SAS Innovate on Tour

Register now

Amsterdam • 2 June 2026 • Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ 

 

The data and AI conference for business leaders, technical users and SAS Partners

 

Register now

Join us in the vibrant city of Amsterdam for this exclusive, free, in person event bringing leaders, practitioners and partners together around the real world of data and AI.

SAS Innovate on Tour will give you practical, evidence-based insights on how:

  • Organisations make decisions confidently with AI they can trust.
  • Industry specific SAS solutions give companies a competitive edge.
  • Partners help scale AI across complex environments.
  • Transparency and governance unlock innovation with AI.

Plus, you’ll connect with industry peers, experts and partners to share best practices of data and AI turning insight into action.

Whether you define strategy, build models, deploy systems or support clients, SAS Innovate on Tour is your opportunity to join us in our 50th year as a trusted partner across business, government and society.

SAS Innovate on Tour Amsterdam – register now to secure your place, as spaces are limited.

SAS Innovate on Tour - Amsterdam

Highlights 2025

Speakers

More speakers will be announced soon!

Register now

Agenda

09:30 - 10:30

Welcome & registrations

10:30 - 12:00

Main stage opening sessions

Where Human Ingenuity Meets AI in Action

What does real AI impact look like when it’s accountable, governed, and delivering measurable results today?

In this 90 minute session, we showcase how leading organizations are moving AI from promise to practice—combining human expertise and advanced analytics to drive real business outcomes. You’ll see how domain knowledge, responsible design, and intelligent systems work together to power better decisions at scale.

We explore what makes AI truly enterprise ready, starting with trust. Learn how organizations are embedding transparency, accountability, and governance across the AI lifecycle—and why trustworthy AI is becoming a competitive advantage, not just a requirement.

You’ll then see how these capabilities come together on the SAS Viya platform, where teams are shortening time to value, scaling innovation, and operationalizing AI with confidence. From copilots to autonomous agents, AI is accelerating across the analytics lifecycle—delivering impact where it matters most.

This isn’t a vision of what might happen someday.

It’s what’s delivering value now—and how you can put it to work in your organization.

12:00 - 13:30

Lunch and networking at Innovation Square

13:30 - 15:30

Breakout Sessions: Engage & exchange tracks
Breakout sessions: after the plenary session, you can choose a breakout session. Indicate your preferred journey on the registration form.

Financial Services at the Inflection Point

Financial institutions are navigating unprecedented volatility, regulatory pressure and rising financial crime, while AI is rapidly evolving from experimentation to industrialized decision-making.

This track explores how banks and insurers can create value in uncertain times by moving to governed, agentic and scalable AI. Through practical sessions on risk and regulatory management and fraud and financial crime prevention, you’ll gain concrete insights into how leading organizations modernize decision systems, strengthen resilience and deliver better outcomes with trusted AI.

View Financial Services Session Agenda

  • “The Next Frontier: AI Agents Managing the Bank’s Balance Sheet” By Maurits Bakker (Senior Risk Leader)

    Banks are still managing their balance sheet with fragmented models and backward-looking reports.
    But what if the balance sheet could think, simulate, and act?

    This session explores how Agentic AI can move banks from static reporting to real-time decisioning, continuously optimizing capital, liquidity, and profitability across Treasury, Risk, and Finance.

    The future is not more dashboards.
    It is an intelligent, self-steering balance sheet
  • SPOTLIGHT: From Models to Machines: The Next Era of AI in Financial Services By Dr. Iain Brown (Global Head of AI & Data Science)

    What agentic, governed and industrialised AI actually means for banks and insurers.

