Academic and Industry Mentors

DeployAI 2026 brings together experienced academic researchers, industry professionals, technology leaders, and AI practitioners who work across the complete lifecycle of artificial intelligence systems. The mentor group is designed to help participants understand not only how AI models are developed, but also how they are evaluated, deployed, monitored, improved, and maintained in real-world environments. Academic mentors will introduce participants to the foundations behind machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, natural language processing, foundation models, generative AI, and large language models. They will help participants understand the scientific principles, model architectures, training strategies, evaluation methods, ethical considerations, and current research challenges associated with modern AI systems. Industry mentors will provide practical guidance on converting AI prototypes into reliable applications and services. Their sessions will focus on data pipelines, API development, cloud platforms, containerisation, MLOps, model serving, scalability, monitoring, security, responsible deployment, and the operational challenges involved in maintaining AI systems in production. Throughout the winter school, mentors will support participants during lectures, hands-on laboratories, technical discussions, case studies, implementation exercises, and project development. Participants will have opportunities to discuss their technical problems, receive feedback on their solutions, understand alternative approaches, and improve the quality of their implementations. Mentors will also guide the capstone projects and hackathon activities. Their role will include helping teams define practical problems, select appropriate datasets and models, design system architectures, evaluate performance, identify deployment risks, and prepare working demonstrations. This mentorship will allow participants to experience the complete journey from problem formulation to the deployment of an end-to-end AI application. The programme aims to create meaningful interaction between participants and experts from both academia and industry. These interactions will expose participants to current research directions, professional practices, emerging tools, interdisciplinary applications, career opportunities, and the expectations associated with building trustworthy and deployable AI systems. Detailed mentor profiles will include their name, photograph, role, institutional or industry affiliation, area of expertise, biography, professional links, and assigned sessions. These profiles will be added and updated through the Speakers & People management section as the mentor list is finalised.