The MIT Startup Exchange Lightning Talks and Startup Exhibit listed below are part of the full agenda for 2026 MIT Enterprise AI Forum - Scaling AI for Real-World Implementation and Impact.
Join MIT faculty, senior executives, and industry innovators for a forward‑looking forum exploring how artificial intelligence is redefining industrial operations and enabling enterprise‑scale transformation. This gathering will spotlight cutting‑edge Enterprise AI strategies, practical frameworks, and breakthrough applications across mission‑critical domains such as real-time digital twins, automated defect detection, and intelligent product lifecycle management.
Participants will gain an inside view into how MIT researchers and corporate leaders are collaborating to build scalable, reliable, and interpretable AI systems that elevate operational excellence and strengthen competitive advantage. Expect deep insights, real‑world case studies, and a clear vision of how AI is reshaping the future of industrial performance.
Program Coordinator, MIT Startup Exchange
Irina Gaziyeva joined the Startup Exchange team on June 21, 2022, as Program Coordinator reporting to Catarina Madeira and working closely with the whole Startup Exchange and other Corporate Relations teams. Irina comes to Corporate Relations from the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT where she worked 10 years as Administrative Assistant where she has supported four senior faculty members and their research groups (20-25 graduate students). Since 2018, Irina has acted as program coordinator, teaming-up with the program manager and program faculty lead for the MechE Alliance program. She has facilitated 45+ virtual seminars, workshops, and mentoring events in this informal role. Irina has also actively connected members of the MechE community to support student career development, mentorship, and networking opportunities with MIT alumni and industry. Before MIT, Irina held positions as Administrative Assistant and Member Representative at Brookline Dental and Tufts Health plan, respectively. Irina has also been a Community Organizer in Worcester, MA. Irina earned her B.A., Management (with Innovation & Entrepreneurship track) at Clark University in Worcester, and her M.S., Program and Project Management from Brandeis University in Waltham. She has received many awards at MIT for outstanding service, and she has extensive community volunteer work to her credit.
Dr. Stewart Jamieson is Head of Technology at Themis AI, where he leads the development of Capsa, a platform for measuring and managing risk in production AI systems. He oversees the company’s technical strategy across uncertainty quantification, anomaly detection, and decision safeguards, and is helping expand Capsa with a growing catalog of pre-wrapped models with built-in uncertainty quantification, alongside automated model onboarding and training workflows. In this role, Stewart works closely with enterprise customers to deploy AI that is reliable, transparent, and governable in high-stakes environments. His work spans the full AI lifecycle—from model validation and risk calibration to real-time monitoring and continuous improvement—enabling organizations to build safeguards around automated decisions and operate with greater confidence. Stewart earned his Ph.D. in Autonomous Systems from MIT, where his research focused on Bayesian modeling and risk-aware decision-making under uncertainty. He regularly presents to technical and executive audiences on trustworthy AI, production deployment, and AI governance.
Katie Trauth Taylor is CEO and Cofounder of Narratize AI, a product intelligence and innovation platform empowering teams to bring products and discoveries to market faster, smarter, and with greater impact by eliminating inefficiencies, aligning teams, and preserving institutional knowledge. Katie is a growth-focused entrepreneur executive with 10+ years experience inspiring teams to design and deliver magnetic products, memorable experiences, and groundbreaking impacts. She has led strategic innovation narratives and served as a senior content strategist within fast-growth tech startups and the Fortune 500, including Boeing, NASA, Hershey, Sunoco, AAA, IFF, Dupont, Edgewell, Cincinnati Children's, Argonne National Lab, Crossover Health, Parsley Health, Omada, Physera, US Dept of Veterans Affairs, Millennium Challenge Corporation, World Food Forum, and the United Nations. She believes that everyone can be an innovator--when empowered to share their bold ideas.
Bernardo Aceituno is Co-Founder and President of Stack AI, the Enterprise AI Transformation Platform enabling organizations to orchestrate AI agents that understand data and take action. He combines deep technical expertise in machine learning with proven operational leadership. Originally from Caracas, Venezuela, Bernardo’s passion for AI began through hands-on robotics projects at Universidad Simón Bolívar. He later earned his SM and PhD at MIT, where he conducted research in robotic manipulation at the MCube Lab, developing mathematical frameworks that enable robots to reason under uncertainty. He also interned at Meta’s Facebook AI Research, advancing machine learning systems for autonomous robotic manipulation. Before founding Stack AI, Bernardo co-founded Grupo Aktio, scaling a mobile payments and cryptocurrency POS platform across Latin America. He led a 20+ person B2B sales team, supported over 5,000 active users, and managed more than 200 contractors. A former leader in MIT’s graduate engineering community, Bernardo now builds AI tools for the very teams he once was part of—because, as he says, “We are the market.”
