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. Presenters can assume the audience is mathematically savvy, but cannot assume any definitions are known to begin with. The Club has no strict leadership but is gently guided by Max von Hippel, Jacob Denbeaux, & friends.
To join the Slack & attend future talks, or if you would like to give a talk, email maxvh [ at ] hey [ dot ] com. You can find us on YouTube, Anchor, and Substack.

Next Meeting: February 17, 2026 at 5PM EST

Image Approximately Aligned Decoding, Daniel Melcer

Prior Meetings

Image 02/06/26: Early Experiments with LLMs and FM at Galois, Max von Hippel
Image 01/16/26: VeriExploit: Automatic Bug Reproduction in Smart Contracts via LLMs and Formal Methods, Chenfeng Wei [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 01/02/26: Breaking the Sorting Barrier for Directed Single-Source Shortest Paths, Xiao Mao
Image 12/05/25: Tree Borrows, Neven Villani [SLIDES]
Image 11/07/25: Trials and Tribulations Linting Typescript, Josh Goldberg
Image 11/07/25: Trials and Tribulations Linting Typescript, Josh Goldberg
Image 11/01/25: Building Lenma -- Voice Control for MacOS, Furkan Köseoğlu
Image 10/10/25: Rayhunter, Cooper Quintin
Image 09/13/25: Infecting Generative AI with Viruses, David A. Noever (collaboration with Forrest McKee) [VIDEO]
Image 08/15/25: An LLM Agent for Functional Bug Detection in Network Protocols, Mingwei Zheng [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 08/02/25: Formal Reasoning Meets LLMs: Toward AI for Mathematics and Verification, Kaiyu Yang [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 07/25/25: RefinedC: Automating the Foundational Verification of C Code with Refined Ownership Types, Michael Sammler [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 06/20/25: TypeScript Types Can Run DOOM, Dimitri Mitropoulos [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 06/13/25: Gradual Verification: Assuring Software Incrementally, Jenna DiVincenzo [VIDEO] [AUDIO] [SLIDES]
Image 05/16/25: GREASE: An Open-Source Tool for Uncovering Hidden Vulnerabilities in Binary Code, Langston Barrett
Image 05/07/25: Exploring Zero-Shot Prompting for Generating Data Format Descriptions, Prashant Anantharaman [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 04/30/25: IDP-Z3: a reasoning engine for FO(.), Simon Vandevelde
Image 04/18/25: Descriptive Complexity, Ramit Das [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 04/04/25: Constrained Decoding for Code Language Models via Efficient Left and Right Quotienting of Context-Sensitive Grammars, Daniel Melcer [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 03/21/24: How and Why to extend First Order Logic for Knowledge-Based Systems, Marc Denecker [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 03/15/25: An Introduction to LEAN, Jesse Han
Image 03/08/25: An Introduction to LiquidHaskell, Michael H. Borkowski [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 03/01/25: What is the SOTA in Automated Software Development?, Jesse Han
Image 01/10/25: Combining Causal Inference and Knowledge Graphs, Brook Santangelo and John Sterrett [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 01/04/25: Hacking GenAI with LLM Red Teaming and Beyond, Gaspard Baye [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 11/30/24: LB4TL: A Smooth Semantics for Temporal Logic to Train Neural Feedback Controllers, Navid Hashemi [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 11/17/24: When Static Analysis Meets Large Language Models, Chengpeng Wang [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 10/05/24: Abuse-Resistant Location Tracking: Balancing Privacy and Safety in the Offline Finding Ecosystem, Harry Eldridge [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 09/28/24: Hacking an LLM Using the Z3 Theorem Prover, Ian Bicking [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 09/07/24: Shaken, not Stirred -- Automated Discovery of Subtle Attacks on Protocols using Mix-Nets, Dhekra Mahmoud [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 08/24/24: An Introduction to Lurk, Matej Panciak [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 08/17/24: Efficient Synthesis of Symbolic Distributed Protocols by Sketching, Derek Egolf [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 08/10/24: Radically Better Academic Search With Undermind, Joshua Ramette [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 07/27/24: Pragmatic Program Synthesis, Evan Pu [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 07/20/24: Verification and Attack Synthesis for Network Protocols, Max von Hippel
