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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260903T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260904T170000
DTSTAMP:20260824T181749Z
CREATED:20260217T174509Z
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UID:10003846-1788426000-1788541200@cmsa.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Big Data Conference 2026
DESCRIPTION:Big Data Conference 2026 \nDates: Sep. 3–4\, 2026 \nLocation: Harvard University CMSA\, 20 Garden Street\, Cambridge MA & via Zoom \nThe Big Data Conference features speakers from the Harvard community as well as scholars from across the globe\, with talks focusing on computer science\, statistics\, math and physics\, and economics. \nRegister to attend in person \nRegister for Zoom Webinar \n  \nConfirmed Speakers \n\nSueYeon Chung\, Harvard\nBailey Flanigan\, MIT\nSergey Ovchinnikov\, MIT\nAriel Procaccia\, Harvard\nAdit Radhakrishnan\, MIT\nAndrew Sutherland\, MIT\nChris Wiggins\, Columbia\nRex Ying\, Yale\nWei Zhou\, Harvard\n\n  \nOrganizers \n\nMichael Desai\, Harvard\nMichael R. Douglas\, CMSA\nYannai Gonczarowski\, Harvard\nMelanie Weber\, Harvard\n\n  \n  \nThursday\, Sep. 3\, 2026 \n8:45–9:10 am\nBreakfast \n9:10–9:15 am\nIntroductions \n9:15–10:15 am\nRex Ying\, Yale \n10:15–10:30 am\nBreak \n10:30–11:30 am\nAdit Radhakrishnan\, MIT\nToward universal steering and monitoring of AI models\nAbstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) models contain much of human knowledge. Understanding the representation of this knowledge will lead to improvements in model capabilities and safeguards. Building on advances in feature learning\, we developed an approach for extracting linear representations of semantic notions or concepts in AI models. We showed how these representations enabled model steering\, through which we exposed vulnerabilities and improved model capabilities. We demonstrated that concept representations were transferable across languages and enabled multiconcept steering. Across hundreds of concepts\, we found that larger models were more steerable and that steering improved model capabilities beyond prompting. We showed that concept representations were more effective for monitoring misaligned content than for using judge models. Our results illustrate the power of internal representations for advancing AI safety and model capabilities. \n11:30 am–12:45 pm\nLunch \n12:45–1:45 pm\nAndrew Sutherland\, MIT\nCrowdsourcing mathematical databases\nAbstract: The L-functions and Modular Forms Database (LMFDB) is one of the largest online repositories of mathematical research data. It contains comprehensive catalogs of mathematical objects that arise in the context of the Langlands program\, including number fields\, elliptic curves\, modular forms\, and higher-dimensional analogs of these objects. In cooperation with the Foundation for Science and AI Research (SAIR)\, we recently ran a competition aimed at solving the inverse Galois problem over Q in degree 24 (IGP24). This goal was achieved by collecting more than 50 million candidate number fields submitted by more than 100 teams\, including examples that realize all 25\,000 transitive permutation groups of degree 24 as Galois groups. AI tools and computer algebra systems played a central role in this project\, both in building the infrastructure to run the contest and in enhancing the capabilities of participants. \n1:45–2:00 pm\nBreak \n2:00–3:00 pm\nBailey Flanigan\, MIT\nAlgorithmic Tools for Trading Off Sortition Ideals\nAbstract: Citizens’ assemblies and other deliberative minipublics — representative groups of everyday people convened to deliberate on a policy issue and then make recommendations — are now used by governments around the world. Choosing who sits on these panels is the problem of sortition: randomly selecting a small group of citizens that represents the broader population. Sortition has been the subject of substantial computer science research in recent years\, and the resulting algorithms are now widely used in practice. This talk will describe the key challenges that arise in the practice of sortition\, and the algorithmic tools that have been developed to navigate them optimally. \n3:00–3:15 pm\nBreak \n3:15–4:15 pm\nChris Wiggins\, Columbia \n  \nFriday\, Sep. 4\, 2026 \n8:45–9:15 am\nBreakfast \n9:15–10:15 am\nAriel