With the aim of cultivating global partnerships and delivering a paradigm shift in automated decision making at massive scales, the AI4OPT Institute, driven by societal challenges in energy, logistics and supply chains, resilience and sustainability, and circuit design and control, held a special half-day event to showcase work with core industrial partners and beyond during the AI4OPT TechFest held at Georgia Tech's Dalney Building.

Opening the inaugural event, Pascal Van Hentenryck, Director of AI4OPT welcomed participants, the Institutes core industrial partners and Georgia Tech President, Ángel Cabrera who discussed the need for engineers and data scientist. Cabrera expressed his commitment to see more inclusive, robust, and skilled students contribute to STEM studies.

“We need smart people finding solutions to these complex problems – that’s where you come in,” said Cabrera. “We need to make sure we use the tools we develop, and the things Pascal teaches to try and figure out how to effectively optimize food, water and energy resources as best as we possibly can.”

Tech Fest featured speakers from Bank of America, Kinaxis, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Intel, Google AI and UPS.