Schedule

Conference Schedule

The AI in Health Conference features thematic tracks with invited speakers, technical talks, poster presentations, and networking receptions on September 15-16. There are also add-on workshops available on September 17. Click the dropdowns below to view the full schedule for each day.

View technical talk details | View poster session details

Track Key:
Welcome / Networking Ethical, Legal & Social Impact Medical Robotics Interpretable AI in Health AI for Disease Genomics Technical Talks Industry Perspective

Tuesday, September 15

Time Event Location
8:00 – 8:30am Check-In & Breakfast Lobby/Exhibit Hall
8:30 – 8:45am Welcome | Day 1
Luay Nakhleh
Rice University
Lydia E. Kavraki
Ken Kennedy Institute, Rice University		 Auditorium
8:45 – 9:30am In Search of the Regulatory 'Sweet Spot': Regulating (Medical) AI in the European Union
Timo Minssen
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
View talk abstract here		 Auditorium
9:30 – 10:00am Coffee Break Exhibit Hall
10:00 – 10:45am Towards Precision Autism Through Genome-Scale AI
Gerald Quon
The University of California, Davis		 Auditorium
10:45 – 11:30am From Cells to Tissues: Context-Aware AI for Spatial and Single Cell Disease Genomics
Xiuwei Zhang
Georgia Tech		 Auditorium
10:00am – 12:00pm

Technical Talk: Multimodal Medical AI

10:00am - GLR-MM: Graph-Based Global-Local Reconstruction for Robust Multimodal Representation Learning under Missing Modalities | Surbhi Sharma (Houston Methodist Research Institute)

10:20am - MedMIX: Modality-Internal Expert Fusion for Multimodal Medical Diagnosis | Seungik Cho (Rice University)

10:40am - RareCollab: An LLM-Powered Framework for Multimodal Reasoning in Mendelian Disease Diagnosis | Guantong Qi (Baylor College of Medicine)

11:00am - The Prophetic Language of Sleep: A Multimodal Foundation Model for Disease Prediction | Jatin Tekchandani (Intellimedics International)

11:20am - World Models in Healthcare AI: Anticipating the Risks of Anticipatory AI | Kristin Kostick-Quenet (Baylor College of Medicine)

11:40am - Constraint-Guided Neuro-Symbolic Learning for Multi-Modal Sleep Phenotyping in Adolescent Neurodevelopmental Disorders | Abiola Saka (University of Bristol)

 Room 280
11:30am – 1:00pm Lunch Exhibit Hall
1:00 – 1:45pm When More Isn’t Better: A Lesson from Rethinking Scale in Multimodal Cell Foundation Models
Lorin Crawford
Microsoft Research		 Auditorium
1:45 – 2:30pm The New Microscopes? Foundation Models as Instruments of Biological Discovery
Rohit Singh
Duke University
View talk abstract here		 Auditorium
1:00 – 2:20pm

Technical Talks: Clinical Systems and Governance

1:00pm - NEPHPROS: Architecture and Design of an Integrated AI-Powered Research Operating System for Nephrology Laboratories | Baiyee-Ndang Agbor-Baiyee (Manyu Tech LLC; Howard University)

1:20pm - PrecisionKB Agent: A Human-in-the-Loop Agentic AI System for Scalable Knowledge Curation and Molecular Interpretation in Precision Oncology | Jia Zeng (The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center)

1:40pm - Verifiable Private Clinical Hypothesis Testing over Masked Patient Embeddings | Olcay Kursun (Sam Houston State University)

2:00pm - From RAG to GRAF: A Governance-Centric Framework for Clinical AI with Text2SQL Validation | Abu Shufean (The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center)

 Room 280
2:30 – 3:00pm Afternoon Break Exhibit Hall
3:00 – 3:45pm

Industry Perspective Panel
Rafael Rosengarten (Moderator), Genialis
Homer Quintana, Houston Methodist
Leslie Schatz, UpToDate
Kent Snider, NVIDIA
Suzanne Tomlinson-Mathis, Texas A&M Health Science Center; GCC REACH
Todd Treangen, Rice University; Train Genomics

