Thought Summits
Thought Summits are dynamic forums hosted at Cornell University that bring together leaders and innovators to spark innovative collaborations in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.
Upcoming Summits
Adapting to Climate Uncertainty through AI-Enabled Microbial System Design
December 8 - December 10 at Cornell University – Ithaca, NYThis Thought Summit will bring together researchers across AI, microbial systems, climate resilience, infrastructure, materials engineering, and agriculture to explore AI-driven design of engineered microbial communities. The convening will identify promising research directions, applications, and collaborations around climate resilience, including flood protection, resilient crops, housing, and airborne hazard mitigation.
AI and Formal Methods
January 19, 2027 - January 21, 2027 at Cornell University – Ithaca, NYEnabling Trustworthy Cross-Disciplinary Advances The current era of Artificial Intelligence has demonstrated models powerful enough to catalyze major theoretical advances across fields like mathematics, physics, and biology through automated reasoning. Despite this power, frequent ”hallucinations” severely limit the usefulness of large language models as reliable scientific collaborators. To realize the promise of these technologies, scientists need a strong basis for trusting AI outputs, wh...
HUMAN AI Collaboration, Creativity and Critical Thinking
March 22, 2027 - March 24, 2027 at Cornell University – Ithaca, NYThis interdisciplinary Thought Summit will examine how AI is reconfiguring education across three domains: cognition and learning, creative practices, and evaluation and institutional knowledge systems. Unlike prior technologies, AI actively shapes reasoning and creativity, raising tensions between expanding capabilities and diminishing critical thinking. The summit will integrate cognition, creative practice, and evaluation to address AI's impact on learning.
AI for Animal Communication
March 29, 2027 - April 2, 2027 at Cornell University – Ithaca, NYImagine a visitor from another planet listening to Earth without knowing any language. What in the sound alone would tell them that humans speak and other animals do not? This is a real scientific problem, and it is now becoming tractable. Large datasets and AI powered tools are revealing structure in vocalizations of socially sophisticated animals like cetaceans, bats and birds that have defied characterization for decades. The summit brings together experts in animal communication, neuroscienc...
Previous Summits
Building Benchmarks for AI-Driven Veterinary Innovation
June 9 - June 11 at Cornell University – Ithaca, NYThis summit will bring together experts from veterinary medicine, computer science, ethics, and law to tackle the unique challenges of creating standardized, high-quality datasets tailored to veterinary needs.
Community-Centered AI
May 18 - May 20 at Cornell University – Ithaca, NYBringing together researchers, practitioners, and community members, the three-day convening will tackle AI's core problem – its massive carbon footprint, displacement of local expertise, and violations of community consent – through collaborative workshops, participatory algorithm auditing, and solution-generating discussions.
Data Science to Build Resilience and Improve Humanitarian Response
May 11 - May 15 at Cornell University – Ithaca, NYBy connecting philanthropies and the private sector with Cornell expertise across computer, information, natural and social sciences, the summit aims to spark new research, collaborations, and funding pathways that bring cutting-edge data tools into real-world humanitarian decision-making.
Everyday Sensing and AI for Mental Health Care: Navigating a Tipping Point
June 16, 2025 - June 20, 2025 at Cornell University – Ithaca, NYThis Thought Summit brings together leading experts and thought leaders from academia, industry, and the entrepreneurial world to envision and help create the future of everyday AI and mental health.
LLMs And Society
May 19, 2025 - May 21, 2025 at Cornell University – Ithaca, NYThe 3-day thought summit will explore, analyze, and chart the future of LLMs and their integration into high-stakes settings in an increasingly complex and interconnected world. The summit will bring together experts, researchers, and thought leaders from diverse fields, who will delve into the implications and applications of LLMs for discovery, decision support, and creativity in diverse domains and geographies.
The Future of Survey Science
September 22, 2024 - September 25, 2024 at Cornell University – Ithaca, NYThis Thought Summit brings together experts in survey research with connections to large NSF-funded surveys, data science, and AI. Our goal is to identify strategies and infrastructure to support the most accurate and cost-effective surveys.
Want to get involved?
Ready to chart the future? All Cornell University faculty are invited to apply. The next call for proposals will open in February 2027.