Agenda & Venue

TIME

DESCRIPTION

Driving American Prosperity: University, Enterprise and the Public Sector

Mung Chiang, PhD
President, Northwestern University

As President of Purdue University, Mung Chiang helped create the Hard Tech Corridor between Indianapolis and West Lafayette by attracting major tech investments such as SK Hynix’s $3.9 billion AI Chips facility. He also energized the industry-university research partnerships, including a $250 million research and talent grant from Eli Lilly. He is taking that spirit of industry and economic development to Chicagoland.

Introduced by Jim DeNaut, MBA, Trustee, Northwestern University; Co-Chair, Trienens Institute Executive Council 

Networking Lunch

Welcome & Framing

Leadership from the Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy

Airplanes for the Mind: AI Agents and the Science of Science

Dashun Wang, PhD
Kellogg Chair of Technology; Professor, Kellogg School of Management, McCormick School of Engineering; Founding Director, Northwestern Innovation Institute; Founding Co-Director, The Ryan Institute on Complexity; Founding Director, Center for Science of Science and Innovation,  Northwestern University 

Steve Jobs famously called computers “bicycles for the mind,” a metaphor for tools that let individuals go farther and faster with less effort. Today, AI agents demand a new metaphor. They are airplanes for the mind—tools with the potential to dramatically extend the scale, speed, and coordination of human cognition while introducing new challenges for science and discovery. This talk focuses on these “airplanes” and asks what changes for science when AI systems move from passive tools to active partners. 

Introduced by Pin Ni, MBA, Trustee, Northwestern University; Member, Trienens Institute Executive Council

The Database That Taught Machines Chemistry

Chris Wolverton, PhD
Frank C. Engelhart Professor of Materials Science & Engineering, Chair of the AI4Energy Platform, Northwestern University

In late 2010, a handful of students ran calculations to stress-test a new supercomputer. Their work became the Open Quantum Materials Database, free to anyone and containing 1.4 million computed compounds, most never yet made. It was used to train early versions of Google DeepMind’s GNoME, shaped Meta’s Open Materials 2024, and gave rise to Citrine Informatics.

Introduced by Daniel Zheng, PhD, IIN Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University

Building the Virtual Biology Initiative: An International Data Generation Effort

Shana Kelley, PhD
President, Bioengineering, Head of Biohub, Chicago, Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, Chicago; Neena B. Schwartz Professor of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University

On October 7, Biohub, the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs, and Meta committed $1.8 billion to generate the AI-ready biological data needed to predict how any cell responds to any intervention. It is the largest coordinated commitment of its kind. Shana Kelley tells the story of the Biohub Chicago and the new Virtual Biology Initiative: how philanthropy, federal agencies, and frontier AI companies came into alignment, and what that teaches anyone assembling a consortium at national scale.

Introduced by Sumit Dhar, PhD, Interim Vice President for Research, Northwestern University

Digital Trust: Who Signs Off When the System Decides?

Robert Slone, PhD
Chief Scientist and Innovation Officer, UL Solutions

At Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, William Henry Merrill confronted a dangerous new technology called electricity; a year later, he founded UL. The question of who signs off has not changed. As AI reshapes critical infrastructure, certification must become a lifecycle system, and the hardest part remains human.

Introduced by Valerie Taylor, PhD, Director, Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory 

Open Science at Scale: AI for Chemistry and Materials Discovery

Madeline Hinkamp, MBA, MPP, AI for Good Program Manager, Meta
Muhammed Shuaibi, PhD, Senior Research Engineer, FAIR Chemistry team, Meta

Quickly and accurately computing atomic properties is critical for advancing drug discovery, energy storage, manufacturing, and beyond. Meta's FAIR Chemistry team has spent the last few years advancing the frontier by releasing large open datasets and models across a broad range of domains. This talk will highlight the team's latest developments, thoughts on future directions, the importance of open-source models in scientific advancement, and how Meta partners with universities, national labs, and industry to ensure these tools deliver real-world impact.

Introduced by Nat Kreamer, MBA, Founder & Managing Partner, Fairtide Partners; Member, Trienens Institute Executive Council

Accelerating Chemistry and Materials Discovery with GPU Computing 

Steven B. Torrisi, PhD
Senior Strategic Alliance Manager, NVIDIA

GPU acceleration is changing what is practical in computational chemistry and materials science, from high-throughput screening to large-scale molecular dynamics. This talk will share examples of the capabilities and demonstrated benefits of tools like NVIDIA ALCHEMI for academic and industrial materials research, and offer ideas for how new users and contributors can bring emerging GPU acceleration techniques into their own workflows.

Introduced by Jim Bray, MS, Executive Director, Corporate Engagement, Northwestern University