MIT

Tue Oct 6 · 5:15pm

Knighthood and the Realities of War in Medieval Germany

MIT · MIT Building E51 · 70 Memorial Dr · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

David S. Bachrach, a historian of medieval warfare, challenges the picture of German warfare as the business of a few mounted warrior aristocrats. His paper, for MIT's Ancient and Medieval Studies Colloquium, takes up "knighthood" as a problem of military history, the reality of pre-crusade warfare, the centrality of sieges and fortifications, and what that implies about the scale of war and of government.

Wed Oct 7 · 3:30pm

PPSM Seminar: Kyra Yap on Ion Transport in Solid State Battery Electrolytes

MIT · Building 56 114 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Kyra Yap, a researcher in Nitash Balsara's group in the chemical engineering department at the University of California, Berkeley, speaks on ion transport in solid-state battery electrolytes. The talk is part of the fall seminar series of MIT's Program in Polymers and Soft Matter, which brings on- and off-campus speakers to the polymer community at MIT and beyond.

Wed Oct 7 · 4pm

Lie Groups Seminar: Shenghao Li (University of Maryland)

MIT · Building 2 142 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Shenghao Li of the University of Maryland speaks on the base change fundamental lemma, which produces matching functions, with equal stable orbital integrals, between Hecke algebras of an unramified p-adic group over a field and over an unramified extension. Tracing results by Kottwitz (1986), Clozel (1990) and Haines (2009 and 2012), Li extends them to general principal series blocks through explicit constructions of types.

Wed Oct 7 · 4pm

SCSB Colloquium: Tom Nowakowski on Building a Brain, One Cell at a Time

MIT · Building 46 46-3002 · Singleton Auditorium · Cambridge · Cambridge

Tom Nowakowski, associate professor at UCSF, describes how his lab tags individual neural stem cells with genetic barcodes and uses single-cell sequencing to reconstruct the family trees of hundreds of thousands of brain cells in mouse and human tissue. The work maps where excitatory and inhibitory neurons originate, how the human cortex expands, and, through a modified rabies virus, the brain's earliest transient wiring before birth.

Wed Oct 7 · 4:15pm

Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Ada Stelzer (University of Michigan)

MIT · Building 2 132 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Ada Stelzer of the University of Michigan speaks on Gröbner crystal structures. When a reductive group acts on an embedded variety, its coordinate ring is a representation, recorded by an equivariant Hilbert series or K-polynomials, and combinatorial rules for their coefficients are sought. For generalized determinantal varieties, where pipe dreams and the RSK correspondence arise, Stelzer presents joint work with Abigail Price and Alexander Yong computing these series, and open problems.

Thu Oct 8 · 12pm

MLK Scholar Presentation: Justus Ndukaife on Optical Nanotweezers

MIT · Building 10 105 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Justus Ndukaife, a visiting professor at MIT through its Martin Luther King Jr. Scholars program, presents “Capturing the Invisible, Building the Future,” on the optical nanotweezers his lab uses to trap and characterise particles without labels, from nanoplastics studied under the ARPA-H STOMP program to drug-delivery nanomedicine. He also describes work with MIT teams placing quantum emitters precisely onto nanophotonic devices, and his approach to mentorship.

Thu Oct 8 · 4:30pm

Symplectic Geometry Seminar: Georgios Dimitroglou-Rizzell (Uppsala)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Georgios Dimitroglou-Rizzell of Uppsala University speaks at MIT's Symplectic Geometry Seminar, a research seminar in the mathematics department. His work in symplectic and contact topology concerns Lagrangian submanifolds, Lagrangian cobordisms and Legendrian knots.

Thu Oct 8 · 5pm

Quantum Connections Dinner: The Past, Present and Future of Quantum

MIT · ENDICOTT · Dedham · Dedham

A reception, dinner and panel discussion at Endicott House revisit the 1981 Physics of Computation Conference held there, a gathering that helped lay the ground for quantum information science. The evening honours Charles H. Bennett, a 1981 participant and co-recipient with Gilles Brassard of the 2025 Turing Award. Ian Waitz, MIT's vice president for research, moderates Bennett, Danna Freedman, Aram Harrow, Paola Cappellaro and IBM's Jamie Garcia.

$129.00 plus tax - MIT Rate

Thu Oct 8 · 6:00pm

MIT Architecture Lecture: TAKK — Mireia Luzárraga

MIT · MIT Building W41 · 265 Massachusetts Ave · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Mireia Luzárraga, co-founder with Alejandro Muiño of the Barcelona and New York practice TAKK, presents research and built work under the title Unlearning the Anthropocene: Architecture after Human Exceptionalism, drawing on feminist thought, political ecology and low-embedded-carbon materials. She teaches at Columbia GSAPP, co-edited 100 Words for Water and co-curated the Catalan Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. Presented with MIT's Morningside Academy for Design.

Fri Oct 9 · 3pm

MIT.nano Seminar: Mark Allen on Magnetics in MEMS

MIT · Building 34 401 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Mark Allen, chair of electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, surveys magnetic materials in microelectromechanical systems: laminated iron-alloy cores that suppress eddy currents in compact power converters, permanent-magnet circuits that tune yttrium iron garnet filters in the gigahertz range with zero DC power, and a magnetic optical relay that shuts converters off during a fault. Allen co-founded Cardiomems and belongs to the National Academy of Engineering.

