Chemistry Student Seminar (CSS) is a student-organized seminar series that host graduate students and postdocs to share their research in a friendly and informal environment. Free donuts and coffee are provided.

Speaker: Tatsunori Hashimoto (Stanford University)Abstract: Compute scaling has dominated the conversation with modern language models, leading to an impressive array of algorithms that optimize performance for a given training (and sometimes inference) compute budget. But as compute has grown cheaper and more abundant, data is starting to become a bottleneck, and our ability to exchange computing for data efficiency may be crucial to future model scaling. In this talk, I will discuss some of our recent work on synthetic data and algorithmic approaches to data efficiency, and show that in both cases, classical statistical perspectives based on nonparametric modeling and ensembling bring new insights and empirical benefits to modern questions of scaling and data efficiency.Biography: Tatsunori Hashimoto is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. Work from his group spans many areas within statistical machine learning and language models including language model post-training, uncertainty quantification, and data selection. He received his Ph.D. at MIT under the supervision of Tommi Jaakkola and David Gifford, and is the recipient of the NSF CAREER, Samsung AI researcher of the year award, a Kavli fellowship as well as best paper awards at ICML, ICLR, and CHI.

The Mobility Forum with Prof. Jinhua Zhao showcases transportation research and innovation across the globe. The Forum is online and open to the public.

Ten minutes for your mind@2:50 every day at 2:50 pm in multiple time zones:Europa@2:50, EET, Athens, Helsinki (UTC+2) (7:50 am EST) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88298032734Atlantica@2:50, EST, New York, Toronto (UTC-4) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85349851047Pacifica@2:50, PST, Los Angeles, Vancouver (UTC=7) (5:50 pm EST) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85743543699Almost everything works better again if you unplug it for a bit, including your mind. Stop by and unplug. Get the benefits of mindfulness without the fuss.@2:50 meets at the same time every single day for ten minutes of quiet together.No pre-requisite, no registration needed.Visit the website to view all @2:50 time zones each day.at250.org or at250.mit.edu

Time: 5:00 PMLocation: Cambridge, MA

Bhagavad Gita Fall Lecture SeriesJoin HG Sadananda Dasa, MIT Vaishnava Hindu Chaplain, for a weekly journey into the timeless wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita. Explore profound questions about identity, purpose, karma, yoga, love, and selfless service, and discover practical insights for living a meaningful and spiritually grounded life. Each session combines reflection, discussion, and practical tools for self-realization.RSVP: tinyurl.com/mitgita25