April 8th and 9th, 2026, University of Tennessee, Knoxville Conference Center
There is no registration fee for individuals from academia or non-profit organizations.
Focus: Establishing the baseline of AI/ML and understanding the regional health landscape.
| Time | Session | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 8:00AM | Breakfast & Registration | Welcome and check-in. |
| 9:00AM | Introductions & Level Setting | Opening remarks and attendee introductions - Dr. Tabitha Samuel |
| 9:15AM | AI Tennessee Vision | Overview of AI Tennessee - Dr. Vasileios Maroulas, Director of AI Tennessee |
| 9:30AM | The NAIRR Vision | Overview of the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) goals and project scope - NSF |
| 10:15AM | Break | |
| 10:30AM | Training #1: AI Fundamentals | Overview of architecture, parameters vs. hyperparameters, loss functions, and optimization. Overfitting and underfitting. - Dr. Amr Hilal |
| 11:45AM | Short Transition Break | |
| 12:00PM | Lunch Panel: Health Disparities | Contextualizing TN: Discussion on Regional health challenges featuring: • Jennifer Ferris (MHS Director of Research, UTHSC College of Medicine, Knoxville) • Dr. Sima Namin (Health Disparities Research Specialist, UTHSC College of Medicine, Knoxville) • Sabrullah Deniz and Dr. Courtney Cronley (University of Tennessee, Smart Regional Healthcare Ecosystem (REACH) for East TN) |
| 1:00PM | Short Transition Break | |
| 1:15PM | Training #2: Foundation Models and Responsible AI | Comparing CNN architectures vs. Transformer-based models and the benefits/ethics of pre-trained/foundation models. Discussing overfitting, distribution shifts, and why we use CUDA over CPU. Overview of NAIRR resource scaling and loss optimization monitoring - Dr. Jesse Roberts |
| 2:15PM | Afternoon Break | |
| 2:45PM | Training #3: Hands-on Modeling | Technical Lab: MNIST classification using a small CNN (Dr. Amr Hilal). MNIST classification on CUDA with finetuning foundation approach (Dr. Jesse Roberts). Classification on the CheXpert dataset cuda (Dr. Hector Santos Villalobos). |
| 4:15PM | Precision Health Panel | Innovations & Equity: Predictive analytics for chronic disease, AI-enabled rural health solutions, and equitable healthcare delivery, featuring: • Dr. Patricia Roberson, Director of The Healthy Families Lab and Research Team, College of Nursing, UTK • Dr. Tom Berg, Health, Strategy Director of Health Innovation Technology and Simulation Laboratory (HITS Lab), College of Nursing, UTK |
| 5:00PM | After Hours Session | Open Lab: Deep-dive Q&A for attendees to discuss specific project ideas with instructors. |
Focus: Transitioning from small-scale prototypes to large-scale infrastructure.
| Time | Session | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 8:00AM | Breakfast | Informal networking and arrival. |
| 9:00AM | Day 1 Recap & Open Discussion | Summary of key takeaways and attendee Q&A. |
| 9:45AM | Break | Refreshment break. |
| 10:15AM | Training #4: Scaling Up | Responsible scaling. Moving from small subsets to the full 400GB+ CheXpert dataset using high-performance hardware. - Dr. Hector Santos Villalobos |
| 12:00PM | Working Lunch | Final Q&A, resource sharing, and defining “Next Steps” for project implementation. |
| 1:00PM | Workshop Conclusion | End of session. |