Tue Oct 13 · 2:30pm

Physical Math Seminar: Nicolas Romeo (University of Chicago)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Nicolas Romeo of the University of Chicago presents “Mechanical canalization of chiral morphogenesis,” a theory-experiment study of how the fruit fly midgut reliably coils with the same handedness. An early constriction biases the symmetry breaking, with handedness set by molecular cues relayed between organs; elongation under anatomical confinement then drives a buckling instability that amplifies and stabilises the coil, pointing to tissue mechanics as a source of developmental robustness.

Tue Oct 13 · 4pm

Dertouzos Distinguished Lecture: Sir Michael Brady

MIT · Building 32 G449 (Patil-Kiva Seminar Room) · Cambridge · Cambridge

In “Applications of Image Analysis & AI in the Understanding of Cancer and Metabolic Syndrome,” Sir Michael Brady reviews systems built to study breast, lung and liver cancer and metabolic syndrome, including work from three companies he founded: ScreenPoint Medical, Optellum and Perspectum. Brady, a member of MIT's AI Lab from 1980 to 1985, is emeritus professor of information engineering at Oxford and was knighted in 2004.

Wed Oct 14 · 9am

Molecular Machine Learning Conference

MIT · Building 76 Luria Auditorium · Cambridge · Cambridge

The MIT Jameel Clinic, the research centre behind Boltz, the open-source series of biomolecular structure-prediction models, hosts its annual Molecular Machine Learning Conference (MoML), a gathering of academic and industry researchers applying machine learning to molecular modelling, molecular interactions and therapeutic design. The day combines talks with poster presentations, and students and postdocs attend free; registration is otherwise $300 early or $500.

Wed Oct 14 · 4pm

Lie Groups Seminar: Daniel Litt (University of Toronto)

MIT · Building 2 142 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Daniel Litt of the University of Toronto speaks on “Exceptional motives and exceptional local systems,” taking up a question Serre posed in 1996. Motives with exceptional motivic Galois group are now known for every exceptional group, but families of them were missing for E6 until recently; Litt surveys the story and explains joint work with Krämer and Maculan building such E6 families from the classical geometry of cubic threefolds.

Thu Oct 15 · 12pm

Applied Math Colloquium: Kui Ren (Columbia)

MIT · Building 45 (MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing) 432 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Kui Ren of Columbia University, an applied mathematician who works on inverse problems and their use in imaging, gives a special session of MIT's Applied Math Colloquium, held jointly with the Center for Computational Science and Engineering.

Thu Oct 15 · 4:30pm

Starr Forum: Anne-Marie Slaughter on What Would the US Do in a Middle Power Order?

MIT · Building E51 115 · Wong Auditorium · Cambridge · Cambridge

Anne-Marie Slaughter, incoming dean of public policy at the London School of Economics, takes up what the United States would do in a middle power order. She was previously CEO of New America and director of policy planning at the US State Department. Three MIT faculty respond: Fotini Christia, who directs the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society; Taylor Fravel, director of the Security Studies Program; and Noelle Selin, director of the Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy.

Thu Oct 15 · 4:30pm

Symplectic Geometry Seminar: Samuel Sottille (Stanford University)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Samuel Sottille of Stanford University speaks at MIT's Symplectic Geometry Seminar, a research seminar in the mathematics department on symplectic and contact geometry.

Thu Oct 15 · 6:00pm

MIT Architecture Lecture: Studio Ossidiana — Giovanni Bellotti and Alessandra Covini

MIT · MIT Building W41 · 265 Massachusetts Ave · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Giovanni Bellotti and Alessandra Covini lead Studio Ossidiana, a Dutch practice making spaces, objects, exhibitions and installations between architecture, design, art and landscape: experimental playgrounds, floating gardens inhabited by birds, outdoor kitchens and land-art pavilions on water. The studio won the Prix de Rome in 2018, was nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award in 2024 and 2026, and has shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Fri Oct 16 · 12pm

SCSB Lunch Series: Tatsuya Osaki on the Blood-Brain Barrier in Autism

MIT · Simons Center Conference room · 46-6011 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Tatsuya Osaki, a research scientist in Mriganka Sur's laboratory at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, presents a human stem-cell-derived model of the blood-brain barrier built to study vascular contributions to autism. Starting from Rett syndrome, his work found that MeCP2 mutations impair endothelial function and barrier integrity, and that blocking the microRNA miR-126-3p restored it. The talk is also streamed on Zoom.

Sat Oct 17 · 1pm

Anne Pauly: Before I Forget

MIT · French Library · Boston · Boston

Anne Pauly discusses her debut novel Before I Forget, which recounts the aftermath of her father's death and the task of mourning a man who was “at once a self-taught philosopher and romantic, and an alcoholic whose violence marked his family.” The book won the Prix du Livre Inter and was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt. Bruno Perreau, Cynthia L. Reed Professor of French Studies at MIT, moderates.

