Shows
Boston Computation Club06/20/25: TypeScript Types Can Run DOOM with Dimitri MitropoulosDimitri Mitropoulos is a Michigan-based typescript dev, linguist, and classicist who joined us to talk about his completely unhinged, odyssean, and frankly just unwise project to get DOOM running completely within Typescript's type system. Someone give the dude a PhD, please. 2025-06-221h 41Boston Computation Club06/13/25: Gradual Verification with Jenna DiVincenzoJenna DiVincenzo is an Assistant Professor in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering @ Purdue University. She is broadly interested in research spanning software verification, programming languages, and software engineering, especially research aimed at making verification techniques and programming languages more usable and scalable. Today Jenna joined us to talk about her broad research program in gradual verification. This was a really interesting talk with great Q&A and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did!2025-06-1459 minBoston Computation Club05/07/25: Exploring Zero-Shot Prompting for Generating Data Format Descriptions, Prashant AnantharamanPrashant Anantharaman is a long-time BCC group member and has presented as both a solo researcher and a panelist to prior events. Today he joined us to present some of his work with NARF, to appear at IEEE S&P, on generating grammars for fuzzing using LLMs. This is a super exciting new frontier for LLMs and LangSec generally and his talk was wonderful.2025-05-0939 minBoston Computation Club04/18/25: Descriptive Complexity with Ramit DasRamit Das is a formal verification engineer at Intel and an avid Boston Computation Club group member. Ramit and I have been speaking for ages about formal methods, exchanging papers, etc. and today he finally agreed to come give a talk to the group about his area of expertise -- descriptive complexity. This was a really fun talk and an excellent introduction for anyone looking to get their feet wet with complexity theory, some language theory, and even a smidgeon of model theory and underpinnings of abstract interpretation. It was really fun and we can't wait to host another...2025-04-191h 00Boston Computation Club03/21/24: How and Why to extend First Order Logic for Knowledge-Based Systems with Marc DeneckerToday Marc Denecker joined us to present How and Why to extend First Order Logic for Knowledge-Based Systems. This presentation provided the setup for a follow-on that Marc's student Simon Vandevelde is set to give on IDP-Z3, a formal reasoning machine that Marc and Simon have built. This was a really interesting talk touching on a variety of forms for formal logic, decision procedures, and industrial use-cases thereof, potentially with profound implications for the future and realizability of so-called AGI.2025-04-0552 minBoston Computation Club04/04/25: Constrained Decoding for Code Language Models via Efficient Left and Right Quotienting of Context-Sensitive Grammars with Daniel MelcerToday Daniel Melcer joined us to present Constrained Decoding for Code Language Models via Efficient Left and Right Quotienting of Context-Sensitive Grammars (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.17988). This is work he completed while at Amazon, and it's a really interesting project around how to constrain, guide, and check language models such that they generate valid code within a given context. We really appreciate that Daniel took the time to talk to us and hope you like the talk as much as we did!2025-04-0558 minBoston Computation Club03/08/25: An Introduction to LiquidHaskell with Michael H. BorkowskiMichael H. Borkowski is an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University. Before joining Purdue, he earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego, where he was affiliated with the ProgSys Group. Today Michael joined us to discuss LiquidHaskell, a very cool project that incorporates a kind of refinement types, with SMT-based proofs, into Haskell. This was a really compelling talk and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did!2025-03-091h 02
Science History PodcastQuantum Mechanics: Jim BaggottHumanity's understanding of the universe radically altered with the advent of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century. The theory of quantum mechanics describes how nature behaves at or below the scale of atoms, and the road to that theory was littered with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. With us to discuss the development of quantum mechanics, and the major schools of thought represented by Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein, is Jim Baggott. Today we discuss many of the key players in the development of quantum mechanics, including Bohr, Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Max Planck, and Max B...2025-01-122h 15Boston Computation Club01/10/25: Combining Causal Inference and Knowledge Graphs with Brook Santangelo and John SterrettToday Brook Santangelo and John Sterrett2025-01-1058 minBoston Computation Club01/04/25: Hacking GenAI with LLM Red Teaming and Beyond with Gaspard BayeGaspard Baye is a Cyber AI Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he researches AI-driven offensive and defensive security applications. Today Gaspard joined us to present "Hacking GenAI with LLM Red Teaming and Beyond" based on his recent DefCon talk. This was a really fun event with a great Q&A. Thanks to Jacob from the Trust Lab for hosting!2025-01-101h 00Boston Computation Club11/30/24: LB4TL: A Smooth Semantics for Temporal Logic to Train Neural Feedback Controllers with Navid HashemiNavid Hashemi recently defended his PhD at USC and is about to begin a post-doc at Vanderbilt. His research focuses on the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Temporal Logics, with applications in Formal Verification of Learning Enabled Systems and Neurosymbolic Reinforcement Learning. Today Navid joined us for a really exciting presentation about his work on metrizable logics for reinforcement learning, and a technique for verification thereof based on the over-approximation of reachable sets using ReLU.2024-12-0145 minBoston Computation Club11/17/24: When Static Analysis Meets Large Language Models with Chengpeng WangChengpeng Wangworking with Prof. Xiangyu Zhang. His research focuses on program analysis, especially software analysis, and in particular how existing analysis techniques intersect with emerging approaches from AI such as Large Language Models. Today Chengpeng joined us to talk about his recent NeurIPS paper proposing a novel static analysis technique based on LLMs. The technique is very interesting and highly informed by prior works in the static analysis space, but leverages LLMs as a kind of "oracle" to solve problems which, when handled statically, quickly become untenable. This was a really interesting talk and we're very greatful t...2024-11-1857 minBoston Computation Club10/05/24: Abuse-Resistant Location Tracking: Balancing Privacy and Safety in the Offline Finding Ecosystem with Harry EldridgeHarry Eldridge is a Cryptography PhD student at Johns Hopkins, advised by Abhishek Jain and Matthew Green. His research (so far) touches