Procaccia\, Harvard\nNo Generation Without Representation\nAbstract: AI systems and democratic processes are confronting similar challenges around representation. I examine two related questions that cut across both domains. First\, how can AI enable democratic processes that handle vast spaces of opinions or statements while ensuring proportional representation of a population’s views? Second\, when AI systems themselves provide normative guidance\, whose viewpoints do they reflect\, and can we make this precise? Drawing on social choice theory\, I present formal frameworks and algorithms for both problems\, showing that meaningful representation guarantees are feasible and practical. \n10:15–10:30 am\nBreak \n10:30–11:30 am\nWei Zhou\, Harvard\nBiobank-scale genetic discovery: from association testing to global meta-analysis\nAbstract: Biobanks linking genomic data with electronic health records provide unprecedented opportunities for genetic discovery for complex human diseases\, but they also pose analytical challenges that extend well beyond sample size. Within a biobank\, association studies must account for population structure and relatedness\, highly unbalanced case–control ratios\, rare genetic variants\, longitudinal and censored outcomes\, and the computational demands of analyzing hundreds of thousands of individuals and millions of genetic variants. Across biobanks\, additional challenges arise from differences in ancestry\, phenotype definitions\, recruitment strategies and genetic effects.In this talk\, I will discuss statistical and computational methods developed to address these challenges at successive stages of biobank analysis. These include scalable generalized linear mixed models for binary traits\, survival mixed models for censored time-to-event outcomes\, and gene- and region-based tests that aggregate rare variants. I will describe statistical approximations and computational strategies that make these analyses feasible at biobank scale while maintaining calibration in the presence of relatedness and highly unbalanced phenotypes. I will then introduce the Global Biobank Meta-analysis Initiative (GBMI) and describe how genetic evidence can be combined across biobanks without sharing individual-level data. Examples from GBMI will illustrate how combining evidence across biobanks can increase statistical power through larger sample sizes and broaden genetic discovery through greater ancestral diversity. \n11:30 am–12:45 pm\nLunch \n12:45–1:45 pm\nSergey Ovchinnikov\, MIT \n1:45–2:00 pm\nBreak \n2:00–3:00 pm\nSueYeon Chung\, Harvard \n\n 
URL:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event/bigdata_2026/
LOCATION:CMSA Room G10\, CMSA\, 20 Garden Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Big Data Conference,Conference,Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/media/Big-Data-2026_ad.crop_.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260903T161500
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260903T173000
DTSTAMP:20260804T134427Z
CREATED:20260803T204031Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260804T134427Z
UID:10004037-1788452100-1788456600@cmsa.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Fall CMSA Welcome Event
DESCRIPTION:Fall CMSA Welcome Event \nDate: September 3\, 2026 \nTime: 4:15 pm \nLocation: CMSA Common Room\, 20 Garden Street\, Cambridge MA \n  \nAll CMSA and Math affiliates are invited. \n 
URL:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event/welcome2026/
LOCATION:CMSA 20 Garden Street Cambridge\, Massachusetts 02138 United States
CATEGORIES:Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/media/CMSA_Wwlecome-2023-IMG_9367.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260908T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260911T170000
DTSTAMP:20260824T204141Z
CREATED:20260217T174544Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260824T204141Z
UID:10003847-1788858000-1789146000@cmsa.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:The Geometry of Machine Learning 2026
