Flower City AI

Speakers/Performers

Max Irwin

Keynote

Max is the founder of MAX.IO LLC, an AI Knowledge Discovery business, and the organizer of Flower City AI. As Chief Everything Officer, he builds and sells AI products to businesses that need predictable and scalable solutions. We develop state of the art model serving inference software, train models, and help companies incorporate AI in their customer facing products.

Masum Hasan

SAPIEN

Masum is a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Rochester and Co-founder of SAPIEN Coach. He has been working on Natural Language Processing and Langauge Models for more than 5 years. Currently, he and his team are building a general-purpose virtual-human API backed by Large Language Models that aims to redefine customer service, education, and entertainment.

L. è D

Music

L. é D is a multi-talented vocalist, and rapper, guitar player and dancer. She dubs herself a creative entrepreneur. She was born in Bansoh, Cameroon. With the rise of AI and language model based chatbots she found that she could use artificial intelligence to bridge the resource gap between independent artists like her self, and multi million dollar creatives.

Chris Cooley

Prompting Positivity

Chris Cooley, the visionary CEO of Cooley Comics, LLC, is a renowned visual storyteller, artist, and community builder. With a passion for AI technology and a keen eye for creative solutions, he stands as an investor and enthusiast in the field. Chris empowers individuals to embrace their inner strengths by helping them explore their truths, promoting positivity, and fostering mindfulness in the present moment.

Jeff McCormack

Iryss

Jeff embarked on his entrepreneurial journey in 2021, backed by a rich background in financial services and technology. Mid-career Jeff transitioned from managing billion-dollar portfolios as a buy-side healthcare equity analyst to steering innovative AI projects. Jeff initially led the product team at an AI-powered intellectual property search engine, demonstrating his ability to communicate from the lab to the C-suite. He was then recruited to lead product development on the development of a revolutionary universal operating system for industrial robots.

Landon Gray

Building an AI Developer Community

Landon Gray is an empathy-driven problem solver and software consultant working at Test Double, a Software Consultancy. In his free time, Landon pursues learning about and implementing AI use cases in the Ruby programming language. Landon enjoys bringing together people and recently founded a community called Ruby AI, which has a following of almost 300 engineers and technologists interested in building AI applications in Ruby.

Mark Weber

Business and Innovation

An expert in international business, Weber was an executive for two corporations selling lead-edge technology around the world. He has earned multiple honors for student mentoring at Nazareth University. Weber co-developed and is the director of the Business, Artificial Intelligence, and Innovation (B.S.) major. He received his received his bachelor's degree in marketing and advertising from Ohio University and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Dayton.

Abbas Rizvi

Tempus

Abbas is passionate about leveraging real-world data in oncology to drive advancements in precision medicine. Expert in multimodal datasets analysis, including genomics, clinical information, and medical imaging. Skilled in implementing machine learning techniques to extract valuable insights.

Paul Yacci

Tympana

Paul Yacci is Co-founder and CTO of DataCicada. He has over 15 years of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Software Development and Data Analytics. He has served as the leading developer and visionary for Tympana. He has successfully deployed software for the Federal Government while working as a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton. Paul also served as Director of Data Science at ITT Gould's Pumps and is Adjunct Faculty at RIT in the college of computing. He is a co-author of the book, “Field Guide to Data Science,” and several research papers. He holds Masters Degrees in Computer Science (George Mason University) and Bioinformatics (Rochester Institute of Technology) and a Bachelors in Biotechnology from RIT.

Allison Yacci

Tympana

Allison Yacci is Co-founder and CEO of DataCicada. She is a serial entrepreneur that has run 5 prior companies. Allison is hands on with all aspects of DataCicada and is responsible for the management of business operations at DataCicada. She has a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degree with dual concentrations in Finance and Entrepreneurship and a Bachelors of Science degree in Biotechnology from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Evan Dawson

Emcee

Our Emcee for the day - Evan Dawson is the host of "Connections with Evan Dawson." He joined WXXI in January 2014 after working at 13WHAM-TV, where he served as morning news anchor. He was hired as a reporter for 13WHAM-TV in 2003 before being promoted to anchor in 2007.

Parking

The Little Theatre has a free parking lot off of Winthrop Street, directly behind the historic Theatre 1.

There is additional free parking further down Winthrop Street, in the lot between RDG and Redd Rochester.

On-street parking (paid) is available nearby on Winthrop Street, East Ave, Union Street, Pitkin Street, and Charlotte Street, to name a few.

Additionally, the East End Garage (paid) is just a short walk from the Theatre.

