Boston Computation Club

Bill Dalessandro is a philosopher of science and mathematics at Oxford University. Today Bill joined us to discuss proofs -- specifically, what it means for a proof to be fixable, what it means for a proof to be transferable, and the apparent tension between these notions. This work built on prior work by Northeastern's Don Fallis, who attended the talk and participated in the lively and fascinating conversation that ensued. We also discussed what it's like to work in an interactive theorem prover. In such an environment, you don't really make mistakes -- because the prover doesn't let you -- but you might prove the wrong thing, and/or, you might not learn much despite having proven something. This was a great talk with a great with a really strong discussion section and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did! - Bill's website - The paper in question

Bernardo Anibal Subercaseaux Roa
Marijn Heule. He has a background in engineering and is passionate about mathematics and computer science. Bernardo's research attacks the following question from a variety of angles: what can and cannot be done (efficiently?) by a computer? Today, Bernardo joined us to talk about Packing Chromatic, a fascinating research area at the intersection of pure mathematics and SAT solving. Bernardo and his advisor recently solved an open problem in the space, finding the packing chromatic number for the infinite 2D grid. We discussed the proof and a bunch of related problems, including some intriguing (and open) questions about periodic vs aperiodic tilings. By the way, this work was also covered (briefly) in the NYT! (Not a lot of 2nd year PhD students get covered in the grey lady!!)

Bo Zhao is a 2nd year PhD student in computer science at UCSD, advised by Rose Yu. Her research focuses on deep learning theory and optimization, with a recent emphasis on the parameter space and dynamics of learning. Today Bo joined us to talk about her recent paper, "Symmetries, Flat Minima, and the Conserved Quantities of Gradient Flow", which was joint work at ICLR with Iordan Ganev, as well as co-authors Robin Walters, Rose Yu, and Nima Dehmamy. This is a really interesting paper which takes an algebraic approach to a problem typically only studied analytically. Bo gave a phenomenal presentation and then we had a really nice discussion with a variety of technical questions. We enjoyed this one a lot and we hope you do too!

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, his recent work to make a blazingly fast, super resource efficient system for graph neural networks. We hope you enjoy the talk as much as we did!

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 intriguing talk in which pretty deep mathematical ideas naturally emerged from simple, playful premises. We really enjoyed it and we hope you do too! This talk is also available in video form, here.

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 the form of tables.  This was a really excellent talk with a lively discussion touching on data quality, student motivation and engagement, pedagogy, data visualization, the nature of computation both essentially and in social context, incorrect assumptions programmers make (about names, interfaces, data, etc.), and much, much more.  We had a lot of fun with this one and we hope you enjoy it too!

By the way, you can watch the video version of this talk, HERE.

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 favorite things about running the group: when a group member expresses interest in some research paper, we can simply invite the lead author to give a presentation!). Elizabeth graciously agreed and gave one of the best presentations we've had in months, full of fascinating real-world examples of the often surprising ways that we use "per" in the English language, and the underlying mathematical complexity of said usage. This was an enormously fun talk and we really hope you enjoy it as much as we did! And thank you again to Elizabeth for presenting!

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 about eta's work, refer to her website here: https://eta.st/

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 real world?  When can models tell us something about ... anything other than their own mathematical substance?  And perhaps most importantly, in the Q&A section, how can we build a formal mathematics for computer hacking 😉?  This was a super fun event and we are very thankful for Mel's time.  We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

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 storied career as one of the people on the ground floor of cybersecurity, in its messy and exciting start.  This was a fun one and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

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 internet glory, and then answered a metric ton of questions about Wikipedia, the internet, Stack Exchange, etc.  This was a super fun event and one we really enjoyed.  We hope you enjoy it too!

• LakYah's website: https://www.khoury.northeastern.edu/home/lakyahtyner/index.html 
• The paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/842

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 geo-physicist, in addition to the standard array of derelict computer scientists (myself included).  To read more about John's work, refer here.  You can also watch this talk on YouTube, here.

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 practical justifications like "Boeing", this was refreshing and cool!  Anyway we had a really nice time with a great conversation section, and if you missed it, I'm sure you'll thoroughly enjoy the recording.  You can read more about Kimberly HERE.

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 methods - an endeavor I'm solidly halfway through at the time of writing.  All this is to say, Jean-Eric Pin is partially to blame for the fact that I am currently a sleepless PhD student at Northeastern University.  

Today Jean-Eric Pin joined us to discuss The Generalized Star Height Problem, an open problem in formal language theory which he and his colleagues have attempted to attack from all angles: algebraically, logically, topologically, etc.  It's one of those deeply enticing problems in math that's reasonably easy to explain yet apparently quite challenging to solve.  In this 2-hour talk, Jean-Eric Pin explains the problem starting with the most basic definitions, and then discusses some of the related results from those who wish to solve it.  It's a fascinating and very accessible talk, and we really hope you enjoy!

You can view a video version of the talk HERE.

