2nd Annual AI Research Symposium at Hartford AI Day
Showcasing innovative AI research across Connecticut.
Co-organized by the Connecticut AI Alliance (CAIA) and the University of Connecticut (UConn).
|
Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2026 Venue: 100 Constitution Plaza, Hartford, CT Rooms: GBLC Room 501 (Track 1) and GBLC Room 502 (Track 2) Format: 15-minute presentations + 5-minute Q&A Full Hartford AI Day schedule: Track 2 |
CAIA invited undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty members from all Connecticut colleges and universities to submit one-page abstracts of their AI-related research for presentation at the 2nd Annual AI Research Symposium, held as part of Hartford AI Day 2026
The symposium welcomed submissions based on recently published work, early results from ongoing research, or work currently under review or accepted at other venues. This non-archival format allowed researchers to share their latest findings while maintaining the ability to publish elsewhere.
Building on the success of our inaugural 2025 symposium, this year's event continues to bridge academic research with industry applications and foster collaboration across institutions statewide.
Accepted Papers & Presentation Schedule
Session 1: 9:45 - 10:30 AM
Track 1 (Room 501)
1) A Foundation Model for Microbiome Data Using Transformer Architectures
Authors: Khaled Sayed, Mohit Raiyani
Affiliation: University of New Haven
Track 2 (Room 502)
2) FedAVOT: Exact Distribution Alignment in Federated Learning via Masked Optimal Transport
Authors: Herlock Rahimi, Dionysis Kalogerias
Affiliation: Yale University
Paper: arXiv:2509.14444
3) Toxic by Design: Psychophysiological Evidence That AI Personality Shapes Cognition,
Emotion, and Work Quality
Authors: Tamilla Triantoro, Leon Ciechanowski, Anna Kovbasiuk, Konrad Sowa, Aleksandra
Przegalinska, Richard Freeman
Affiliations: Quinnipiac University; Kozminski University; MIT Center for Collective Intelligence;
Harvard University; NBER
Session 2: 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM
Track 2 (Room 502)
4) Consistency Is Not Safety: Paraphrase Sensitivity Reveals Text-Driven Selection in Medical
Vision-Language Models
Authors: Binesh Sadanandan, Vahid Behzadan
Affiliation: University of New Haven
Paper: arXiv:2603.20985
5) From Convolutions to Attention: Comparing CNN and Transformer Models for Medical Imaging
Authors: Sarah Tasneem, Kehan Gao
Affiliation: Eastern Connecticut State University
Session 3: 1:45 - 2:30 PM
Track 1 (Room 501)
6) Dynamic Automated Risk Mapping for Archaeological Looting
Authors: Michelle D. Fabiani
Affiliation: University of New Haven
Track 2 (Room 502)
7) AI Tutoring in Computer Science Education
Authors: Joel Rosiene, Carolyn Pe Rosiene
Affiliations: Eastern Connecticut State University; University of Hartford
Paper: IEEE Xplore
8) Teaching Symbolic AI through Ontologies, Linked Data and Knowledge Graphs
Authors: Neli Zlatareva
Affiliation: Central Connecticut State University
9) Working With AI: The Trust Verification Paradox in Human-AI Collaboration
Authors: Beth Kanyiri
Affiliation: Quinnipiac University
Session 4: 3:30 - 4:30 PM
Track 1 (Room 501)
10) Robust Coordination under Misaligned Communication via Power Regularization
Authors: Nancirose Piazza, Amirhossein Karimi, Behnia Soleymani, Vahid Behzadan, Stefan Sarkadi
Affiliations: University of New Haven; University of Tehran; King's College London
Paper: IOS Press
12) Model Forensics: Characterizing Nondeterminism in Locally Hosted Quantized Language
Models across Heterogeneous Inference Environments
Authors: Sadie Simek, Robert Ruiz, Jacob Mancini, Ramyapandian Vijayakanthan
Affiliation: Central Connecticut State University
Track 2 (Room 502)
13) HazDepth: A Fused Depth-Aware Detection Pipeline for Real-Time Hazard Recognition
Authors: Shruti Brahma, Maral Talebbeidokhti, Khaled Sayed
Affiliation: University of New Haven
14) Generating Quality Word-Association Puzzles
Authors: Ashish Khadka, Mohamad Nassar, Muhammad Aminul Islam
Affiliation: University of New Haven
15) Explainable RAG-based Agentic System for Conversational Scams Detection
Authors: Ahmed Omar Salim Adnan, Yogananda Manjunath, Shivanjali Khare
Affiliation: University of New Haven
16) Financial Literacy as a Driver of Financial Innovation Adoption: Evidence from
AI-Based Advice and Cryptocurrency Holdings
Author: Li Liang
Affiliation: Eastern Connecticut State University