Manufacturing with Embodied AI

Celebrating manufacturing-related R&D achievements and their business impacts on National Manufacturing Day!

Leadership Remarks
-Northwestern University President Mung Chiang
-National Center for Manufacturing Sciences President and CEO Lisa Strama
-Northwestern University Provost Erik Luijten

Corporate Panel, Stan Rendon, 3M VP of R&D, Yu Cao, Applied Materials Chief AI Officer and Amey Deosthali, AMD Head of Robotics, Industrial & Healthcare (Physical AI)

NU Faculty Panel, Prof. Jian Cao, Prof. Ed Colgate, Prof. Mark Hersam, Prof. John Rogers

Founders/SME Panel, Jason Sebastian, Executive VP QuesTek Innovation, Demeng Che, co-Founder & CEO Converge Lab, Gino Domel, CEO HiDeNN-AI, Joe Mullenbach, co-founder Fluid Reality

Ecosystems Panel, Tom Kurfess, CTO, NCMS & Executive Director of Mfg Institute at Georgia Tech, Berardino Baratta, CEO MxD, Allison Fisher, Chief of Staff mHUB

Related Info

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Join us for an in-person Distinguished Speaker event featuring Xiao-Li Meng, an internationally renowned statistician, data scientist, and former Dean of the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Widely recognized for his pioneering contributions to statistical science, data analysis, and interdisciplinary research, Meng has helped shape statistics and data science through groundbreaking scholarship, academic leadership, and innovative approaches to understanding uncertainty in an increasingly data-driven world.

Lecture title and abstract will be made available in the coming weeks!

Xiao-Li Meng is the Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Statistics at Harvard and Founding Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Data Science Review. He received his BS in mathematics from Fudan University in 1982 and his PhD in statistics from Harvard in 1990. After serving on the University of Chicago faculty (1991–2001), he returned to Harvard, where he chaired the Department of Statistics (2004–2012) and served as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (2012–2017). His research spans foundations of statistical inference—including interactions among Bayesian, fiducial, and frequentist perspectives; standard, imprecise, and quantum probability; data utility and privacy; and multi-source, multi-phase, and multi-resolution inference—statistical methodology and computation, including posterior predictive p-values, EM, MCMC, bridge and path sampling, and heavy-tail approximations; and applications across natural, social, and medical sciences and engineering, including complex modeling in astronomy and astrophysics, disparities in mental health services, and statistical information in genetic studies. In 2001, Meng received the COPSS President’s Award, recognizing the outstanding statistician under age 40, and in 2020 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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Join us on October 29 for an in-person Distinguished Speaker event featuring Dennis Chookaszian, former Chairman and CEO of CNA Insurance Companies, CPA, and one of the nation's most experienced corporate directors. Throughout a career that has included leadership roles across industry, finance, and entrepreneurship, Chookaszian has helped shape organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to startups and nonprofit institutions.

3:30-4:45 — Lecture

4:45-5:30 — Light networking reception

Dennis Chookaszian is the former Chairman and CEO of CNA Insurance Companies, a $17 billion multiline insurer with 20,000 employees, where he spent 26 years in a variety of senior leadership roles, including Chief Financial Officer, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Chairman of the Executive Committee. During his tenure, he oversaw CNA's property, casualty, life, health, and investment operations and also served as Chairman of both Agency Management Services and Intergroup, CNA's HMO operation. Before joining CNA, he spent eight years as a management consultant with Deloitte, and later served as Chairman and CEO of mPower, an internet startup providing electronic financial advice for 401(k) plan management. A Certified Public Accountant, Chookaszian chaired the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council (FASAC) from 2007 to 2011 and served on numerous AICPA and FASB committees and task forces, the Public Oversight Board Panel on Audit Effectiveness, and the international Financial Crisis Advisory Group (FCAG).

Throughout his career, he has served on the boards of thirteen publicly traded corporations, approximately eighty private companies, and numerous nonprofit organizations; he currently serves on the boards of Career Education Corp, Pillarstone Capital, twenty private companies, and six nonprofit organizations. Chookaszian earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Northwestern University, an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and a master's degree in economics from the London School of Economics. In 2010, he received the Financial Times Outstanding Directors Exchange Outstanding Director Award.

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