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
Want to speak at a future session? Submit your topic
Learn more about this group (https://twincities-techhub.lovable.app/apply)
Join our LinkedIn Group (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/19247009/)
Co-sponsored by: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Speaker(s): , ,
Room: 2nd Floor, Mary and David Doty Board Room, Bldg: Minneapolis Central Library, 300 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States