 Auditorium
3:45 – 4:30pm Operating Principles for Humanistic Health AI
Kirsten Ostherr
Rice University		 Auditorium
4:30 – 6:00pm Networking Reception Exhibit Hall

Wednesday, September 16

Time Event Location
8:00 – 8:30am Check-In & Breakfast Lobby/Exhibit Hall
8:30 – 8:45am Welcome | Day 2
David V. Pynadath
Ken Kennedy Institute, Rice University		 Auditorium
8:45 – 9:30am Ethics in the Social Robotics Lab: What Can Philosophers Learn from Design Engineers?
Nancy Berlinger
The Hastings Center		 Auditorium
9:30 – 10:00am Coffee Break Exhibit Hall
10:00 – 10:45am

AI for Surgery: Novelty, Niche, or Necessity?
Gregory D. Hager

Johns Hopkins University
View talk abstract here		 Auditorium
10:45 – 11:30am Surgineering Using Intelligent and Flexible Robotic Systems
Farshid Alambeigi
Houston Methodist Research Institute; Rice University		 Auditorium
10:00am – 12:00pm

Technical Talks: Molecular and Cellular AI

10:00am - A Foundation Model for Spatial Proteomics | Andrew Song (The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center; Rice University)

10:20am - Vision-Based AI Modeling of Spatial Genomic Evidence for Interpretable Copy Number Variant Pathogenicity Prediction | Ilia Buralkin (Baylor College of Medicine)

10:40am - Functional Embedding of Multiple Cross-Species Protein Interaction Networks for Conserved Pathway Identification | Cole McGuire (Rice University)

11:00am - AI‑Spatial Assistant (AISA): An Agentic AI Framework for Automated Pathology Data Review and Spatial–Molecular Functional Niche Discovery in Translational Cancer Science | Qing Ye (The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center)

11:20am - Reinforcement Learning Enables Single-Cell Foundation Models to Learn Multistep Perturbation Programs | Kai-Li Chang (Baylor College of Medicine)

11:40am - Human-in-the-Loop AI for Single Vesicle Cryo-EM Analysis: A New Quantitative Axis for Diagnostics and Therapeutic Design | Kshipra Kapoor (Seek Diagnostics Inc.)

 Room 280
11:30am – 1:30pm Lunch & Poster Session Exhibit Hall
12:30 – 1:30pm

Technical Talks: Neurological Clinical Analytics

12:30pm - Predicting Falls in Elderly Patients Through Machine Learning Analysis of Real-World Electronic Health Records | Elizaveta Naydanova (The University of Texas Medical Branch)

12:50pm - Using an Honest Random Forest to Assess the Prevalence of Cardiovascular Conditions after Traumatic Brain Injury and Identify Potential Heterogeneity Among Subgroups | Ellen Taylor (Southern Methodist University; The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center)

1:10pm - Reduced Neural Predictability in Ventral Striatum After DBS is Associated with OCD Symptom Relief and Increased Reward Sensitivity | Rick Hanish (Rice University)

 Room 280
1:30 – 2:15pm No Aggregation Without Representation
Andrea Downing
The Light Collective		 Auditorium
2:15 – 2:20pm Awards Auditorium
2:20 – 3:00pm Closing Social Lobby

Workshop Schedules

Attendees can register for add-on workshops separately or in combination with the main conference. All workshops will take place at the BRC venue on Thursday, September 17. Workshops are an additional price, see each workshop for details.

The Present and Future of AI in Multi-Modal Clinical Pathology

Thursday, September 17, 2026 | BRC Auditorium
8:30AM - 2:00PM

AI is rapidly advancing the field of computational pathology, enabling new ways to extract quantitative and biologically meaningful information from digitized tissue images. This symposium will highlight recent developments across the field and at MD Anderson, including advances in machine learning for diagnosis, prognosis, and biomarker discovery, as well as emerging approaches for integrating histopathology with molecular and clinical data. We will also discuss the growing role of foundation models and agentic AI as part of a broader ecosystem of methods that support scalable representation learning and more flexible analytical workflows. Together, these innovations are reshaping computational pathology, driving new insights into disease biology, and accelerating progress toward precision medicine.