Image 07/06/24: The Algebraic Structure of Infinite Craft, Arthur O’Dwyer [VIDEO] [AUDIO] [SLIDES]
Image 06/22/24: npm install everything, Evan Boehs [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 06/08/24: Compressing a JSON Parser Beyond Comprehension, June Marcuse [VIDEO] [ROP STUFF] [MORE ROP STUFF]
Image 05/18/24: `sage --pip install torch` and Other Superhero Origin Stories, Brennon Brimhall
Image 04/20/24: Chess-GPT's Internal World Model, Adam Karvonen [AUDIO] [VIDEO]
Image 04/12/24: DY Fuzzing: Formal Dolev-Yao Models Meet Cryptographic Protocol Fuzz Testing, Max Ammann [AUDIO] [VIDEO]
Image 03/24/24: Pegasus Panel, Jonathan Rugman, Raya Sharbain, Elina Castillo Jimenéz, Prashant Anantharaman, and Hinako Sugiyama, in conversation with Holmes Wilson [AUDIO] [VIDEO]
Image 03/08/24: Bitwuzla: A New SMT Solver For Bit-Precise Reasoning, Mathias Preiner [AUDIO] [VIDEO]
Image 02/24/24: Protocol Analysis using Real Analysis in ACL2, Max von Hippel
Image 02/16/24: Q&A on Verified Elections, Joe Kiniry
Image 1/27/24: Q&A on Entrepreneurship, Kraettli Epperson
Image 01/13/24: How to Fund your Projects by Remembering One Number, Joe Shiraef [VIDEO]
Image 01/06/24: NLP Café #1: Semantic Arithmetic for Visualizing Natural Language, Jefferson Richards [VIDEO] [CODE]
Image 12/15/23: Q&A on Puzzles, Roger Barkan in conversation with Jacob Denbeaux [Puzzle Builder] [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 12/01/23: Cascade: CPU Fuzzing via Intricate Program Generation, Flavien Solt
Image 11/19/23: Low Cost Robotics and Semi Open-Sourced Automation, Jan Hennecke [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 11/04/23: Logic in Color, Christian Williams [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 10/21/23: How to Write a Coequation, Todd Schmid [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 10/07/23: Artificial Intelligence, Openness, and "Existential" Risk: Well Informed Vibes on What is Hype and What is Real, Avijit Ghosh, David Widder, and Fabio Tollon, moderated by Wei Sun [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 09/17/23: Open Problems in Probabilistic Programming Semantics, Eli Sennesh [VIDEO] [AUDIO] [TEXTBOOK]
Image 09/09/23: Transferable and Fixable Proofs, Bill Dalessandro [VIDEO] [AUDIO] [RELATED PAPER] [SLIDES]
Image 09/01/23: The ChipSec Project, Nathaniel Mitchell and Dan Scott [VIDEO] [AUDIO] [SLIDES]
Image 08/12/23: Packing Chromatic, Bernardo Anibal Subercaseaux Roa [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 07/15/23: Symmetries, Flat Minima, and the Conserved Quantities of Gradient Flow, Bo Zhao [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 06/30/23: ChatGPT on your Personal Corpus in Algovera, Richard Blythman [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 06/25/23: Unikernel Linux (UKL), Thomas Unger
Image 06/23/23: MariusGNN, Roger Waleffe [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 06/16/23: Infinite Games -- Strategies, Logic, Theory, and Computation, Joel David Hamkins [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 06/10/23: Math is Not Relevant, Wei Sun [VIDEO]
Image 05/20/23: A Data-Centric Introduction to Computing, Shriram Krishnamurthi [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 05/13/23: Automation of Medical Form Processing in the Context of Organ Transplantation, Marek Rychlik and Beaker Tanriover
Image 04/29/23: Q&A on the Philosophy of Games, Christopher Ba Thi Nguyen in conversation with Wei Sun [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 04/21/23: Quantity Calculus in Natural Language Semantics, Elizabeth Coppock [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 04/02/23: Path Finding with Ghihorn, Jeffrey Gennari
Image 03/17/23: The Process, Challenges, Struggles & Joys of Creating "How to Design Programs", Matthias Felleisen [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 03/03/23: Reverse Engineering UK Mobile Rail Tickets, eta [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 02/12/23: Web3 is Going Just Great, Molly White [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 02/03/23: How to Give a Good Mathematical Presentation, Anthony Bonato [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 01/28/23: Implications of Model-Based Phil/Sci for ML, Mel Andrews [AUDIO]
Image 01/15/23: Quiet: a Web3 Alternative to Discord, Holmes Wilson [VIDEO]
