Stanford GSB Campus
Friday, May 08, 2026
8:30am – 6:30pm
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Sustainable and Responsible Operations in the Age of AI

This conference will bring together academics and practitioners to explore how novel data sources and AI tools can support environmental sustainability, organizational resilience, and social responsibility.
Open to
Faculty
Staff
Students
Stanford Community
Stanford GSB Campus

Location

On Campus

Event Details

About the Sustainability Research Conference Series

The Stanford Initiative on Business and Environmental Sustainability Research Conference Series is hosted by Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

Stanford Graduate School of Business is hosting a one-day conference on sustainable and responsible operations in the age of AI. Topics discussed during the day include, for example, the use of satellite imagery and geospatial analytics to monitor forests, quantify biomass, and improve carbon and land‑use accounting; the use of novel data combined with analytics and AI to improve efficiency and resilience and foster sustainable value chains; the role of AI in planning and operating energy systems, but also the energy challenges associated with training and operating large-scale AI models; and the social and institutional dimensions of sustainability AI, including governance, fairness, accountability, and transparency.

Registration is now closed.

Agenda

Time
Session
8:00 - 8:30 AM

Breakfast & Registration

8:30 - 8:35 AM

Welcoming Remarks

Dan Iancu, Associate Professor, Stanford University

8:35 - 10:15 AM

AI for Agriculture and the Natural Environment

  • Valuing Nature for Transformation - Gretchen Daily, Bing Professor of Environmental Science, Stanford University
  • Predictive and Prescriptive AI toward Optimizing Wildfire Suppression - Alexandre Jacquillat, Associate Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management
  • Sustainable and Responsible Operations in the Age of AI; Business and La Condition Humaine, A Perspective - Arjen Vrielink, Co-founder, Satelligence
  • AI for a Living Planet: From Vibecoding to Conservation, Science, and Disaster Response - Léonard Boussioux, Assistant Professor, University of Washington Foster School of Business
10:15 - 10:30 AM

Break

10:30 - 12:10 PM

AI - Education, Governance, and Ethical Issues

  • Mitigating Label Bias with Interpretable Rubric Embeddings - Sharad Goel, Professor, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
  • Learning When to Personalize: Evidence from Large-Scale Nudging Experiments in Education - Divya Singhvi, Assistant Professor, NYU Stern School of Business
  • From Predictive Prioritization to Prescriptive Matching: Fairness, Transparency, Robustness, and Their Trade-offs in Homeless Services - Phebe Vayanos, Associate Professor, USC
  • AI and Algorithmic Decision-Making in Education Policy - Irene Lo, Assistant Professor, Stanford University
12:10 - 12:40 PM

Lunch Break

12:40 - 1:40 PM

Lunch Panel: AI and Sustainable Production and Consumption

  • Inês Azevedo, Professor, Stanford University
  • Sytske Wijnsma, Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business
  • Jim Leape, William and Eva Price Senior Fellow; Co-Director, Center for Ocean Solutions, Stanford University
  • Mohsen Bayati, The Carl and Marilynn Thoma Professor of Operations, Information & Technology, Stanford University
1:40 - 2:00 PM

Break

2:00 - 3:40 PM

AI and Sustainable Operations

  • Data-Driven Operations for Social Sustainability: Evidence from Distributed Artisanal Supply Chains - Somya Singhvi, Assistant Professor, USC Marshall School of Business
  • From Bytes to Bananas: Making AI Work in the Perishable Supply Chain - Nathan Fenner, Co-Founder, Afresh
  • From Uniform Policies to Actionable Personalization - Mahyar Eftekhar, Associate Professor, Arizona State University
  • Sustainable Research Operations in the Age of AI - Michael Wagner, Professor, University of Washington Foster School of Business
3:40 - 3:55 PM

Break

3:55 - 5:15 PM

AI for Energy and Transportation

  • Autonomous(?) Vehicles - Operational deployment challenges for expensive L4 cars - Daniel Freund, Associate Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management
  • Optimization @ Waymo: Fleet Scheduling, Positioning and Matching - Ruben Lobel, Product Data Scientist Lead, Waymo
  • Algorithmic Nudging for Energy Savings and Environment: Evidence from an IoT Platform - Nur Sunar, Associate Professor, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
5:15 - 6:30 PM

Evening Reception

  

Conference Organizer

Dan A. Iancu

Associate Professor of Operations, Information & Technology