AI Rising 2026

About AI Rising 2026

Ohio State's Student Union at 2400 Olentangy River Road in Columbus hosts AI Rising 2026, an in-person event run by AI Rising on Monday, October 19 and Tuesday, October 20, 2026. Pitched at intermediate to advanced attendees, it covers AI Applications, Business Transformations, AI Innovations, Governance and Risk Management, and Practical AI Solutions.

Expect 44 sessions and 21 listed speakers, among them Melanie Kolp (SVP, Chief Data Officer and Chief Technology Officer, Nationwide), Susan Carroll-Boser (Chief Information Officer, White Castle) and Nada Aried (EVP and Chief Digital Technology Officer, Safelite). Titles range from who owns the context an AI runs on to designing where the human belongs in a workflow.

Location

2400 Olentangy River Road, Columbus, Ohio, 43210, United States

Venue: The Ohio State University Student Union

Agenda

Monday, October 19

• 12:00–12:45 · Registration
• 12:45–13:00 · Kick off
• 13:00–15:00 · The Reluctant Expert: AI Crash Course for Unwanted Expertise — Mary Kaufmann
• 13:00–15:00 · Who Owns the Context Your AI Runs On? — Dave Donaldson
• 13:00–15:00 · Build Smarter: Deploying Production-Ready AI Agents on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore — Dhiraj Mahapatro
• 15:00–16:00 · LUNCH
• 16:00–18:00 · From Architecture to Terraform: Letting AI Do the Boring Parts — Chad Green
• 16:00–18:00 · Think Clearly With AI: How to Defend Your Thinking When You Didn't Do It Alone — Pav Lertjitbanjong
• 16:00–18:00 · Bring One Workflow: Designing Where the Human Belongs — JP Graulty
• 18:00–18:15 · ☕Break
• 18:15–20:15 · Hands-On with the Athanor Method — Charles Fry
• 18:15–20:15 · Operational AI Starts With People: A Hands-On Workshop — Rob Buchwald

Tuesday, October 20

• 12:00–12:45 · Registration
• 12:45–13:00 · Housekeeping Remarks
• 13:00–13:45 · Opening Keynote - AI Rising. For Keeps. The Next Five Years Belong to Operational AI — Ryan Frederick
• 13:45–14:10 · Break!
• 14:10–15:00 · Human Creativity in the Age of AI — Eric Coleman
• 14:10–15:00 · The Prompt That Changed Your Mind — Vandana Rajagopal
• 14:10–15:00 · AI For Audience Segmentation and Persona Development — Bill Balderaz
• 14:10–15:00 · AI-Driven Predictive Health Intelligence for Personalized and Preventive Care — Balasubramanian Rengasamy
• 14:10–15:00 · From Overhead to Output: How We Rebuilt a 132-Person Agency Around AI — Parth Pandya
• 14:10–15:00 · From Architecture to Terraform: Letting AI Do the Boring Parts — Chad Green
• 15:00–15:10 · Break!
• 15:10–16:00 · EUREKA! Turning AI Uncertainty into Action — Rob Buchwald
• 15:10–16:00 · The Human Advantage: Making Better QA Decisions with AI in the Loop — Krishna Bandarupalli
• 15:10–16:00 · Trust is Built After the Click — Emily Beal
• 15:10–16:00 · Helping the Unemployed Through AI Solutions — Archanna Manoharan
• 15:10–16:00 · Smart Contract AI Integration: The Double-Edged Sword of Autonomous On-Chain Agents — Naga Sujitha Vummaneni
• 16:00–17:05 · Lunch!
• 17:05–17:55 · Building and scaling AI-powered solutions that transform how large-scale setups operate — Kritika Sharma
• 17:05–17:55 · From Chatbot to Coworker: What It Takes to Make AI Actually Useful — Christopher Slee
• 17:05–17:55 · Implementing Human-in-the-loop controls in Agentic architectures on AWS — Dhiraj Mahapatro
• 17:05–17:55 · The Social Impact of AI — Eric Richardson
• 17:05–17:55 · Is This How We Want to Spend It? Building the wrong thing, faster — Liz Rettig
• 17:55–18:10 · Break!
• 18:10–19:00 · The Hidden Operating System: What’s Actually Deciding Whether Your AI Investments Succeed or Fail — Mike Alvarez
• 18:10–19:00 · From Prompt Engineering to Context Engineering — Dave Donaldson
• 18:10–19:00 · Al 101 - Understanding the Language of Deep Learning — Daneyand Singley
• 18:10–19:00 · The Human Side of AI: Why Emotional Safety Drives Adoption — Paulina Brahm
• 18:10–19:00 · From Vendor Cost Crisis to AI-Native Delivery: Lessons from a Multi-Million-Dollar API Migration — Tim Garvin
• 19:00–19:15 · Break!
• 19:15–20:00 · Closing Keynote
• 20:00–20:15 · Housekeeping Remarks
• 20:15–22:15 · After Party!

Speakers

• Ryan Frederick
  Principal, Transform Labs
• Melanie Kolp
  SVP, Chief Data Officer and Chief Technology Officer, Nationwide
• Susan Carroll-Boser
  Chief Information Officer, White Castle
• Nada Aried
  EVP and Chief Digital Technology Officer, Safelite
• Mike Alvarez
  Co-Founder & CTO, NeuPath.ai & NeuZeit
• Eric Richardson
  Senior Enterprise Architect, Waters Corporation
• Dhiraj Mahapatro
  Principal Specialist Solutions Architect - Agentic AI, Amazon Web Services
• Kritika Sharma
  Sr. Data Scientist, Walmart
• Daneyand Singley
  Technical Leader, IBM
• Naga Sujitha Vummaneni
  Sr. Security Engineer, Ripple
• Usha Jammula
  Staff Software Engineer, Ripple
• Krishna Bandarupalli
  QA Team Lead, Encova Insurance
• Archanna Manoharan
  Chief Architect, Ohio Department of Job & Family Services
• Vandana Rajagopal
  Agility Consultant, Kforce
• Carina Silfverduk
  Agile Coach, CAS
• Dave Donaldson
  Head of Innovation, LiminalArc
• Parth Pandya
  KrishaWeb
• Christopher Slee
  CTO & AI Strategist, LainaHealth & Transform Labs
• Rob Buchwald
  Akron Innovations
• Paulina Brahm
  Physician
• Liz Rettig
  Kanban Trainer & Agile Coach, Lil Agile Monster, LCC

Sponsors

• Transform Labs
• Big Kitty Labs
• Augustwenty
• Futurety
• NeuZeit

Social

• linkedin

AI Rising 2026 FAQ