Registration 8AM-9AM	Coffee and Networking Meet in the lobby of Theater #1, get registered, enjoy some coffee, and meet your fellow attendees.
Morning 9AM-9:40AM	Keynote: Flower City AI Max Irwin & Evan Dawson
9:45AM-10:20AM	SAPIEN Chat Masum Hasan We are building a platform of virtual humans backed by state-of-the-art Large Language Models and Com... We are building a platform of virtual humans backed by state-of-the-art Large Language Models and Computer Vision systems, that will allow you to have highly realistic interactions with virtual humans in a way that has never been possible before.
	15 minute break
10:40AM-11:15AM	Tympana for No-Code Data-Centric AI Paul Yacci & Allison Yacci Tympana, a powerful web-based platform that brings Machine Learning tools to the hands of the domain ... Tympana, a powerful web-based platform that brings Machine Learning tools to the hands of the domain experts. Tympana assists scientists in building high quality Machine Learning models for their complex data, allowing them to scale their expertise and serving as a multiplier in efforts. Designed to be user friendly, Tympana requires no programming or coding skills on the part of the user. Tympana integrates active learning, explainable AI, and generative AI to create robust models and datasets that can be exported for scientific workflows. Tympana currently has proof-of-concept use cases, in Protein Sequences, Image Object Detection and Sensor Signal detection. These use cases serve to demonstrate the capabilities of the Tympana platform. The active learning strategies utilized by Tympana have demonstrated a reduction in data volume requirements in initial experiments that will save scientists time in achieving comparable results. While it can be easy to instruct users at diverse education levels how to recognize a specific object within an image, it requires years of training to properly evaluate a sensor reading from a DNA sequencer, an X-ray, CT scan, or a particle accelerator. These domains require an inherent body of knowledge and experience that does not lend itself to annotation by the general public. Tympana enables scientists to comb through large volumes of data and teach the computer what features are important, putting scientists in the driver seat of their own analysis.
11:20AM-11:55AM	Building an AI Community with Ruby Landon Gray Have you ever considered building a machine learning model in Ruby? It may surprise you to learn that... Have you ever considered building a machine learning model in Ruby? It may surprise you to learn that you can train, build, and deploy ML models in Ruby. But what are the benefits of using Ruby over other languages? In this talk, we'll walk through the process of building a simple ML model in Ruby that predicts the weather, and we will explore some of the various tools and libraries used.
Lunch 12PM-1PM	Lunch will be provided Along with more networking!
Afternoon 1:05PM-1:40PM	Racing Towards Responsibility: Why AI Developers Must Lead on Ethics Mark Weber As AI rapidly advances, developers must swiftly implement ethical frameworks, rather than wait for go... As AI rapidly advances, developers must swiftly implement ethical frameworks, rather than wait for government regulation. This talk will provide examples of major tech companies facing backlash over AI's failures, from perpetuating historical biases that harm marginalized groups to enabling Deep Fakes that threaten stability. Growing concern exists that complex black-box algorithms have become difficult for even creators to control. While long-term solutions require industry, government, and society coordination, developers have tools today to mitigate harm. Internally, companies need personnel to steer teams toward ethical objectives. Externally, the industry should adopt corporate social responsibility policies. The message is clear: AI developers must lead on ethics before public trust is irreparably damaged.
1:45PM-2:20PM	Revolutionizing Healthcare Spending: A Predictive Approach to the Patient Journey Jeffrey McCormack Iryss is building a platform to automate how patients plan, save, and pay for healthcare, by guiding ... Iryss is building a platform to automate how patients plan, save, and pay for healthcare, by guiding them to cost-saving opportunities and tailoring payment strategies to ensure financial security. Leveraging his professional and personal experience, Jeff is leading a team that is passionate about making an impact on patients' lives. Iryss is headquartered in Rochester, NY.
	15 minute break
2:40PM-3:15PM	Prompting Positivity Chris Cooley Chris will discuss an innovative approach at the intersection of AI technology and creative storytell... Chris will discuss an innovative approach at the intersection of AI technology and creative storytelling. He will highlight a unique initiative to craft comic books inspired by real people and their life experiences. The talk will showcase how the company empowers individuals to confront their fears and transform vulnerabilities into strengths using AI tools. By exploring these compelling stories, the presentation will illustrate the transformative potential of creative cultures and demonstrate how AI-driven creativity can be harnessed to uplift individuals and communities.
3:20PM-3:55PM	AI in Cancer Care: Enhancing Precision Medicine Abbas Rizvi Join Abbas in exploring AI's transformative impact on precision medicine in oncology. Discover how in... Join Abbas in exploring AI's transformative impact on precision medicine in oncology. Discover how integrating AI with real-world data is revolutionizing cancer care. This talk will highlight AI's role in genetic sequencing, digital pathology, and translational science, enhancing personalized treatment and accelerating biopharmaceutical development. Additionally, we'll discuss the wider industry's innovative contributions to this field.
	10 minute break
4:10PM-4:45PM	Bridging the gap with Music and AI L. è D L. é D is a multi-talented vocalist, and rapper, guitar player and dancer. She dubs herself a creativ... L. é D is a multi-talented vocalist, and rapper, guitar player and dancer. She dubs herself a creative entrepreneur. She was born in Bansoh, Cameroon. At the age of 6 her family moved to the United States and she was raised in PG County MD where she lived until she moved to Rochester In 2021 in search of identity and self she quickly realized she’d found home. In the past 2 years that she has been here she has dedicated herself to contributing to and creating safe spaces for people to connect and be vulnerable, to have hard conversations and find community, to be and to become. She has partnered with institutions like Community justice initiative, Avenue Blackbox theater and Beamhouse nation to spread a message of inclusion, acceptance and self empowerment. She is dedicated to creating and fostering more safe spaces for people to be their truest and freest self in hopes of giving back to the city where she found her truest and freest self. With the rise of AI and language model based chatbots she found that she could use artificial intelligence to bridge the resource gap between independent artists like her self, and multi million dollar creatives.
4:50PM-5:00PM	Closing Remarks Max Irwin
Evening 5PM-7PM	After Party Sponsored by StartupGrind Fattey Beer Company, 60 Adventure Pl, Rochester, NY 14607