Image 01/06/23: Q&A: AppSec from OWASP to Present, John Viega [AUDIO]
Image 12/10/22: Challenges Encountered Building Slow Roads, Anslo
Image 12/03/22: Depths of Wikipedia, Annie Rauwerda [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 11/19/22: Nearly Optimal Property Preserving Hashing, LaKyah Tyner [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 11/06/22: Intro to Zero Knowledge Proofs, Gabriel Kaptchuk
Image 10/23/22: Formal Analysis of Ethereum's GossipSub in ACL2s, Ankit Kumar and Max von Hippel
Image 10/14/22: Cryptography with Quantum States, William Kretschmer [AUDIO] [VIDEO]
Image 10/08/22: Mock Theta Functions, Amanda Folsom. [ALSO: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Image 09/17/22: Math Café #11: Prep for Dr. Folsom's Talk, Ammar Husain. [SLIDES]
Image 09/16/22: A Conversation on Theorem Provers and Vulnerability Research, Addison Crump and Teddy Heinen
Image 09/15/22: Math Café #10: Infinite Dimensional Analysis (Semi-Continuity), Cheng Zhang
Image 09/04/22: Math Café #9: Infinite Dimensional Analysis (Continuity & Compactness), Cheng Zhang
Image 09/03/22: A Conversation on Reverse Engineering Tooling, Matteo Giordiano
Image 08/27/22: Blockchain Café #2: Applied Cryptography and APIs, Brennon Brimhall
Image 08/07/22: Math Café #8: Infinite Dimensional Analysis (Continuity), Cheng Zhang
Image 08/05/22: The Mobile Network Battlefield in Ukraine, Cathal McDaid
Image 07/29/22: A Conversation on Reverse Engineering and Symbolic Execution, Boyan Milanov
Image 07/17/22: Math Café #7: Infinite Dimensional Analysis (Filters), Cheng Zhang
Image 07/16/22: The Crypto Crash(es), Cristiano Teixeira
Image 07/10/22: Math Café #6: Infinite Dimensional Analysis (Topologies & Nets), Cheng Zhang [NOTES]
Image 06/19/22: Assessing Recycling, Displacement, and Environmental Impacts using an Economics-Informed Material System Model, John Ryter [AUDIO] [VIDEO]
Image 06/11/22: An Open Discussion on Unionizing Graduate Students, Jacob Morrison and Jeremy Stepansky
Image 06/05/22: Math Café #5: The Collatz Conjecture, Max von Hippel
Image 05/28/22: Efficiently Modeling Long Sequences with Structured State Spaces, Albert Gu
Image 05/20/22: Hybrid Systems: Not Just For Cars Anymore!, Kimberly Ayers [AUDIO] [VIDEO]
Image 05/13/22: The Generalized Star Height Problem, Jean-Eric Pin [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 05/08/22: Math Café #4: Selected Topics in Kleene Algebra, Cheng Zhang
Image 05/07/22: Math Café #3: Prep for Dr. Pin's Talk, Max von Hippel [NOTES] [SLIDES] [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 04/15/22: When Memory Guards are Crooked and Become Speculating Snitches, Andrea Mambretti [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 03/20/22: An Open Conversation on Web3, Spice DAO [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 03/13/22: Automated Attack Synthesis by Extracting Finite State Machines from Protocol Specification Documents, Maria Leonor Pacheco and Max von Hippel [CODE]
Image 03/12/22: Live Coding: Making a Wordle Scraper and Solver, Jacob Denbeaux [CODE] [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 03/09/22: Q&A Regarding the War in Ukraine, Karin von Hippel
Image 03/05/22: Seize the Means of Computation: the Big Tech Disassembly Manual, Cory Doctorow [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 03/04/22: Topology Homework Session #5: Liveness & Safety Properties
Image 02/17/22: Quantum Computing in Plato's Cave, Daniel Burgarth [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 02/11/22: Math Café #2, lead by Sam Stites
Image 02/10/22: Topology Homework Session #4: Homotopy Equivalence
Image 02/09/22: Topology Homework Session #3: Continuity & Nullhomotopy
Image 02/06/22: Trojan Source Attacks, Nicholas Boucher [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 01/22/22: How to Meet Interesting People by Accident & Design, Dan Ritter
Image 01/20/22: Math Café #1, lead by Sam Stites
Image 01/14/22: Topology Homework Session #2: The Quotient Topology
Image 01/13/22: Topology Homework Session #1: The Zariski Topology over spec R
Image 01/08/22: Covert C2 Channels, Kai Bernardini [VIDEO] [AUDIO] [GITHUB] [TWITTER]
Image 12/15/21: Blockchain Café #1: Formal Methods for Smart Contracts [PAPER]
Image 12/04/21: Feynman Integrals for a Mathematical Audience, Matt von Hippel [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 12/03/21: Aesthetic and Organic Complexity, Tyler Hobbs and Bill Cresco, moderated by Joe and Anya [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 10/29/21: It's Just Math and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves, Jade Edenstar Master
