Events

Empowering Future Gen-AI Enterprise and Research Through AI-Native Cloud

11:30 AM to 1:00 PM

Leon Song, Together.AI

We are living in the era of GenAI, which has transformed not only the computing industry but also our daily lives. Today, I will discuss our journey building the Together AI Native Cloud — designed to empower next-generation large-scale enterprise Gen AI with customized end-to-end solutions that target the entire AI lifecycle, powered by open source models. I will share insights into some of our innovations in the inference system research space, highlighting how these advancements shape our services and real-world applications. Lastly, I will explore future trends in Gen AI and discuss how Together AI’s cutting-edge technologies are driving the next-generation AI cloud revolution: large-scale agentic system building, multi-silicon adoption and more.

Leon Song is the vice president of research at Together AI, leading the R&D org to produce industry-leading inference system solutions at large scale. Prior to Together AI, Leon was a senior principal research manager for DeepSpeed and Brainwave at Bing. He was also the chief scientist for the DeepSpeed4Science initiative at Microsoft. Before Microsoft, Leon was a tenured computer science professor and also spent several years working for DoE. Leon is an ACM distinguished speaker.

Agentic Risk Standard

12:00 PM to 1:00 PM

CSB 453

Wenyue Hua

Prior work on trustworthy AI emphasizes model-internal properties such as bias mitigation, adversarial robustness, and interpretability. As AI systems evolve into autonomous agents deployed in open environments and increasingly connected to payments or assets, the operational meaning of trust shifts to end-to-end outcomes: whether an agent completes tasks, follows user intent, and avoids failures that cause material or psychological harm. These risks are fundamentally product-level and cannot be eliminated by technical safeguards alone because agent behavior is inherently stochastic. To address this gap between model-level reliability and user-facing guarantees, we propose a complementary paradigm grounded in risk management. Inspired by financial underwriting, we introduce a mechanism for AI-mediated transactions that quantify and price task risk and protect user interests through contractual guarantees. Under this mechanism, users receive contractual and deterministic compensation for execution failure, misalignment, or unintended outcomes, shifting trust from an implicit technical property to a measurable and enforceable product guarantee. Towards this goal, we present an end-to-end standard, Agentic Risk Standard, integrating risk assessment, underwriting, and compensation, along with a simulation for evaluation. This standard links technical reliability with economic accountability to enable operational trust in AI agents. ARS’s implementation can be found at t54-labs/AgenticRiskStandard.

Wenyue Hua is currently a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, AI Frontiers. She was a CS postdoctoral researcher at UCSB working with Prof. William Yang Wang. She received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, under the supervision of Professor Yongfeng Zhang. Her research focuses on the safety and efficiency of LLM agents, multi-agent reinforcement learning, and LLM reasoning. She was selected as KAUST AI Rising Star in 2025, published over 60 papers at top natural language processing and machine learning conferences such as ACL, EMNLP, ICLR, NeurIPS, TACL.

Undergraduate Class Day

1:00 PM to 2:45 PM

South Lawn, Morningside Campus

Angeliki Frangou, Navios Maritime Holdings Inc.

Undergraduate Ceremony Details:
Date: Monday, May 18, 2026
Time: 1:00 - 2:45 p.m.
Location: South Lawn | Morningside Campus

Speaker: Angeliki Frangou, Chairwoman and Chief Executive Officer of Navios Maritime Holdings Inc.

Diploma: All graduating students must apply for their degree with the University Registrar’s Office. Diplomas are mailed to the “Diploma Address” listed in Student Services Online (SSOL). Please verify/update your address and ensure it will remain valid for at least 8 weeks after graduation, as diplomas are not distributed during commencement activities. For questions or additional information, please contact the University Registrar or visit the Registrar’s Graduation and Diplomas webpage.

School Graduation Website: https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/class-day

School Contact:
Columbia Engineering Events
classday@columbia.edu

Graduate Class Day

5:15 PM to 8:00 PM

South Lawn, Morningside Campus

Tom Caulfield, GlobalFoundries

Graduate Ceremony Details:
Date: Monday, May 18, 2026
Time: 5:15 - 8:00 p.m. (Gates Open: 4:15 p.m.)
Location: South Lawn | Morningside Campus

Speaker: Tom Caulfield, Executive Chairman of GlobalFoundries

Diploma: All graduating students must apply for their degree with the University Registrar’s Office. Diplomas are mailed to the “Diploma Address” listed in Student Services Online (SSOL). Please verify/update your address and ensure it will remain valid for at least 8 weeks after graduation, as diplomas are not distributed during commencement activities. For questions or additional information, please contact the University Registrar or visit the Registrar’s Graduation and Diplomas webpage.

School Graduation Website: https://www.engineering.columbia.edu/countdown-engineering-class-day-and-university-commencement

School Contact:
Columbia Engineering Events
seas-grad@columbia.edu

Columbia Engineering Doctoral Hooding Ceremony

2:15 PM to 4:30 PM

Miller Theater

Columbia Engineering Doctoral Hooding Ceremony
Date: Tuesday, May 19
Time: 2:15 - 4:30 p.m.
Location: Miller Theater

Diploma: All graduating students must apply for their degree with the University Registrar’s Office. Diplomas are mailed to the “Diploma Address” listed in Student Services Online (SSOL). Please verify/update your address and ensure it will remain valid for at least 8 weeks after graduation, as diplomas are not distributed during commencement activities. For questions or additional information, please contact the University Registrar or visit the Registrar’s Graduation and Diplomas webpage.

School Graduation Website: https://www.engineering.columbia.edu/countdown-engineering-class-day-and-university-commencement

School Contact:
Engineering Student Affairs
seas-grad@columbia.edu

University Commencement

10:30 AM to 6:30 PM

Morningside Campus

Columbia University’s Commencement ceremony of the 272nd academic year will take place on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, with two celebrations held on the Morningside Campus: one for graduate degree candidates and one for undergraduate degree candidates.

Graduate Ceremony 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Undergraduate Ceremony 5:00 - 6:30 p.m.