exSPLOre 26
July 1, 2026
The Safexpress Centre for Data, Learning and Decision Sciences successfully hosted the second annual edition of its flagship event, exSPLOre 26, at Ashoka University on January 13-17, 2026. The workshop brought together 170+ participants from Ashoka University and other top-tier academic institutes and industry.
The workshop was designed for in-depth and comprehensive engagement, exposing participants to cutting-edge research in the fast-evolving areas of data science, machine learning and AI, and to engage with leading academic researchers and industry leaders.
The five-day event included two days of tutorials, research talks, and an industry day. The event also featured a high-profile panel discussion, industry exhibitions, student poster presentations, the Best Young Researcher Paper Competition, and a cultural evening performance.
The symposium featured keynotes and insights from Peter W. Glynn and Ashish Goel (Stanford University), Nisheeth Vishnoi (Yale University), and Assaf Zeevi (Columbia University) , alongside distinguished faculty including Sarah Cen (Carnegie Mellon University), Vineet Goyal (Columbia University), Karthyek Murthy (University of Southern California), Venkat Padmanabhan (Microsoft Research), Alexandre Proutière (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) , and Dootika Vats (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur).
Leading academics, Arun Sai Suggala and Dheeraj M Nagaraj from Google DeepMind and Aditya Gopalan from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) delivered in-depth technical discussions on cutting-edge Generative AI, Diffusion models, and Reinforcement Learning.
The event also facilitated interactive industry engagement through specialized booths representing the Aditya Birla Group, Wadhwani AI, Kyndryl, DRDO, Ministry of Defence, Govt. of India, Citi, and Alt Carbon.
The event also hosted the following panel discussions:
- “Next Decade of AI: Reshaping Business and Society”: This panel featured Puneet Chandok, Ashish Goel, Venkat Padmanabhan
, Nisheeth Vishnoi, and Assaf Zeevi, moderated by Mohit Bhatnagar. - “Collaborations between Academia and Industry: What Works and What Doesn’t”: This panel featured Arko Chatterjee, PhD, Peter W. Glynn , Ashish Goel, Ashish Gupta, and Gautam Shroff, moderated by Debayan Gupta.
- “Why I became a Researcher?”: The panel featuring Peter W. Glynn, Alexandre Proutière, Venkat Padmanabhan, and Nisheeth Vishnoi , moderated by Gautam Menon.
The Centre hosted the best young paper award and celebrated the finalists and winners— Ramsundar Anandanarayanan and Tamojit Sadhukhan—of the inaugural SCDLDS Young Researcher Best Paper Award.
We the generous support of its partners, Google and the DRDO, Ministry of Defence, Govt. of India, in driving this event. We thank all our speakers, industry guests, and delegates for their presence and contribution to making exSPLOre 26 an outstanding success!