AI Engineer World's Fair 2026 — unofficial import demo

Bio

Frank Coyle (also known as drC) is a recently retired computer science professor who spent 32 years at Southern Methodist University, where he was repeatedly recognized as a standout teacher, before moving into part-time online teaching generative AI and large language models at Berkeley on. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Bologna, where he teaches generative AI in the graduate school of business. His path to AI runs through an unusual range of disciplines: psychology, neuroanatomy and physiology, and computer science. That cross-domain background shapes how he thinks about intelligent systems—drawing connections others miss, from neural architecture to software design patterns. His current work focuses on the practical engineering of agentic AI systems and the architectural gaps that cause them to fail. He argues that many agent failures are symptoms of a missing layer: formal ontologies acting as logical guardrails around probabilistic reasoning. He also teaches AI to district attorneys and formerly-incarcerated students. (150 words)

Sessions

• Anthropic's CCA Exam as a Field-Guide for Agentic EngineeringThursday, July 2 · 11:10 AM – 11:30 AM · Track 8Agentic Engineering
• Why Agentic Systems Need OntologiesThursday, July 2 · 1:55 PM – 2:15 PM · Track 5Graphs