Mon Oct 19 · 3pm

Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Zilin Jiang (Arizona State University)

MIT · Building 2 143 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Zilin Jiang of Arizona State University speaks on “Unbalancing unit vectors,” a reversal of the vector-balancing problem behind the Komlós conjecture: rather than keeping a signed sum of vectors small, it asks how large one can be guaranteed. For n unit vectors in d dimensions, some choice of signs yields length at least √(2n − d), settling a conjecture of Ambrus and Nietert when n = d + 1.

Mon Oct 19 · 5:15pm

Mat Fournier: Undoing Gender in French Literature

MIT · Building 14 304 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Mat Fournier presents his book Dysphoric Modernism, which questions “the entanglements of the modern gender binary with state power and colonial history.” Reading Gide, Genet, Colette and others, Fournier traces how narratives of sexual dissidence in the French modernist canon both deconstruct and reinforce exclusive definitions of masculinity and femininity, and argues that tracking that dysphoria shows gender's complicity with historical and contemporary fascisms.

Tue Oct 20 · 6pm

Eleni Sikelianos and Julie Carr: William Corbett Poetry Series

MIT · Building 2 105 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Poets Eleni Sikelianos and Julie Carr read. Sikelianos's Memory Rehearsal, the third book in her trilogy of ancestral encounters, was called by Kirkus “a moving family memoir and a triumph of cultural archaeology”; she has also translated Jacques Roubaud and Mohamed Leftah. Carr's recent books include The Garden, the first of her Overflow series; she teaches at the University of Colorado Boulder and co-runs Counterpath in Denver.

Wed Oct 21 · 3:30pm

PPSM Seminar: Adam Caparco (Northeastern)

MIT · Building 56 114 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Adam Caparco, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Northeastern University, gives a seminar for MIT's Program in Polymers and Soft Matter, the interdepartmental graduate program in polymer science and soft materials.

Wed Oct 21 · 4pm

Lie Groups Seminar: Guy Shtotland (Ben-Gurion University)

MIT · Building 2 142 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Guy Shtotland of Ben-Gurion University speaks on a relative version of the Kazhdan–Lusztig isomorphism for the spherical variety GL2n\Sp2n. The original isomorphism, linking the affine Hecke algebra of a p-adic group to the equivariant K-theory of the Steinberg variety of its Langlands dual, was central to proving the Deligne–Langlands conjecture. Shtotland compares two Hecke-algebra modules built from such a variety and applies the relationship to distinguished representations.

Wed Oct 21 · 4pm

SCSB Colloquium: Jason Lerch on Biologically Informed Subgroups in Neurodevelopmental Disorders

MIT · Building 46 46-3002 · Singleton Auditorium · Cambridge · Cambridge

Jason Lerch, professor of neuroscience at the University of Oxford's Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, combines brain scans from 135 mouse models with two human MRI cohorts of more than a thousand people each to sort neurodevelopmental conditions by shared brain anatomy. The resulting subgroups cut across diagnoses such as autism, ADHD and OCD, aligning instead with a few molecular pathways, among them synaptic function and chromatin regulation.

Wed Oct 21 · 4:15pm

Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Jonathan Boretsky (McGill)

MIT · Harvard Science Center 232 · Boston

Jonathan Boretsky of McGill University speaks on totally positive skew-symmetric matrices. Since such matrices always have nonpositive entries, they cannot be totally positive in the classical sense, so the talk calls one totally positive when it lies in the totally positive orthogonal Grassmannian. Boretsky gives a positivity criterion in terms of a fixed set of minors and describes the sign pattern of their Pfaffians.

Thu Oct 22 · 4:30pm

Applied Math Colloquium: Sheehan Olver (Imperial College)

MIT · Building 2 190 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Sheehan Olver, a mathematician at Imperial College London, speaks at MIT's Applied Math Colloquium. His research is in numerical analysis, particularly spectral methods, orthogonal polynomials and the numerical solution of Riemann–Hilbert problems, and he created ApproxFun, an open-source Julia package for computing with functions.

Thu Oct 22 · 4:30pm

Symplectic Geometry Seminar: Dylan Cant (Université de Montréal)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Dylan Cant of the Université de Montréal speaks on "the spectral diameter of the Grassmannians", a pseudometric built from Floer theory. He shows the diameter is finite for Gr(2, n) when n is prime, a consequence of quantum cohomology, and infinite for Gr(2k, 2n) when k < n, through Lagrangian submanifolds. The work is joint with Habib Alizadeh, Marcelo Atallah and Jianqiao Shang.

Thu Oct 22 · 5:30pm

Artist Talk: Hao Jingban

MIT · Bartos Theatre 20 Ames Street · Bldg. E15 Atrium level Cambridge · Massachusetts 02139 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Hao Jingban talks with Huirong Ye, a Harvard doctoral student in East Asian film and media, to open I Witness, the List Center's exhibition and her first major US museum solo show; a reception follows. Its centrepiece, a three-channel installation, takes up "the embodied residue of the COVID-19 pandemic." Hao lives between Yunnan and Berlin and has had solo shows at Tokyo's Mori Art Museum and Matadero Madrid.

