THE FUTURE OF APPLIED AI IN THE ENTERPRISE

AUSTIN | February 18, 2026

DSS AUSTIN | Schedule

Wednesday, Feburary 18

 

8:30 – 9:55am ET

Registration Opens

9:55 – 10:00am ET

Introduction
Anna Anisin - Founder, Data Science Salon

10:00 – 10:30am ET

AI based Product Management
Shamindra Peiris - Senior AI Product Manager at Visa, Inc
Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the healthcare industry by enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of diagnostics, treatment planning, and patient care. This talk explores recent AI-powered innovations in healthcare, including machine learning algorithms for early disease detection, natural language processing for patient data management, and robotics for precision surgery. I will talk about the integration of AI in real world healthcare applications and examine how AI enhances diagnostic accuracy, enables personalized medicine, improves operational efficiency, and contributes to better patient outcomes. In this session, I will also address ethical considerations, data privacy concerns, and the future potential of AI in transforming healthcare as AI has the potential to significantly advance medical research and practice, ultimately leading to a more effective and equitable healthcare system.

10:30 – 11:00am ET

Multi-Model Approach to Large-Scale Information Retrieval
Dushyanth Sekhar - Head of Data Platforms & AI, Enterprise Data Organization at S&P Global

The rapid evolution of Large Language Models (LLMs) has opened new possibilities for automating data extraction tasks from unstructured sources. However, individual LLMs may exhibit variability in accuracy, consistency, and bias. To address these limitations, organizations are increasingly adopting multi-LLM architectures, complemented by an LLM Judge framework to ensure optimal results.

**Multi-LLM Data Extraction Approach**

In this paradigm, multiple LLMs (e.g., GPT-4, Claude, Llama) are deployed in parallel to extract data from the same input. Each model independently processes the input and generates its own extraction output. This redundancy aims to:
– Increase reliability by cross-verifying outputs.
– Mitigate model-specific biases.
– Capture a wider range of interpretations, especially for ambiguous data.

**Benefits**
– **Enhanced Accuracy:** Aggregating outputs and adjudicating them improves the likelihood of extracting correct data.
– **Reduced Bias:** Multiple perspectives help neutralize individual model biases.
– **Scalability:** Automated judging enables large-scale data extraction with minimal manual intervention.

**Challenges**
– **Resource Intensity:** Running multiple LLMs in parallel increases computational costs.
– **Complexity:** Designing effective judging criteria and workflows requires careful engineering.
– **Latency:** Additional processing steps may introduce delays.

11:00 – 11:20am ET

Session Title Coming Soon

Speaker Coming Soon - Aerospike

Solve the last-mile optimization of AI agents by integrating swift, cost-effective LLM judges to evaluate their steps and decisions at scale. This session tackles the challenge of making frequent, high-quality evaluations affordable by framing it as a semantic optimization problem, the practise known as EvalOps. Through practical examples, learn how to optimize speed, semantic virtues and cost of your judges, in order to then optimize your agents, to make aligned, informed decisions without breaking the bank.

11:20 – 11:40am ET

Coffee Break

11:40 – 12:40pm ET

Using LLM to improve email marketing
Preetham Kaukuntla - Staff Data Scientist at Glassdoor/Indeed
Enterprises hold wealth of data, much of which remains untapped. In today’s data-driven landscape, unstructured data—spanning text, images, videos, and more—makes up over 80% of all enterprise data. Yet, its full potential often goes unrealized. In this session, I will explore strategies to unlock the value of unstructured data, enabling actionable insights, enhanced decision-making, and innovation. Drawing from a real-world use case, I’ll demonstrate how scanned documents can be transformed into structured formats to drive positive business outcomes. I will also address key challenges faced during this process and share practical tips to overcome them effectively.

12:40 – 1:10pm ET

From Prompts to Production: Building Reliable AI Agents for the Enterprise
Hamed Alikhani - Senior AI Engineer & Data Scientist at McGraw Hill
Discover cutting-edge tools designed to revolutionize how organizations process, query, and extract value from their data using ArangoDB’s unique approach to GraphRAG and HybridRAG. This session will dive into advanced solutions that will transform your unstructured information into actionable insights, leveraging the power of a multi-model graph database. Natural Language to Query Language – Explore an innovative service that translates natural language into precise database queries, enabling intuitive data exploration powered by private or public language models.

Unstructured to Structured Data – Learn how to extract entities and relationships from complex, text-heavy files, automatically constructing a robust knowledge graph for better data connectivity and visibility.