    A practical look at how agentic and governed AI are moving financial services from isolated models to industrialised decision systems and what leaders need to change now.
  • Fraud/AML (title to be announced) By Patrick Özer (KPMG Advisory) & Frederic Hennequin (Head of AI for Risk, Fraud & Compliance)

    Are Your Fraud Controls Still Working? Strengthening Fraud Detection with AI and Continuous Validation

    Fraud controls degrade over time. This session explores how continuous validation and emerging AI capabilities help organizations maintain effectiveness, reduce false positives, and stay ahead of evolving threats

From Principles to Practice: AI for Effective Public Service

In an era of geopolitical tension, digital threats, and complex regulations, governments and healthcare organizations must safeguard their data, AI, and infrastructure. This session shows where AI delivers real value today, with practical examples of how leading organizations use trusted data, AI, and advanced analytics to enable confident decision‑making, strengthen resilience, prevent fraud, and deliver real impact for citizens and organizations.

Audience: Senior government and healthcare leaders, CIOs/CDOs, program executives, and policy leaders seeking practical frameworks and real-world AI insights.

View Public Sector & Healthcare Session Agenda

  • 13.30: Welcome & Introduction  
    Nicoline Mol, Director of Sales Public & Health Care Benelux, SAS

  • 13.35: How AI is Reshaping Governments 
    Véronique Van Vlasselaer, Head of AI & Data Science EMEA, SAS
    Edwin van Unen, Principal Customer Advisor, SAS

  • 13.55: Customer Presentations: AI in the Public Sector: Real Applications of Game-Changing Technology
    Rijkswaterstaat: AI & Sovereignty
    Adriaan Schutte, CTO, Rijkswaterstaat Netwerken
    Maarten van Leeuwen, Senior Technology Officer, Rijkswaterstaat

    Erasmus MC: Building Trust in Clinical AI
    Julia van Wijngaarden, PhD’s Erasmus MC
    Imke Bloemen, PhD’s Erasmus MC
    Imane Ihaddouchen, PhD’s Erasmus MC

  • 14.35: Short Break
  • 14.45: Fighting Fraud, Waste & Abuse: The Transformation Story of AGEA
    Katarina Garai, CFE, Fraud & Compliance Solutions Advisor, SAS

  • 15.05: Panel Discussion: Innovation at the Speed of Trust
    Moderator: Véronique Van Vlasselaer, Head of AI & Data Science EMEA, SAS
    Panelists: Adriaan Schutte (CTO, Rijkswaterstaat), Julia van Wijngaarden (PhD Student, Erasmus MC), Teresa Cardoso Ribeiro (Program Manager AI, Zorginstituut Nederland), Colin Nugteren (CEO, Notilyze), Nicola Furlong (EMEA Head of Public Sector)

  • 15.30: Closing session

From Data to Decisions: Driving Value in Life Sciences with Trusted Data & AI

Life Sciences organizations face growing pressure to accelerate innovation, shorten development timelines and demonstrate real-world impact, all while navigating increasing regulatory and data complexity. With rapid advances in AI and analytics, the challenge is no longer whether to modernize, but where to focus first. In this session, hear from leaders from SAS, our partners and our customers on how trusted data, AI and advanced analytics are reshaping the life sciences landscape and enabling more confident decisions across the value chain and around the world.

Session moderators:
Dr. Mark Lambrecht, Global Head, SAS Health Care and Life Sciences Advisory
Luis Andre Soriano, Senior Statistical Programmer, OCS Life Sciences

View Life Sciences Session Agenda

  • 13.30-13.45: Trust at Scale: How Data and AI Are Reshaping Life Sciences

    As Life Sciences organizations scale AI across research, development, and operations, trust becomes the defining requirement. In this presentation, SAS shares its vision for the future of life sciences - one where advanced analytics, AI, and governance are designed together. We will show how SAS supports customers across the Life Sciences value chain, enabling them to convert complex, regulated data into reliable, explainable insights that stand up to scientific, regulatory, and operational scrutiny.