DESCRIPTION:The Geometry of Machine Learning 2026 \nDates: September 8–11\, 2026 \nLocation: Harvard CMSA\, Room G10\, 20 Garden Street\, Cambridge MA 02138 & via Zoom Webinar \nRegister to attend in person \nRegister for Zoom Webinar \nLarge language models are presently\, and will increasingly\, be complemented by other dimensions of intelligence: formal verification and energy-based optimizers\, becoming parts of larger ecosystems. Can AIs reason geometrically and can we use geometry to reveal how data is currently processed in NNs? Can AIs reveal the geometry of mathematics\, as well as studying geometry as a subject within math. This conference is intended to continue the discussion of these topics. \nConfirmed Speakers: \n\nNada Amin\, Harvard\nRandall Balestriero\, Brown\nMichael Brenner\, Harvard and Google\nBennet Chow\, UCSD\nSurya Ganguli\, Stanford\nBoris Hanin\, Princeton\nRoi Holtzman\, Oxford\nRobert Koirala\, UCSD\nDmitry Krotov\, Dynamical Mind\nSlava Krushkal\, Virginia\nJared Duker Lichtman\, Stanford\nMike Mulligan\, UCR\, Logical Intelligence\nLuca Pesce\, Harvard\nGabriel Poesia\, U Michigan\nMathew Vanherreweghe\, Logical Intelligence\nSean Welleck\, CMU (via Zoom)\nMattiew Wyart\, JHU\n\nOrganizers: Michael R. Douglas (CMSA) and Mike Freedman (CMSA) \n  \nSchedule \n\n\n\nTuesday\, Sep. 8\, 2026\n\n\n8:15–8:45 am\nBreakfast\n\n\n8:45–9:30 am\nTalk\n\n\n9:45–10:30 am\nTalk\n\n\n10:30–11:00 am\nBreak\n\n\n11:00–11:45 am\nTalk\n\n\n12:00–12:45 pm\nTalk\n\n\nWednesday\, Sep. 9\, 2026\n\n\n8:15–8:45 am\nBreakfast\n\n\n8:45–9:30 am\nTalk\n\n\n9:45–10:30 am\nTalk\n\n\n10:30–11:00 am\nBreak\n\n\n11:00–11:45 am\nTalk\n\n\n12:00–12:45 pm\nTalk\n\n\nThursday\, Sep. 10\, 2026\n\n\n8:15–8:45 am\nBreakfast\n\n\n8:45–9:30 am\nTalk\n\n\n9:45–10:30 am\nTalk\n\n\n10:30–11:00 am\nBreak\n\n\n11:00–11:45 am\nTalk\n\n\n12:00–12:45 pm\nTalk\n\n\nFriday\, Sep. 11\, 2026\n\n\n8:15–8:45 am\nBreakfast\n\n\n8:45–9:30 am\nTalk\n\n\n9:45–10:30 am\nTalk\n\n\n10:30–11:00 am\nBreak\n\n\n11:00–11:45 am\nTalk\n\n\n12:00–12:45 pm\nTalk\n\n\n\n  \n  \nSupport provided by Logical Intelligence. \n \n  \n 
URL:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event/gml_2026/
LOCATION:CMSA 20 Garden Street Cambridge\, Massachusetts 02138 United States
CATEGORIES:Conference,Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/media/GML2026-Poster3.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20260916
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20260918
DTSTAMP:20260803T143531Z
CREATED:20260701T195057Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260803T143531Z
UID:10003959-1789516800-1789689599@cmsa.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Ahlfors Lectures: Mohammed Abouzaid
DESCRIPTION:Ahlfors Lectures  \nDates: September 16 & 17\, 2026 \nTime: 4:00–5:00 pm \nSpeaker: Mohammed Abouzaid (Stanford) \nRegister to attend in person or online at: https://www.math.harvard.edu/event/ahlfors-lecture-series-mohammed-abouzaid/ \n  \n \n  \nSeptember 16\, 2026 \nTitle: Framed bordism and nearby Lagrangians \nAbstract: The problem of understanding Lagrangian embeddings in symplectic manifolds remains a mystery. The simplest class of symplectic manifolds are the cotangent bundles of smooth manifolds\, which is the setting for the most prominent open problem in the subject: Arnold’s nearby Lagrangian conjecture which asserts the connectedness of the space of Lagrangians for which the relative class of the symplectic form vanishes. In particular\, the conjecture asserts that all such submanifolds are diffeomorphic. In view of recent work with Alvarez-Gavela\, Courte\, and Kragh\, as well as work of Procelli and Smith\, I will use the question as a motivation for joint work with Andrew Blumberg on a bordism-theoretic approach to define bordism-valued refinements of Floer homology. \n  \nSeptember 17\, 2026 \nTitle: Complex bordism and Hamiltonian fibrations \nAbstract: As a consequence of his theory of weights\, Deligne proved that smooth complex projective varieties\, carrying a smooth morphism to the projective line\, have rational cohomology groups that are isomorphic to the tensor product of the cohomology of the fibre with that of the base. In joint work with McLean and Smith\, we should that the result not only holds for symplectic manifolds\, but is in fact a consequence of an analogous result that holds for complex cobordism. The proof identifies bordism of “stably complex derived orbifolds” as the correct framework in which to formulate these results\, and I will discuss joint work with Shaoyun Bai to understand these bordism groups. \nThe Ahlfors Lecture Series is presented by the Harvard University Math Department in memory of  Professor Lars Ahlfors.