Enhanced Retrieval and Insights – See how advanced search capabilities unlock semantic similarity searches and aggregate community insights through flexible global and local queries.

These containerized services combine graph, document, key-value, full-text, and vector search capabilities, offering unparalleled efficiency in data retrieval and knowledge extraction. Don’t miss this opportunity to see how modern data technologies can streamline your approach to complex datasets.

1:10 – 1:30pm ET

Session Title Coming Soon

Speaker coming soon

Abstract coming soon

1:30 – 2:30pm ET

Lunch

2:30 – 3:15pm ET

Panel Title Coming Soon

Cal Al-Dhubaib - Responsible AI & ML Executive at Further

3:15 – 3:45pm ET

Stop Building Generalists: Architecting Task-Specific Agents for Real-World Enterprise ROI
Dippu Kumar Singh - Leader Of Emerging Data Technologies at Fujitsu North America Inc.
This talk encapsulates the essence of exploring diverse time series forecasting methods across sectors such as travel, logistics, supply chain, and retail. It highlights the comparison between traditional econometric techniques and modern machine learning approaches like deep learning, transformer models, and LLM-based methods. The talk would delve into how these varied approaches are applied in different industries to enhance forecasting accuracy and decision-making processes.

3:45 – 4:05pm ET

Scaling Responsibly: Building Data & AI Governance Frameworks for Fintech Startups That Grow into Enterprises
Reema Gill - Senior Consultant - AI Governance, Compliance and Oversight at CIBC
As artificial intelligence (AI) advances, AI agents are revolutionizing the field of data science by automating routine but essential tasks such as data cleaning, preprocessing, feature engineering, and pipeline management. These autonomous systems are not just tools; they are reshaping the data scientist’s role, enabling a shift toward higher-value activities like strategic analysis and creative model development. This beginner-friendly talk will introduce the concept of AI agents, explain their functionality and the transformative opportunities they bring to the data science workflow. Attendees will gain a clear understanding of how these systems streamline mundane processes and multiply productivity. Whether you are new to data science or a professional looking to learn more about the future of autonomous AI-driven workflows, this session offers a technically grounded yet accessible guide to the game-changing role of AI agents in modern data science.

4:05 – 4:25pm ET

Coffee Break

4:25 – 4:55pm ET

Inside Manulife’s Agentic Architecture: Real-Time Voice Automation Powered by RAG and Sentiment AI
Hari Kishan - Director of Cloud Engineering at Manulife John Hancock Retirement
What if you could turn complex datasets into instant, actionable insights, just by asking a question like you would, to a colleague familiar with the data? This talk introduces an Advanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system that puts the power of data directly into the hands of business leaders. No more delays and data bottlenecks. This RAG powered tool enables real-time, natural language interactions with your data, bridging the gap between technical teams and decision-makers. Business leaders can now unlock nuanced insights with ease, ask follow-up questions, and make data-driven decisions not only faster than ever before but also way easier. This session will dive into real-world applications, revealing how the tool enhances operational efficiency, democratizes data access, and empowers businesses to stay ahead in competitive markets. Learn how organizations are transforming their workflows, reducing reliance on technical teams, and fostering a culture of rapid, intelligent decision-making.

4:55 – 5:15pm ET

Session Title Coming Soon

Speaker Coming Soon

Abstract coming soon

5:15 – 5:45pm ET

Using LLM to improve email marketing
Preetham Kaukuntla - Staff Data Scientist at Glassdoor/Indeed
Personalization in notifications has traditionally focused on surface-level rules, but at scale, these approaches fail to capture the diversity of user intent and inbox behavior. In this talk, Preetham Reddy Kaukuntla presents how Glassdoor redesigned its email and push-notification ecosystem using NLP- and time-series–driven machine-learning models. The system integrates transformer-based subject-line generation, LSTM and Prophet send-time prediction, and uplift modeling to optimize both what users receive and when they receive it. Preetham walks through the architecture, feature engineering, experimentation strategy, and challenges of deploying models that power over 32 million daily messages. Attendees will learn how combining personalized content with personalized timing produces compounding engagement gains, including double-digit open-rate lifts and reactivation of dormant users. The session offers practical lessons on model evaluation, long-term cohort impact, and building an experimentation culture that reliably translates personalization into measurable business outcomes.

5:45 – 5:55pm ET

Closing Remarks

6:00 – 8:00pm ET

Networking Reception