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ScienceMathematics

Boston Computation Club

Max von Hippel

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.

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  • 24 episodes
  • Avg 57 min
  • English

Episodes 24

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  • September 8 · 46 min

    Sum-check protocol: categorical view, Alex Sorokin

    Alex is a friend of mine and a mathematician. He did his PhD in mathematics with other Alex (Martsinkovsky), who has presented at the seminar group previously. We're huge fans of both Alexes at the Boston Computation Club and we hope you enjoy this talk as much as we did!

  • July 3 · 48 min

    06/26/26: Tracing Introspection Across Model Depth, Zach Maas

    Zach Maas is an independent AI safety & mechanistic interpretability researcher in Boulder, Colorado, funded by Coefficient Giving. Today Zach joined us to talk about some of his recent work tracing introspection across model depth. This is, I think, the first mech interp talk we've hosted other than ChessGPT, and it was a good one! We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

  • April 18 · 58 min

    An Extremely Short Proof of the Hairy Ball Theorem with Peter McGrath

    Today Peter McGrath An Extremely Short Proof of the Hairy Ball Theorem. Peter is a professor of mathematics at NC State, where he researches geometric analysis, minimal surfaces, PDEs. Today's talk was an elegant presentation of the classical result -- Peter makes it accessible, and explains each concept in a clear and transparent manner. This was a really fun talk and really back to our roots as a group, doing pure math on an iPad and loving it! We hope you enjoy the talk as much as we did!

  • March 9 · 57 min

    Logic.py: Bridging the Gap between LLMs and Constraint Solvers with Pascal Kesseli

    Pascal Kesseli is a software engineer and technical lead at Microsoft AI, with a PhD in Computer Science from Oxford (or a DPhil? Or whatever they call PhDs on that side of the pond). Today Pascal joined us to discuss work he completed while at META FAIR, focused on the conjoining of large language models with symbolic reasoning systems (ultimately, dispatch to SAT) as well as future research directions building on said work.

  • February 18 · 48 min

    2/17/26: Approximately Aligned Decoding with Daniel Melcer

    Daniel Melcer is a PhD student at Northeastern University, where he researches formal methods, reinforcement learning, and large language models, among other things. Daniel also has the most colorful hair in the business (bright red for this talk, other colors for other occasions). Today he joined us to talk about some really exciting work he completed at Amazon, and to expand on his general vision of where constrained inference problems are heading in the future.

  • January 17 · 41 min

    VeriExploit: Automatic Bug Reproduction in Smart Contracts via LLMs and Formal Methods, Chenfeng Wei

    Chenfeng Wei is a PhD student at the University of Manchester, where he researches formal guarantees for large language models. Today he joined us to talk about his latest work exploring bugs in smart-contracts. This is a really interesting project at the intersection of explainable AI, smart contract debugging/security, and cybersecurity/symbolic analysis, and I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

  • Sep 15, 2025 · 59 min

    Infecting Generative AI with Viruses - David A. Noever and Forrest McKee

    David A. Noever and Forrest McKee are researchers at PeopleTec, where they work on problems at the intersection of security, defense, and AI/ML. Today David joined us to present their joint work Infecting Generative AI with Viruses. This was a really great presentation that took a rigorous approach to defining the security boundaries and limitations of AI tools, and it fostered one of the better discussions we've hosted in a while. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

  • Aug 15, 2025 · 57 min

    08/15/25: An LLM Agent for Functional Bug Detection in Network Protocols with Mingwei Zheng

    Mingwei Zheng a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University, advised by Prof. Xiangyu Zhang since 2021. Before that, she received her Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Technology from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2020. Mingwei's research lies at the intersection of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Software Engineering. She builds LLM agents that combine program analysis with LLMs for deep codebase understanding that improve software correctness, robustness, and trustworthiness. Today Mingwei joined us to discuss some ongoing work which she previously presented at IEEE Security and Privacy LangSec, applying language models to bug detection in protocols with IETF RFCs. This was a great talk with deep, technical content and a good conversation. We hope you enjoy!

  • Aug 2, 2025 · 1 hr 13 min

    08/01/25: Formal Reasoning Meets LLMs: Toward AI for Mathematics and Verification with Kaiyu Yang

    Today Kaiyu Yang from Meta joined us to discuss formal reasoning using LLMs, particularly in the context of interactive theorem provers. This is a really fast-moving and exciting field in which reinforcement learning and theorem proving combine to provide a new frontier for fully automated reasoning, and Kaiyu is at the bleeding edge of it. We were really lucky to get an hour of Kaiyu's time and we hope you enjoy the talk as much as we did!

  • Jul 25, 2025 · 52 min

    07/25/25: RefinedC: Automating the Foundational Verification of C Code with Refined Ownership Types with Michael Sammler

    Michael Sammler n assistant professor leading the Programming Languages and Verification Group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). Today he joined us to talk about his three primary projects: RefinedC, which uses a refinement and ownership type system to verify C code, Islaris, which shows how to scale verification of assembly code to realistic models of real-world architectures, and DimSum, which provides a decentralized approach for reasoning about multi-language programs (with a particular focus on RefinedC). We had a small but really dedicated crowd which facilitated an excellent discussion. This was a really fun one and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

  • Jun 22, 2025 · 1 hr 41 min

    06/20/25: TypeScript Types Can Run DOOM with Dimitri Mitropoulos

    Dimitri 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.

  • Jun 14, 2025 · 59 min

    06/13/25: Gradual Verification with Jenna DiVincenzo

    Jenna 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!

  • Apr 19, 2025 · 1 hr

    04/18/25: Descriptive Complexity with Ramit Das

    Ramit 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 talk by Ramit sometime in the future!

  • Apr 5, 2025 · 52 min

    03/21/24: How and Why to extend First Order Logic for Knowledge-Based Systems with Marc Denecker

    Today 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.

Showing 1–20 of 24 episodes