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Artificial intelligence and its growing role across industries took centre stage at the International Conference on Advanced Technology and Artificial Intelligence (ATAI 2026), held on September 26–27, 2026. Organised by the ACM Houston Chapter, USA, with technical sponsorship from The Institution of Engineers and Scientists (IoES), the two-day event saw keynote speakers, invited speakers and session chairs share their expertise with researchers, academicians and technology professionals.
Across its paper presentations, keynote addresses and invited talks, the conference explored a wide spectrum of subjects: artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, automation and robotics, enterprise systems, cloud infrastructure, data engineering, cybersecurity and intelligent applications. Authors presented their research in dedicated technical sessions, where they received feedback and exchanged views with session chairs and fellow delegates.
Milan Parikh, Chair of the ACM Houston Chapter, USA, opened the conference with a welcome address in which he described the chapter’s work in promoting professional growth, technical collaboration and closer ties between industry and academia. Ram Hibane, the chapter’s Communication Chair, then walked the audience through the conference, and Prof. Mukesh Saraswat, Chair of The Institution of Engineers and Scientists, introduced IoES and its initiatives. The inaugural session ended with the formal release of the ATAI 2026 souvenir.
Industry voices dominated the keynote sessions. Addresses were delivered by Sarvesh Gupta, Consulting Member of Technical Staff at Oracle; Siva Shankar Konjerla, Senior Director – MarTech, CRM and Analytics at Cotulla Education; Praveen Kumar Billa, Senior Software Developer at Intone Networks Inc.; Shubh Prabhat, Creator and Maintainer of AegisAI – Adaptive Intelligence for Secure Distributed Systems; Raju Chavan, Principal Architect, Quality Engineering at T-Mobile; Abhradeep Chatterjee, Associate Director at NTT DATA Services, USA; Sanjeev Vemireddy, Staff Software Engineer; Naga Bhuvaneswari Chinnam, Senior Software Engineer at Walmart; Rishith Chinthamani, Software Engineer at Walmart; and Venkata Kalyan Polamarasetty, Senior Global PX Technology Analyst.
Delegates also heard keynote talks from Sai Prakhyath Jawaji, Senior Data Engineer – Big Data Engineering and Cloud Analytics at ValueLabs; Faruk Celikkanat, Independent AI Engineer and Data Scientist; Mehmet Altinkaynak of Mining Engineering, Aldur Mining Ltd.; Deniz Oktay Tuncay, Founder and CEO of Configgo USA (Planned Venture), which focuses on real estate technologies, PropTech and software solutions; Krishna Sukanth Randhi, Senior MuleSoft Developer; Praveen Kumar Bandaru, Staff Engineer at Pentangle Tech Services LLC, USA; Gokul Gurunathaswamy, Manager, Commercial Technology and Intelligence; Ramakrishna Kommineni, Lead Infrastructure and Platform Engineer; Sharath Chandra Kampili, Staff Enterprise Architect; and Vinay Dittakavi, Distinguished Engineer.
Completing the keynote programme were Venkata Subba Rao Kakani, Senior Integration Lead and Architect; Firat Kocak, Program Manager – Projects, Global Manufacturing Operations, Operational Excellence and Industrial Transformation at Specialty Minerals Inc.; Sridhar Mysula, Integration Engineer; Sreedivya Sharma, Staff Software Engineer; Ajay Bharadwaj Raghavapudi, Java Backend Developer; Adinarayana Reddy Lakku, Senior Credit Risk Analyst; Uday Kiran Poranki, Independent Researcher; Sowmya Ala, Packaging Engineer at Ford; and Venkata Phani Patelkhana, Independent Researcher.
The invited talks took a more hands-on view of technology in practice, with speakers drawing on their work in real-time data platforms, regulatory submissions, AI-driven compliance, warehouse management, cloud engineering and enterprise integration. Speaking in these sessions were Santosh Kumar Maddali, Senior Staff Data Engineer at Tesla; Pushkar Devanahalli Gopalakrishna, Staff Software Engineer and Independent Researcher; Radhika Aitha, Manager, Statistical Programming at IT Caps (Arcellx Pharma); Naresh Babu Goolla, Senior System Architect at IMR Soft LLC; Abdul Basit Iqbal, Senior Software Development Engineer at Amazon; Praveen Kumar Yeruva, SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) Consultant at DTNA; Sagar Chaudhari, Lead Member of Technical Staff at Salesforce; Suresh Kumar Maddali of Rackspace Technologies; Mohan Kumar Dalai, Staff Software Engineer; Naveen Kumar Toopran, Senior Product Manager at F5, Inc.; Shubham Srivastava, Senior Cloud Software Engineer at Tech MNC; Nirmal Jingar, Senior Engineering Manager; Viswaprakash Yammanur, Principal Solutions Architect at PCB APPS LLC; and Venkata Subramanya Vedagiri of Digital Savants.
Moderating the paper presentations was a panel of session chairs from academia and industry. They included Poli Reddy Basani of SAP America Inc.; Suprajyotsna Dasari, Software Engineer at Cognizant; Siddharth Arun, Senior Member of Technical Staff at Salesforce; Venkateswara Rao Guntupalli, Independent Researcher in Cloud Database Architecture and Enterprise Data Infrastructure, USA; VenkateswaraReddy Gudise, Associate Director, Data Engineering; Mrugesh Kharwar, Doctoral Researcher in Business Intelligence and Analytics at Westcliff University; Gadepalli Sri Pratyak Aditya Swaprakash, Senior Technical Director and Senior Solutions Architect at Global Alliant Inc., USA; Deep Barot, AI and Cybersecurity Researcher; Janvi Vijaykumar Saddi, CAD Technician II at Astreya Partners; and Sai Pavan Gopularam of Giraffy Reach.
Raghu Chirra, Project Manager, ASU; Navneeth Reddy, Senior Data Scientist at Vertex Pharmaceuticals; Jitender Sahu, SAP S/4HANA Finance Solution Architect; Praparna Moharana, EVV Reporting Analyst at Tempus Unlimited, Inc.; and keynote speakers Faruk Celikkanat, Mehmet Altinkaynak, Deniz Oktay Tuncay, Firat Kocak and Sai Prakhyath Jawaji also served as session chairs, steering the discussions and encouraging lively interaction between presenters and the audience.
By bringing research findings and industry experience onto a single platform, ATAI 2026 offered participants valuable insight into how advanced technologies are being built and deployed today. From AI and robotics to cloud platforms, data systems, cybersecurity and enterprise transformation, the discussions opened new avenues for collaboration and highlighted the practical challenges that lie ahead. The partnership between the ACM Houston Chapter and IoES also demonstrated how professional and institutional networks can work together to strengthen the global computing and engineering community.
Photographs of the conference are available at the following Google Drive link: ATAI Photographs
