Data Science Institute, The University of Chicago

Please join us for our monthly Chicago Data Night, cohosted by Drive Capital, ChiData and the DSI, Practitioners, academics, and aficionados within the Chicago area are all invited to be part of a community at the intersection of industry and academia, brought together by a mutual interest in data. Each month, guest speakers will cover a specific data-related topic.

Hors d’oeuvres and drinks will be provided. Admission is free, and we strongly encourage an RSVP to attend.

Meeting Location
Drive Capital, Fulton East Building
215 N Peoria St
Chicago, IL 60607

AGENDA
5:30pm: Networking Reception
6:00pm: Welcome Remarks
6:05pm: Guest Speaker
6:50pm: Q&A
7:00pm: Networking Reception
7:30pm: Event Concludes

Talk Title: Why Knowledge Graphs and Context are the Next Big Thing
Knowledge graphs are a cornerstone of modern AI architectures. They can now be found at the heart of production enterprise systems anytime the business stakes are high. Knowledge graphs provide agents with uniform access to knowledge and context, and work alongside LLMs to mitigate models' top shortcomings: hallucinations, explainability, and discernment; and overcome limitations imposed by data silos. In tonight's talk, Philip will explore how AI changes the way applications are developed, how agents introduce new requirements for the AI knowledge layer, what you can learn from real-world successes at companies like Walmart, Uber, Adobe, Comcast, and more, and how you can get started yourself.

Bio: Philip Rathle is the CTO of Neo4j, where he helped to pioneer the graph database category, and one of the world’s leading database, analytics, and AI companies now valued at >$2B. Philip’s influence on the data landscape includes spearheading ISO GQL (“Graph Query Language”), the first new international database language standard since SQL was introduced 40 years ago. His work powers mission-critical AI applications at 84 of the Fortune 100, including Uber, Walmart, Abbvie, Pfizer, JPMorgan, Airbus, BMW, and many more; as well as at thousands of startups. Philip is a native Chicagoan who fell in love with data & AI at his first job at Accenture. After a decade in consulting working with some of the world's largest database systems, he co-founded an early Customer 360 startup before moving to Silicon Valley to lead product management for database tooling vendor Embarcadero Technologies, and ultimately to lead product and then technology at Neo4j.