ACM-IEEE Twin Cities | Multimodal AI, Enterprise Adoption & Community Showcase
Tech is moving fast — and the best way to keep up is together. Join the ACM-IEEE WIE Twin Cities community for an evening of expert-led talks, real-world insights, and genuine connection. This session is part of our ongoing Track 03 — Data Infrastructure & AI Readiness series, designed to bridge the gap between AI architecture and enterprise-scale adoption.
This month's theme: AI in the Real World — Build, Adopt, Belong.
We go from how multimodal AI actually works under the hood, to why enterprise adoption still fails — and what to do about it. Whether you're an engineer, architect, leader, or student, there's something here for you.
What's Happening
👋 *Welcome & Keynote — AI is ready. Are we?
Lakshmi Priya Gopalsamy, Senior Engineering Manager — Target
🎤 *Multimodal AI: How Models See, Hear, and Reason Across Data Types by Rudra Pratap Chakraborty, Cloud & AI Solutions Architect — N5 Sensors
From text-only transformers to multimodal systems — embeddings, cross-attention, and modality fusion. Real deployment patterns, honest tradeoffs, and what this means for the systems you're building today.
🎤 Beyond the AI Hype: What It Really Takes for Enterprises to Adopt AI by Harish Vundavalli, Senior IT Architect — Strategic Education Inc.
Why AI pilots stall, what causes hesitation across teams and leadership, and a grounded framework for moving from experimentation to sustainable adoption.
🤝 Open Q&A + Networking & Community Mixer
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Date and Time
Location
Hosts
Registration
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- 300 Nicollet Mall
- Minneapolis, Minnesota
- United States
- Building: Minneapolis Central Library
- Room Number: 2nd Floor, Mary and David Doty Board Room
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- Co-sponsored by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
- Starts 30 April 2026 05:00 AM UTC
- Ends 26 May 2026 10:00 PM UTC
- No Admission Charge
Speakers
Biography:
Rudra Pratap Chakraborty, Cloud & AI Solutions Architect — N5 Sensors
Cloud and AI Solutions Architect with 21+ years of experience delivering large-scale, mission-critical systems across global markets. His expertise spans AWS, microservices, and event-driven architectures, with a growing focus on Generative AI, multimodal systems, and AI-driven enterprise transformation. He is passionate about integrating advanced AI capabilities such as LLMs, RAG pipelines, and intelligent agents into modern cloud platforms.
Address:United States
Biography:
Harish Vundavalli, Senior IT Architect — Strategic Education Inc
Senior Technical Architect at Strategic Education, Inc., leading the development of enterprise-scale, cloud-native platforms integrating AI, data, and modern architectures. With 15+ years of global experience across India, Australia, and the U.S., he specializes in scalable, resilient, production-ready systems. He actively drives AI initiatives in engineering with a focus on AI security, risk, and governance — implementing guardrails for trustworthy AI including model monitoring, data integrity validation, access control, bias detection, and protection against prompt injection and data leakage. Previously worked with Petco and Commonwealth Bank of Australia. He also contributes to the research community as a journal reviewer with multiple AI-focused papers under review.
Address:United States
Biography:
Host & Speaker: Lakshmi priya Gopalsamy, Senior Member, IEEE, is a Senior Engineering Manager at Target
With over 20 years of experience in enterprise platform engineering, AI-driven systems, and large-scale distributed infrastructure. She leads engineering teams delivering mission-critical commerce and payment platforms, and has published peer-reviewed research in areas spanning AI governance frameworks, cognitive load modeling in enterprise systems, and decision latency optimization in AI-native organizations. She is a professional member of ACM and Full Member of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society. Her interests include multi-modal AI systems, enterprise platform engineering, AI governance, and supply chain intelligence.