Build a Semantic Search Engine Tonight

Hosted by Aki Wijesundara and Manu Jayawardana

Fri, Jul 17, 2026

9:00 PM UTC (30 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

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AI Engineering Bootcamp & Certificate
Aki Wijesundara, PhD and Manu Jayawardana
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What you'll learn

Search by meaning, not exact words

Return the right document even when the query and the answer share no vocabulary.

Embed documents and queries the same way

Put your content and the user's question into the same vector space so they can be compared.

Ship something usable tonight

Walk away with a small working search you can run over your own files immediately.

Why this topic matters

Keyword search only finds the words you typed, so a search for cancel my plan misses a doc titled ending your subscription. In this free 30 minute session you build a semantic search engine that ranks results by meaning: embed your documents, embed the query, and return the closest matches even when the wording is totally different. You watch a search succeed on a phrase that shares no words with the answer. You leave with a working semantic search you can point at your own notes, docs, or product content the same night.

You'll learn from

Aki Wijesundara

AI Advisor | Educator | Google AI Accelerator Alum

Aki Wijesundara is an AI leader with a PhD in Machine Learning and extensive experience mentoring startups at Google’s AI Accelerator. With a career spanning both research and applied AI, Aki has taught 5,000+ students worldwide how to design and deploy production-ready AI systems.

He has worked across cutting-edge areas of applied AI, from LangChain and RAG pipelines to observability and large-scale deployment. As a researcher and educator, Aki bridges the gap between theory and practice, making complex systems approachable and actionable for engineers, founders, and product leaders.

Aki is also a frequent speaker and advisor to organizations adopting AI, helping them transition from experimentation to production at scale.

Manu Jayawardana

AI Founder | Co-Founder & CEO at Krybe | Co-Founder of Snapdrum

Manu Jayawardana is a serial entrepreneur with multiple AI startup successes.

He is also the Co-Founder of Snapdrum, an AI consultancy helping companies integrate and automate their businesses using AI. Through Snapdrum, Manu has worked with top startups and enterprises across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, advising on automation, product development, and AI strategy.

Currently, Manu is the Co-Founder & CEO of Krybe, an AI voice agent startup in London transforming how businesses automate customer interactions. His experience spans fundraising, scaling products, and leading teams to deliver production-grade AI solutions adopted globally.

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