Thu Oct 22 · 6pm

MIT Architecture Lecture: Carrie McKnelly

MIT · Building W41 (MET Warehouse) 1216 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Carrie McKnelly, who leads the design team in Nike Innovation's Advanced Digital Creation Studio, works where computational design meets material craft. At Nike she has led computational design for products including DriFit Advanced for the 2024 Paris Olympics. She began at SOFTlab, designing large installations, and at MIT, in the Design and Computation Group that co-presents the lecture, worked on knit textiles as a material system.

Fri Oct 23 · 1pm

2026 McGovern Institute Symposium - Decoding Addiction: Breaking new ground in research and clinical care

MIT · Building 46 Singleton Auditorium · Cambridge · Cambridge

The McGovern Institute's 2026 symposium brings scientists, engineers and clinicians together on substance use disorders, bridging basic research in humans and animal models with clinical care. Speakers include Patricia Janak of Johns Hopkins, Geoffrey Schoenbaum of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, A. Eden Evins, director of Mass General's Center for Addiction Medicine, and Sarah Wakeman of Mass General Brigham, alongside four early-career researchers from MIT labs.

Mon Oct 26 · 12:30pm

Book Launch: Against Tech Oligarchy

MIT · Building W41 (MET Warehouse) 1216 · Cambridge · Cambridge

JS Tan and Clarissa Redwine launch Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World's Most Powerful Industry, on tech worker activism, Silicon Valley's shifting labour politics and the rise of today's tech oligarchs. It argues that workers, "when united," can build the leverage to push back. Tan is a doctoral student in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Mon Oct 26 – Tue Oct 27

Arthur Miller Lecture on Science and Ethics

MIT · MIT Welcome Center · Cambridge · Cambridge

The annual Arthur Miller Lecture on Science and Ethics is a panel on chatbots in children's toys: whether children, as "first-time learners," can defend themselves against "pretend empathy," or whether embodied AI is "a blank canvas" for good. Sherry Turkle, founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, joins Mimi Ito of UC Irvine's Connected Learning Lab and Mike Rizkalla, founder of Snorble.

Mon Oct 26 · 4:30pm

Innovation on Steroids: What Are We Learning from the Ukraine War?

MIT · Building 3 270 · Cambridge · Cambridge

The Focus on Eurasia series asks what the war in Ukraine is teaching about military innovation. Erik Lin-Greenberg, co-director of MIT's Wargaming Lab and author of The Remote Revolution: Drones and Modern Statecraft, studies how emerging military technology shapes conflict. Gene Keselman, an MIT Sloan lecturer, is a colonel in the Air Force Reserve. Carol Saivetz and Elizabeth Wood, author of Roots of Russia's War in Ukraine, co-chair.

Tue Oct 27 · 2:30pm

Physical Math Seminar: Olivia Pomerenk (Brown University)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

In "Flocking and floating," Olivia Pomerenk of Brown University presents mathematical models of collective behaviour in fluids at two scales. The first half develops a boundary-element framework for particles that attract, repel and organise at a fluid interface; the second models the wake-vortex interactions of two flapping birds in tandem, finding the follower's most efficient position for northern bald ibises and probing why birds fly in V-formation.

Wed Oct 28 · 4pm

Lie Groups Seminar: Steven Karp (University of Notre Dame)

MIT · Building 2 142 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Steven Karp, a mathematician at the University of Notre Dame, speaks to MIT's Lie Groups Seminar, a research seminar in Lie theory and representation theory. Karp works in algebraic combinatorics, chiefly on total positivity: the totally nonnegative Grassmannian, positroids and sign variation, and the amplituhedron that physicists use to compute particle scattering amplitudes.

Wed Oct 28 · 4pm

Picower Lecture: Richard L. Huganir

MIT · Building 46 Singleton Auditorium (46-3002) · Cambridge · Cambridge

Richard L. Huganir, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, gives the 2026 Picower Lecture. His laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity, in particular how AMPA-type glutamate receptors at the synapse are regulated during learning and memory. MIT's Linlin Fan hosts, and a reception follows.

Wed Oct 28 · 4:15pm

Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Ariana Chin (UCLA)

MIT · Harvard Science Center 232 · Boston

Ariana Chin of UCLA speaks at the Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics, the joint Harvard–MIT research seminar named for the MIT combinatorialist whose two-volume Enumerative Combinatorics is a standard reference in the field.

Wed Oct 28 · 5pm

MIT Music Tech Speaker Series: Andrew McPherson

MIT · Building 6 120 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Andrew McPherson, Professor of Design Engineering and Music at Imperial College London, talks on Enacted, not Extracted: Designing and Performing with Music-Analytical Concepts, arguing that a preoccupation with language about music risks reinforcing clichés and cultural stereotypes in instrument design. An MIT graduate in music and electrical engineering, he leads Imperial's Augmented Instruments Laboratory and built the magnetic resonator piano, an electromagnetically augmented grand used in dozens of compositions.