on security and privacy implications of commodity hardware, which is a fascinating topic deserving of the mathematically disciplined, cryptographically informed approach his lab takes to such problems. Today Harry joined us to talk about his research into the problem of AirTag stalking, and how it can be ameliorated, while retaining acceptable performance, through cryptographic protocols. This was a very interesting talk with serious, real-world implications, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did!2024-10-0650 minBoston Computation Club09/28/24: Hacking an LLM Using the Z3 Theorem Prover with Ian BickingIan Bicking is an engineer at Brilliant, which is also what he is. (Sorry, dad joke). Ian joined us today to talk about his super charming (and extremely interesting) weekend of experiments hacking various LLMs to solve puzzles using z3. The presentation was roughly the first 2/3 of the event and the remaining third presented a fantastic conversation about the future of AI, tool use, chain and tree of thought, o1, and more. Thanks again for joining us Ian!2024-09-2954 minBoston Computation Club09/07/24: Shaken, not Stirred -- Automated Discovery of Subtle Attacks on Protocols using Mix-Nets with Dhekra MahmoudDhekra Mahmoudat LIMOS in Clermont-Ferrand, France, where she researches the formal analysis of cryptographic protocols under the supervision of Pascal Lafoucade and Jannik Dreier. Today Dhekra joined us to present her recent USENIX paper Shaken, not Stirred -- Automated Discovery of Subtle Attacks on Protocols using Mix-Nets. This was a really interesting presentation with a good conversation afterword touching on some subtler points around the Dolev-Yao threat model, the limitations of ProVerif, and proof optimization.2024-09-0857 minBoston Computation Club08/25/24: An Introduction to Lurk with Matej PanciakMatej Panciak holds a PhD in mathematics and is a software engineer at the Argument Computer Corporation, where among other things, he works on Lurk. Lurk is a LISP for defining computations that can prove (in the ZKP sense) that they ran, which is probably useful for all sorts of cool things we haven't thought of yet, but right now, is pretty important for doing stuff on-chain. (I can easily imagine this being applicable to building something like a dweb version of AWS ... in some theoretical future where FHE is so good that you can just trust randos to...2024-08-251h 01
Reaching Max PotentialEpisode #111: The Power of Disruptive InnovationIn this episode of The Reaching Max Potential Podcast, we explore the transformative power of disruptive innovation. Learn how smaller companies can challenge industry giants by targeting underserved markets and leveraging new technologies. Discover the importance of fostering an adaptable culture, investing in R&D, and utilizing customer feedback to refine innovations. We also discuss the role of scalability and strategic partnerships in driving business growth. Perfect for entrepreneurs aiming for high performance, this episode provides actionable insights to harness the power of disruption and lead your industry.REFERENCESAmabile, T. M., & Khaire...2024-08-2107 minReaching Max PotentialEpisode #109: How to Foster a Culture of InnovationIn this episode of The Reaching Max Potential Podcast, we explore how to foster a culture of innovation within your organization. Learn the importance of leadership, cross-functional teams, and providing time for creative pursuits. Discover how a supportive culture, continuous learning, leveraging technology, and engaging customers can drive innovation. Perfect for entrepreneurs aiming for high performance, this episode offers actionable strategies to cultivate an environment where creativity thrives and your business stays ahead in a dynamic market. Tune in to unlock your company's innovative potential!REFERENCESAmabile, T. M., & Khaire, M. (2008). Creativity and...2024-08-2009 minBoston Computation Club08/17/24: Efficient Synthesis of Symbolic Distributed Protocols by Sketching with Derek EgolfDerek Egolf is a PhD student (since 2021) at Northeastern University, advised by Stavros Tripakis. His primary research focus is the automatic generation of correct-by-construction systems from high-level specifications (synthesis). Today Derek talked about his recent paper in this vein, Efficient Synthesis of Symbolic Distributed Protocols by Sketching, to appear in FMCAD. This was a very interesting talk with a technical conversation afterword. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!2024-08-1852 minBoston Computation Club08/10/24: Radically Better Academic Search With Undermind with Joshua RametteJoshua Ramette (https://x.com/RametteJoshua) recently completed a PhD in physics at Mass Tech, and today he joined us to talk about his new project, Undermind. Josh and his friend Tom Hartke (https://www.tomhartke.com/) founded Undermind (YC S24) to radically improve academic literature search using a mixture of AI techniques. Their system is slow, deliberate, and very high quality. You can check out Undermind at www.undermind.ai , or peruse the query I did during the Q&A section here: https://www.undermind.ai/query_app/display_one_search/c743b66ee4378b12ae8bad1fe58975...2024-08-1157 minBoston Computation Club07/27/24: Pragmatic Program Synthesis with Evan PuEvan Pu ( https://evanthebouncy.github.io/ , @evanthebouncy on X ) is a senior research scientist at Autodesk AI Lab, working on code-generation for human-machine collaboration in CAD, and industry scale instruction-following dataset annotation. Today Evan joined us from a toilet (with the lid closed) so as not to wake up his wife due to a rather large time-zone delta, which was hilarious and a first for the Boston Computation Club. Anyway, this was a really fun talk with excellent Q&A and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did!2024-07-281h 16Boston Computation Club07/06/24: The Algebraic Structure of Infinite Craft with Arthur O’DwyerArthur O’Dwyer is a C++ programmer and blogger who today joined us to talk about his musings on the algebraic structure of the popular web-game Infinite Craft. Infinite Craft is a clever little experiment in sandboxed exploration, and it turns out to give rise to a rather complex mathematical structure with some interesting background in theoretical CS. Arthur covered all this and more in his presentation, which was super interesting and a lot of fun to watch.
Check out Arthur's original blog post here: https://quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2024/03/03/infinite-craft-theory/
Check ou...2024-07-0753 minBoston Computation Club06/22/24: npm install everything with Evan BoehsEvan Boehs is a HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT who broke the freaking internet. What more do I need to say? Hire this kid. Maybe I will. It's a race.
Evan made an npm package called everything which installs everything. Then he got stuck in a dependency loop when someone tried to delete something. It turns out this is a nearly impossible problem to solve and he totally broke npm. Then a bunch of adults got made at him, when really, they should have been mad at themselves for building a bad system.
