The Data, Agents, and Processes Lab (DAPLab) at Columbia University is building the foundations for a future where AI agents safely and reliably automate complex work. We bring together researchers in data systems, applied AI, operating systems, HCI, algorithms, and business to invent the infrastructure, algorithms, and design principles needed to deploy agents in the real world.

Our work spans the full stack—from systems and training frameworks to human–agent interaction, process automation, and digital twins. We build open-source tools, collaborate closely with industry partners, and prototype agentic technologies that reimagine how work gets done. Based in the heart of New York City—home to some of the world’s largest enterprises—we are uniquely positioned to explore how agent automation transforms real organizational processes. DAPLab is a home for students, researchers, and partners who want to shape the next generation of AI-native systems.

For more information about the lab, please contact ewu@cs.columbia.edu

News & Education

Spring 2026 AI Entrepreneurship Series

The DAPLab is organizing a series of events that bring together Columbia students, faculty, and industry partners to discuss the process of transitioning lessons from research and the classroom into products and value.

Spring 2026 DAPLab Research Seminar

The DAPlab’s Tuesday 12PM research seminar in CSB 453 (CS Conference Room) invites speakers that can share cutting-edge agent-systems research or can talk about processes in their organizations and how they are trying to automate them.

Honorable Mention, CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award

Congratulations to Tianle Zhou on earning an Honorable Mention in the 2025-2026 CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award, presented by the Computing Research Association (CRA). Zhou is an undergraduate researcher in our DAPLab, where he works under the guidance of Prof. Eugene Wu and Prof. Kostis Kaffes. His research focuses on understanding how autonomous agents can be effectively supported in real-world, stateful system environments, as well as identifying the limitations that arise when such agents are deployed for complex, multi-step tasks.

October 2025 Workshop

We plan to run the second iteration of our AI Agents for Work workshop in October 2025. The first day will be a public event with cutting edge research, war stories from deployments, and engaging panels. The second day will be private for DAPLab industry partners to deeply engage with the students, faculty, and other partners.

Events

  • 2025-12-16
    Building Liquid AI Ramin Hasani, Liquid AI

    AI progress today is constrained by rising energy use, cost, latency, and complexity. In this ...

  • 2025-12-16
    AI for IT Automation: Benchmarking and Agent Development Research @ IBM Saurabh Jha, Yu Deng, Daby Sow, Ruchi Mahindru

    IT outages remain frequent and expensive and stem from diverse causes spanning network failure...

  • 2025-12-09
    Validation Techniques for Offensive Security Agents Brendan Dolan-Gavitt

    Large language models are increasingly helping to automate vulnerability discovery and exploit...

  • 2025-12-02
    AI Entrepreneurship: Obstacles, Opportunities, and Outcomes Anish Das Sarma, Reinforce Labs

    Building an AI startup today is exciting, but also uniquely challenging. In this talk, I’ll of...

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Publications

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