Thu Oct 29 – Fri Oct 30 · 3pm/8am

MIT Golub Center Annual Conference on Finance and Policy, Day 1

MIT · Boston Marriott Cambridge · Kendall Square · Cambridge · Boston

Thu Oct 29 · 3pm / Fri Oct 30 · 8am

MIT Sloan's Golub Center holds its 13th annual conference on financial regulation in an era of innovation and disruption, as AI accelerates new products, trading platforms and market infrastructure. Thursday's panels take up the future of money and payments, with former Treasury officials Michael Faulkender and Nellie Liang, and AI in markets; Stanford's Darrell Duffie gives the dinner keynote. Friday brings paper sessions on crypto trading and tokenized Treasuries.

Thu Oct 29 · 4:30pm

Symplectic Geometry Seminar: Chris Woodward (Rutgers University)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Chris Woodward, a professor of mathematics at Rutgers University, speaks at the Symplectic Geometry Seminar. He works on symplectic geometry and its links with algebraic geometry and representation theory, including Lagrangian Floer theory, gauged Gromov–Witten theory and, with Katrin Wehrheim, pseudoholomorphic quilts, a framework for relating Floer theories through Lagrangian correspondences.

Thu Oct 29 · 5pm

Evening With a Laureate: Simon Johnson on AI and the Global Economy

MIT · ENDICOTT · Dedham · Dedham

Simon Johnson, the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan, shared the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson for research on how institutions shape prosperity. Over dinner he talks about that work, his time in Stockholm, and how AI and economic policy are shaping the future. The evening launches the Endicott House Nobel Laureate Series.

$149.00 plus tax, MIT Rate

Thu Oct 29 · 6pm

MIT Architecture Lecture: Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi and Rachel Lee

MIT · Building W41 (MET Warehouse) 1216 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Architectural historians Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi and Rachel Lee give a lecture, The Work of Collaboration, on collaboration as both a feminist practice and a mode of historical inquiry, starting from their long-term project Feminist Architectural Histories of Migration. Siddiqi, Associate Professor at Barnard College, is the author of Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Settlement; Lee is Assistant Professor of Architecture at TU Delft.

Thu Oct 29 · 6:30pm

Camille de Peretti: Portrait of an Unknown Woman

MIT · Boston French Library · Boston · Boston

Camille de Peretti discusses her novel Portrait of an Unknown Woman, which starts from a true episode: in 1910 Gustav Klimt painted a young woman, then painted over her portrait, and the canvas, stolen in 1997, resurfaced two decades later. De Peretti imagines the woman behind the painting and the generations that follow her. MIT's Global France Seminar presents the talk with Literature at MIT and the French Library.

Mon Nov 2 · 3pm

Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Huy Tuan Pham (Caltech)

MIT · Building 2 143 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Huy Tuan Pham of Caltech speaks at the Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics, the joint Harvard–MIT seminar named for the MIT combinatorialist. In 2022 Pham and Jinyoung Park proved the Kahn–Kalai conjecture, which ties the threshold at which a random graph acquires a property to a simpler expectation threshold; his work spans probabilistic and additive combinatorics.

Mon Nov 2 · 4pm

Davison Lecture: Jeffrey R. Long (UC Berkeley)

MIT · Boston

Jeffrey R. Long, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, gives the Department of Chemistry's Davison Lecture, part of its inorganic chemistry seminar series. Long's research centres on metal–organic frameworks, porous crystalline materials built for gas storage and separations such as carbon dioxide capture, and he co-founded Mosaic Materials to develop frameworks for capturing carbon.

Wed Nov 4 · 9am

The Picower Institute Fall 2026 Symposium "Comparative Neuroscience: Lessons from Biodiversity"

MIT · Building 46 Singleton Auditorium (46-3002) · Cambridge · Cambridge

The Picower Institute's fall symposium, hosted by Brady Weissbourd, asks how nervous systems are organised across species as different as jellyfish and bats, what evolution changes to produce new behaviours, and why some brains regenerate better than others. Nine speakers take part, among them Herwig Baier of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, Kanaka Rajan of Harvard, Vanessa Ruta and Daniel Kronauer of Rockefeller, and Elly Tanaka of IMBA.

Wed Nov 4 · 4pm

Davison Lecture: Jeffrey R. Long (UC Berkeley), Second Lecture

MIT · Boston

Jeffrey R. Long, a professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, gives the second of his Davison Lectures for MIT's Department of Chemistry. Long's laboratory designs metal–organic frameworks, porous crystalline materials built for carbon capture, hydrogen storage and gas separation, and he has also worked on single-molecule magnets. He co-founded the carbon-capture company Mosaic Materials.

Wed Nov 4 · 4pm

Lie Groups Seminar: Eric Sommers (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

MIT · Building 2 142 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Eric Sommers of the University of Massachusetts Amherst speaks at MIT's Lie Groups Seminar, the mathematics department's meeting on Lie theory and representation theory. Sommers studies nilpotent orbits in semisimple Lie algebras, a subject that links the geometry of these algebras to Springer theory, Weyl group representations and the combinatorics of root systems.

Wed Nov 4 · 4:15pm

Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Sarah Brauner (UPenn)

MIT · Building 2 132 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Sarah Brauner of the University of Pennsylvania speaks at MIT's seminar in combinatorics, named for Richard P. Stanley, the longtime MIT mathematician whose Enumerative Combinatorics is a standard text in the field. Brauner works in algebraic combinatorics, where counting problems meet the representation theory of groups such as the symmetric group, and has written on configuration spaces and Eulerian representations of reflection groups.

Thu Nov 5 · 4:30pm

Symplectic Geometry Seminar: Shuhao Li (Stony Brook University)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Shuhao Li of Stony Brook University speaks at MIT's Symplectic Geometry Seminar. Symplectic geometry grew out of the phase spaces of classical mechanics, and its modern tools, among them Floer homology and pseudoholomorphic curves, now reach into low-dimensional topology, mirror symmetry and string theory.

Thu Nov 5 · 6pm

e-flux Architecture: Nick Axel and Nikolaus Hirsch

MIT · Building W41 (MET Warehouse) 1216 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Nikolaus Hirsch, co-founder of e-flux Architecture, and Nick Axel, its deputy editor, speak in MIT's fall architecture lecture series with the Architecture and Urbanism Group. Hirsch directs the Brussels museum Kanal Architecture, was dean of the Städelschule and designed the Dresden Synagogue. Axel heads architectural design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, was editor of the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale under Carlo Ratti, and co-edited Sick Architecture with Beatriz Colomina.

Fri Nov 6 · 12pm

SCSB Lunch Series: Chaoyi Zhang on Volumetric Functional Ultrasound Imaging of the Social Brain

MIT · Simons Center Conference room · 46-6011 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Chaoyi Zhang, a postdoctoral fellow in Guoping Feng's laboratory at MIT's McGovern Institute, presents a functional ultrasound platform for recording brain-wide activity in awake marmosets through an acoustically transparent skull implant. In the Simons Center for the Social Brain's lunch series, he reports that a live social partner drives stronger and wider activation than video of the same animal, and discusses applying the method to transgenic marmoset models of autism.

Mon Nov 9 · 4:30pm

Algebraic Topology Seminar: Connor Malin (Max Planck Institute for Mathematics)

MIT · Building 2 131 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Connor Malin of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn speaks at MIT's Algebraic Topology Seminar. Malin works in homotopy theory, notably on configuration spaces of manifolds and the Koszul self-duality of the little disks operads, the structures that record how disks can be placed side by side inside a larger disk in Euclidean space.

Tue Nov 10 · 4pm

SCSB Special Seminar: Aya Ito-Ishida on Cross-Species Cortical Network Alterations

MIT · Building 46 46-3002 · Singleton Auditorium · Cambridge · Cambridge

Aya Ito-Ishida, a physician-scientist who leads the Laboratory for Brain Development and Disorders at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Japan, presents work combining resting-state fMRI in people with Rett syndrome and wide-field calcium imaging in mice. The findings point to a shared disruption of cortical functional hierarchy that tracks behavioural severity and reverses in mice when MECP2 is reintroduced. Hosted by Giselle Fernandes and Mriganka Sur.

Thu Nov 12 · 4:30pm

Symplectic Geometry Seminar: Yusuf Baris Kartal (National University of Singapore)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Yusuf Baris Kartal of the National University of Singapore speaks at MIT's Symplectic Geometry Seminar, the mathematics department's research seminar on symplectic manifolds, the geometry that underlies classical mechanics. Kartal's research concerns Fukaya categories, including work that uses wrapped Fukaya categories to tell apart open symplectic mapping tori.

Thu Nov 12 · 6pm

MIT Architecture Lecture: Colectivo C733

MIT · Building W41 (MET Warehouse) 1216 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Gabriela Carrillo and Carlos Facio of Colectivo C733, the group of four Mexican architecture offices that won the 2024 Obel Award for completing 36 public projects in 36 months, speak in MIT's fall architecture lecture series with the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism. Carrillo, who teaches at UNAM, received the Royal Academy Dorfman Award in 2023; Facio founded the Mexico City workshop TO with José Amozurrutia in 2015.

Mon Nov 16 · 4:30pm

2026 Dresselhaus Lecture

MIT · Building 10 250 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Gang Chen, MIT's Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering, who headed Mechanical Engineering from 2013 to 2018, delivers the annual lecture named for Mildred Dresselhaus, the MIT physicist known as the “queen of carbon science.” Chen's research runs from electron and phonon transport in thermoelectric materials to evaporation and condensation for desalination and data-centre cooling; his honours include the ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award.

Mon Nov 16 · 4:30pm

Algebraic Topology Seminar: David Lee (Northwestern University)

MIT · Building 2 131 · Cambridge · Cambridge

David Lee of Northwestern University speaks at MIT's Algebraic Topology Seminar, the mathematics department's weekly Monday research seminar in homotopy theory and neighbouring fields, organised by Jeremy Hahn.

Mon Nov 16 · 6pm

Elisa Shua Dusapin: The Old Fire

MIT · Boston French Library · Boston · Boston

Elisa Shua Dusapin discusses her novel The Old Fire, about “two estranged sisters, a childhood home, and all that remains unspoken between them.” Dusapin, who was born in France to a South Korean mother and grew up between Paris, Seoul and Switzerland, writes in French; Winter in Sokcho, translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins, won the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature. MIT and the French Library co-present.

