Presentation with Steve Hafif & Marlene Valderrama
September 2026
The IRI podcast episode features Steve Hafif, Co-Founder and CEO of Cypris.ai, and Marlene Valderrama, Principal IP Manager and Senior Technology Scout at Halliburton, discussing the evolution of enterprise AI from general-purpose tools toward verticalized intelligence built specifically for R&D, innovation, and technical decision-making.
The conversation explores how domain-specific data, ontologies, retrieval capabilities, source grounding, and agent workflows can make AI more relevant and reliable for specialized research. Topics also include security and guardrails, accelerating R&D workflows, demonstrating measurable ROI, and the emerging role of human-in-the-loop AI orchestrators who combine AI capabilities with human expertise and judgment.
Hear practical perspectives on how organizations can build on existing AI platforms to create more specialized intelligence and turn AI adoption into meaningful value for research, innovation, and IP teams.
