(CS)²AI Author Spotlight™: Cassie Crossley

Sundays were made for doing very little, and we're doing it in style. Slow Weekends is back with a midday hangout hosted by Pooja Sinha & Abhimanyu. Think easy energy, good company, and a one-hour reset before the week starts creeping back into your head. Come as you are. Roll in, find a spot, say hi to someone new or settle in with the people you came with. The mood is relaxed, the kind of party where nobody's checking the clock (even though it's only an hour, so make it count). Bring your good vibes and your best Sunday-mode self. The location is still to be announced, so keep an eye on this page for the details.

Paytm × AI Garage | Bengaluru Most Voice AI demos stop at having a conversation. In this buildathon, we’ll go one step further: build Voice AI agents that interview people, understand what they’re saying, and turn conversations into useful structured outcomes. We’ll start with a walkthrough of a real AI hiring automation built by AI Garage. Then, you’ll choose one of two challenges and build your own interviewer agent. No slide-deck hackathon. We end with working demos. Part 1 | Host Walkthrough: AI Hiring Automation We’ll start by breaking down a real workflow: Candidate applies → AI voice agent calls → conducts screening interview → transcript is evaluated → structured candidate data is generated → next action is triggered We’ll look at how the different pieces work together: Voice AI conversational prompting follow-up questions structured data extraction LLM evaluation workflow automation human review downstream actions The goal isn’t to copy the hiring use case. It’s to understand the primitives well enough to build your own interviewer agent. Part 2 | Buildathon Choose one of two challenges. Challenge 1: Personal Interviewer Agent What if you never had to fill another application form manually? Build an agent that can take an application/form, understand what information is required, and interview the user over voice to produce the answers. For example: Application/Form → Agent understands questions → Voice interview → Follow-up questions → Draft answers → User review The agent shouldn’t simply read every form field aloud. A strong agent should understand what information is missing and probe for better answers. If a form asks: Tell us about something you've built. The agent might ask: What exactly did you build? What part did you personally own? Who used it? What happened as a result? Is there a number or outcome we can include? At the end, the user should receive a structured draft ready for review. Human approval stays in the loop before anything is submitt

Variance is a one-month deep-tech residency in Bengaluru - free, equity-free, and built for people who want to spend every waking hour on hard problems. From 750+ applications, we selected 14 founders working across foundational AI, robotics, aerospace, and biotech, and for the last month they've been living and building together under one roof. On Sunday, October 18, the cohort presents what they've built. Expect live demos, honest conversations about what worked and what didn't, and a room full of people who care about deep tech in India. Presenting: - Harsh Joshi - India's First Hybrid-Electric STOL Aircraft - Sachin M Yaragal - Computational Layer to solve Cancer - Piyush Jha - A Bio-Electrical Off-Grid Reactor for Affordable Water Treatment - Rhitam Dutta - Custom Actuators for Robots - Lakshya Shishir Khandelwal - Foundation Models for the Earth's Subsurface - Pallavi Saha - Vision Models for Outdoor Autonomy - Tarini Sai Padmanabhuni - Foundation Models for Voice Authenticity - Prateek Gupta - Data Pipeline for Autonomous Drones - Jerry Swamynathan - Water from the Atmosphere - Ansh Mishra - Bionic Hand for Humans and Robots - Nitu Joseph - Transforming Underutilized Biological Resources into Advanced Biomaterials that Improve Healthcare - Harshit Chellani - Continuous non-invasive tracking of biomarkers via urine. e're expecting venture partners, angels, founders, and friends from the ecosystem. Whether you're investing, building, or just curious about what the next generation of Indian deep tech looks like - come see it for yourself. Sunday, October 18, 4:00 - 7:00 PM Attendance is free, but we're keeping the room small - 50 to 70 people we really want there. Request an invite and we'll confirm your spot.

Hosted by GDG on Campus MPSTME Following our inaugural edition with Luis Serrano, Luminaire returns for its second chapter. We are bringing industry leaders shaping AI and large-scale software directly to MPSTME for an afternoon of deep technical insight, architectural breakdowns, and honest career discussions. The Speaker: Gaurav Sen Founder, InterviewReady Ex-Software Engineer at Uber, Directi, and Morgan Stanley 750,000+ Subscribers on YouTube YouTube: youtube.com/@gkcs LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/gkcs Gaurav Sen has demystified distributed systems, high-throughput architectures, and low-level system design for hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide. Having worked on mission-critical, high-volume production systems, he brings real-world engineering perspective directly to campus. What We’ll Cover Harness Engineering: Structuring, validating, and testing complex system workflows and automated engineering pipelines reliably at scale. Live Engineering Q&A: An open floor to ask Gaurav your questions on tech stacks, distributed systems, and breaking into top-tier tech roles. Event Details Date: Monday, 19th October 2026 Time: 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM Venue: MPSTME Small Seminar Hall Eligibility: Open to all engineering branches and years Cost: Free Note: Seating is limited and allocated on a strictly first-come, first-served basis for approved ticket holders.

Monday, October 19, 2026 · 9:00–10:00 AM PDT · Online Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82308186562 Join us for three perspectives on AI performance: getting more from GPUs, turning agent failures into learning, and exploring faster network transport. Talk #0: Introductions and Meetup Updates by Chris Fregly and Antje Barth Talk #1: Why Does Serving More Users Change GPU Utilization? by Rajat “Raj” Dandekar, Co-founder of Vizuara In this 5–10 minute technical segment, Raj will use a visual explanation and code to explore how concurrent users change GPU utilization. He’ll connect vLLM measurements on an H100 to the roofline model and briefly introduce Vizuara’s Kernel Engineering workshop. Bio: Rajat Dandekar is a co-founder of Vizuara. He holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University and BTech and MTech degrees from IIT Madras. Talk #2: From Agent Traces to Agent Training: Closing the Continuous Learning Loop by Rustem Feyzkhanov, Engineering Manager at Snorkel AI Production traces show where agents fail, but how do we turn those failures into learning? This talk explores a practical loop from traces to reproducible simulations, verifiable rewards, and model improvement through fine-tuning or reinforcement learning. We’ll also look at when it’s better to change prompts, tools, or the agent harness instead of updating model weights. Bio: Rustem Feyzkhanov is an Engineering Manager at Snorkel AI. Talk #3: Homa: A Fast Lane for Small Messages by John Ousterhout, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University John will explain how Homa can dramatically reduce small-message latency and explore its potential relevance to AI workloads. Drawing on his expertise in transport protocols, he’ll discuss what Homa could offer when small-message latency matters. Its importance for AI workloads remains an open, workload-dependent question. Bio: John Ousterhout is a Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University, the creator of Tcl, an

🎲 Founders Play & Connect Step away from formal meetings and connect with fellow founders through games, conversations, and meaningful networking. Join us for an evening of 300+ games, founder networking, collaboration opportunities, and real connections in a relaxed café environment. ✨ Event Highlights 🎲 300+ Games 🤝 Founder Networking 🚀 Collaboration Opportunities 💬 Real Connections 🍽️ 50% OFF on Food for Event Attendees 📅 21 October ⏰ 5:00 PM onwards 📍 Game On Board Cafe, Sector 51, Gurgaon Play. Connect. Collaborate. Grow. https://chat.whatsapp.com/BapS0FYJ1OkKk2EG82jlll