You...2024-06-2240 minBoston Computation Club06/08/24: Compressing a JSON Parser Beyond Comprehension with June MarcuseJune Marcuse2024-06-0953 minBoston Computation Club04/20/24: Chess-GPT's Internal World Model with Adam KarvonenAdam Karvonen was my coworker at Galois and is a bright guy doing really interesting stuff in the ML interpretability space. Today he joined us to present his work on Chess-GPT, you guessed it, a GPT model that can play chess. The punchline isn't so much how good the model is as it is how the model "thinks" -- Adam provides compelling evidence that the model internally reasons about an actual board state, and learns to make legal moves. The discussion on this one was great and we really appreciate that Adam took the time to talk to us...2024-04-2158 minBoston Computation Club04/12/24: DY Fuzzing: Formal Dolev-Yao Models Meet Cryptographic Protocol Fuzz Testing with Max AmmannMax Ammann is a cybersecurity researcher at Trail of Bits, where he's recently been working on extending his Master's thesis work on fuzzing cryptographic protocols into an industrial-grade fuzzing tool. That work resulted in an S&P publication which is what he joined us to present today. This was a really good talk but also a great discussion, in large part because of the highly engaged audience (with representation from Galois, TwoSix, and academia!).2024-04-1259 minBoston Computation Club04/23/24: Pegasus PanelFor this event, Holmes Wilson of Fight for the Future moderated a panel retrospective on the Pegasus malware. Our panelists were:
- Jonathan Rugman: Foreign Affairs Correspondent at Channel 4 News, BAFTA Award-winning journalist, visiting lecturer at University of London, and Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI.
- Raya Sharbain: education and communities coordinator at the Tor Project, and digital rights activist at the Jordan Open Source Association as well as the Digital Arabia Network.
- Elina Castillo Jimenéz: feminist human rights lawyer and digital activist at the Amnesty International Tech Lab.
...2024-03-272h 05
Something You Should KnowWeird Human Behaviors Explained & Be Kind to Your Mouth -SYSK ChoiceCould drinking water make you smarter? Actually no one is really sure, but it does seem to be so. This episode begins by explaining how we know this is true and what some possible explanations might be. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/minding-the-body/201205/can-sipping-water-make-you-smarter#Humans are strange creatures who act in weird ways. For example, we often compare ourselves to others. We exaggerate our stories to make us look better. And we do unusual things to make ourselves happy. All of this makes you wonder – why? Joining me with some fascinating explanations is William Von Hippel, a p...2024-03-0951 minBoston Computation Club03/08/24: Bitwuzla with Mathias PreinerMathias Preiner is a Research Scientist at Stanford University in the Centaur lab. He is one of the main developers of the SMT solver Boolector (since June 2012) and Bitwuzla -- which is what he joined us to discuss today. This was a good talk, but an excellent Q&A, and we really enjoyed it. Thanks Mathias for joining us today, and to the awesome audience for showing up with such deep and technical questions!2024-03-0959 minBoston Computation Club02/16/24: Q&A on Verified Elections with Joe KiniryJoe Kiniry is a computer scientist at Galois, specializing in Rigorous Systems and Software Engineering (Model-based Systems Engineering with Digital Twins), Hardware/Firmware Security, Trustworthy and Verifiable Elections, High-assurance Cryptography, and Audits-for-Good. He's also the Chief Scientist at Free & Fair, a Galois spin-off focused specifically on verified elections tech. Today Joe joined us for a Q&A focused specifically on his elections tech work, and it was a fun one! Joe is one of the more pragmatic and charismatic FM evangelists out there and I think this is an enormously compelling use-case for the tech. We really enjoyed the...2024-02-1759 minBoston Computation Club01/13/24: How to Fund your Projects by Remembering One Number with Joe ShiraefJoe Shiraef is a professional card counter and indie game dev. Today he joined us for a very fun, free-form conversation on advantage play, indie game development, avoid arrest, and pursuing your passions.
https://www.inktalestudios.com/2024-01-1445 minBoston Computation Club12/15/23: Q&A on Puzzles, with Roger Barkan in conversation with Jacob DenbeauxToday puzzle-maker Roger Barkan joined us to talk about the creation and solution of cave puzzles, a category of puzzle for which he's quite famous as a puzzle author. Jacob lead the conversation, using an interactive puzzle that he implemented with the help of ChatGPT (:0), and it was a ton of fun. We're super grateful to Roger for joining us today and we look forward to doing a follow-up event sometime in the future!
Jacob's interactive: https://bstn.cc/artifacts/jacobDenbeaux/cave.html
Buy Roger's book (you know you want to!): https://www.barnesandnoble.com...2023-12-161h 04Boston Computation Club11/19/23: Semi Open-Source Robotics with Jan HenneckeJan Hennecke is an engineer and roboticist in Boston, MA. Jan has been a buddy of mine for ages, ever since we met at the Bernardo Faria Jiu Jitsu Academy where he told me a hilarious story about placing top-3 in his first half ironman while munching down on snickers. Today Jan joined us to talk about his work at RBTX, a marketplace and platform for low-cost automation. This was a really fun talk with a lot of audience engagement and I think many of you will find it interesting!2023-11-201h 04Boston Computation Club11/04/23: Logic in Color with Christian WilliamsToday Christian Williams joined us to talk about his dissertation project, Logic in Color. This is a really exciting project which he is now working on post-graduation, which aims to re-frame the way we think about logic, and logics, using a largely visual medium. The key insight is that certain mathematical observations are made completely obvious simply by adding color to the areas enclosed by arrows in monoidal string diagrams. But from this key observation comes the more foundational view that really, all of mathematics and logic not only can be expressed visually, but in some sense, perhaps _is_ vis...2023-11-0457 minBoston Computation Club10/21/23: How to Write a Coequation, with Todd SchmidTodd Schmidan Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department of St. Mary's College of California. They are generally intereted in the algebraic, coalgebraic, and logical foundations of program semantics, and recently completed a PhD as a part of the PPLV group in the Computer Science Department of University College London. Today Todd joined us to talk about coequations, a fascinating (categorical) subject relating to the how we add algebraic structure to a space, how we think about relationships between spaces, and more. It turns out that coequations show up all over the place -- in DFAs, Markov chai...2023-10-221h 12Boston Computation Club10/07/23: Artificial Intelligence, Openness, and "Existential" Risk: Well Informed Vibes on What is Hype and What is Real, with Avijit Ghosh, David Widder, and Fabio Tollon, moderated by Wei SunAvijit Ghosh is a Research Data Scientist at AdeptID and a Lecturer in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. He's a good friend of mine and was an element of my PhD cohort at Northeastern. He's also a well-respected researcher at the intersection of machine learning, ethics, and policy. You can read about some of his innovative and cross-disciplinary work, for example, in the New York Times.
