Giving LLMs a Map: Building Smarter GenAI with GraphRAG

TALK LOGISTICS:
Monday, March 23, 2026
(remote speaker, audience can be either in person or remote on Zoom. Please RSVP and indicate if you will be local or remote)

6:30 registration, food sponsored by Neo4j, networking. Neo4j contacts will be attending.
7:00 SFbayACM upcoming events, introduce the speaker
7:10 to 8:15 or 8:30 based on Q and A - presentation

The Zoom and YouTube links will be provided here about 2-3 days before the event

SFbayACM will support a local audience at VRP in Mountain View

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TALK DESCRIPTION:
Generative AI is powerful, but without the right data and retrieval strategies, results can quickly break down. This session will explore how GraphRAG combines knowledge graphs with retrieval-augmented generation to deliver more accurate, context-rich AI applications. Through live demos and code, we will walk through building a GenAI solution end to end using Neo4j and Python. Learn how to construct knowledge graphs from unstructured and structured data, make key design decisions around schema and chunking, and implement multiple retrieval strategies—including vector search, vector plus Cypher, and text-to-Cypher approaches. Then, pull all these skills together in a conversational agent built with Neo4j and LangChain. Come to this session and leave with practical techniques for designing knowledge graphs, choosing the right retriever for a use case, and applying GraphRAG patterns you can adapt to your own GenAI projects.

A good starting point for code to be discussed is in the examples in: https://github.com/neo4j/neo4j-graphrag-python

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SPEAKER BIO: (presenting remotely)
Jennifer Reif is a Developer Advocate at Neo4j, speaker, and blogger with an MS in CMIS. An avid developer and problem-solver, she has worked with many businesses and projects to organize and make sense of widespread data assets and leverage them for maximum business value. She has expertise in a variety of commercial and open source tools, and she enjoys learning new technologies, sometimes on a daily basis! Her passion is finding ways to organize chaos and deliver software more effectively. See also https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmhreif/