Keynote 2
Empowering Engineers, Enabling Innovation: The AI Journey

Olena Zhu , Intel Corporation

As we enter a new era of accelerated innovation, AI is not just augmenting engineering—it is redefining it. From tackling the most complex design challenges to unleashing creative breakthroughs, AI is becoming an indispensable partner in the engineering process.

In this keynote, we explore how AI is transforming engineering workflows and enabling new levels of innovation. For example, in high-speed, nonlinear signal integrity analysis, traditional methods fall short under the complexity of modern interconnects. While standalone AI techniques like Bayesian optimization can reduce simulation time from weeks to days, only human-AI collaboration has shown the ability to compress this process to mere hours—bringing practical, real-time solutions into reach.

Beyond efficiency gains, AI is a catalyst for engineering creativity. Once engineers begin solving problems with AI, they unlock new pathways for innovation. In the field of thermal and power analysis for advanced SoC design, the development of an AI tool—SuperGrid—reduced analysis time from two weeks to seconds. This breakthrough spurred a wave of innovation, expanding analysis coverage by orders of magnitude and driving better-informed design decisions across the board.

Looking forward, the rise of agentic AI—autonomous systems capable of planning, reasoning, and acting across devices and platforms—is set to revolutionize engineering once again. At Intel, we built the SuperBuilder platform to empower engineers to create their own AI agents. The latest version supports MCP (model context protocol) framework and runs across diverse hardware, enabling secure, on-device AI agents like our IEEE editor agent, which drastically speeds up technical paper reviews.

Join us on this journey as we showcase how AI is not just a tool but a partner—empowering engineers, amplifying creativity, and enabling innovation at an unprecedented scale.

Dr. Olena (Jianfang) Zhu is Head of AI Solutions and Ecosystem at Intel’s Client Computing Group, leading AI solution development for PC clients. She drives collaborations with global partners to build next-generation AI agents and platform, including Intel’s AI Assistant Builder (formerly Project SuperBuilder) for multi-agent, hybrid on-device & cloud AI. Dr. Zhu is also an Adjunct Professor at Purdue University. She has authored 50+ papers, holds 40+ U.S. patents, and is recognized with multiple industry awards.