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 😉).  Today, Andrea joined us to discuss some of his security research into ROP attacks, specifically attacks that exploit timing-based side-channels caused by speculative execution.  This research builds on the academic legacy of attacks like Spectre, but formalizes the relevant threat models and explores the full space of relevant attack varieties.  The talk was fun, technical, and exciting.  We concluded with a question-and-answer/discussion section, mostly centered on (a) attack realizability against differing architectures, and (b) mitigations/defenses.  This was a great talk, and we hope you enjoy it post-hoc!

• ArXiV
• Andrea's homepage
• Andrea's twitter
• Video version of this talk

• SpiceDAO website
• SpiceDAO twitter
• An article in The Verge about SpiceDAO
• Video version of this recording

• CODE
• VIDEO

Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist and journalist.  In my circles, he's probably best known for his work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Boing Boing, but he's also a renowned science fiction author in his own right, an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University, a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science, and co-founder of the UK Open Rights Group.  In short: Cory is precisely the kind of polymath we love to engage with at the Boston Computation Club!  Today, Cory joined us to discuss Big Tech - what's wrong with it and how to fix (read: DISMANTLE) it.  The talk was engaging, exciting, elucidating - all that and a bag of chips.  We really enjoyed talking to Cory and we hope you enjoy the recording!  You can also view this talk in video form HERE.

• The paper 
• Daniel's homepage
• This presentation as a video

Nicholas Boucher is a PhD student in computer science studying under Professor Ross Anderson at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory.  He is also one of the authors of Trojan Source Attacks, a paper (and CVE, and vulnerability class) which highlighted supply-chain vulnerabilities in open-source software (among other things) due to code that is different than it looks.  This is one of the most creative hacks we saw in 2021 and we were thrilled to have Nicholas tell us about it.  The presentation was great, as was the discussion, where we got into the difficulties of the disclosure process, the complexities of peer review (in tandem with ethical vulnerability disclosure), and future problems (🤖🔔🐍🧶are emojis kosher??).  We hope you enjoy!

• Nicholas's homepage can be found HERE.
• You can read the Trojan Source Attacks paper HERE.
• You can see the video of this talk HERE.

• Kai on Github
• Kai on Twitter
• This talk on YouTube

• Matt's personal page at the NBIA is HERE.  
• Matt's popular physics blog is HERE. 
• Matt can be found on Twitter HERE.
• This talk can be found in video form HERE.
• You can learn more about the Boston Computation Club HERE.

• Learn more about Tyler Hobbs HERE.
• Learn more about Bill Cresco and his lab HERE.
• Learn more about the Boston Computation Club HERE.
• Learn more about Anya HERE.
• Learn more about Joe: Just kidding, you can't, he is an internet ninja.
• Watch the video version of this talk HERE.

- Preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.10061 

- Larkin: https://larkz.github.io/ 

- Jun: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jun-tao-luo

- Video: https://youtu.be/bVpUlJU-piA

- Ankit Kumar: https://www.khoury.northeastern.edu/people/ankit-kumar/

- FMCAD21: https://fmcad.org/FMCAD21/

- Pete Manolios: https://www.ccs.neu.edu/~pete/

- The Boston Computation Club: https://bstn.cc/

- Video form of this talk: https://youtu.be/doeauZv3JrE

- Julia Belyakova's homepage: https://julbinb.github.io/

- The Julia language: https://julialang.org/

- The Boston Computation Club: https://bstn.cc/

- This talk but as a video: https://youtu.be/JNxrX2XvZIY

You can read more about Matteo HERE. 

You can read more about the Boston Computation Club HERE.

You can watch this presentation in video form on YouTube HERE.

• Sara Archour's homepage can be found HERE.
• This presentation can also be viewed in video format HERE.

This talk is also available on YouTube HERE.

• You can watch a video version of Artem's talk [HERE].
• You can learn more about Artem [HERE].

"Café Events" are small, informal events where we discuss our research and our (perhaps, unfulfilled) research interests.  Our ongoing "Biology Café" series is exactly that, but focused on topics at the intersection of biology and computation.  Today's presentation by Sophia von Hippel covered the open, and very important, problem of developing a mathematical language for chemistry.  Chemistry has a great diagrammatic syntax, but a (or, multiple) terrible prose representation.  Sophia presents the problem in clear and careful detail with examples, and then we discuss.  TL;DR: we don't solve the problem.  Sophia is currently pursuing a BS in Chemistry at the University of Arizona (with Honors).  She previously interned with NASA and served as a COVID-19 vaccinator.  She is also an Emergency Medical Technician with the University of Arizona Emergency Medical Services (UAEMS).  You can also view this presentation as a video on YouTube [HERE].

[ Paper ] [ Maria ][ Code ][ Video ][ Boston Computation Club ]

• The Boston Computation Club can be found at https://bstn.cc/
• Carlo Angiuli can be found at https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cangiuli/
• A video recording of this talk is available at https://youtu.be/VMqF06fDljU
• For more on Homotopy Type Theory refer to https://homotopytypetheory.org/book/