Registration: $100 regular, $50 student — Register here

Schedule:
8:30 - 9:00 AM — Check-In & Breakfast

9:00 - 9:10 AM — Opening Remarks (Andrew Song)

9:10 - 9:30 AM — IDSO Overview (David Jaffray & Caroline Chung)

9:30 - 10:15 AM — Panel Discussion: Clinical development for AI and pathology (Moderated by Andrew Sohn)

  • Faisal Mahmood (Harvard Medical School)
  • Caroline Chung & David Jaffray (UT MD Anderson IDSO)
  • Tin-Yun Tang (Investigational Cancer Therapeutics)
  • J. Bryan (Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory)

10:15 - 10:45 AM — SEQUOIA Session: AI for pathology and clinical deployment studies at MD Anderson (Moderated by Andrew Sohn)

10:45 - 11:15 AM — Break & Networking

11:15 AM - 12:00 PM — Keynote Presentation by Dr. Faisal Mahmood, Harvard Medical School: Agentic Multi-Modal Computational Pathology (Moderated by Andrew Song)

12:00 - 12:35 PM — Lunch

12:35 - 1:50 PM — Invited Speaker Sessions (Moderated by Andrew Song)

  • Sangyeon (Fred) Cho (Rice University)
  • Kristy Brock (UT MD Anderson)
  • Nick Navin (UT MD Anderson)

1:50 - 2:00 PM — Closing Remarks

Organizer: Institute for Data Science in Oncology (IDSO)

From BF16 to FP8 and Beyond: Accelerating AI Model Training with NVIDIA

Thursday, September 17, 2026 | BRC Room 280
8:30AM - 11:00AM
Limited to 90 Participants

As AI models grow in size and complexity, reduced-precision computing is increasingly important for improving training performance and efficiency. This workshop will explore how NVIDIA Tensor Cores, Transformer Engine, and the NeMo framework enable mixed and reduced-precision training with BF16, FP8, and emerging lower-precision formats. Participants will learn practical approaches for selecting precision formats, balancing performance and model quality, and applying these techniques to Transformer and generative AI workloads to improve training throughput and GPU efficiency.

Schedule:
8:30 - 9:00 AM — Check-In & Breakfast
9:00 - 11:00 AM — Hands-On Workshop presented by Greg Zynda (NVIDIA)

Registration: $75 regular/student — Register here

Organizer: NVIDIA

Microbes and Microbiomes in Health

Thursday, September 17, 2026 | BRC Room 280
12:00PM - 5:30PM
Limited to 90 Participants

​Join us for a half-day workshop titled “Microbes and Microbiomes in Health”. The workshop will feature both computational and biological perspectives for studying microbes and microbiomes relevant to human health. This workshop will bring together experts in computational biology, microbiology, and microbiome science to discuss cutting-edge approaches for studying microbial communities and their impact on health.

Registration: $75 regular, $50 student — Register here

Schedule:
12:00 - 1:00 PM — Check-In & Lunch

1:00 - 1:30 PM — Keynote presentation by Erik Wright, Baylor College of Medicine

1:30 - 2:00 PM — Keynote presentation by Diana Proctor, UTHealth Houston

2:00 - 2:10 PM — Break

2:10 - 3:30 PM — Invited Speaker Sessions

  • 2:10 - 2:30 PM — Invited Talk #1 TBD
  • 2:30 - 2:50 PM — Leonardo Cruz-Pineda, Houston Methodist Research Institute
  • 2:50 - 3:10 PM — Rossie Luo, Rice University
  • 3:10 - 3:30 PM — Nick Sapoval, Rice University

3:30 - 4:00 PM — Keynote presentation by Lauren Stadler, Rice University

4:00 - 5:30 PM — Reception

Organizer: Todd Treangen and AI2Health Research Cluster with the Ken Kennedy Institute

Details

September 15–17, 2026

In-Person
Conference + Workshops

Venue

BRC at Rice University

6500 Main Street

Houston, TX 77030

Social Media

LinkedIn · YouTube

#AIHealthConference

#AIHC26

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