David Widder is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech, and earned his PhD from the School of Computer Science at Carn...2023-10-071h 14Boston Computation Club09/17/23: Open Problems in Probabilistic Programming Semantics with Eli SenneshEli Sennesh is a recent graduate of the PhD program in computer science at Northeastern, in which I (Max) and many other BCC group members are currently enrolled. Eli's research is highly interdisciplinary, taking into consideration various topics in mathematics (statistics, measure theory, probability theory, optimization), programming language theory, and neuroscience, with the unifying goal of building useful probabilistic programming languages. Today Eli joined us to discuss that research, with a particular emphasis on important open problems -- problems which he intends to study as a post-doc! This was a fun one and an excellent introduction to the world...2023-09-181h 04Boston Computation Club09/09/23: Transferable and Fixable Proofs with Bill DalessandroBill Dalessandro is a philosopher of science and mathematics at Oxford University. Today Bill joined us to discuss proofs -- specifically, what it means for a proof to be fixable, what it means for a proof to be transferable, and the apparent tension between these notions. This work built on prior work by Northeastern's Don Fallis, who attended the talk and participated in the lively and fascinating conversation that ensued. We also discussed what it's like to work in an interactive theorem prover. In such an environment, you don't really make mistakes -- because the prover doesn't let you...2023-09-101h 05Boston Computation Club09/01/23: ChipSec with Nathaniel Mitchell and Dan ScottToday Nathaniel Mitchell and Dan Scott joined us from Intel to discuss the ChipSec project, an open-source platform security assessment framework, available at https://github.com/chipsec/chipsec . Specifically, ChipSec "is a framework for analyzing the security of PC platforms including hardware, system firmware (BIOS/UEFI), and platform components" -- for both Windows and Linux (although as we discuss, getting it to work on Windows requires some leg-work). This was a really interesting talk and it included a very impressive demo! We learned a lot and we're very thankful that not just one but two busy engineers from Intel too...2023-09-0243 minBoston Computation Club08/12/23: Packing Chromatic with Bernardo Anibal Subercaseaux RoaBernardo Anibal Subercaseaux RoaMarijn Heule. He has a background in engineering and is passionate about mathematics and computer science. Bernardo's research attacks the following question from a variety of angles: what can and cannot be done (efficiently?) by a computer? Today, Bernardo joined us to talk about Packing Chromatic, a fascinating research area at the intersection of pure mathematics and SAT solving. Bernardo and his advisor recently solved an open problem in the space, finding the packing chromatic number for the infinite 2D grid. We discussed the proof and a bunch of related problems, including some intriguing...2023-08-131h 01Boston Computation Club07/15/23: Symmetries, Flat Minima, and the Conserved Quantities of Gradient Flow with Bo ZhaoBo Zhao is a 2nd year PhD student in computer science at UCSD, advised by Rose Yu. Her research focuses on deep learning theory and optimization, with a recent emphasis on the parameter space and dynamics of learning. Today Bo joined us to talk about her recent paper, "Symmetries, Flat Minima, and the Conserved Quantities of Gradient Flow", which was joint work at ICLR with Iordan Ganev, as well as co-authors Robin Walters, Rose Yu, and Nima Dehmamy. This is a really interesting paper which takes an algebraic approach to a problem typically only studied analytically. Bo gave a...2023-07-1642 minBoston Computation Club06/30/23: ChatGPT on your Personal Corpus in Algovera with Richard BlythmanToday Richard Blythman joined us to talk about the big and exciting world of large language models. Richard has a PhD in fluid dynamics and is the CEO of Algovera, a cool company building a decentralized and personalized tech stack based on LLMs. His talk today was short and focused, explaining what in particular makes LLMs so magical. Then we had a phenomenal discussion section! We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. To learn more about Algovera, go here: algovera.ai2023-07-0156 minBoston Computation Club06/23/23: MariusGNN with Roger WaleffeRoger Waleffe is a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison working under the supervision of Prof. Theodoros (Theo) Rekatsinas (now at ETH Zurich). A few months ago one of our group members (Brennon) saw Rover's talk at EuroSys and thought it was pretty rad, so we invited Roger to give the same talk to the Club today. (You can decide, what's more prestigious, EuroSys or 6 random dudes from Boston?). Roger graciously agreed and gave a superb talk on MariusGNN, his recent work to make a blazingly fast, super resource efficient system for graph neural networks...2023-06-2455 minBoston Computation Club06/16/23: Infinite Games -- Strategies, Logic, Theory, and Computation, with Joel David HamkinsJoel David Hamkins is a mathematician and logician at Oxford, where he studies the logic of the infinite. Today Joel joined us to talk about infinite dimensional games. As Joel explained, there are really three areas of mathematical inquiry related to games: Game Theory, as traditionally used in economics, ecology, etc.; the Theory of Games, which many CS students learn a little bit of in Complexity Theory; and the Logic of Games, which is really the camp where this talk falls. This was a totally intriguing talk in which pretty deep mathematical ideas naturally emerged from simple, playful premises...2023-06-1657 minBoston Computation Club05/20/23: A Data-Centric Introduction to Computing, with Shriram KrishnamurthiShriram Krishnamurthi is a professor of Computer Science at Brown University, where he researches (among other things) programming languages, software engineering, formal methods, HCI, security, and networking. Today Shriram joined us to discuss his joint project with Kathi Fisler, Benjamin S. Lerner, and Joe Gibbs Politz, titled "A Data-Centric Introduction to Computing". The project is a new vision of what it means to teach introductory computing with data as a first-class object, in the form of tables. This was a really excellent talk with a lively discussion touching on data quality, student motivation and engagement, pedagogy, data visualization, the nat...2023-05-211h 14Boston Computation Club04/29/23: Q&A on the Philosophy of Games with Christopher Ba Thi Nguyen, in conversation with Wei SunChristopher Ba Thi Nguyen is a professor of philosophy at the University of Utah, and the author of Games: Agency as Art. Today he joined us to discuss his book, which covers the philosophy of all sorts of games: rock climbing, Dark Souls, judo, poker, dungeons and dragons, etc. The event took the form of an interview hosted by Wei Sun, a longtime group member who read Thi's book in detail and really vibed with it. This was one of the most engaged and dynamic conversations we've hosted and in contrast to other events which have had a heavily...2023-04-3056 minBoston Computation Club04/21/23: Quantity Calculus in Natural Language Semantics with Elizabeth CoppockElizabeth