Signal and image sciences community celebrates record-breaking 30th annual CASIS workshop

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory called and the signal and image sciences community answered: The Center for Advanced Signal and Image Sciences (CASIS) hosted their 30th annual workshop at the University of California Livermore Collaboration Center (UCLCC) on June 24-25, setting new records for attendance and technical contributions in the workshop’s three-decade history.

This year’s workshop drew 303 registrants, a 35% increase over 2025 and more than double the attendance of just three years ago, along with around 70 talks and 55 posters spanning eight tracks on a parallel agenda: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, National Ignition Facility, Non-Destructive Evaluation, Quantum Sensing and Quantum Computing, Remote Sensing/Non-Invasive Imaging and Inverse Problems, Robotics and Automation, a dedicated student track, and a tutorial and seminar track. CASIS’s audience has grown more balanced in recent years, with participation from outside the Lab rising from about 20% of attendees three years ago to 45% this year.

Celebrating 30 years of the workshop

CASIS was founded in 1994, and its annual workshop, now marking its 30th edition, has grown from a small technical exchange between LLNL and Sandia National Laboratories into one of the Lab’s longest running and most broadly attended events. To mark the milestone, this year’program included a special anniversary session bringing together nearly every former CASIS director for an open, interactive discussion of the center’s history and evolution, the first time the group had appeared together in this format. James Candy, Steve Azevedo, Randy Roberts and Dave Chambers joined current director Ruben Glatt on stage, with only one former director, Kyle Champley, unable to attend.

The session also featured a special recognition: Engineering Director Anup Singh and Engineering Deputy Director for R&D Rob Sharpe honored Jim Candy, CASIS’s founding director, for 50 years of service at LLNL.

“Jim is the ultimate role model for a LLNL researcher: always focused on solving big, complex problems by thinking-outside-the-box and teaming up with the best minds,” said Singh. “What better event to celebrate his 50 years of service than at the annual workshop for CASIS, an organization he helped found.”

Something for everyone

With several parallel tracks, the 2026 program offered entry points for researchers at every career stage and across disciplines.

“The Robotics and Automation track was particularly noteworthy, featuring roughly 20 presentations spanning work from autonomous laboratories to physical AI for science,” said Aldair Gongora, the track’s session chair. “Because this work is deeply multidisciplinary, the workshop created a space where people from diverse backgrounds could share ideas, strengthen relationships and build the collaborations needed to keep the Lab at the forefront of critical emerging technologies. It was also a wonderful opportunity for early-career research scientists to share their work.”

Featured speakers brought outside perspectives to the technical program as well. Anne Garafalo of Pacific Fusion, who was a featured speaker in the National Ignition Facility track, said the workshop’s open format is part of what makes it valuable.

“The CASIS workshop is one of the few open-access events at LLNL that brings together people from across the Lab, academia and industry to learn from one another,” Garafalo said. “This year, I was impressed by presenters explaining complex topics in accessible ways, such as how cross-beam probing of plasma significantly improves Thomson scattering measurements at the National Ignition Facility.”

Growing the next generation

This year’s student track was expanded through a new partnership with the Data Science Summer Institute (DSSI), giving students the opportunity to learn about one of the Lab’s premier internship programs and explore career paths at LLNL through presentations, panels and mentoring sessions.

“The expanded student track was a successful experiment,” said Min Priest, the track’s session chair. "Students appeared engaged for the entire duration of the micro-mentoring sessions, and I received a lot of thoughtful questions throughout — feedback I heard echoed by other mentors as well. Several students expressed gratitude for the chance to ask career-related questions to so many different mentors, and DSSI students in particular benefited from exposure to mentors outside their own program and to Lab career perspectives shared during the lectures and former-intern panel.”

For students, the poster sessions and breaks were just as valuable as the formal program. “CASIS was really exciting — there were tons of posters and a huge number of talks, and students were bound to find several that directly applied to their research and experience,” said Nicholas Di, a Rice University student interning this summer with the AI Research Group. “The conversations were great, and students got the chance to network with attendees who were friendly and open to sharing their ideas. The breaks were scheduled perfectly, giving us time to mingle, catch up on work or just get some fresh air.”

Looking ahead

The positive feedback and productive atmosphere were also based on the venue itself. UCLCC, a space for “sparking conversations where innovation thrives,” is a UC system-wide resource purpose-built for collaboration between the UC campuses and UC-affiliated national labs. The modern and bright meeting rooms and courtyard provided enough space to hold the expanded crowd, while the UCLCC staff brought a professionalism and warmth that made the two days run smoothly from setup to close.

“It’s been wonderful to see UC collaborations continue to grow since CASIS is being hosted at UCLCC. Since 2023, UC participation has expanded significantly, and this year we have welcomed professors and students from six UC campuses,” said Camille Bibeau, UC National Laboratories executive director for division initiatives. “This growth reflects the vision of UCLCC: fostering collaboration, connection and shared progress across the UC system.”

The workshop continues to be sponsored by the LLNL Engineering Directorate and organized jointly by CASIS with the IEEE Oakland East Bay Section and the local chapters of the IEEE Signal Processing Society and IEEE Computer Society, alongside industry exhibitors including MathWorks, Keyence, Clarivate and Elsevier.

“CASIS is in a unique position to give people a window into a huge range of different fields, all tied together by this shared multidisciplinary foundation of the signal and image sciences,” Glatt said. “That’s why the workshop is such a good opportunity to make the Lab more approachable by inviting the broader research community in to find where their interests overlap with ours and where we might collaborate. I am looking forward to seeing the event grow further with the support from the newly formed CASIS council with Victoria Dadzie, Austin Smith and Aditya K. Mohan.”

For more information about CASIS or to get involved in future workshops, contact CASIS director Ruben Glatt (glatt1 [at] llnl.gov (glatt1[at]llnl[dot]gov)).