Wed Nov 18 · 3:15pm

Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Jim Propp (UMass Lowell and Radcliffe Institute)

MIT · Harvard Science Center 232 · Boston

Jim Propp of UMass Lowell and the Radcliffe Institute presents “Snake graphs and q-deformed real numbers,” a statistical-mechanical construction that extends the q-deformed rationals of Morier-Genoud and Ovsienko to irrational numbers, using random dimer covers of infinite snake graphs. He starts from Stern's diatomic series and the Calkin–Wilf bijection. Propp is known for work on domino tilings of the Aztec diamond and, with David Wilson, coupling from the past.

Wed Nov 18 · 3:30pm

PPSM Seminar: Diego Alzate-Sanchez (Northeastern)

MIT · Building 56 114 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Diego Alzate-Sanchez, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Northeastern and a member of its Plastics Center, speaks in MIT's Program in Polymers and Soft Matter seminar series. His lab works on polymer sustainability, looking for cleaner ways to manufacture materials. After a master's at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia he worked as a volcanologist, then trained with William Dichtel at Northwestern and Jeffrey Moore at Illinois.

Wed Nov 18 · 4pm

Lie Groups Seminar: Shamgar Gurevich (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

MIT · Building 2 142 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Shamgar Gurevich of the University of Wisconsin–Madison speaks at MIT's Lie Groups Seminar, the mathematics department's research seminar in representation theory. Gurevich works on representations of groups over finite fields, including a notion of “rank” for them developed with Roger Howe, and has applied the same harmonic analysis to problems in signal processing.

Wed Nov 18 · 4:30pm

Starr Forum: Jake Sullivan on AI and Global Power

MIT · Building E51 115 · Wong Auditorium · Cambridge · Cambridge

Jake Sullivan, President Biden's national security advisor and now Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center, speaks on AI and global power: democracy, competition and control. In office he made artificial intelligence a top national security priority. Deb Roy, director of MIT's Center for Constructive Communication, moderates; the Center for International Studies co-sponsors, and a recording goes on YouTube afterwards.

Wed Nov 18 · 5pm

MIT Music Tech Speaker Series: Mark Ethier

MIT · Building 6 120 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Mark Ethier, who co-founded the audio software company iZotope in 2001 after taking MIT degrees in music and computer science, speaks on “Tools for Musicians in the Age of AI: From iZotope to Berklee.” Under him as CEO, iZotope won two Primetime Engineering Emmys and an Academy Award for Scientific and Engineering Achievement. He is now founding executive director of Berklee's Emerging Artistic Technology Lab, which helps musicians navigate technology.

Thu Nov 19 · 4:30pm

Applied Math Colloquium: Nikhil Srivastava (UC Berkeley)

MIT · Building 2 190 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Nikhil Srivastava of the University of California, Berkeley gives MIT's Applied Math Colloquium. With Adam Marcus and Daniel Spielman he resolved the Kadison–Singer problem in 2013, work recognised with the 2014 George Pólya Prize and the 2021 Michael and Sheila Held Prize. His research spans spectral graph theory, random matrices and numerical linear algebra, and includes the theory of spectral sparsification of graphs.

Thu Nov 19 · 6pm

MIT Architecture Lecture: Ruth Mandl and Bobby Johnston

MIT · Building W41 (MET Warehouse) 1216 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Ruth Mandl and Bobby Johnston discuss CO Adaptive, the “unbuild-design-build practice” they founded in 2011, and its work on adaptive reuse, high-efficiency retrofits, material salvage, remanufacturing and design for disassembly. The firm won the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices 2026, and its Mercury Store project appeared in MoMA’s New York, New Publics exhibition. Both are teaching a studio at MIT this fall; the lecture is also streamed on YouTube.

Mon Nov 23 · 4:30pm

Algebraic Topology Seminar: Andy Senger (University of Maryland)

MIT · Building 2 131 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Andy Senger of the University of Maryland speaks at MIT’s Algebraic Topology Seminar. Senger works in homotopy theory and its applications; he took his PhD at MIT in 2021 under Haynes Miller and was then an NSF postdoc at Harvard. His papers include work with Jeremy Hahn and Ishan Levy on the algebraic K-theory of the integers mod p^n.

Tue Nov 24 · 4:30pm

Symplectic Geometry Seminar: Zhengyi Zhou (Morningside Center of Mathematics)

MIT · Building 2 361 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Zhengyi Zhou, an associate professor at the Morningside Center of Mathematics in Beijing, speaks at MIT’s Symplectic Geometry Seminar, which meets on a Tuesday this week rather than its usual Thursday. Zhou works on symplectic field theory and its applications; he earned his PhD at UC Berkeley under Katrin Wehrheim and spent three years at the Institute for Advanced Study working with Helmut Hofer.

Mon Nov 30 · 4:30pm

Algebraic Topology Seminar: Sanath Devalapurkar (Institute for Advanced Study)

MIT · Building 2 131 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Sanath Devalapurkar, a member of the Institute for Advanced Study this fall, speaks at MIT’s Algebraic Topology Seminar. He works across algebraic topology, characteristic-p geometry and geometric representation theory, including relative Langlands duality for generalized cohomology theories. Devalapurkar studied mathematics at MIT as an undergraduate, completed a Harvard PhD under Mike Hopkins and Dennis Gaitsgory, and joins Johns Hopkins as an assistant professor in January 2027.

