NSF BRIDGE Conference 2026
An afternoon gathering of the NSF BRIDGE community: researchers, domain scientists, and partners to share progress, shape the roadmap, and connect the communities BRIDGE serves.
Overview
Bringing the BRIDGE community together
The NSF BRIDGE Conference gathers the project’s investigators, collaborating research labs, and domain communities for an afternoon of talks, demonstrations, and hands-on sessions. Attendees will see how BRIDGE and Apache Texera (Incubating) lower the barriers to modern data science and AI, and help shape where BRIDGE goes next.
The conference will focus on BRIDGE’s five initial research communities: Vision, Brain Mapping, Metabolic Traits, Social Sciences, and High Performance Computing (HPC). Through talks, demonstrations, and hands-on sessions with Apache Texera (Incubating), participants will share research needs, explore workflows, and help identify priorities for platform development, training, and support.
Event details
Date
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Location
ISEB Auditorium 1010, UC Irvine, Irvine, CA
Format
Afternoon conference, 1:00 – 5:00 PM
Host
NSF BRIDGE: UC Irvine, UCLA, University of Michigan
Organizer
Chen Li (PI, UC Irvine)
Register
What this conference is for
Sharing progress
Present the latest from BRIDGE and the Texera platform, from new workflow tooling to domain-specific AI assistants.
Connecting communities
Bring together labs and domain scientists across BRIDGE’s five initial communities, so data and knowledge flow across boundaries.
Shaping the roadmap
Gather feedback from users and partners to guide BRIDGE’s priorities for usability, scalability, and reproducibility.
Expected speakers
The program will feature the BRIDGE principal investigators and senior personnel, invited domain scientists, and community partners.
Who should attend
Research labs
Groups looking for a shared, reproducible workspace for data, workflows, and models.
Domain scientists
Researchers who want modern data science and AI with little or no code.
Partners & educators
Collaborators, infrastructure providers, and instructors interested in adopting or teaching the platform.
Program
Tuesday, October 27, 2026 · ISEB Auditorium 1010, UC Irvine.
The program below is preliminary and may get updated.
| Time | Session |
|---|---|
| 1:00 – 1:15 | Welcome remarks VCR and the ICS Dean’s Office |
| 1:15 – 1:45 | Overview of NSF BRIDGE Chen Li |
| 1:45 – 2:15 | Talk from the Bioinformatics domain |
| 2:15 – 2:45 | Talk from the Social Sciences domain |
| 2:45 – 3:15 | Break and demos |
| 3:15 – 3:45 | Invited guest talk Suresh Marru (Georgia Tech) |
| 3:45 – 4:15 | Invited guest talk Jia Zou (ASU) |
| 4:15 – 4:45 | Invited guest talk TBD |
| 4:45 – 5:00 | Closing remarks Chen Li |
Get involved
Interested in attending?
Registration and travel details are coming soon — email the organizers to register your interest, or to propose a talk or demo. The conference is organized by the NSF BRIDGE team, led by PI Chen Li (UC Irvine), with UCLA and the University of Michigan.