data Science at the University of Pretoria
Venkat Viswanathan, Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Michigan
Day 2 – Tuesday, March 31
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM
Keynote Speaker – Annie Hsieh, Associate Professor of Music Theory, Carnegie Mellon University and Composer
Finding the Human Connection in the Orchestration of Senses
Session Chair: Shahana Chumki, Research Manager, MIDAS
45 min + 15 min Q&A
10:00 AM – 10:10 AM
Break
10:10 AM – 11:10 AM
AI Journey Talks
Session Chair: Shahana Chumki, Research Manager, MIDAS
10:10 AM
Machine Listening to Music Across the Globe
Presented by David Sears
10:25 AM
A Counterfactual AI Framework to Quantify Rhetorical Style and Its Impact in Scientific Communication
Presented by Jingyi Qiu
10:40 AM
AI-powered Dataset Curation, Processing, and Rehearsal Interfaces for A Cappella
Presented by Hao-Wen Dong
10:55 AM
Seeing Before Sorting: How Machine Learning Revealed a Hidden Crisis in Educational Classification
Presented by Peter Bahr
11:10 AM – 12:00 PM
AI Organizations Showcase
Session Chair: Shahana Chumki, Research Manager, MIDAS
Check here for the full list for presenting organizations
LAUNCHING NEW AI RESOURCES 🚀
- Campus AI Resource Map
- Online AI Guidebook
- MAIZEY Demonstration
12:05 PM – 1:30 PM
Lunch, Networking, & Poster Session
Poster Session
📍Assembly Hall, Rackham Building
AWS AI for Research: Tools, Techniques, and Higher Education Applications
This session explores how AWS artificial intelligence and machine learning services are transforming research workflows in higher education. AWS Solutions Architects will provide an overview of the AWS AI toolset, including key services for machine learning, generative AI, and data analytics. Presidio, AWS strategic partner, will then showcase real-world research use cases demonstrating how institutions are leveraging these tools to accelerate discovery, enhance collaboration, and scale computational research across disciplines. Attendees will gain practical insights into implementing cloud-based AI solutions for academic research environments.
📍Amphitheatre, Rackham Building
1:30 PM – 2:30 PM
AI Journey Talks
Session Chair: Jon Reader, Data Systems Manager, Michigan Alzheimer’s Disease Center
1:30 PM
Beyond Binary Moderation: Transforming Online Safety through Generative AI
Presented by Farnaz Jahanbakhsh
1:45 PM
AI-Driven Transcription of Herbarium Specimens: Scalable Workflows for Biodiversity Data Mobilization
Presented by William Weaver
2:00 PM
The Noisy Path from Source to Citation: Measuring How Scholars Engage with Past Research
Presented by Hong Chen
2:15 PM
Small Models Achieve Large Language Model Performance: Benchmarking AI for Secure Child Welfare Research
Presented by Zia Qi
2:30 PM – 2:40 PM
Break
2:40 PM – 3:00 PM
Empowering Research with AI Awards
Brad Orr, Acting Director, MIDAS and Associate VP, Natural Sciences and Engineering of the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR), University of Michigan
3:00 PM
End of Symposium
U-M & Africa AI in Research Collaboration Workshop co-sponsored by African Studies Center
*invite only*
Day 3 – Wednesday, April 1
9:00 AM – 10:15 AM
Opening Remarks & Lightning Talks
10:15 AM – 11:45 AM
Roundtable discussions
11:45 AM – 12:00 PM
Closing Remarks
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Lunch & Networking
Questions? Contact Us.
Message the MIDAS team: [email protected].