    Dr. Mark Lambrecht, Global Head, SAS Health Care and Life Sciences Advisory
  • 13.45-14.10: Modernizing Clinical Data Workflows: Real-World Insights from SAS Viya Evaluation

    This paper presents a comprehensive evaluation of SAS Viya’s capabilities in transforming clinical data workflows within a biopharma context. Different Real-world use-cases—ranging from autoscaling and open-source integration to advanced biomarker analytics and model management—were implemented and assessed. The study highlights Viya’s impact on execution efficiency, interoperability with R and Databricks, and support for custom applications and dashboards. Key learnings include substantial reductions in processing time, seamless integration with open-source tools, and enhanced support for scalable, collaborative analytics. The findings inform best practices for migrating from legacy platforms to Viya, leveraging SAS Managed Cloud Services, for next-generation clinical data operations.

    Bjorn Daems, Director, Statistical Programming, ArgenX
  • 14.10-14.25: Turn insights into actionable outcomes: Exploring how data, AI and RWE are shaping smarter clinical trial protocols

    Clinical trials are evolving fast. Learn how trusted data, AI and real‑world evidence are enabling more efficient, patient‑centric trial protocols; Helping life sciences teams move from insight to action while navigating regulatory and data complexity.

    Lisa Murch, Sr Industry Consultant, SAS Life Sciences Customer Advisory, Real-world Evidence 

  • 14.25-14.35 Coffee Break

  • 14.35-15.00: From Code Validation to Code Generation: A Human-Centered Generative AI Collaboration Between SGS and SAS

    SGS Pharma - Clinical Research and SAS have been collaborating to explore how generative AI can support clinical programming workflows.

    The initial phase of the collaboration focused on AI-assisted code validation, evaluating how generative AI can automate the review and verification of programming. The collaboration has since expanded to explore AI-driven code generation for common CDISC ADaM domains. Future areas of collaboration between SGS and SAS include automated generation of define.xml metadata, as well as support for more advanced efficacy domains.

    This presentation will share key lessons from AI-driven code validation and generation, and how these approaches can help improve efficiency while maintaining quality, transparency, and regulatory requirements.

    Van Thang Hoang, Biostatistician, SGS

  • 15.00-15.30: Closing panel discussion
    Real Stories and Trusted Impact: Moving AI from Experiment to Enterprise in Life Sciences

    A forward-looking discussion on how Life Sciences organizations are turning AI into a trusted operational capability - with governance that keeps models transparent, monitored and compliant from build through scale.

    Paul Vervuren, Principal Clinical Data Strategy at Danone
    Lisa M. Smits-Besamusca, Senior Manager, Enterprise AI Transformation at Deloitte
    Dr. Mark Lambrecht, Global Head, SAS Health Care and Life Sciences Advisory

Modern Data, Real AI: How Organizations Are Evolving Their Analytics Ecosystems

Organizations today face growing pressure to turn growing volumes of data into meaningful decisions while keeping pace with rapid advances in AI and evolving technology landscapes. Many teams are navigating fragmented data environments, legacy platforms, and complex migration paths—while trying to adopt new AI capabilities without disrupting existing processes.

This tech user track brings together four complementary perspectives. We’ll explore how teams are extracting more value from their data with modern analytics approaches, demonstrate how agentic AI can support real-world decision making, discuss strategies for modernizing the data and data management stack, and hear from customers navigating large-scale analytics platform migrations.

View Technical Users Session Agenda

  • SAS & the Modern Data Stack 
    Optimizing for Cost, Performance and Productivity

    Today's modern data stack offers a wide range of choices across file formats, storage technologies, query engines, compression techniques, and storage tiering. Selecting the right combination within an organization’s specific context is critical to controlling costs, optimizing performance, and improving user productivity. This session examines how SAS Viya fits into the modern data stack, exploring its role in areas such as data mesh architectures, open data formats, SAS SpeedyStore, and integration with cloud data platforms.

    Anthony Severeyns, Principal Systems Engineer, SAS

  • Agentic AI at Scale with SAS and Intel: Lower TCO through Accelerator-Driven Architectures—Enabling Digital Sovereignty

    This session explores real-world AI and analytics use cases powered by Intel Xeon 6–based architectures and enterprise analytics platforms from SAS across public cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments. From both business and technical perspectives, attendees will learn how cost-efficient, accelerator-enabled infrastructure delivers consistent performance and scalability for modern AI workloads—without sacrificing flexibility. The discussion will include how accelerator-enabled architectures shape TCO and token economics for agentic AI, while confidential computing advances digital sovereignty, scalability, compliance across multi-agent decisioning workflows.