Coppock is a linguistics professor at BU. He research focuses on foundational topics in truth, reference, quantification, and measurement in natural language semantics, through the lens of specific empirical puzzles. Recently, one of our group members (Cheng Zhang) expressed interest in Elizabeth's work as it might relate to his own research in programming languages, so we reached out to Elizabeth and asked if she'd be willing to present to the seminar group. (This is one of my favorite things about running the group: when a group member expresses interest in some research paper, we can simply invite the...2023-04-231h 02Boston Computation Club03/17/23: The Process, Challenges, Struggles & Joys of Creating "How to Design Programs" with Matthias FelleisenMatthias is a world-class scientist and highly influential computer programmer, and also the author of "How to Design Programs", a Computer Science 101 book which takes a fundamentally different approach than prior works. Today Matthias joined us to share his experience writing that book (and its many iterations), as well as his broader philosophy on how to instruct the next generation of thinkers and builders (not to mention, programmers). This was a highly instructive and somewhat philosophical talk and we really hope you enjoy it as much as we did! To learn more about Matthias, refer here: https://felleisen.org...2023-03-1755 minBoston Computation Club03/03/23: Reversing UK Rail Tickets with etaeta is a phenomenally talented polymath, hacker, and computer programmer from the UK. Today eta joined us to discuss her very fun project reverse engineering UK rail tickets. This was a fun event with a reasonably big audience and lots of Q&A, and we really enjoyed it! It was also a good example of the best possible outcome in hacking: you break something, you tell the people who made the thing, and they give you a high-five and fix it. Thank you so much eta for speaking to us! To learn more about eta's work, refer to her websi...2023-03-0443 minBoston Computation Club02/13/23: Web3 is Going Just Great with Molly WhiteMolly White is a Northeastern alum, a software engineer, and now, a web3 researcher (researching all the stuff that stinks about web3, to be clear). Today Molly joined us to talk about her ongoing project and perhaps magnum opus, Web3 is Going Just Great (web3isgoingjustgreat.com), an ongoing history of all the grifts, thefts, hacks, and crashes in Web3/the broader blockchain ecosystem. This was a fun one - perhaps even a controversial one - and we hope you enjoy it!2023-02-131h 00Boston Computation Club02/03/23: How to Give a Good Mathematical Presentation with Anthony BonatoAnthony Bonato is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Toronto Metropolitan University. Anthony's research focuses on graph theory, with applications to real-world complex networks and pursuit-evasion games on graphs such as Cops and Robbers. However, today Anthony joined us not to present some groovy new results in graph theory, but rather, to discuss how one _might_ give such a presentation, with panache! This was a super fun event with a lively and engaged discussion and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
- Anthony's webpage: https://math.ryerson.ca/~abonato/
...2023-02-0458 minBoston Computation Club01/29/23: Implications of Model-Based Phil/Sci for ML with Mel AndrewsMel Andrews is an instructor and doctoral student in the department of philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. Their work focuses on the phenomena of cognition and life, comparing and contrasting the merits and explanatory scope of conceptual and formal models of life and mind, and exploring the implications of these considerations for science at large. Today Mel joined us to talk about the philosophy of math in science and mathematical models in scientific reasoning. How do models relate to the real world? When can models tell us something about ... anything other than their own mathematical substance? And perhaps most...2023-01-2957 minBoston Computation Club01/06/23: Q&A: AppSec from OWASP to Present with John ViegaJohn Viega is the Executive Vice President of Products, Strategy, & Engineering at SilverSky, an Adjunct Professor at NYU Poly, former editor-in-chief for IEEE Security and Privacy Magazine, co-developer of GCM (a mode of operation for block ciphers such as AES), and the original author of Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager. He's also the founder of CrashOverride, a stealthy new security company which you should totally apply to work at! Today he joined us to do an impromptu Q&A about his storied career as one of the people on the ground floor of cybersecurity, in its messy and ex...2023-01-0758 minBoston Computation Club12/03/22: Depths of Wikipedia with Annie RauwerdaAnnie Rauwerda is an internet personality and polymath with a background in neuroscience and data science. She is also the host and operator of Depths of Wikipedia, a phenomenally popular meme page, Depths of Wikipedia, which you can read about HERE on Wikipedia. Annie is also herself a frequent Wikipedia editor and author. Today she joined us to talk about how Wikipedia can be charming, funny, and informative, all at once. She showed us a variety of charming examples of Wikipedia in all its niche internet glory, and then answered a metric ton of questions about Wikipedia, the internet, Stac...2022-12-0459 minBoston Computation Club11/19/22: Nearly Optimal Property Preserving Hashing with LakYah TynerLakYah Tyner is a 1st year PhD student at Northeastern University co-advised by abhi Shelat and Daniel Wichs. Her research focuses on cryptography, with recent works involving Property Preserving Hashing and Threshold Signature Schemes. Put differently, she's accomplished considerably more in less than a year of graduate school than I did as a first year (we're a semester in and she has a paper in Crypto!), and today she joined the Boston Computation Club to share some of that hard-earned wisdom. LakYah's talk focused on the difficult problem of efficiently hashing data such that the hashes preserve a binary pre...2022-11-2044 minBoston Computation Club10/14/22: Cryptography with Quantum States with William KretschmerWilliam Kretschmer is a PhD student at the University of Texas Austin, advised by Scott Aaronson. He's one of these pseudo-celebrity-grad-students with lots of cool splashy results and we're stoked that he took the time to talk to us today. The talk primarily covered the basics of quantum cryptography, much of which should be familiar to regular group members who attended our quantum cafe series with Billy, but also concluded with some groovy quantum crypto history (see: quantum cash) and a discussion of exciting recent results by William & co. This is one of a series of cryptography related talks we...2022-10-151h 00Boston Computation Club07/16/22: The Crypto Crash(es) with Cristiano TeixeiraCristiano Teixeira is a friend of the Club, and the CEO of Lindy Labs. He has a traditional mathematics background and is one of the grown-ups in the crypto/DeFi space. Today he joined us to give an insider's perspective on the recent crypto crash(es), stable coins, ponzy schemes, DeFi, and more. This was an extremely interesting event with a great Q&A section and a big audience. We had a lot of fun and we're certain you'll enjoy it as well.