Dr. Rong is a Director of Corporate Relations at MIT. He currently supervises a group of ILP program directors who promote and manage the interactions and relationships between the research at MIT and companies worldwide to help them stay abreast of the latest developments in technology and business practices. Previously, Dr. Rong founded IKA, LLC. He has led corporate development and product innovation and provided strategic advice to companies in corporate strategy, IT leadership, digital transformation, AI, enterprise content management, and customer relationships. He held senior roles in Harte-Hanks and Vignette Corporation. He held an EU postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland where he started global collaborative research. Dr. Rong is on the board of multiple organizations, including the MIT Sloan Alumni Association of Boston from 2009 to 2012. He chaired MIT Sloan CIO Symposium from 2009-2011. He is a senior expert invited by international organizations. Dr. Rong holds an M.B.A. in global and innovation leadership from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a Ph.D in numerical computing from the University of Guelph in Canada.
President, AUO Display Plus America
Simon Nip serves as President of AUO Display Plus America, guiding the company’s strategic vision since its founding. He is instrumental in shaping the organization’s strategy, focusing on innovation, ecosystem partnerships, and growth driven by technology collaboration and acquisitions.
Simon’s career bridges high-tech leadership and financial services, giving him a unique perspective on business building and scaling. Since 2010, he has held senior executive roles at leading technology companies in Boston. Prior to entering the tech sector, Simon established his career in investment banking and asset management with major international firms. He later leveraged this experience as an entrepreneur, successfully starting and incubating multiple ventures across international markets.
Simon holds an MBA with High Honors from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Co-Founder and CTO, Maven AGI
Sami Shalabi is the Co-Founder and CTO of Maven AGI, where he is building enterprise-grade AI agents for customer experience. With more than three decades of leadership at Google, IBM, Lotus, and three startups, two of which he exited, Sami has built, scaled, and led high-performing organizations from zero to hundreds. At Google, he led, built and launched a from the ground rewrite of Google News and grew it into one of the world’s largest personalized products. Sami has created products spanning generative AI, news, healthcare, entertainment, social, and SaaS, and holds more than 55 patents. An MIT alumnus, inventor, mentor, and angel investor, he received MIT’s Young Professional Award and was named an Inc. Magazine 2025 Business Leader of the Year honoree.
Co-Founder and CEO, DataCebo Principal Research Scientist, MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems
Kalyan Veeramachaneni is a principal research scientist at the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. In 2015, he founded MIT’s Data-to-AI Lab (part of MIT’s LIDS), where he directs a team focused on Big Data + Human Interactions + Impactful Domains. The algorithms, system,s and open-source software developed by the MIT Data-to-AI (DAI) Lab are deployed for applications in the financial, healthcare, educational, security and energy sectors.
Kalyan’s latest AI-focused start-up, DataCebo, which he co-founded in 2021, is the commercial spin-off of the MIT DAI Lab’s The Synthetic Data Vault (SDV) and is backed by Mark Gorenberg (Zetta Venture Partners) and Salil Deshpande (Uncorrelated Ventures).
His two previous AI start-ups have both been acquired. Feature Labs, a data science automation company, was acquired by Alteryx (NYSE:AYX) in 2019. PatternEx, an AI cybersecurity company, was acquired by Corelight in 2020.
In 2017, Kalyan was named as one of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company.
Disclaimer: MIT Startup Exchange can make introductions that ideally provide open ended discussions in order to share mutual interests and potentially create common ground that incite the parties to collaborate. MIT Startup Exchange introductions may eventually lead to mutual partnerships, but that is not in any way guaranteed by MIT, MIT Corporate Relations, MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) or MIT Startup Exchange, which takes no responsibility for these outcomes and no formal part in such discussions following our introduction. MIT Startup Exchange and its activities and events are not for purposes of soliciting investment or offering securities.