IEEE Photonics Society Membership Drive - The Photonic Edge
IEEE Photonics Society Membership Drive & The Photonic Edge Webinar
Discover the world of photonics and explore how light-based technologies are shaping the future of computing, communication, artificial intelligence, and innovation.
Join the IEEE Photonics Society CUSB Student Branch for The Photonic Edge, a technical webinar that brings together perspectives from large-scale machine learning and enterprise AI to explore the technologies driving the next generation of intelligent systems.
As part of the IEEE Photonics Society Membership Drive, this event aims to introduce students and young professionals to the field of photonics and highlight the opportunities available through the IEEE Photonics Society community. From optical communication and lasers to photonic computing and emerging AI hardware, photonics is becoming increasingly important in solving the challenges of modern technology.
The webinar will connect these emerging technologies with the rapidly evolving world of AI.
Session First Half — Efficient AI at Scale
Rajat Kanti Bhattacharjee will explore why AI models are becoming both more capable and more efficient, covering Mixture of Experts, gating, routing, expert parallelism, quantization, and production-serving trade-offs. He will also share practical experiences from building large-scale machine learning systems.
Session Second Half — From Prompts to Autonomous Agents
Kunal Datta will explore what happens between a prompt and an autonomous AI agent completing a real-world task, covering Agentic AI, RAG 2.0, orchestration patterns, LLM agent loops, and enterprise AI.
Joint Session — Efficiency Meets Autonomy
The speakers will bring both perspectives together to examine multi-agent systems, routing overhead, latency budgets, model efficiency, and the engineering trade-offs involved in building scalable AI systems.
The session will conclude with an interactive Q&A.
Why Join IEEE Photonics Society?
Becoming part of the IEEE Photonics Society connects students with a global community working at the intersection of light, technology, research, and innovation. Membership provides opportunities to learn about emerging photonics technologies, engage with researchers and industry professionals, participate in technical activities, and become part of a community shaping the future of photonics.
Whether you are already interested in photonics or are discovering the field for the first time, this membership drive is an opportunity to learn, connect, and explore where photonics meets the future of AI and computing.
Speakers
Rajat Kanti Bhattacharjee
Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Roku Inc.
MS in Computer Science, Georgia Tech
Kunal Datta
Senior Advisory Architect, IBM
Founder, Kyma AI
Date: Saturday, August 22, 2026
Time: 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM IST
Join the IEEE Photonics Society CUSB community and discover the photonic edge.
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- Starts 19 August 2026 06:30 PM UTC
- Ends 22 August 2026 12:00 PM UTC
- No Admission Charge
Speakers
Rajat Kanti Bhattacharjee of Roku Inc.
Efficient AI at Scale
Biography:
Rajat Kanti Bhattacharjee is a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Roku Inc. and is pursuing an MS in Computer Science at Georgia Tech. His work focuses on large-scale machine learning systems, efficient model architectures, and Mixture of Experts (MoE). He works on building scalable AI systems and exploring the practical trade-offs involved in deploying modern machine learning models in production.
Kunal Datta of IBM / Kyma AI
Agentic AI and Production Systems
Biography:
Kunal Datta is a Senior Advisory Architect at IBM and the Founder of Kyma AI. He works on enterprise AI initiatives with a focus on Agentic AI, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and LLM orchestration. His experience spans designing and deploying AI systems that connect language models with real-world enterprise workflows.
Agenda
5:30 PM – 5:40 PM
Welcome and IEEE Photonics Society Introduction
Introduction to IEEE Photonics Society, photonics awareness, and the Membership Drive
5:40 PM – 6:25 PM
The Production AI Stack
Rajat Kanti Bhattacharjee
Large-scale ML systems, Mixture of Experts, routing, quantization, and production AI
6:25 PM – 7:10 PM
From Prompts to Autonomous Agents
Kunal Datta
Agentic AI, RAG 2.0, orchestration, LLM agent loops, and enterprise AI
7:10 PM – 7:25 PM
Efficiency Meets Autonomy
Rajat Kanti Bhattacharjee & Kunal Datta
AI efficiency, latency, multi-agent systems, and the future of AI hardware
7:25 PM – 7:30 PM
IEEE Photonics Society Membership Drive and Closing
Media
| Banner img | Poster for the Webinar | 1.81 MiB |