Lindy Labs
Video version
2022-07-1759 min
Boston Computation Club06/19/22: Assessing Recycling, Displacement, and Environmental Impacts using an Economics-Informed Material System Model, with John RyterJohn Ryter is my lead partner in Cambridge MA, a gnarly climber, and also a PhD student in materials science at MIT (aka MassTech) where he studies recycling using a unique combination of economic theory and environmental modeling. John's work has entertained me during countless climbing sessions and now it can equally enthrall you, via the magic of the Internet. We were very happy to have John present to the group, particularly since the audience contained a chemist, a physicist, and a geo-physicist, in addition to the standard array of derelict computer scientists (myself included). To read more about Joh...2022-06-2051 minBoston Computation Club05/20/22: Hybrid Systems: Not Just For Cars Anymore! With Kimberly AyersKimberly Ayers is an assistant professor of mathematics at Cal State San Marcos, where she studies the mathematics of hybrid systems. Kimberly is a genuine theorist (in contrast to us computer science neanderthals, haha) and this talk touched on some of the aspects of hybrid systems that make them theoretically interesting (e.g., how the topology imposed on a skew flow can apparently be quite strange). Since I've only previously seen hybrid systems work in CS, where it's always motivated by practical justifications like "Boeing", this was refreshing and cool! Anyway we had a really nice time with a grea...2022-05-2157 minBoston Computation Club05/13/22: The Generalized Star Height Problem with Jean-Eric PinRoughly four years ago, when I took second semester Abstract Algebra at the University of Arizona, my professor (Jay Taylor) generously offered to meet with me every week outside class to discuss algebraic topics in computer science. We chose Dr. Pin's book, Varieties of Formal Languages. Due to my own mathematical immaturity we worked through the material slowly, and didn't finish the text before I graduated. Nevertheless, working through this material helped inspire me to pursue a PhD in formal methods - an endeavor I'm solidly halfway through at the time of writing. All this is to say, Jean-Eric Pin...2022-05-131h 52Boston Computation Club05/07/22: Math Café #3: Prep for Dr. Pin's Talk with Max von HippelPlagiarizing Wikipedia: "Jean-Éric Pin is a French mathematician and theoretical computer scientist known for his contributions to the algebraic automata theory and semigroup theory." He will also be our featured guest in a week, presenting The Generalized Star Height Problem. In advance of his talk, he requested that the audience familiarize themselves with some basic mathematical definitions, such as "monoid" and "completion of a metric space". To which end, I prepared a presentation, went through some light-weight peer review with random friends from the PL group at Northeastern, and then delivered this talk. This is a fun little revie...2022-05-0854 minBoston Computation Club04/15/22: When Memory Guards are Crooked and Become Speculating Snitches with Andrea MambrettiAndrea Mambretti is a system security researcher at IBM Research Europe, Zurich Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. from Northeastern University, in the SecLab under the supervision of Engin Kirda. Since 2011, he's participated in several CTF competitions (Ictf, Ructf, Defcon and others) with both the TowerOfHanoi and Shellphish teams. (Audience members will surely fall into two partitions: those who are more impressed by Andrea's PhD, and those who are more impressed by his membership in Shellphish 😉). Today, Andrea joined us to discuss some of his security research into ROP attacks, specifically attacks that exploit timing-based side-channels caused by speculative executi...2022-04-1555 minBoston Computation Club03/20/22: An Open Conversation on Web3 with the SpiceDAOThe SpiceDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) which recently purchased a copy of the "Dune Bible", namely, the elusive and rare storyboard script for Alejandro Jodorowsky’s DUNE film. As big Dune fans ourselves, and also as nerds interested in both the failures and opportunities of Web3, we were enormously excited to meet with a representative of SpiceDAO and discuss all things decentralized. The discussion was lively, touching on sybil attacks, democracy, in-real-world legal and financial instruments, blockchain permanence, forking, and other issues! We really enjoyed this open conversation and look forward to more events like it in the f...2022-03-201h 01Boston Computation Club03/12/22: Live Coding: Making a Wordle Scraper and Solver with Jacob DenbeauxJacob is a mathematician, computer scientist, and notably, co-organizer of the Boston Computation Club. Today he joined us to give an interactive lesson on web-scraping, with Worlde-solving as a motivating case study. This was a fun exercise and one we will almost certainly follow up on in the future. We worked through parsing the ... DOM? Is that the right word? IDK. And then entering text. And then actually utilizing the feedback offered by the game to start interactively solving the puzzle. We concluded with a brief conversation about the complexity of handling the clues in the context of words that hav...2022-03-131h 03Boston Computation Club03/05/22: Seize the Means of Computation: the Big Tech Disassembly Manual with Cory DoctorowCory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. In my circles, he's probably best known for his work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Boing Boing, but he's also a renowned science fiction author in his own right, an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University, a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science, and co-founder of the UK Open Rights Group. In short: Cory is precisely the kind of polymath we love to engage with at the...2022-03-061h 14Boston Computation Club02/17/22: Quantum Computing in Plato's Cave with Daniel BurgarthDaniel Burgarth is an associate professor of mathematics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, where he studies a host of interesting things including various kinds of quantum systems. Today he joined us to discuss his 2014 Nature paper "Quantum Computing in Plato's Cave", which studied the complexity of quantum computers through a mathematically and philosophically structured lens. This talk was a lot of fun, and the math was refreshingly easy to follow, despite the difficult topic. The Q&A section was also quite good, although some of it was cut from the recording (hence