Dr. Natalia Connolly, PhD

Large language models are impressive—but on their own, they're limited to answering prompts. AI agents take things a step further, combining reasoning, memory, tool use, and even collaboration to tackle more complex, goal-oriented tasks.

In this talk, we’ll explore what AI agents are, why they matter, and how they go beyond the prompt to unlock new kinds of business value. We’ll cover the essential building blocks of agent systems, including multi-agent coordination, planning, and tool integration—and why understanding the underlying mechanics is critical to using them effectively.

The session wraps with a live demo of a multi-agent system in action, showing how these autonomous systems can be designed to solve practical problems (and where things can still go sideways). Whether you're just agent-curious or thinking about deploying them in the real world, you'll leave with both inspiration and technical insight.

Biography:

Natalia brings deep expertise in generative AI, artificial intelligence and machine learning to challenging business problems. A physics PhD by training, she became a data science and analytics executive, building and scaling data teams in industries as diverse as management consulting, e-commerce, retail, FinTech, and AgTech. In addition to the diversity of industries with which she has gained experience, Natalia is familiar with the differences in the data and artificial intelligence needs at large, well-established companies versus smaller start-ups. Natalia has a PhD in high energy physics from the University of California. She performed her thesis work at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and completed her postdoctoral training at Berkeley National Laboratory under the tutelage of Dr. Saul Perlmutter (Nobel Prize in Physics, 2011).