Started in Rochester · Built for Central & Western New York

A regional home
for AI safety.

A one-day hackathon and conference at the University of Rochester — connecting students, researchers, and builders across Central and Western New York.

One day
9am – 7pm
Two tracks
Governance · Technical
40–80
builders
September 2026
University of Rochester
The vision

Started in Rochester.
Built to spread.

CNY AI Safety begins where the first organizer, venue, and launch event are. The goal is bigger: a lightweight network connecting campuses and cities across Central and Western New York around concrete AI safety work.

BuffaloUniversity at Buffalo SyracuseSyracuse U · SUNY Upstate IthacaCornell University LAUNCH RochesterUniversity of Rochester · RIT

A launch node in Rochester

A durable local group forms from the first event — the anchor of the network.

Groups seeded nearby

Reading groups, project nights, and campus hubs in Syracuse, Buffalo, and Ithaca.

A summit that rotates

A recurring regional hackathon that moves across institutions year to year.

Two tracks

Choose your lane for the day.

Governance

The institutional, political, and social side of advanced-AI risk — and how society can reduce catastrophic outcomes.

AI misuse Biosecurity Model evaluations Institutional risk Responsible deployment Red-teaming
Outputs · Policy memos, governance proposals, risk briefs, red-team reports.

Technical safety

Concrete, safety-relevant building — tools and experiments for understanding and constraining model behavior.

LLM evals Interpretability Agent safety Benchmark design Behavior monitoring Eval harnesses
Outputs · GitHub repos, eval harnesses, demos, interpretability visualizations.
Why it matters

Most AI events teach you to ship.
This one points talent at the risks.

Students are excited about AI — but few local events connect that energy to reducing risk from increasingly capable systems. CNY AI Safety is a concrete on-ramp into the field, before commercial incentives shape every project.

Find promising people

Identify students and builders who could go deep on safety.

Generate real projects

Turn a day of work into demos, evals, and proposals worth continuing.

Build something lasting

Leave behind a community that keeps meeting after the event.

The day

Nine to seven, end to end.

9:00 – 9:30
Breakfast & check-in
9:30 – 10:00
Opening remarks — why AI safety, why a regional community
10:00 – 11:00
Keynote & invited talk
11:00 – 11:30
Track intros & project prompts
11:30 – 12:30
Team formation & planning
12:30 – 1:30
Lunch
1:30 – 4:30
Hackathon & project work
4:30 – 5:30
Demos & governance presentations
5:30 – 6:00
Judging, prizes & closing
6:00 – 7:00
Reception & follow-up signups
Who's invited

From across the corridor.

Students, researchers, and builders in AI, CS, policy, philosophy, and the sciences — at any level of experience with safety.

Rochester
University of Rochester
RIT
Local builders & startups
Syracuse
Syracuse University
SUNY Upstate
Policy & bio communities
Buffalo
University at Buffalo
Local technical builders
Ithaca
Cornell University
AI, policy & philosophy
Ithaca communities

…plus BlueDot community members across Central and Western New York.

What we'll make

A day that leaves something behind.

40–80
builders in the room
5–12
demos & proposals shipped
1
public recap, shared widely
a community that lasts
Attend

Be in the first cohort.

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