Inaugural AI Summit Showcases Interdisciplinary Innovations Today

• Sami Haddadin, Director of the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence, and Vice President for Research at MBZUAI, to deliver keynote address
• Event to highlight AI projects advancing cancer care, brain science, robotics, climate work, business, and energy across Columbia’s schools

March 4, 2025 (New York, New York) – Columbia University will today present its inaugural AI Summit, which will convene top leaders in AI research and application from across the University’s schools and academic disciplines to share insights on AI’s evolving role in research, industry, and society. The daylong event will feature distinguished speakers at the forefront of their fields from across Columbia’s world-renowned schools, from arts to journalism to engineering to the biomedical sciences, and more. 

"Columbia University isn’t just advancing AI—we’re shaping how it serves society, tackling challenges from climate to healthcare,” said Garud Iyengar, Avanessians Director of the Columbia Data Science Institute. “The AI Summit highlights AI’s wide-ranging impact, from health care to policy to creative fields. With world-renowned faculty spanning such a broad spectrum of fields, Columbia is uniquely positioned to integrate AI across disciplines in ways few institutions can.”

The first-ever Columbia AI Summit is a flagship event from Columbia AI, a university-wide initiative led by Columbia’s Data Science Institute, which works to bring AI and data science to every field, academic discipline, and domain area, and to facilitate interdisciplinary partnerships that leverage AI to address pressing societal challenges.

“As a leading research university that covers nearly every discipline and sector, Columbia is a microcosm of the world in which we live and the myriad ways by which AI discoveries can emerge and converge,” said Jeannette Wing, Executive Vice President for Research. “The Columbia AI Summit promises necessary, thoughtful and inspiring conversations that explore profound questions about AI’s place in our society." 

“Columbia’s AI efforts effectively combine the University’s deep expertise in the science of AI with its leadership across medicine, law, communications, and business to create possibility and momentum unlike anywhere else in the world,” said Shih-Fu Chang, Dean of Columbia Engineering. “The AI Summit provides an opportunity to see this process in action.”

Keynote speaker Sami Haddadin, Director of the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence and Vice President for Research at MBZUAI, will give a talk on embodied AI – or robotics – artificial intelligence that can interact with the physical world and the implications for human potential. 

The event, held across Columbia’s Morningside, Manhattanville, and Irving Medical Center campuses will feature presentations, panels, workshops and demos from Columbia’s leading AI experts in fields like art, journalism, the physical sciences, and more. Speaker Session topics include “New Frontiers in AI,” “Decoding the Mind: From the Brain to Mental Health,” “AI for Cancer Care: From Cells to Systems,” and “Will Machines Have Free Will? Shaping the Future of AI.” 

In addition to the cross-disciplinary speaker sessions, the Summit will also offer a rich array of interactive workshops presented by individual schools to explore AI’s impact on specific domains and disciplines.