Image 10/24/21: An Extensible and Modular Design and Implementation of Monte Carlo Tree Search for the JVM, Larkin Liu and (in attendance) Jun Tao Luo [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 10/15/21: Mathematical Programming Modulo Strings, Ankit Kumar [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 10/09/21: Types in PL Research vs Types in Julia, Julia Belyakova [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 09/25/21: Labor and Unions, Jacob Morrison and Adam Keller [NU Grad Union] [ALSO: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ]
Image 09/18/21: Live Coding Hacking, Max von Hippel (pilot) and Jacob Denbeaux (copilot)
Image 09/12/21: More Category Theory for More Cybernetics, Matteo Capucci [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 08/28/21: Compilation Techniques for Reconfigurable Analog Devices, Sara Achour [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 08/20/21: An Open Question in Category Theory, Alex Martsinkovsky [NOTES]
Image 08/14/21: Minimal Length Representations of Database Provenance, Neha Makhija
Image 07/30/21: Structural Attacks on Local Routing in Payment Channel Networks, Ben Weintraub [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 07/24/21: Linear Haskell, Artem Pelenitsyn [SLIDES] [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 07/10/21: Biology Café #1: The Illogical Nature of Chemical Nomenclature, Sophia von Hippel [NOTES] [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 06/25/21: Q&A, John Launchbury
Image 06/13/21: Modeling Content and Context with Deep Relational Learning, Maria Leonor Pacheco [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 06/06/21: Quantum Café #5: Formal Methods (revisited)
Image 05/29/21: Homotopy Type Theory 101, Carlo Angiuli [VIDEO] [AUDIO]
Image 05/15/21: How Does a Health Actuary Estimate a Reserve?, Paul Johnson [CHANNEL]
Image 05/01/21: Assembly Programming for M1, Chris Patuzzo [SLIDES]
Image 04/25/21: Open Discussion
Image 04/17/21: Quantum Café #4: Grand Unified Theories
Image 04/11/21: Project Waves, Jacob Denbeaux [RELATED NEWS]
Image 03/27/21: Introduction to Operational Security, The Grugq
Image 03/21/21: Quantum Café #3: Syntax and Semantics [NOTES]
Image 03/13/21: Concurrent Interpretations of Authorization Logic, Andrew K. Hirsch [PAPERS: 1,2,3] [SLIDES]
Image 02/28/21: Quantum Café #2: Noisy Quantum Gates
Image 02/27/21: Nuclear Non Proliferation - Role of Citizen Scientists, Frank N. von Hippel [COALITION]
Image 02/21/21: Quantum Series #2: Entanglement, Billy Kalfus
Image 02/13/21: Quantum Café #1: Formal Methods
Image 02/07/21: Quantum Series #1: Fundamentals, Billy Kalfus
Image 01/24/21: Algorithmic Artwork, Tyler Hobbs
Image 01/09/21: Category Theory for Cybernetics, Jules Hedges
Image 12/27/20: Dilemma Languages & Moral Codes, Max von Hippel [NOTES] [RELATED]
Image 12/13/20: Compositional PCA for Microbiome data, Jamie Morton [CODE]
Image 11/29/20: Parsing Real-World Data Formats, Prashant Anantharaman [SLIDES]
Image 11/15/20: What Decentralization Is And Isn't, Paul Miller [SLIDES]
Image 11/01/20: The Yoneda Lemma, Tyler Bryson [SLIDES] [BOOK]
Image 10/17/20: Overfitting Management in ML Applications, Frances Hubis
Image 10/03/20: Testing the Paradigm of Asteroidal Dust around White Dwarfs, Ted von Hippel
Image 09/20/20: Implications of Collaborative Filtering, Jacob Denbeaux
Image 09/06/20: Graph Representations for Higher Order Logic, Sam Stites
Image 08/16/20: Programming from Galois Connections, Max von Hippel [NOTES full of typos]

Future Meetings

Other Venues

We're not the only rodeo in town. If you like us, be sure to check out the BU POPV Seminar (organized by our very own Cheng Zhang), PLTea, Intercats (from the Topos Institute), TMWYF, the Online Worldwide Seminar on Logic and Semantics, London Computation Club, Chaitin School of Engineering, IIT Bangalore Theory Club, Offbeat Computation Club, MIT CSAIL Security Seminar, MIT Categories Seminar, Waterloo ML+Logic Colloquium, Northeastern PL Seminar, CiviTech, MLAB, Engineering Book Club, gpLM Reading Group, Boston TS Club, Tucson Drug Club, and always-wonderful Northeastern Topology Seminar. If you like podcasts, we highly reccomend We Speak Your Language, The Iowa Type Theory Commute, and My Favorite Theorem. If you'd like your venue to be listed here as well, shoot Max an email.


Emojis from OpenMoji