Time: 6:30-8:00 p.m., Wednesday, October 28th Join us on: Zoom (password: Seminar) or YouTube Live Speakers: JohnMark Taylor Graphics: Olivia Foster Rhoades You may not have heard of “artificial neural networks”, but if Facebook has ever automatically tagged you in a picture, you’ve definitely used one. Many experts once thought certain challenges in artificial intelligence wouldn’t be solved for decades: writing humanlike prose; recognizing people, places, and things; … Continue reading October 28 – Deep Learning, Deep Implications

Update: In accordance with Harvard guidelines regarding coronavirus, this week’s lecture will be a virtual event only. Please join us via live-stream on Youtube at the scheduled time (7 p.m.)! Time: 7:00-9:00 p.m., Wednesday, March 11th Location: Armenise Amphitheater at Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston (link to directions) Speakers: Madelyn Ray and Rachel Walker Graphics: Abby Knecht Responding appropriately in the face of fear is an … Continue reading March 11 – What’s your brain afraid of?

Time: 7:00-9:00 p.m., Wednesday, March 4th Location: Armenise Amphitheater at Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston (link to directions) Speakers: Maria Bauza Villalonga and Ferran Alet Graphics: Rebecca Senft Robotic hardware has made enormous progress recently, with drones being commonplace and Boston dynamics releasing impressive videos. However, robots are only present in very limited environments, which only require very repetitive actions. Through the lens of the Amazon … Continue reading March 4 – Machine learning in robotics: Current progress and challenges ahead.

Time: 7:00-9:00 p.m., Wednesday, November 20th Location: Armenise Amphitheater at Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston (link to directions) Speakers: Ada Shaw Graphics: Rebecca Senft In 2016, an estimated 5.4 million Americans were suffering from Alzheimer’s disease; 1 million from Parkinson’s; 400,000 and 30,000 from Huntington’s disease. These numbers are expected to increase as the population ages. One promising approach to studying the causes of neurodegenerative disease … Continue reading November 20 – Disentangling the causes of Neurodegenerative Diseases

Time: 7:00-9:00 p.m., Wednesday, November 6th Location: Armenise Amphitheater at Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston (link to directions) Speakers: Linda Xu Graphics: Olivia Foster Rhoades The search for dark matter is one of the defining physics challenges of our generation, driving collaborations and progress across many disciplines both experimental and theoretical. The abundance of evidence for its existence and continued elusiveness of any particle interaction is … Continue reading November 6 – The many magnitudes of darkness

Time: 7:00-9:00 p.m., Wednesday, October 30th Location: Armenise Amphitheater at Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston (link to directions) Speakers: Juliana Rhee Graphics: Olivia Foster Rhoades Have you ever wished you had an invisibility cloak? While this may sound like science fiction to us, coleoid cephalopods – octopus, cuttlefish, and squid – can change the color of their skin to disappear into the background in the blink … Continue reading October 30 – Masters of Disguise: How cephalopods change their colors

Time: 7:00-9:00 p.m., Wednesday, October 23rd Location: Armenise Amphitheater at Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston (link to directions) Speakers: Steven Torrisi Graphics: Jovana Andrejevic The problems facing society have technological solutions, but need materials we don’t have yet. Computers are one of our biggest tools in the quest for finding the materials of the future. We have a new and exciting edge against the problems of … Continue reading October 23 – Computers Dream of a Better Future: Artificial Intelligence in Materials Science

Time: 7:00-9:00 p.m., Wednesday, October 16th Location: Armenise Amphitheater at Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston (link to directions) Speakers: Anna Ponomarenko Graphics: Aparna Nathan Every year the world prepares for a new flu season. Scientists keep modifying and updating vaccines, as well as researching and testing novel anti-flu drugs. And the next season the race with the ever changing virus starts over. But why does flu … Continue reading October 16 – Mutants on the Rise: Survival tricks of a flu virus

Time: 7:00-9:00 p.m., Wednesday, October 9th Location: Armenise Amphitheater at Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston (link to directions) Speakers: Vicky Chou and Kevin Dervishi Graphics: Vicky Chou What do The Bachelor, America’s Got Talent, Hell’s Kitchen, and your brain have in common? They all need competition to work properly! Competition drives our development in ways that confused scientists for years. In this talk, we’ll learn about … Continue reading October 9 – America’s Next Top Neuron: How microscopic competition shapes our brains

Time: 7:00-9:00 p.m., Wednesday, May 8th Location: Pfizer Hall at Harvard University, 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge (link to directions) Speakers: Jordan Wilkerson Graphics: Nick Lue The Arctic Circle has been getting slushier over the past century. The culprit is climate change. From Russia to Canada to Alaska, roads and buildings are beginning to collapse under the melting soil on which they rest. But humans aren’t the only ones … Continue reading May 8 – Cities Resting on Slush: Impacts of Climate Change on Earth’s Frozen Regions