[Note: While I and many others are fortunate to be able to go on with our work, deadlines, and (as mentioned in this post) seminars, this is not the case for many in the U.S. following yet another demonstration that black lives don’t matter as much as they should in this country. I would like to relay Rediet Abebe’s call to support local organizations. As Rediet says “These problems have been and will be here for a very long time. We’re not solving racism this month.”. –Boaz]
For the last year, I have been co organizing a theory of machine learning seminar at Harvard. Following the format of our prior Harvard/MSR/MIT theory reading group, these have been extended blackboard talks with plenty of audience interaction.
Following COVID-19, the last three talks in the semester (by Moritz Hardt, Zico Kolter, and Anima Anandkumar) were given virtually. Frankly, I was at first unsure whether these seminars can work in the virtual format but was pleasantly surprised. Talks have been very interactive, with plenty of audience participation in the chat channel. In fact, the virtual format has some advantages over physical talks. Sometimes a question will be asked and answered by a co-author over chat, without the speaker needing to interrupt the talk.
Since the seminars were so successful, we decided to continue holding them over the summer. We have an exciting line up of confirmed speakers, and more will come soon. See our webpage for more details, which also contains a google calendar and a mailing list you can sign up for to get the Zoom link.
Confirmed speakers so far include:
- Jascha Sohl-Dickstein – June 11
- Behnam Neyshabur – June 18
- Alex Dimakis – July 9
- Nadav Cohen – August 6
- Maithra Raghu – date tbd
- Hanie Sedghi – date tbd
More should be confirmed soon – join our mailing list to get updates.
Windows On Theory 