View the 2026 Abstract Booklet

Networking That Invites Collaboration

Attendees participated in the Speed Networking Pitch session that featured faculty, startups, industry leaders, and organizations focused on advancing science and technology innovation throughout New York State.

Keynote Presentation – Beyond Smart Display Glasses: Creating a path to Comfort, Context, and Depth in Spatial Computing.

We were honored to welcome Barry Silverstein, Director of the Center for eXtended Reality (CXR) from the URochester. He delivered a compelling keynote exploring the future of augmented reality, wearable computing, and the technical challenges shaping the next generation of immersive technology.

Partner Appreciation Awards

Congratulations to our 2026 Partner Appreciation Award Recipients! We are so thankful for their dedication to Science and Technology and the support of their partnership with our centers. These awards recognize the exceptional innovation and measurable impact that they contribute to New York State.

2026 CoE-DSAI Partnership Award Recipient Buffalo Solar

2026 CEIS Partnership Award Recipient James McGrathÌý

New Partnership with TechRochester

One of the exciting changes this year was the new partnership between this event and TechRochester’s Technology Woman of the Year awards event. We were honored to collaborate because it so closely aligned with our programming and was a terrific opportunity to expand networking, visibility and engagement across similar audiences. Both events took place at the Memorial Art Gallery creating a full day dedicated to innovation, leadership, research and technology connections in the Finger Lakes Region. We are proud to be associated with TechRochester and this event that recognizes amazing women, their accomplishments and important contributions to the Tech community. This partnership reflects a shared commitment to strengthening the region’s technology community by bringing together people in new and meaningful ways. Connect and learn more on the

Poster Competition Winners

This year’s poster session showcased outstanding student and faculty research across areas including Data Science, Biomedical Technology, Optics & Photonics, AR/VR, Sensors & Materials and more! Thank you so much to all our participants including this year’s winners:

1^st Place – Haolin Liao and Zongyuan Lu for their poster on Polarimetric imaging of peripheral nerves: an intraoperative aid

2^nd Place – Zhengdong Gao for the poster on Development of high-Q microresonators on thin-film lithium niobate platform

3^rd Place – Arthur Masiukiewicz for the poster on The µSiM-MVB – A Microfluidic System for Sepsis Drug Development and Immune Cell Studies

Thank you to all the presenters, exhibitors, sponsors, volunteers, and attendees who helped make this year’s Showcase such a success. Events like these contribute to strengthening the collaboration between academia and industry and broaden innovation opportunities across the Finger Lakes region, New York State, and beyond. We look forward to the next Showcase in April 2027.

View all the photos from the showcase in our .

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We have made significant progress in imaging nerves using polarized light sensing at different wavelengths. Starting in the visible spectral range and using raw or frozen chicken and now progressing to human cadaver nerve imaging, we have developed new methodologies of image processing to highlight the nerves to stand out from the surrounding tissues. We propose to expand our project to include a FIH (First in Human) surgical study which will present new data science challenges with image motion, and also to push into the near infrared for better tissue penetration, and to develop an endoscopic version of our technology.

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In robot manipulation, adapting to dynamic environments with flexible task specifications is challenging. Language-based vision manipulation systems offer a solution by linking language instructions to visual data and generating actions. However, current approaches often develop vision models and action policies separately, leading to poor integration. To address this, we propose ACTLLM, a method that unifies visual interpretation and policy learning using large language models (LLMs). By generating structured scene descriptions and incorporating an action consistency loss, ACTLLM is expected to enhance the fusion of visual and policy elements, facilitating the efficient execution of complex tasks within a multi-turn visual dialogue framework.

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L3Harris currently deploys ontologies that are experiencing data limitations, which compromise the performance and scalability of the applications. Thus, there is motivation to find an approach to migrate ontologies into a graph database that can provide performance, flexibility, and scalability benefits, particularly for applications involving complex and highly interconnected data. This project aims to investigate methods to enable ontology development into Neo4j, an open-source graph database, thereby empowering users to extract valuable insights from existing ontologies and expanding queries to extensive multi-domain data sets. Furthermore, the project aims to help users retrieve knowledge from existing ontologies, even when the users are not computing experts.

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The optical wavefront the transverse spatial variation of the optical phase — plays a significant role in the propagation of optical beams and in the characterization of optical components & systems. Wavefront sensors are therefore important instruments for the worldwide optics community and especially for our regional optics ecosystem. This project seeks to apply deep learning to advance the performance of the RAM Photonics QuantoPhase wavefront sensor, harvesting & learning aspects of raw shearing interferograms including in the realm of pre-formed interferograms to allow for previously prohibited sensor design.

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IngenID, which specializes in AI-driven voice biometrics and deepfake detection, launched in 2021 in downtown Rochester. Since then, the company has rolled out a suite of voice biometric platforms that provide businesses with advanced identity verification and .Ìý

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ROCHESTER, N.Y. and TEL AVIV, ISRAEL,ÌýFeb. 10, 2026Ìý/PRNewswire-PRWeb/ —Ìý, a leading provider of SaaS voice biometric solutions, andÌý, a voice intelligence company focused on identity verification in the era of AI-drivenÌýfraud, today announced a strategic partnership combining their complementary voice intelligence technologies. The partnership will deliver enhancedÌýfraudÌýprevention and authentication solutions for financial services, enterprise, and government organizations, addressing the full spectrum of voice-based threats facing organizations today.

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