why you should always come to eve...2022-02-181h 04Boston Computation Club02/06/22: Trojan Source Attacks with Nicholas BoucherNicholas Boucher is a PhD student in computer science studying under Professor Ross Anderson at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory. He is also one of the authors of Trojan Source Attacks, a paper (and CVE, and vulnerability class) which highlighted supply-chain vulnerabilities in open-source software (among other things) due to code that is different than it looks. This is one of the most creative hacks we saw in 2021 and we were thrilled to have Nicholas tell us about it. The presentation was great, as was the discussion, where we got into the difficulties of the disclosure process, the complexities of pee...2022-02-071h 04Boston Computation Club01/08/22: Covert C2 Channels with Kai BernardiniKai Bernardini is a professional hacker/security researcher, a mathematician, and and a lecturer in computer science at Boston University. He's also better than me at lead belay (no short-roping from Kai!). Today Kai joined us to discuss covert command and control (C2) channels. Sure, your communication might be indistinguishable from random noise. But is it indistinguishable from r/dankmemes? If not, prepare to get caught by the local sysadmin.
Kai on Github
Kai on Twitter
This talk on YouTube
2022-01-091h 22Boston Computation Club12/04/21: Feynman Integrals for a Mathematical Audience with Matthew von HippelMatt von Hippel is (a) my cousin and (b) a professor at the Niels Bohr International Academy in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he researches scattering amplitudes in gauge and gravity theories. Matt received his PhD in 2014 from SUNY Stony Brook, and from 2014 to 2017 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Perimeter Institute. Today Matt joined us to discuss Feynman integrals. Apparently "Feynman integral" means different things to different people; the kind discussed here are those associated with "Feynman diagrams". The talk was engaging and fun, and at the end Matt fielded mathematical questions from the audience, which included both usual BCC...2021-12-0458 minBoston Computation Club12/03/21: Aesthetic and Organic Complexity with Tyler Hobbs & Bill Cresco, moderated by Anya & JoeTyler Hobbs is a generative artist from Austin, Texas. Bill Cresco is a geneticist who specializes in quantitative evolutionary genomics at the University of Oregon. Today Tyler and Bill joined us for a wide-ranging discussion, seeded by the topic of "complexity". The conversation was fascilitated by our two excellent moderators, Anya and Joe. Anya studied studio art and environmental studies at Wellesley College and now works at Reed Hilderbrand, and Joe studied bioengineering at MIT and now works at Ginko Bioworks. The conversation was wide-ranging and compelling, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
Learn...2021-12-041h 14Boston Computation Club10/24/21: An Extensible and Modular Design and Implementation of Monte Carlo Tree Search for the JVM with Larkin Liu & Jun Tao LuoLarkin Liu is an operations research (OR) & machine learning (ML) specialist, currently completing a PhD in Operations Research under the advisement of Stefan Minner at the Technical University of Munich. Today Larkin joined us to present *An Extensible and Modular Design and Implementation of Monte Carlo Tree Search for the JVM*, a recent preprint he authored with Jun Tao Luo (MS student in CS at Carnegie Mellon; also in attendance at this talk). The paper is exactly what it sounds like, and the presentation was a lot of fun, with clear mathematical background, a solid foundation in software engineering pr...2021-10-251h 06Boston Computation Club10/15/21: Mathematical Programming Modulo Strings with Ankit KumarAnkit Kumar is a PhD student in the Khoury College of Computer Science at Northeastern University, advised by Pete Manolios. He is from Dhanbad, Jharkand, in India, and prior to joining Northeastern, he earned his MTech in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Kanpur and his BTech in Electrical Engineering from IIT (BHU) Varanasi. Now, Ankit's research focuses on formal methods (FM) -- particularly in ACL2Sedan -- and the use of FM to study programming languages, including writing machine-checkable proofs to prove properties. Today Ankit joined us to present Mathematical Programming Modulo Strings, his recent FMCAD21 paper. This pres...2021-10-1545 minBoston Computation Club10/09/21: Types in PL Research vs Types in Julia with Julia BelyakovaJulia Belyakova is a PhD student in computer science at Northeastern University, where she is currently focused on formalizing the Julia programming language. Julia's primary primary research interests are programming languages and type theory, although she also enjoys theorem proving, generic programming, functional and object-oriented programming, software engineering, programming by contracts, software testing, and as of late, human aspects of software engineering and the interaction between humans and programming languages. In short: Julia is quite the polymath. Today she joined us to discuss the Julia Language's type system, in contrast to type systems in other languages, and in programming lan...2021-10-101h 07Boston Computation Club09/12/21: More Category Theory for More Cybernetics with Matteo CapucciMatteo Capucci is a PhD student at the University of Strathclyde in the MSP group, advised by Neil Ghani and Scott Cunningham. He studies Applied Category Theory (aka ACT), specifically Categorical Cybernetics and Applied Topos Theory. Today Matteo joined us to discuss the foundations of Categorical Cybernetics, in a wide-ranging conversation touching on lenses, feedback systems, dynamical systems, and more. The conversation extended these ideas to distributed systems, model checking, cyber-physical systems, program sketching, and quantum systems, among other things. This one was an absolute blast live and we hope you enjoy it after the fact in its audio form...2021-09-131h 16Boston Computation Club08/28/21: Compilation Techniques for Reconfigurable Analog Devices with Sara ArchourSara Archour recently completed a PhD at MIT/CSAIL in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, and is joining Stanford University (EE) as an Associate Professor. Sara studies analog computers - how to build them; how to use them; what they're good for; how to stick them together to do interesting things; and so forth. Today, Sara joined us to discuss these things, with a smidgeon of career advice at the end :)
Sara Archour's homepage can be found HERE.
