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PODCAST

Boston Computation Club

The Boston Computation Club is a small seminar group focused on mathematical computer science, and computational mathematics. Its name is plagiarized from the London Computation Club. Boston Computation Club meetings occur roughly every other week, on weekends, around 5pm EDT (modulo speaker availability). The usual format is a 20m presentation followed by 40m of discussion. Some, but not all, meetings are posted on YouTube and in podcast form.

science mathematics

All Episodes

00:56:23

06/30/23: ChatGPT on your Personal Corpus in Algovera...

Boston Computation Club ·

2023/06/30

Today 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.ai

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00:55:39

06/23/23: MariusGNN with Roger Waleffe

Boston Computation Club ·

2023/06/23

Roger 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,

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00:57:28

06/16/23: Infinite Games -- Strategies, Logic,...

Boston Computation Club ·

2023/06/16

Joel 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

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01:14:35

05/20/23: A Data-Centric Introduction to Computing,...

Boston Computation Club ·

2023/05/21

Shriram 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

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00:56:58

04/29/23: Q&A on the Philosophy of Games with...

Boston Computation Club ·

2023/04/29

Christopher 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

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01:02:56

04/21/23: Quantity Calculus in Natural Language...

Boston Computation Club ·

2023/04/23

Elizabeth 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

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00:55:59

03/17/23: The Process, Challenges, Struggles & Joys...

Boston Computation Club ·

2023/03/17

Matthias 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

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00:43:45

03/03/23: Reversing UK Rail Tickets with eta

Boston Computation Club ·

2023/03/04

eta 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

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01:00:56

02/13/23: Web3 is Going Just Great with Molly White

Boston Computation Club ·

2023/02/13

Molly 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!

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00:58:01

02/03/23: How to Give a Good Mathematical...

Boston Computation Club ·

2023/02/03

Anthony 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

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00:57:54

01/29/23: Implications of Model-Based Phil/Sci for ML...

Boston Computation Club ·

2023/01/28

Mel 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

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00:58:33

01/06/23: Q&A: AppSec from OWASP to Present with John...

Boston Computation Club ·

2023/01/06

John 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

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00:59:10

12/03/22: Depths of Wikipedia with Annie Rauwerda

Boston Computation Club ·

2022/12/03

Annie 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

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00:44:31

11/19/22: Nearly Optimal Property Preserving Hashing...

Boston Computation Club ·

2022/11/19

LakYah 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

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01:00:46

10/14/22: Cryptography with Quantum States with...

Boston Computation Club ·

2022/10/14

William 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

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00:51:43

06/19/22: Assessing Recycling, Displacement, and...

Boston Computation Club ·

2022/06/19

John 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

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00:57:02

05/20/22: Hybrid Systems: Not Just For Cars Anymore!...

Boston Computation Club ·

2022/05/20

Kimberly 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

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01:52:19

05/13/22: The Generalized Star Height Problem with...

Boston Computation Club ·

2022/05/13

Roughly 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

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00:54:28

05/07/22: Math Café #3: Prep for Dr. Pin's Talk with...

Boston Computation Club ·

2022/05/07

Plagiarizing 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

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00:55:54

04/15/22: When Memory Guards are Crooked and Become...

Boston Computation Club ·

2022/04/15

Andrea 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

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78 results

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