    Can Yurtseven, AI/Cloud Solution Architect, Intel
  • From Idea to Action: The End to End Lifecycle of an AI Agent

    In this session, SAS’ Agentic AI experts will walk you through the full lifecycle of developing an AI agent: from idea to operational deployment. They will explore how to design agents that go far beyond basic productivity assistants, transforming them into strategic actors that drive meaningful outcomes. You will learn how agents can be enriched with textual documents, structured data, and advanced machine learning models to make informed decisions and support complex organizational processes. The session will focus how to embed trust, governance, and responsible controls into every stage of the agent’s lifecycle, ensuring they operate reliably, transparently, and safely within your organization.

    Mattia Guglielmelli, Pre-Post Sales Engineer, SAS
  • Brainbay Case Study: Ensuring Continuous Access to Critical Dutch Real Estate Data – Presented by Notilyze

    This session will explore how a leading real estate data organization (Brainbay, NVM) successfully upgraded to a modern analytics platform without disrupting access to critical data for thousands of users. Discover how a carefully planned, low-risk migration ensured continuous service while improving stability and scalability. You’ll also see how the new platform is unlocking advanced analytics capabilities and setting the foundation for future innovation.

    Paul Koot, Lead Analytics, Notilyze

15:30 - 16:00

Networking break at Innovation Square

16:00 - 18:00

SAS Hackathon Bootcamp

The SAS Hackathon Boot Camp is a dynamic, hands-on experience designed to spark collaboration and innovation using cutting-edge data and AI on SAS® Viya®. 

Tick the box on the registration form if you want to participate.

16:00 - 17:30

Closing remarks and keynote ‘Artifhacking Intelligence’ by Inti De Ceukelaire

17:30 - 18:30

Networking drinks & bites at Innovation Square

What to expect

Join us in Amsterdam to learn how to boost productivity with data and AI. This complimentary event will provide something for everyone – top executives, IT directors, data scientists, engineers, analysts and SAS partners across industries.

Turn data into decisions you trust

Hear how SAS makes sure AI can be trusted and how industries feel safe and confident in the decisions they make.

Responsibly use trusted and transparently governed AI

Learn how you can drive meaningful impact for your organization using data and AI responsibly and effectively, all while prioritizing transparency and governance.

Industry-first insights

Hear real stories from your industry and learn how peers are applying AI to solve sector specific challenges.

Actionable ideas, real impact

Discover ways to scale AI across your organization with simplicity and speed. Get practical guidance on building compliant, future-proof AI systems.

Conference Experience

Join us and bring your team. We’ll bring content, inspiration, networking, and fun!

Viya Ball Pit

A fun way to remind us how to get insights faster with a more productive data and AI platform.

Innovation Square

Get to know SAS partners, their services and solutions or check out interactive demos.

Worker Safety Demo

Discover how SAS can help you reduce and prevent safety incidents in real time with our worker safety solution, powered by computer vision combined with SAS Analytics for IoT.

Let’s celebrate five decades of turning data into responsible decisions and see how SAS is shaping the future.

Location

Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ

Piet Heinkade 1
1019 BR Amsterdam

Google maps

Registration

It’s free to register for Innovate on Tour in Amsterdam however spaces are limited, so register now to request your place.

*
*
*
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Yes, I will participate in the SAS Hackathon Bootcamp.
 
  Yes, I consent to share my contact information with the event sponsors and I would like to occasionally receive emails from these sponsors regarding their products and services. I understand that I can withdraw my consent at any time by clicking the opt-out link included in the emails received from the sponsors or by contacting them directly.

All personal information will be handled in accordance with the SAS Privacy Statement.

 
 

Sponsors