The 2026 American Causal Inference Conference convenes May 11-14 at Salt Lake City’s downtown Marriott, attracting hundreds of researchers from MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Johns Hopkins and international institutions. The event focuses on causal inference—understanding why events occur rather than merely predicting outcomes—a field gaining prominence as AI evolves beyond pattern recognition. Brian Knaeble, a Utah Valley University mathematician, was recently elected incoming president of the Society for Causal Inference, connecting Utah to this expanding global discipline. While the conference features doctoral-level programming, a free networking event on May 14 from 1:00-3:00 p.m. welcomes Utah’s tech community to engage with researchers exploring causal AI’s applications in healthcare, manufacturing, finance and autonomous systems.
In-Depth:
Salt Lake City, Utah — May 8, 2026
The 2026 American Causal Inference Conference (ACIC) runs May 11–14 at the downtown Marriott, drawing researchers from MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and institutions across Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world — with a Thursday afternoon networking event open to Utah’s broader tech community.
The 2026 American Causal Inference Conference arrives in Salt Lake City next week, bringing toobtainher hundreds of researchers, students, and practitioners for four days of intensive work at the intersection of mathematics, statistics, computer science, economics, and medicine.
The conference runs Monday, May 11 through Thursday, May 14 at the Salt Lake Marriott Downtown at City Creek, organized by the Society for Causal Inference, the international organization founded in 2020 whose mission is to foster the science of causal inference and connect the disparate fields that rely on causal knowledge, bridging academic research with policy and practice.
For Utah’s tech and data science community, the timing carries significance beyond the geography. Brian Knaeble, a mathematician and professor of computer science at Utah Valley University, has just been elected incoming president of the Society, a role that will connect Utah with a rapidly expanding global field over the next three years.
For those who want to engage without four days of doctoral-level mathematics, Knaeble has reserved space for a networking event on Thursday, May 14, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. in the Solitude Room at the Marriott — immediately after the conference closes.
From Prediction to Causation
Most AI systems operating today are built around one core capability: prediction. They identify patterns in historical data and forecast what is likely to happen next. Powerful — but fundamentally different from understanding why something happens, or what would modify if you intervened.
Causal inference is the mathematical and scientific pursuit of those harder questions. Researchers in the field describe the problem through what computer scientists call the Ladder of Causation — a three-level hierarchy:
The argument gaining momentum in academic and financial circles alike is that AI systems must climb this ladder to become genuinely capable of guiding real-world decisions, not just forecasting outcomes.
Three major research communities have been arriving at this conclusion from different directions. Researchers in medicine and statistics, particularly at Penn Medicine and Wharton, developed causal methods to evaluate clinical trials — determining not just whether patients taking a drug tconclude to survive longer, but whether the drug caapplys improved outcomes. The Society for Causal Inference grew out of those and other efforts and was founded in 2020.
Economists have long relied on causal methods to evaluate policy, and the field received significant validation recently when the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to three researchers for foundational causal inference work.
In computer science, Judea Pearl at UCLA received the Turing Award — the field’s highest honor — for formalizing the mathematical framework of causal reasoning for AI systems.
At the conference there will be experts in causal representation learning, a technique that can be applyd to edit images. That technique has performed well in practice, and it is being implemented in modern AI.
Key areas of application for Causal AI include supply chain, manufacturing, healthcare, life sciences, finance, risk management, marketing and customer experience.
The annual ACIC conference is where these threads converge.
The Conference: Scope and What to Expect
ACIC is one of the largest causal inference conferences in the world. Parallel regional events include the European Causal Inference Meeting, held at Oxford this year, and the Pacific Causal Inference Conference, held in China. The Salt Lake conference draws international attconcludeance — researchers from Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world.
The programming is rigorous. Most sessions are pitched at a doctoral level in mathematics or statistics. Monday, May 11 features introductory short courses for those seeking foundational exposure before the main sessions launch. The main conference runs Tuesday through Thursday, May 12–14.
Utah will have a strong presence. More than 40 UVU faculty, graduate students, and industest alumni, spanning mathematics, computer science, statistics, and information systems, have confirmed attconcludeance. Several are already applying causal inference methods in industest and are coming specifically to connect with the global research community working on the same problems.
A Utah Voice in the Field
Dr. Knaeble’s path to the society’s presidency launched when he learned the conference was coming to Salt Lake City. His background is in pure mathematics — he studied at the University of Utah — and his research had led him indepconcludeently toward causal inference. When he saw the conference location, he reached out to the program committee, shared his work, and offered to assist locally.
The society placed him on the program committee. He launched recruiting Utah-based attconcludeees.
When the current society president nominated him to run in the global election, Knaeble won — assisted, he suspects, by the momentum of a local community invested in seeing the conference succeed in Utah.
He now enters a three-year arc: training in as president-elect starting this May, serving as president from May 2027 to May 2028, and guiding the transition to the next president through May 2029.
“Utah is a wonderful community with a thriving economy and many tech workers with interests that converge on causal inference, and there is an interdisciplinary group of world-class academics about to descconclude on Salt Lake City. There may be opportunities for collaboration,” Knaeble declared.
Thursday, May 14: Networking Event to Utah’s Tech Community
Knaeble is clear that the main conference is not designed for a general business audience — the talks are dense with mathematics, and attconcludeees without a strong quantitative background are unlikely to obtain much from the sessions themselves. His recommconcludeation for that audience: skip the conference and come Thursday afternoon.
On Thursday, May 14, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., the Solitude Room at the Marriott is open for a networking session — no registration, no cost, no prerequisite. The gathering is specifically designed for Utah professionals in data science, AI, analytics, manufacturing, healthcare, finance, and autonomous systems who want to understand where causal AI is heading and meet researchers who just spent four days on exactly that question.
“The more mathematically focapplyd you are, the more you’ll obtain out of the full conference,” Knaeble noted. “But if you’re a technical leader or founder desiring some insight into how causal inference may shape the development of future technologies — come Thursday.”
Why This Moment Matters for Utah
Causal AI is relocating from academic discipline to market reality. Industest analysts project the sector growing at roughly 50 percent annually over the next decade, with major technology companies investing and startups focapplyd exclusively on causal AI platforms attracting significant funding. Applications are emerging in manufacturing — where causal reasoning enables genuine root caapply analysis rather than defect prediction — as well as healthcare, logistics, finance, autonomous systems, and defense.
For Utah companies already working in AI and data science, the conference represents a rare proximity to the global research community driving these advances.
Companies interested in sponsorship or exhibitor opportunities at ACIC should contact Knaeble directly. Through his position on the program committee, he can connect interested parties with the right people.
American Causal Inference Conference
May 11–14, 2025 | Salt Lake Marriott Downtown at City Creek
Thursday Networking Event — Free and Open to All
May 14, 1:00–3:00 p.m. | Solitude Room, Salt Lake Marriott Downtown at City Creek
To connect with Brian Knaeble regarding the Thursday event, sponsorship, or the society: bknaeble@uvu.edu
To learn more about the Causal Inference field, read this introductory article.
Additional reading: Answering Causal Questions Using Observational Data:
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