2026 AI Symposium on Design and Governance
As AI reshapes the world, business and policy leaders face high-stakes decisions. The AI Symposium at the Robert H. Smith School of Business gathers top thought leaders building real-world AI solutions for a day of insightful talks, discussions and networking.
The third annual AI Symposium on Design and Governance features firsthand insights from business leaders who share the opportunities, challenges and strategies in harnessing AI’s full potential.
Wednesday, April 8, 2026
12 to 5 p.m.
Samuel Riggs Alumni Center
Smith faculty, staff and students are asked to register using the link included in their email invitation.
Who Should Attend?
This symposium is for leaders, innovators and professionals asking:
- What are the most pressing issues in AI, and what do they mean for us?
- How do I stay ahead in an evolving AI landscape?
- How are leading organizations using AI today?
- What role does AI design and governance have in measurable success?
- Where can I connect with other professionals building the future of AI?
If you’re looking to engage in meaningful conversations and understand AI’s real-world impact, this event is for you.
2026 Featured Speakers
Bhargav Patel
Physician, Brown University Health
Former Chief Medical Officer, Sully.ai
Dr. Bhargav Patel is a physician leader, entrepreneur and medical AI researcher shaping the future of health care at the intersection of medicine, data science and technology. Board-certified by the American Board of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, he brings clinical expertise, systems thinking and executive leadership to health care innovation. His research advances adaptive clinical AI and explores relationships among neurodevelopmental stress, early aging-related biomarkers, ADHD, sleep and PTSD, work that informs his upcoming books, Trauma Transformed: Your Guide to PTSD, Resilience and Post-Traumatic Growth and The Future of AI in Health Care. As former medical director and chief medical officer at Sully.ai, he led the development of clinician support tools used across millions of patient visits and co-led the company’s health care AI research team. He studied at Brown University, the Medical College of Georgia and Vanderbilt University and earned an MBA from the University of Arizona. He advises startups and health systems on ethical AI integration and digital transformation, championing a vision in which AI and compassion elevate the practice of medicine.
Manon Revel
Senior Research Scientist, Google DeepMind
Manon Revel is a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind, where she builds mathematical and computational foundations to study human and AI interactions, bridging rigorous theory with empirical and experimental methods. Before joining DeepMind, she was a postdoctoral research scientist at Meta FAIR and a postdoctoral fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, where she led research on participatory processes in AI-mediated systems. She holds a Ph.D. in social and engineering systems and statistics from MIT, where she developed probabilistic frameworks for multi-agent decision-making and led the first laboratory studies on liquid democracy. A former fellow in political philosophy at Harvard Kennedy School, she has taught at MIT and the University of Notre Dame and worked at Palantir, the Responsible AI Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Bell Labs.
Philip Su ’98
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Superphonic
Former Seattle Site Lead, OpenAI
Philip graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1998 with bachelor’s degrees in computer science and neurophysiology. He then worked at Microsoft for 12 years across multiple teams as a developer and product unit manager. In 2010, he joined Facebook, where he founded and led its London engineering office as site director. In 2018, he joined Madrona Venture Group as an entrepreneur in residence and founded Audere, a global health nonprofit funded by the Gates Foundation, serving as its CEO until 2021. Philip joined OpenAI in 2023, where he led the team building ChatGPT for Windows and managed the backend service handling files used or produced during inference. He currently builds Superphonic, a podcast player for iOS, and lives in Seattle.
Marina Tavares
Senior Economist, International Monetary Fund
Marina M. Tavares is a senior economist in the Structural and Climate Policies Division of the International Monetary Fund’s Research Department. Her work sits at the intersection of AI adoption and labor markets, focusing on how countries can capture productivity gains while supporting workers. She led two IMF staff discussion notes — Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work and Bridging Skill Gaps for the Future: New Jobs Creation in the AI Age — and the development of the IMF’s AI Preparedness Index, a cross-country framework to assess readiness for AI adoption. Previously, she led a working group on macroeconomic policy and inequality under the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office–IMF collaboration. Before joining the fund, she was an assistant professor at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota.
Agenda
| 11:45 a.m. | Doors open |
| Noon-1 p.m. | Registration and lunch |
| 12:45 p.m. | Welcome and Opening Remarks Balaji Padmanabhan, Center for AI in Business |
| 1-1:30 p.m. | The Impact of AI on Software’s Future with Philip Su |
| 1:35-2:05 p.m. | AI Big Ideas with Manon Revel |
| 2:05-2:30 p.m. | Intermission |
| 2:30-3 p.m. | AI and the Future of Work with Marina Tavares |
| 3:05-3:35 p.m. | AI and the Healthcare Transformation with Bhargav Patel |
| 3:35-4:30 p.m. | Big Questions in AI Panel |
| 4:30-5 p.m. | Reception and closing remarks Balaji Padmanabhan, Center for AI in Business |
All In On AI
Smith is going all in on AI. Our faculty members are among the best in the business, and their cutting-edge research has been making an impact across industries—from accounting to baseball—for years.
Past Events
Learn more about our previous symposium events and discover how Smith is building upon its AI thought leadership.