URL:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event/ahlfors2026/
LOCATION:Harvard Science Center\, 1 Oxford Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138
CATEGORIES:Event,Public Lecture,Special Lectures
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/media/Ahlfors-Lecture-Series-Poster-1.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260916T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260916T103000
DTSTAMP:20260707T141614Z
CREATED:20260422T170335Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260707T141614Z
UID:10003938-1789549200-1789554600@cmsa.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:CMSA/Tsinghua Math-Science Literature Lecture: Robert Gompf: On classifying smoothings of R^4–from the beginning to the present
DESCRIPTION:CMSA/Tsinghua Math-Science Literature Lecture \nDate: September 16\, 2026 \nTime: 9:00 – 10:30 am ET \nLocation: CMSA G10\, 20 Garden Street & via Zoom Webinar \n  \nPlease register to attend \nIn-person registration\n \nZoom Webinar registration \n  \n \nSpeaker: Robert E. Gompf\, University of Texas\, Austin \nTitle: On classifying smoothings of R^4–from the beginning to the present \nAbstract: The field of 4-manifold topology was born around 1981 with two independent revolutionary breakthroughs\, by Fields medalists Michael Freedman and Simon Donaldson. Freedman showed that topological 4-manifolds obeyed the well-developed theory of higher-dimensional manifolds\, while Donaldson used nonlinear analysis (gauge theory) to show that smooth 4-manifolds are quite different from their high-dimensional counterparts. The clash between the two theories makes 4-manifold topology uniquely intricate within manifold theory. One of the most startling consequences is that unlike in other dimensions\, Euclidean 4-space R^4 admits exotic smoothings. Equivalently\, there are smooth 4-manifolds that are homeomorphic\, but not diffeomorphic\, to R^4. We will trace the classification theory of these manifolds from their discovery to the most recent development (joint with Aristotelis Panagiotopoulos) that they cannot be classified by any countable family of numerical invariants. \n  \n\nBeginning in Spring 2020\, the CMSA began hosting a lecture series on literature in the mathematical sciences\, with a focus on significant developments in mathematics that have influenced the discipline\, and the lifetime accomplishments of significant scholars. \n  \n 
URL:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event/mathscilit2026_rg/
LOCATION:CMSA Room G10\, CMSA\, 20 Garden Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Math Science Literature Lecture Series,Public Lecture,Special Lectures
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/media/Mathlit_91626.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260928T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20261002T170000
DTSTAMP:20260821T151651Z
CREATED:20251027T191925Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260821T151651Z
UID:10003827-1790582400-1790960400@cmsa.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Workshop on Lagrangian Floer theory and applications
DESCRIPTION:Workshop on Lagrangian Floer Theory and Applications \nDates: September 28 – October 2\, 2026 \nLocation: CMSA G10\, 20 Garden St.\, Cambridge MA 02138 \nThis  workshop is part of the Lagrangian Floer Theory and Applications Program \n  \nSpeakers will include: \n\nMohammed Abouzaid\, Stanford University\nOctav Cornea\, University of Montréal\nTobias Ekholm\, Uppsala University\nSheel Ganatra\, USC\nAndrew Hanlon\, University of Oregon\nYanki Lekili\, Imperial College London\nGeorgios Dimitroglou Rizell\, Uppsala University\nPaul Seidel\, MIT\nEgor Shelukhin\, University of Montréal\nVivek Shende\, Berkeley/Syddansk\n\n  \nOrganizers: Denis Auroux (Harvard)\, Jonny Evans (Lancaster)\, and Chris Woodward (Rutgers) \n 
URL:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event/lftworkshop/
LOCATION:CMSA 20 Garden Street Cambridge\, Massachusetts 02138 United States
CATEGORIES:Workshop
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/media/Lagrangian-Workshop-1.jpg
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