Wed Dec 2 · 3:30pm

PPSM Seminar: Arsalan Mirjafari (SUNY Oswego)

MIT · Building 56 114 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Arsalan Mirjafari, a chemistry professor at SUNY Oswego, speaks in the seminar series of MIT’s Program in Polymers and Soft Matter, an interdisciplinary graduate program in polymer science and engineering. His lab works on ionic liquids, designing them for specific tasks to address problems in health, energy and sustainability. Mirjafari holds the Dr. Richard S. Shineman Endowed Chair in Chemistry at Oswego.

Wed Dec 2 · 4pm

Lie Groups Seminar: Siyan Daniel Li-Huerta (MIT)

MIT · Building 2 142 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Siyan Daniel Li-Huerta, an NSF postdoctoral fellow at MIT, speaks at the Lie Groups Seminar. He completed his Harvard PhD in 2023 under Mark Kisin. His recent paper Courbes et fibrés vectoriels en théorie de Hodge z-adique globale studies a global analogue of the Fargues–Fontaine curve over function fields and uses it to recast the global Langlands conjecture in terms of categorical local Langlands.

Wed Dec 2 · 4pm

SCSB Colloquium: Kuan Hong Wang on Neuromodulation of Circuit Plasticity

MIT · Building 46 46-3002 · Singleton Auditorium · Cambridge · Cambridge

Kuan Hong Wang, Dean’s Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Rochester Medical Center, discusses how neuromodulatory systems, among them dopaminergic, cannabinoid and neuroimmune signaling, govern the plasticity of neural circuits across development, experience and disease. Drawing on circuit mapping, in vivo imaging and electrophysiology in mice and non-human primates, he considers how that work could guide circuit-based therapies for brain disorders. Fan Wang hosts; a reception follows.

Thu Dec 3 · 4:30pm

Symplectic Geometry Seminar: Aleksander Doan (University College London)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Aleksander Doan, an associate professor of mathematics at University College London, speaks at MIT’s Symplectic Geometry Seminar. He works in differential geometry, gauge theory and symplectic topology, and his paper with Eleny Ionel and Thomas Walpuski on the Gopakumar–Vafa finiteness conjecture appears in the Annals of Mathematics. Doan took his PhD at Stony Brook under Simon Donaldson and held fellowships at Columbia and at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Thu Dec 3 · 6pm

MIT Architecture Lecture: Meriem Chabani

MIT · Building W41 (MET Warehouse) 1216 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Meriem Chabani, of New South, lectures in MIT’s fall architecture series, co-presented with the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture. She has spent ten years on territorial, urban and architectural projects in places facing significant socio-economic challenges. Chabani teaches the Masters studio ‘Afterlives’ at the Royal College of Art and an African health architecture studio at ENSA Paris-Malaquais, and was a 2024 Wheelwright Prize finalist.

Mon Dec 7 · 4:30pm

Algebraic Topology Seminar: Peter Haine (University of Southern California)

MIT · Building 2 131 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Peter Haine, an assistant professor at the University of Southern California, speaks at MIT’s Algebraic Topology Seminar. His work centers on homotopy theory and algebraic geometry, and in August 2026 he taught a mini-course on homotopy types of schemes in Melbourne. Haine completed his MIT PhD in 2021 with Clark Barwick, then held postdoctoral posts at UC Berkeley and at the Institute for Advanced Study under Jacob Lurie.

Wed Dec 9 · 4pm

Lie Groups Seminar: George Lusztig (MIT)

MIT · Building 2 142 · Cambridge · Cambridge

George Lusztig speaks at the MIT mathematics department’s Lie Groups Seminar, a research-level seminar in representation theory. Lusztig, an MIT mathematician, is known for Deligne–Lusztig theory, developed with Pierre Deligne in 1976 to study representations of finite groups of Lie type, and for the Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomials he introduced with David Kazhdan in 1979. He received the Shaw Prize in 2014 and the Wolf Prize in 2022.

Thu Dec 10 · 4:30pm

Symplectic Geometry Seminar: Xin Jin (Boston College)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Xin Jin, a mathematician at Boston College, speaks at MIT’s Symplectic Geometry Seminar. Her research brings microlocal sheaf theory to bear on symplectic topology and homological mirror symmetry. The seminar, run in the mathematics department by Shaoyun Bai and Paul Seidel, hosts research-level talks in symplectic geometry and neighbouring fields, and is open to the public as well as the MIT community.

Thu Jan 21 · 4pm

Picower Special Seminar: Mark Wagner (NIH)

MIT · Building 46 Singleton Auditorium (46-3002 · Third Fl of MIT Building 46) · Cambridge · Cambridge

Mark Wagner, a neuroscientist at the National Institutes of Health, gives a special seminar at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. His research has centred on the cerebellum and its part in learning and reward. He is hosted by Brady Weissbourd, an MIT neuroscientist whose lab studies the nervous system of the jellyfish. The seminar is offered in person only.