This presentation can also be viewed in video format HERE.
2021-08-291h 01Boston Computation Club07/30/21: Structural Attacks on Local Routing in Payment Channel Networks with Ben WeintraubBen Weintraub is a PhD student in computer science at Northeastern University, advised by Cristina Nita-Rotaru. Today he joined us to present his paper *Structural Attacks on Local Routing in Payment Channel Networks*, which was accepted to the 2021 Euro S&P Blockchain workshop. This is a fascinating paper studying a startlingly powerful attack strategy against payment channel networks. We really enjoyed Ben's presentation and the subsequent discussion, which involved PhD students in computer science and economics, in addition to professional engineers and mathematicians. You can learn more about Ben and his work here: https://ben-weintraub.com/
This talk...2021-07-3158 minBoston Computation Club07/24/21: Linear Haskell with Artem PelenitsynArtem is a PhD student in computer science at Northeastern University, advised by Professor Jan Vitek. Prior to joining the Khoury PhD program, Artem worked as an Assistant Professor at Southern Federal University in Russia, where he earned his MSc and BSc. Today Artem joined us to present about linear Haskell, a version of / feature-set for Haskell allowing "linear" types. Artem explained linearity, why it might be useful, and why adding linear types to an existing (non-linear) language can be difficult - with Haskell as a case study.
You can watch a video version of Artem's talk [HERE].
You...2021-07-251h 17Boston Computation Club07/10/21: The Illogical Nature of Chemical Nomenclature [Biology Café #1]"Café Events" are small, informal events where we discuss our research and our (perhaps, unfulfilled) research interests. Our ongoing "Biology Café" series is exactly that, but focused on topics at the intersection of biology and computation. Today's presentation by Sophia von Hippel covered the open, and very important, problem of developing a mathematical language for chemistry. Chemistry has a great diagrammatic syntax, but a (or, multiple) terrible prose representation. Sophia presents the problem in clear and careful detail with examples, and then we discuss. TL;DR: we don't solve the problem. Sophia is currently pursuing a BS in Chemistry at the U...2021-07-111h 02Boston Computation Club06/13/21: Modeling Content and Context with Deep Relational Learning with Maria Leonor PachecoMaria is a PhD student in Computer Science at Purdue University, where she works with Dr. Dan Goldwasser on neural-symbolic methods to model natural language discourse, among other things. Today she presented her recent project DRaiL, "an open-source declarative framework for specifying deep relational models, designed to support a variety of NLP scenarios."
[ Paper ] [ Maria ][ Code ][ Video ][ Boston Computation Club ]2021-06-1455 minBoston Computation Club05/29/21: Homotopy Type Theory 101 with Carlo AngiuliCarlo is a postdoc in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, where he received a Ph.D. under Robert Harper. He previously studied at Indiana University Bloomington, where he received a B.S. in Mathematics and in Computer Science. Today Carlo joined us to discuss Homotopy Type Theory, a new foundations for mathematics based on a recently-discovered connection between Homotopy Theory and Type Theory. Carlo explains intuitively what Homotopy Type Theory is and how it is used, and then goes over various possible implementations of Homotopy Type Theory in a theorem-proving environment such as Coq. Finally, he fie...2021-06-091h 04
Behavioral Grooves PodcastReflecting on the Best Podcast Insights from 2020This is THE episode to listen to if you have missed the last 90 episodes.
We can all agree that 2020 has been one hell of a year. Many people have been severely impacted by the pandemic, by financial uncertainty, with civil unrest, and the general malaise that the year seemed to have. Many are excited to say, “Good riddance!” The same goes for us, but Kurt and Tim have also used 2020 to surpass several milestones that we’d like to share with you.
#1 Best Behavioral Science Podcast as voted by listeners of Habit Weekly (which was very, very c...2020-12-2349 min
Behavioral Grooves PodcastBill von Hippel on The Social Leap, Context, and Max WeinbergBill von Hippel, PhD is an evolutionary psychologist from Alaska who has lived in Australia for more than 20 years. Bill teaches at the University of Queensland and his body of research is so wide we struggled to focus our conversation. We spoke with him about his research into the ways in which our species’ behaviors have evolved over millions of years into the behaviors we see in our present-day lives. His insights are clever, thoughtful, and thought-provoking.
We talked about reciprocity, collectivism, and most importantly, how being cooperative and social propelled our species forward well beyond anything el...2020-11-151h 13
Science History PodcastBritish Explorers, Part 2: Andrea Hart and Max BarclayThe Natural History Museum in London houses the greatest collection of natural history specimens in the world, collected for centuries by British explorers and scientists. In Part 2 of this episode on British explorers, my guests Andrea Hart and Max Barclay explain the role that these specimens and associated artwork played in the development of major scientific advances. Foremost among these specimens are the beetles, which held an outsized role in the history of evolutionary biology as well as in the childhood pursuits of collectors such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace. Andrea is the Head of Special Collections at...2018-08-1155 min
Jöran ruft an (JRA) – ein Anruf, eine Frage, eine Antwort, fertig!JRA022 Wie kommt man als Schüler in Deutschland dazu, für zwei Jahre in ein Internat in Costa Rica zu gehen?Jöran ruft an bei Felix Kröner, der gerade seinen Schulabschluss in einem United World College (UWC) gemacht hat.
Felix Kröner, Foto von Max von Hippel
2016-07-2906 min