Thanks for joining us for "An Introduction to Neural Radiance Fields"
...and Carson Sweet's demo of Syncog!
Thanks again to everyone who joined us at Vault Virginia earlier this week for From Still Photos to 3D Scene: An Introduction to Neural Radiance Fields. Alison Lu, a data scientist at ENSCO Rail, headlined the evening with a clear, accessible explanation of what a neural radiance field (NeRF) is, how it works, and potential commercial applications for the technique.
The slides from Alison’s talk are available here. If you’d like to reach out to her, you can find her on LinkedIn!
Prior to Alison’s talk, Carson Sweet opened with a fascinating overview of Syncog, an experimental platform he’s working on to explore how cognitive scaffolding like identity, values, affect, and multi-layer memory can enhance the AI assistant experience. Carson asked me to express his thanks to the audience for all of the great and insightful questions. If you’d like to learn more about Syncog or share your feedback, Carson would love to hear from you at cs@carsonsweet.com.
Finally, don’t forget to check out our next Charlottesville Data Science event — Breaking Into Data Science & AI Engineering — coming up on Thursday, August 27. We’re gathering a panel of seasoned data scientists, AI engineers, and team leaders to share their perspectives and advice on what it takes to land your first (or next!) job in the field.
Please share the link with anyone you know who may be interested!
More upcoming events around Charlottesville
Thursday, August 20: The Charlottesville Rust Meetup continues its Tock OS series with Wireless Communication with the IEEE 802.15.4 Protocol, exploring how a Rust application can wirelessly transmit and receive radio frames.
Thursday, August 27: Charlottesville Data Science and Cville AI Explorers jointly host the Breaking Into Data Science & AI Engineering panel discussion at the UVA School of Data Science. Hear from a group of experienced data scientists, AI engineers, and team leaders about how to land your first (or next) job in the field.
Friday, September 4: The UVA School of Data Science hosts an award ceremony and reception for the 2026 Data Is ART Competition. Data visualization expert Alberto Cairo will give a keynote talk, followed by the award presentation for this year’s winners. Open to the public.
Thursday, September 17: CvilleBioHub holds its fifth annual BioDiscovery Summit, “From Spark to Scale,” at the Irving Theater in the CODE Building.
Thursday, October 1: AFCEA Central Virginia (CeVA) holds its third annual Data Centric Summit (DCS26) at the Irving Theater in the CODE Building. The summit will focus on the technologies, architectures, and operational practices shaping the next generation of data‑driven decision-making across defense, government, and industry.
Friday, October 2 – Saturday, October 3: Save the date for beCamp 2026, one of the longest-running and most storied events in the Charlottesville technology scene. beCamp is the Charlottesville tech community’s annual “unconference”, an event fully planned and run by the people who show up. Registration will open in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!