The Department of Mathematics welcomes École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne professor Maryna Viazovska to our annual Simons Lecture Series.She will give three lectures April 29-May 1The Sphere Packing Problem Lecture 1: General overview. Lecture 2: Random sphere packings with symmetries Lecture 3: Ideal lattice packings and subconvexity bounds IIEach day, a reception will be held at 4pm in Room 2-290, followed by the 4:30pm lecture in Room 2-190.This annual lecture series features presentations by top mathematicians. Many thanks to the late Jim Simons and his wife, Marilyn Simons, for their continued financial support of these lectures.

Michael Greenstone (University of Chicago)

A discussion on Professor Marlene Daut’s new book The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe.

Talk Title: Under Pressure: Materials Chemistry at Extreme Conditions

Speaker: Sanath Devalapurkar (Harvard University)

Date: Wednesday, April 30, 2025 Location: 46-3002 (Singleton Auditorium)Speaker: Oliver Rollins, Ph.D. Affiliation: Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society (STS), MITHosts: Dr. Mriganka Sur, Dr. Rebecca SaxeTalk title: What Antiracism means for (Neuro)science Today Abstract: Historically, race—especially its erroneous interpretation as a biological reality—has played a key role in shaping scientific research about the brain. Today, neuroscience, like other related fields of biological inquiry, not only rejects its racist past but also seeks to clarify that race holds little scientific relevance in the present. In response to the Summer of 2020, for example, major scientific journals (e.g., Nature, Science, and JAMA) and institutions issued calls to better recognize and combat the underlying harms of scientific racism. However, our current sociopolitical environment raises questions about whether and how neuroscience can genuinely confront its past and contemporary interactions with race. By emphasizing how racial inequality can be perpetuated and confronted through everyday technological practices involving the brain, I aim to provide evidence of the necessity for neuroscientists and social scientists to think more collectively, critically, and creatively about the intersections between (neuro)science and the politics of social difference.